Marcus Aurelius

Josh Landy
What can we learn from the Stoics about living a good life?

Ray Briggs
Could we ever stop caring about pain, suffering and death?

Josh Landy
Would we even want to?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Josh Landy
except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area,

Josh Landy
continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today, we’re thinking about the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius,

Josh Landy
Marcus Aurelius, he was that rare thing, a Roman emperor who was actually a decent philosopher.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, his Meditations are full of smart ideas about how to live a better life. And they’re pretty radical ideas, too. But he thinks you should be cool, calm and collected, even if you’re being eaten by a lion.

Josh Landy
That’s a pretty surprising view. What’s the argument supposed to be?

Ray Briggs
Well obviously, we’d prefer to be alive and uneaten by a lion. But at the end of the day, there’s only one thing that’s really good for us. That’s virtue. There’s only one thing that’s really bad for us, and that’s vice. Everything else is irrelevant.

Josh Landy
Okay, let me see if I’m getting Marcus Aurelius right. So the only thing that matters is being good. Getting eaten by a lion, not getting eaten by a lion, that kind of thing makes no difference. I mean, that kind of sounds a lot easier said than done. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Whistle “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life” while being mangled by a puma?

Ray Briggs
No, look, all you have to do is change the way that you think about the stuff that happens to you. You’re a literature guy, you remember that thing Hamlet said. There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So when you’re in the lion’s mouth, just remember, you’re not really being harmed. You just need to stop being so emotional, and start using your reason instead.

Josh Landy
What do you mean, I’m not really being harmed? But my leg’s getting chewed off by a vicious animal! Isn’t it rational for me to be less than entirely enthusiastic?

Ray Briggs
Okay, obviously, you’d prefer not to get eaten. But it’s not what’s really important. It’s just your body.

Josh Landy
But I like having legs.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, but if you get too obsessed with your body, it can really ruin your life. I mean, think of all those people making themselves miserable, worrying that they’re too fat or losing their hair or getting wrinkles. Marcus Aurelius would say that the health of the soul is way more important than the health of the body. Whatever is good for your soul is good for you.

Josh Landy
Okay, so let’s say your friends about to be stabbed, and you jump in the way? Are you saying that losing your life like that would be good for you?

Ray Briggs
Yes. What could be more virtuous and heroic than that?

Josh Landy
Just sounds like it’s a bit of a tall order for most of us.

Ray Briggs
Maybe. But imagine if you could really get into that mindset. I mean, you could stop being afraid of death. You wouldn’t be so distraught when things went badly for you or when your family members died?

Josh Landy
Yeah but see, that’s my problem with Marcus Aurelius. I mean, don’t you think you should be sad when family members die? Plus, if you never feel sad about anything, you’ll never feel happy about anything. Don’t make me stop caring about Liverpool winning the league.

Ray Briggs
You’re just deluded about what real happiness is. Your reaction to Liverpool winning, that’s fake happiness. Marcus says the true joy of living comes from doing good deeds. Once you get this, you’ll be happier, and you’ll make the world a better place.

Josh Landy
Well, that’s one way to make the world a better place. But I don’t know if it’s the best one. Like why be all stoical about things instead of getting angry at injustice? Think about the suffragette movement. Those women didn’t just stoically accept the status quo. They got mad and did something about it. Anger is a great motivator.

Ray Briggs
Well, sure. But there are other ways too. Imagine if you could get everyone onto the streets in a spirit of calm reason. They’d still get stuff done, but they’d be happier while doing it.

Josh Landy
That’s an interesting thought, Ray. And I can’t wait to hear what our guest says about it. It’s Rachana Kamtekar from Cornell. She’s an expert on ancient philosophy and has written about Marcus Aurelius.

Ray Briggs
Marcus wrote the Meditations as a way to apply Stoic ideas to his own life, but his works are still relevant today. So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter Shereen Adel to find some surprising places where Stoicism pops up. She files this report.

Shereen Adel
I remember hearing about Stoicism when I was a teenager. When I would have, let’s say, an over the top emotional reaction to something, an adult might tell me I should be more stoic. So you can imagine my surprise when I started looking at where Stoicism has gained a following in today’s world, I wandered down an alt-right rabbit hole.

