The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

by Eric Weiner

Nietzsche’s philosophy dances superbly. It has rhythm. It skips and sashays across the page, and occasionally moonwalks. Just as dancing has no purpose—the dance is the purpose—so, too, with Nietzsche’s philosophy. For Nietzsche, dancing and thinking move toward similar ends: a celebration of life. He’s not trying to prove anything. He simply wants you to see the world, and yourself, differently. Like an artist, a philosopher like Nietzsche hands us a pair of glasses and says, “Look at the world through these. Do you see what I see? Isn’t it miraculous?” What we see may or may not be true in a scientific sense, but that is not the point. The philosopher conveys the truth not of the scientist but of the artist or novelist. It is an “as if” approach. View the world as if another level of reality, the noumenon, lies beneath the surface. Live your life as if it repeats endlessly. See what happens. Does looking at the world this way illuminate yours? Good. Then it has value. Viewing the world in a different way—even an “incorrect,” different way, like Thoreau peering between his legs—enriches our lives.

Can you accept that endless failure? asks Nietzsche. More than that, can you embrace it? Can you love it? About a missed rock—sure, Friedrich. About life’s larger disappointments—botched job interviews, bungled parenting, fickle friends—I’m less certain. I can resign myself to their existence, accept them even. But love them? That is asking an awful lot. I’m not there yet. Maybe I never will be, no matter how many times the universe and I repeat. There’s a reason Groundhog Day is a comedy. If we do live the selfsame life over and over again in the selfsame way, forever and ever, then what can we do but laugh? Better yet: dance. Don’t wait for a reason to dance. Just dance. Dance feverishly and with abandon, as if no one is watching. When life is good, dance. When it hurts, dance. And when your time is up and the dance is over, say—no, shout—Da capo! Again, again.

This is where Stoicism shines. The philosophy’s core teaching—change what you can; accept what you can’t—is appealing in our tumultuous times. Stoicism offers a handrail, a way forward. I knew this, having read Marcus. What I didn’t know was how demanding the philosophy is, and how much fun.

Stoic altruism sometimes appears clinical, but it is exceptionally effective. I have a friend, Karen, who is a Stoic, though she doesn’t know it. I first met her in Jerusalem, where we were both working as journalists. There are a lot of stray cats in Jerusalem, more than in most places. It broke my heart to see these scruffy felines, with matted fur and open sores. I felt bad for them. That was the extent of my “helping.” I responded to their suffering by suffering myself, as if that somehow constituted a form of aid. Not Karen. She sprang into action, scooping up a stray tabby here, a gimpy Oriental shorthair there. She fed them, and took them to a veterinary clinic. She found them homes. She did more than just emote.

The Stoics have a word for these circumstances and achievements that lie beyond our control: “indifferents.” Their presence doesn’t add one iota to our character or our happiness. They are neither good nor bad. The Stoic, therefore, is “indifferent” to them. As Epictetus says: “Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though dying is happy, and who though in disrepute is happy. Show him to me! By the gods, I would then see a Stoic!”

Looking back at the episode, Rob knows his Stoic attitude didn’t change the outcome, but it did change how he endured it. He suffered but he did not compound his suffering by wishing life were otherwise.

Much of life lies beyond our control, but we command what matters most: our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions. Our mental and emotional life. We all possess Herculean strength, superhero powers, but it is the power to master our interior world. Do this, the Stoics say, and you will be “invincible.” Too often we place our happiness in the hands of others: a tyrannical boss, a mercurial friend, our Instagram followers. Epictetus, the former slave, likens our predicament to self-imposed bondage. Only the man or woman who wants nothing is free. Imagine, says Epictetus, you handed over your body to a stranger on the street. Absurd, right? Yet that’s what we do with our mind every day. We cede our sovereignty to others, allowing them to colonize our mind. We need to evict them. Now. It’s not so difficult. It is far easier to change ourselves than to change the world.

Let’s examine how a faulty emotion is born. It starts with a reflexive reaction (called “pre-emotions” or “proto-passions”) to an external event (an “impression” in Stoic-speak). We stub our toe, then scream. We get stuck in traffic, then curse. This is natural. We are human after all. That initial shock is not an emotion but a reflex, like blushing when you’re embarrassed. It becomes an emotion when you “assent” to it, the Stoics say. When you assent, you elevate its status from reflex to passion. All of this happens quickly, in a flash, but none of it happens without our permission. Every time we choose to honor, and amplify, these negative proto-passions we are choosing unhappiness. Why in the world, ask the Stoics, would you want to do that? We must sever the link between impression and assent. This is where the Socratic pause—the “Mighty Pause,” I call it—comes in handy. Says Epictetus: “Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, ‘Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.’ ” Only when we realize our reaction to hardship is not automatic but a choice can we begin to make better choices.

