How to make the right decisions? How to take criticism and manage anger? How to deal with death? And most importantly, how to live right? Stoicism, an ancient philosophy made especially famous by the works of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, can teach us all this. About why it attracts more and more attention of our contemporaries, the philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci tells — his book «How to be a Stoic» was published by Alpina Non-Fiction.
In Stoicism, I found a rational, science-friendly philosophy that includes metaphysics with a spiritual dimension and is immanently open to any «revisions». But most importantly, this philosophy can be successfully applied in real life.
The Stoics lived principle of universal causation: everything in the world happens for a reason, and the processes in the universe follow natural laws. They did not believe in transcendent miracles, but in the fact that the world is organized according to the logos (this can be interpreted as a universal mind, God, and even the so-called «God of Einstein», the essence of which is in the simple and undeniable fact that nature is knowable through a cause) .
The main advantage of stoicism is (definitely) its practicality, although other distinctive features of the Stoic system are no less important. Stoicism was born and has always been perceived as a form of finding a way to a happy and meaningful life. Most of the early writings of this doctrine have been lost, almost all fundamental texts belong to the period of the Late Roman Stoa (the so-called Stoic school). And they are all examples of clear thinking.
Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Marcus Aurelius speak to us in a simple language that is so unlike the enigmatic Buddhist texts and ornate parables of early Christianity. One of my favorite quotes from the same Epictetus illustrates this earthly practicality quite clearly: “Death is an inevitable necessity … I mean, where can I escape death?”
The attitude towards death is one of the main reasons why I turned to stoicism.
This philosophy is extremely direct and honest about the inevitability of the end of life and how to prepare for it.
I recently turned 50 years old, a whole half century, and this made me think deeply about the questions: who am I and what do I do? As a non-religious person, I wanted to find some guidance that would help me prepare for imminent death.
I must say that thanks to the achievements of modern science and medicine, our life expectancy is gradually increasing. As the years go by, more and more people will wonder what to do with their existence for the few decades they have left after retirement.
But no matter how we dispose of the meaning of our «extended» life, we must prepare ourselves and our loved ones for the fact that our consciousness will inevitably fade away — as well as our unique presence in this world. Knowing how to die with dignity will allow us not only to achieve the necessary peace of mind and soul, but also to give it to those who outlive us.
It is known that the Stoics devoted many works to what Seneca called the main test of the human personality and its life. “Every day we die,” he wrote in a letter to Gaius Lucilius. Seneca directly connected the final test with all previous earthly existence: “A person who does not know how to die with dignity will not be able to live with dignity”. Life for the Stoics is an ongoing project, and there is nothing special about its logical, natural conclusion (death): nothing that could cause fear.
This point of view immediately became close to me, because it allowed me to harmoniously reconcile two opposite (and equally unsatisfactory, in my opinion) approaches that the modern world offers. On the one hand, in relation to death, the Stoics have no fantasies about immortality, in which there are no scientific or reasonable grounds to believe. On the other hand, there is no secular neglect or, even worse, avoidance of thoughts about future death and the disappearance of one’s personality.
For these and other reasons, Stoicism attracts so many people, so I am not alone in my desire to revive this ancient branch of practical philosophy and adapt it to life in the XNUMXst century.
Every fall, researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK hold Stoic Week, an international event and social science experiment that brings together thousands of academic philosophers, cognitive therapists and Stoic practitioners from around the world.
In addition to educating people about Stoicism and its application to everyday life, Stoic Week can also collect systematic data to determine whether the practice of Stoicism actually makes a difference in life.
While the results are preliminary (more complex experimental protocols and larger sample sizes are planned for future Stoic Weeks), they are encouraging.
For example, participants in Stoic Week 9 reported a 11% increase in positive emotions, an 14% decrease in negative emotions, and a 56% increase in life satisfaction after just one week of practice. (These were initial results, and the most recent long-term follow-up of people who practice Stoic principles in their daily lives confirmed them.) XNUMX% of participants also felt that Stoicism made them more virtuous.
Of course, these results are based on a «self-declared» sample of people who are interested in Stoicism and believe in the validity of at least some of its provisions and methods. But the fact that even people who have been practicing Stoicism for quite some time are finding such a big change in themselves after just a few days of the Stoic week should arouse interest in this teaching in many.
Meanwhile, these results are not at all surprising, because stoicism is the philosophical foundation of a number of methods of evidence-based psychotherapy.
Including logotherapy by Viktor Frankl and rational-emotional-behavioral therapy by Albert Ellis
It has been said of Ellis that «no other person—not even Freud himself—has had a greater influence on modern psychotherapy.» As for Viktor Frankl, he was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, survived the Holocaust and wrote the famous book . This moving and inspiring essay on human resilience can be seen as a contemporary example of the application of Stoic philosophy to life.
Both Ellis and Frankl recognized the important influence of Stoicism on the formation of their therapeutic approaches, Frankl characterized logotherapy as a kind of existential analysis.
Another compelling example of the application of stoicism to life can be found in the memoir In Love and War by US Navy Vice Admiral James Stockdale, the most decorated officer in the history of the US Navy. Stockdale believes that it was stoicism (in particular, reading the works of Epictetus) that helped him survive in the hellish conditions of the Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
Deeply rooted in Stoicism is a diverse family of practices collectively known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Originally developed to treat depression, it is now used to treat a wide range of mental conditions. The author of Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Aaron Beck, paid tribute to the origins of CBT, writing that «the philosophical premises of cognitive therapy go back to the Stoic school.»
I want to emphasize an important thing: Stoicism is a philosophy, not a type of psychotherapy, and the difference between them is huge.
The therapy is short-term, it helps people overcome specific problems of a psychological nature, but does not offer them a life position, a philosophy on which they will rely for years (in any case, therapy does not set itself such a task). Meanwhile, the philosophy of life is something that no person can do without, each of us forms it for ourselves, consciously or not.
Some people adopt the life paradigm dictated by their religion. Others do not think much about how they live, but their decisions and actions clearly reflect their inherent ideas about the world. Still others spare no time and effort to fulfill Socrates’ famous demand to «study your life» and live it more dignified and happy.
Stoicism, like any other philosophy of life, cannot suit absolutely everyone. It is based on the fact that the human personality is the only thing truly worthy of cultivation.
Health, education and wealth are considered «preferred indifferent things», the Stoics did not promote asceticism, many of them did not shy away from the blessings of life and knew how to enjoy them. However, these things do not define us as unique individuals and have nothing to do with our personal worth, but it depends solely on our character and our virtues.
In this sense, Stoicism is an eminently democratic philosophy.
After all, whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, educated or not, this does not affect your ability to live according to the laws of morality and thus achieve “ataraxia” — as the Stoics call peace of mind.
For all its uniqueness, Stoicism has many points of contact with other areas of philosophy, with religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism and Christianity) and modern movements (for example, secular humanism and ethical culture). For me, a non-religious person, the idea of such a unifying, ecumenical philosophy, which has common goals or at least common relations with other world ethical traditions, is very attractive.
This commonality pushed me even more resolutely to reject the new atheism, which I have already criticized above for being unceremonious. Well, for believers, this commonality allows them to distance themselves from the plague of our days — fundamentalism of all stripes.
In Stoicism, it does not matter who to believe in — in the Logos, God or Nature. The main thing is to recognize that a decent human life is built on cultivating one’s own personality and caring for others (and about Nature), and this is achieved by a reasonable — but not fanatical — rejection of worldly goods.
(Alpina non-fiction, 2022)