James Risen
Specifically with the Stoics, they misread what the philosophers believed and take their writings to mean that men should be macho and society should be dominated by strong, silent men.

Shereen Adel
That’s James Risen, the senior national security correspondent for The Intercept. He reported on how one of the participants in the January 6 Capital riot, a Marine, wrote his college thesis on Epictetus, a popular Greek Stoic.

James Risen
I don’t know that that led him to this, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

Shereen Adel
To Risen, the alt-right interpretation of Stoicism is a completely distorted view of what it was really about.

James Risen
How they jumped from a silent acceptance of exterior factors in life to thinking that just we are strong and silent, we’re going to take action and overturn the world, I mean, it’s a complete misreading of Stoicism.

Shereen Adel
Dr. Kim Diaz agrees. She’s a Philosophy and Mindfulness instructor at El Paso Community College. She says the connection is lost on her.

Kim Diaz
I don’t see how they’re getting it because Stoicism is a very communal type of philosophy, where we are one with the logos, we are one with the universe.

Shereen Adel
In far right politics, she sees the individual placed above the community. But for the Stoics, it was about living in harmony with nature and community.

Kim Diaz
If you read Marcus Aurelius, there is so much about working together, like he has a lot of examples about the jaws. Not one jaw or not one eyelid decides to do its own thing, independent of the whole organism.

Shereen Adel
Diaz actually got into Stoicism when she was researching the philosophy behind Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. It’s the most evidence based psychotherapy, and its ties to Stoicism are widely known. So while some of the alt right are appropriating the Stoics, there’s a long history of CBT practitioners drawing from them.

Kim Diaz
It’s the human condition, right? So they might not have had social media back then. But they were still worried about the same, the same problems that we humans have always [unintelligible] people like me, you know.

Shereen Adel
The Stoics weren’t just about being strong and silent. They were about awareness and acceptance.

Kim Diaz
They draw this very sharp line between some things are out of our control, and some things are within our control. Out of our control is our body, our reputation, our property, money, but the things that we can control are the way we think, the way we feel.

Shereen Adel
The Stoics don’t say that we control our thoughts and feelings by suppressing them. But when we start to notice them, we can change the outcome.

Kim Diaz
Sometimes our emotions can get out of hand where they undermine our happiness, right? And so that’s what they’re targeting. And that’s what CBT is about too. The idea is that what we’re thinking affects how we feel, and what we feel affects what we do

Shereen Adel
In CBT and Stoicism, Diaz says it’s all about slowing down and practicing mindfulness. And she emphasizes, it is a practice. You have to do it every day.

Howard Stern
If you’re too busy to meditate 20 minutes twice a day, then you’re just too busy.

Shereen Adel
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Shereen Adel.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that fascinating and inspiring report Shereen. I’m Josh Landy, with me as my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs, and today we’re thinking about the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Rachana Kamtekar. She’s Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University, and author of Plato’s Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul and the Desire for Good.” Rachana, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Rachana Kamtekar
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Rachana, Stoicism is having a bit of a moment right now. So how did you first get interested in it?

Rachana Kamtekar
So I first got interested in the philosopher Epictetus. And this was after I’d taken a very dreary, Hellenistic philosophy class in graduate school on the so called fragments of the philosophers, which were essentially extracts from longer works. And I couldn’t understand them because of the lack of context. I took this course on Epictetus because Epictetus had been a slave. And I was interested in the perspective of a non elite philosopher. As it turned out, Epictetus was the philosopher who most influenced Marcus Aurelius.

Ray Briggs
Right, so let’s get into talking about Marcus Aurelius. What do you think is the most important insight that he has in the Meditations?

Rachana Kamtekar
I think the biggest idea is that God is the rational principle of the world and is providential, that is, fates or determines everything that comes to be for the good of the whole And we human beings are also rational in the same way that God is. And so we can be perfected by aligning our minds with God’s mind.

Josh Landy
That’s really interesting. And of course, one question it raises immediately is, what do we mean by God in the context of a Roman Emperor? I mean, one of his statements says, there’s one universe, one God, one being, one law. [unintelligible] in the Greek, one God. But, you know, he also talks about “the gods” elsewhere. So is he a monotheist?