Besides, I am engaging in what the Stoics call Voluntary Deprivation. (All right, not so voluntary in my case.) Seneca, among the wealthiest of Romans, recommended practicing poverty for a few days each month. Eat the “scantiest and cheapest fare” and wear “coarse and rough dress,” he advised. When Stoics practice Voluntary Deprivation they are, on one level, adhering to their maxim: “live in accord with nature.” Sweat when it’s hot, shiver when it’s cold, feel hunger pangs when famished. The goal of Voluntary Deprivation, though, is not pain but pleasure. By occasionally denying ourselves certain comforts, we appreciate them more, and lessen their hold on us. Voluntary Deprivation teaches self-control, which has all sorts of benefits. Refrain from eating that piece of chocolate cake and you will feel good about yourself. Forgoing pleasure is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Voluntary Deprivation cultivates courage. It also inoculates us against future deprivation, which might not be voluntary. We experience a prick of pain now but much less later.

This brings us to another vaccine in the Stoic dispensary: premeditatio malorum, or “premeditation of adversity.” Anticipate the arrows of Fortune, says Seneca. Imagine the worst scenarios and “rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.” Imagining adversity is not the same as worrying about it, the Stoics say. Worrying is vague, inchoate. Premeditated adversity is specific—the more specific the better. Not “I imagine suffering a financial setback,” but “I imagine losing my house, car, my entire bag collection and am forced to move back in with my mother.” Oh, suggests Epictetus, helpfully, also imagine you’ve lost the ability to speak, hear, walk, breathe, and swallow. By imagining the worst-case scenario we rob future hardships of their bite, and appreciate what we have. When catastrophe strikes, as it inevitably will, the Stoic is no more surprised than when a fig tree produces figs or a helmsman encounters a headwind, says Epictetus. Adversity anticipated is adversity diminished. Fears articulated are fears lessened. That, at least, is the theory.

This emphasis on self-reliance helps explain why Stoicism appealed to America’s Founding Fathers, and to soldiers everywhere today. It locates responsibility for your happiness squarely on your own shoulders. When a young student complains of a runny nose, Epictetus replies: “Have you no hands? Wipe your own nose, then, and don’t blame God.”

He was articulating the Stoic notion of “the View from Above.” Imagine yourself hovering high above the earth, looking down at your puny world: the inconsequential traffic and dirty dishes and petty arguments and lost notebooks. Indifferents, all of them. You are nothing. You are everything.

My capacity for self-deception didn’t begin with the first wisps of gray. As the Roman philosopher Cicero noted, many of the deficiencies we blame on old age are really failings of character. Old age does not produce new personality traits so much as it amplifies existing ones. As we age, we become more intensely ourselves. Usually, not in a good way. The fiscally cautious young man grows into a miserly old grouch. The admirably determined young woman grows into an infuriatingly stubborn old lady. Must this character amplification always trend negative? Can we reverse the trajectory as we age? Can we become older, better versions of ourselves?

As we walk, I take the initiative and dadsplain about existentialism. I dadsplain how it is a philosophy, as the name implies, focused on existence, and thus represents a return to the original, therapeutic mission of philosophy. Not a what but a how. How can we lead more authentic, meaningful lives? The good news, existentialists say, is that the answer is entirely up to us. Not God or human nature. There is no human nature, only possible natures. Or, as Beauvoir said: “Man’s nature is to have no nature.” This is incredibly empowering—and terrifying. We are, in the famous words of Sartre, “condemned to be free.” We yearn for freedom but also fear it, for if we are truly free we have no one but ourselves to blame for our unhappiness. For the existentialists, we are what we do. Period. We are no more and no less than our projects fully realized. There is no such thing as love in the abstract, only acts of love; no genius, only acts of genius. In our deeds, we draw our self-portrait, one brushstroke at a time. We are that portrait “and nothing but that portrait,” Sartre said. Stop trying to find yourself. Start painting yourself. We can become anything we want, I dadsplain. Just because you’re a waiter in a café, to use one of Sartre’s best-known examples, doesn’t mean you must remain a waiter. You have choices, and it is through these choices, consciously made and rigorously pursued, that we create our essence.

At a young age, before she was an existentialist, before the term existed, Beauvoir said, “My life would be a beautiful story come true, a story I would make up as I went along.” This is existentialism. There is no script to follow, no stage directions. We are author, director, and actor of our own life story.

Learning acceptance—not resignation but genuine openhearted acceptance—is itself a project, perhaps the most important one of all.

Sartre observes the waiter more closely. He is a good waiter, a little too good, a little “extra,” my daughter would say. “His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid,” says Sartre. “He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer.” He is not a waiter in a café, concludes Sartre. He is playing at being a waiter in a café. A lot of us sleepwalk through life like this. We confuse our social roles with our essence. We get “taken hold of by others,” says Sartre, and see ourselves only as they do. We forfeit our freedom, and lack authenticity (a word derived from the Greek authentes, meaning someone who acts independently). This abdication is particularly true, I think, of the elderly. Others see them as helpless and inconsequential, and soon they begin to see themselves this way, too. They play at being an old person. They order the early-bird special and take Caribbean cruises and drive for three miles with their left-turn-signal indicator on because, well, that’s what old people are supposed to do. Hold on, says Sartre. Do you genuinely like the early-bird special? Is it a choice you made consciously, purposively, or one you simply slid into? It doesn’t have to be this way. Consider retirement. After a lifetime playing a certain role—banker, journalist, waiter—we’re suddenly stripped of this identity. Who are we then? Maybe, like Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy’s novel...