Rachana Kamtekar
Yeah, so the Stoics in general, identify God with Zeus, with reason, with the active principle that organizes matter, the passive principle, and the lesser gods, they often identify with other physical principles, like Hera is air.

Josh Landy
And so whoever this God is, is providentially guiding the universe, that everything works out for the best.

Rachana Kamtekar
That’s right. And we’re really fragments of that same reason. And so we can be as wide as the Zeus, that’s the Stoic doctrine.

Ray Briggs
What am I supposed to draw from that? So everything is sort of brought about by the providence of God? Why, like could anything bad happen if everything is just sort of fated by this great rational intelligence?

Rachana Kamtekar
Yeah, so it’s interesting that one move in Marcus is to say that it’s only when you have a narrow perspective, not the perspective of Zeus on the world, that you’ll see things as bad. When you see them from the perspective of Zeus, you understand how they function for the good of the whole. So here’s an example. He says that when you look at a grape that’s ripe and it’s split open, you might think that it’s ugly, because it’s no longer integral or whole. But then when you realize that that split open grape actually stimulates the appetite for the animal that nourishes it, then you’ll see the kind of beauty that it actually has as part of the whole.

Josh Landy
Okay, so that’s good for the animal that eats the grape. But is it good for the grape? I mean, so Marcus will sometimes say things like, you know, nothing’s bad for the part that’s good for the whole. So it’s not just that whatever happens, the universe is good for the universe taken as a whole, but it’s good for me. So, is that true?

Rachana Kamtekar
Well, okay, so here’s why it matters that as human beings, our identity is as rational beings. So we can think of there being a conflict between the good of the part and the good of the whole, unless the part just isn’t different from the whole qualitatively. So Marcus will sometimes say things like, well, what are you? You’re a bit of flesh, you’re a bit of breath. You’re also a divine reasoning- you’re also reasoning capacity. And it’s that reasoning capacity or reasoning faculty that is our identity. That’s why there isn’t conflict between our reason when it’s perfected and gods?

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius with Rachana Kamtekar from Cornell University.

Ray Briggs
Do you have negative emotions you’d rather get rid of? How can we learn to have less anger, less envy, and less fear of death? What can Stoicism teach us about living well?

Josh Landy
From turmoil to tranquility, along with your comments and questions when Philosophy Talk continues.

Is it always better just to watch the wheels go round and let it go? I’m Josh Landy. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Ray Briggs
except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re thinking about the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius with Rachana Kamtekar from Cornell University, author of “Plato’s Moral Psychology.”

Josh Landy
We’re pre recording this episode. So unfortunately, we can’t take your phone calls, but you can always email us at comments@philosophytalk.org. Or you can comment on our websites where you can become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
So Rachana, we’ve been talking about Stoic philosophy, but there’s also a Stoic way of life. What’s that about?

Rachana Kamtekar
Well, it’s very connected with Stoic philosophy. And what I described to you as the big idea that Providence rules the world and we are, insofar as we’re rational fragments of that Providence, that has the implication that we should live as dictated by wisdom and virtue, because that’s just our perfection. And the first item in wisdom and virtue is the recognition that only virtue is good, only vice i bad. And the things that participate in virtue and vice are respectively good and bad.

Ray Briggs
So wait wait, earlier at the top of the show we were talking about, you know, what happens if I get eaten by a wild beast, and it seems like if I get eaten by a wild beast but still be perfectly virtuous, does that mean getting eaten by a wild beast really isn’t bad for me?

Rachana Kamtekar
That’s right. So according to the Stoics, being eaten by a wild beast is an indifferent insofar as it cannot affect your virtue or your vice. But the Stoics also distinguish between indifferents calling some preferred and others dispreferred, some in accordance with nature and others contrary to nature.

Josh Landy
Okay, so when Marcus says, live freely and joyfully, even if wild animals tear apart your limbs, what he’s saying is, you know, it’s okay to prefer not to have wild animals tearing apart your limbs. But even if they do, you can be considered to be living a good life, because you still have your virtue, you’re still using your reason, you’re still living according to nature, Is that about right?

Rachana Kamtekar
That’s about right, I’d make one correction, it’s not just okay to prefer that you’re not be eaten by wild beasts. It’s actually required that if it’s not fated that you’d be eaten by wil beasts, that you not prefer it. So this is a very nice way that Cicero puts this point. He says if there isn’t a difference in value among the indifferents, then wisdom has no function. Because if you think about it, most of our choices in life depend on choosing among indifferents. Should I you know, eat lunch, or finish the lecture I’m working on? Should I give to the homeless person who’s asking me for money or not? Should I vote? Saying only virtue is good and only vice is evil doesn’t guide my actions. So the content of wisdom is actually largely to do with the difference in value among the indifferents.

Ray Briggs
So good things are not just the things that I should prefer. There’s a distinction, because there are some things that aren’t good or bad, but I should prefer them over other things that also aren’t good or bad. So what is the concept of good doing if it’s not telling me what to prefer?

Rachana Kamtekar
So the concept of good is best understood in the following way. And maybe a little bit of history will help with this. So prior to the Stoics, Greek ethics in general said that good things have two features. One, when you have them, they make you happy, and two, you should pursue them. And the Stoics agree with that. But they add that we don’t only have reason to pursue good things, we also have reason to pursue things that are in accordance with nature.

Ray Briggs
So everything that’s good I should pursue but not everything I should pursue, I should pursue because it’s good. There are also other reasons.

Rachana Kamtekar
That’s exactly right. And if we were to say that only good things should be pursued, this was actually the view of the heterodox Stoic philosopher, Aristo. Then, it looks like wisdom doesn’t guide most of our actions. But of course, we think wisdom should be action guiding.

Josh Landy
Okay, but I want to get clear on this if that’s okay. So, you know, because one of you might be just pursue virtue, virtue is the only good, vice is the only bad, just do good deeds. Don’t worry about things like you know, the health of your body or achieving status or, or anything like that. But you’re saying actually, it’s a more interesting, more mixed view where, where you really actually should pursue the health of your body but, but my worry about that, in relation to Marcus is that every now and again, he’ll say things that make it seem like, yeah, well, so he has this line, you know, think of your bath, your bath is oil, sweat, dirt, filth, utterly disgusting, and every part of life and every material thing is like that. So there are times when he’s saying, I think to cheer us up, cheer himself up, more importantly. Don’t worry if you know, if something bad happens if you know you, if you lose a few years of your life, if you lose some health if you lose some, some possessions, because everything’s kind of disgusting, you know, everything in this earthly frame. So how are those two things compatible? How’s that compatible with the idea that in fact, some of these indifference are actually worth pursuing?

Rachana Kamtekar
So when you say, you should only do good deeds, the question is really, what are those good deeds? So you could have a stereotype about good deeds that’s like, you know, helping the old lady across the street or giving 15% of your income in charity. But those stereotyped good deeds aren’t obviously the right thing to do in the moment, in the circumstances, and what Marcus is advocating is his point of view, according to which you actually need to align yourself with what’s going to happen because it’s fated, so as to select those very things that it’s fated for you to have, those very things that cooperate with God’s plan.

Ray Briggs
Alright, so I think I’m getting some kinds of advice out of out of Marcus, like if I have an indifferent that accords with nature. But my getting that indifference is at odds with my getting some genuine good, I should always prefer the genuine good. Or like can getting an indifferent actually be at odds with my getting a genuine good, if the difference is in accord with nature?

Rachana Kamtekar
So you’re getting, you’re getting it is not entirely up to you, because fate determines what happens. You’re aiming at it is up to you. But can I also go back to the point about the disgusting bath? You’re absolutely right that there are things that we value, we ordinary people value. And Marcus is very good at getting us to see those things as disgusting, he does this kind of objectifying thing. He says what is wine but a bunch of you know, grapes trampled together. What is sex but a bunch of, you know, organs rubbing together? So there are things that we value that he renders disgusting to us, because he’s such a skilled stylist and rhetorician. But then there are also things that, as I mentioned, the beginning, there are things that we think are disgusting. And he’s saying, look at them from the point of view of Zeus, look at them from the point of view of the whole, and you’ll see that they’re actually beautiful. So he’s doing both things. And I think that when we apply this to the question should, you know, given a trade off between an indifferent and a good, should we always prefer the good, that’s in a way, right, but the big problem is to figure out what the good is or what virtue requires. And in other work, I’ve called this the content problem. There’s a real content problem with ancient ethics. So it’s fine to say formally, you should choose the good over the indifferent, but what particular thing is good, what action is actually the virtuous action? That’s the hard part.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about Marcus Aurelius with Rachana Kamtekar from Cornell University. Okay, so Rachana, I really want to dig in on this Providence question, because it’s delightful and very confusing to me, at the same time, because I’m supposed to align myself with Providence. And I’m supposed to sort of do the things that Providence wants, that I do, and not the things that it wants me not to do. But I’m, that makes me very confused. Because first of all, how do I know which are the things that Providence wants for me and which it doesn’t? And secondly, I thought everything was ordered for the best, right? So shouldn’t even the things I- you know, I mean, if I choose to do something, quote unquote, bad, isn’t Providence making me do that too? I thought, everything’s, you know, everything’s ordered for the best.