Albert Camus would chuckle at the cartoon. The French-Algerian writer was a leading proponent of a philosophy called Absurdism. The world is irrational. It makes no sense. All our accomplishments crumble under the unforgiving boot of time. Yet we persist. This is Absurdity. This is life. An elaborate stage production performed enthusiastically and repeatedly to an empty theater. Beauvoir was wrong, the Absurdists would say. Old age isn’t life’s parody. Life is life’s parody. Old age is simply the punch line. How to respond to such absurdity? We can ignore it, for a while. Our Fitbits and 401(k)s give the illusion of progress, of meaning. We monitor calories burned, interest earned, and assume we’re getting somewhere. My life has meaning. I can see it flashing brightly on this tiny screen. But Sisyphus wearing a Fitbit is just as absurd as Sisyphus without one. More absurd, in fact, for he is seduced by the illusion of progress while the Fitbit-free Sisyphus is not. Absurdity quantified is more, not less absurd. Interesting, but what does this have to do with growing old? Isn’t life just as absurd when we’re twenty-five years old as when we’re seventy-five? Yes, but at seventy-five we’re more aware of it. We’ve amassed enough accolades, saved enough money, to know how meaningless they are. Sisyphus at twenty-five still holds out hope that maybe, maybe this time the rock won’t roll down the hill. Sisyphus at seventy-five has no such illusions.

Dear Sonya: Question everything, especially your questions. Gaze at the world with wonder. Speak to it with reverence. Listen to it with love. Never stop learning. Do everything, but make time for nothing, too. Cross bridges on any damn level you want. Don’t curse your Sisyphean rock. Own it. Love it. Oh, and cut back on the McDonald’s. Or not. It is your choice.

Grief can crush. Grief can paralyze. Grief can also motivate. It was grief that drove a heartbroken Mughal emperor named Shah Jahan to build the Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved wife. It was grief—over the loss of his wife, daughter, and eyesight—that inspired Milton to pen Paradise Lost. And it was grief that propelled Michel de Montaigne up three winding flights of stairs to the top floor of a red-roofed tower, perched high atop a hill and exposed to the winds, and where he would pen his Essays. From great suffering great beauty arises.

Montaigne did not have a death wish. He had a life wish. Yet he knew this wish could not be fully realized without coming to terms with death. We might think life and death are strictly sequential: we live, then we die. The truth, says Montaigne, is that “death mingles and fuses with our lives throughout.” We don’t die because we are sick. We die because we are alive. Montaigne thinks of death in ways I didn’t believe possible. Not only does he contemplate it but he plays with it and even—I realize this sounds odd—befriends it. “I want death to have a share in the ease and comfort of my life. It is a great and important part of it.” I

Slowly, Montaigne begins to approach death “not as a catastrophe but as something beautiful and inevitable,” like an autumn leaf falling from a tree. The leaf doesn’t worry about how to fall, and nor should we. “If you do not know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do the job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.” Will she, Michel? I hope so. She is awfully mercurial. One moment she’s blooming cherry blossoms, the next she’s unleashing a category 5 hurricane. I don’t subscribe to the if-it’s-natural-it-must-be-good theory. Cockroaches are natural. Earthquakes are natural. Nasal hair is natural.

Medical technology comforts us by numbing us and numbs us by distracting us. As long as the machines beep and the screens flash, all is well.

The remedy for death is not more life—any more than the remedy for despair is hope. Both states call for the same medicine: acceptance. That is where Montaigne, like Beauvoir, ends up. Not a half-hearted acceptance but a full and generous one. Acceptance of death, yes, but of life, too, and of himself. Acceptance of his positive traits (“To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty”) and acceptance of his flaws as well. Like idleness. Montaigne often chastised himself for wasting time. Eventually he realized how silly that was. “We are great fools, ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say; ‘I have done nothing today.’ What, have you not lived?”

Driving our dread of death is not only fear but greed. We want more days, more years, and when, against all odds, we receive those, we want more still. Why? wondered Montaigne. If you have lived one day, you have lived them all. “There is no other light, no other night. This sun, this moon, these stars, the way they are arranged, all of these are the very same your ancestors enjoyed and will entertain your grandchildren.” When my time comes, I hope I can hold on to Montaigne’s words. No, chides Michel. Not my words. Yours. There is no such thing as an impersonal insight. Borrowed truths fit about as well as borrowed underwear, and are just as icky. You either know something in your heart or you don’t know it at all. Live your life not as a standardized exam but, like Gandhi, as one grand experiment. In this sort of personal, lived philosophy, the goal is not abstract knowledge but personal truths: not to know that but simply to know. There’s an enormous difference. I know that love is an important human emotion and has many health benefits. I know I love my daughter. Montaigne’s philosophy boils down to this: Trust yourself. Trust your experiences. Trust your doubts, too. Let them guide you through life, and to the threshold of death. Cultivate the capacity to be surprised, by others and by yourself. Tickle yourself. Remain open to the possibility of possibility. And, for God’s sake, says Montaigne, joining hands with his compatriot Simone Weil, pay attention.