Rachana Kamtekar
Great questions. Um, so how do I know? Well, the official answer is you study physics, you study natural philosophy, and you will understand more and more the intelligent reasoning that structures the whole ordered world. However, Roman Stoics in particular, like Marcus, Epictetus, Seneca are also a little humble about the possibility of their acquiring the very same knowledge that Zeus has in governing the whole. And so what they say we should do, if we aren’t yet perfected sages is to make our plans and aim for things with reservation, that is, with a kind of conditional desire or conditional impulse for their coming to fruition. Second part of your question was, isn’t Zeus making me aim at the things that I aim at too, after all, I’m part of the whole world. And the way that the Stoics in general talk about this is by leaning again on the idea that our reason is not separate from Divine reason. So it isn’t really Zeus that’s making me do things, I am with Zeus a co cause of the things that I do. What am I? I’m, after all, a rational being. And so, I do what I do as a rational being, and that will coincide with what Zeus fates to happen. So this idea of co fated things which are determined both by your contribution and by God’s is a very core idea of the Stoics.

Ray Briggs
So, we’ve got an email from Larry in San Francisco. And Larry writes, I’ve heard the tidy your room and get your life in order ideas of the pseudo intellectual Jordan Peterson described as Stoic. Peterson’s fanboys, who include incels, men’s rights activists, white supremacist and other far right groups use Stoicism to justify their misogyny and racism. And Larry asks, I wonder what your guest makes of this trend. So Rachana, what do you make of this trend?

Rachana Kamtekar
Thanks for that question. So I think that there is a kind of partial uptake of Stoicism in certain movements. The philosopher Nancy Sherman distinguishes between stoic with a lowercase s and Stoic with an uppercase S, calling the contemporary uptake, the stoic with lowercase s. And I think that this is a view of stoicism as like, tough and just unemotional and self reliant. And it’s not, it’s not 100% false. But it’s also I think, ignoring the very, very social and communal nature of Stoic thought. So especially Marcus talks a lot about how, along with our rationality, we have a, a communal faculty. And that connects us with one another, so that our well being is connected with the well being of the whole. So I think in that respect, the Stoics are actually kind of anti individualist.

Josh Landy
That’s really interesting. Oh, yeah, I saw a tweet from Elizabeth Holmes saying to find inspiration, look to Marcus Aurelius. So that you know, it’s any number of people in various kinds, they’re finding inspiration that leads me to a question about the, I don’t know, the likely social/political upshots. Yeah, what if more people were Stoics today? Like, on the one hand, you might think, well, gosh, you know, Stoics are clearly being misused and abused in certain quarters. And they, they weren’t particularly vocal, in speaking out against things like slavery or misogyny for the most part. Certainly, you know, power dynamics, Marcus Aurelius was himself an emperor. But on the other hand, you might think, yeah, they have this notion of you know, communitarianism. And even the, the entire world is one city. Cosmopolis. So what’s the balance here? Do you think on balance, Marcus Aurelius’s version of Stoicism is going to be more pro-social, or more, sort of, let’s leave everything the way it currently is?

Rachana Kamtekar
So it’s clear that stoicism is personally very radical. And then it seems that it is, whether it’s socially conservative or socially radical depends quite a lot on the individual stoic. So to give you a contrast, maybe Cicero thinks that justice requires respecting property rights and requires giving to those in need to the extent that it doesn’t cost you anything. So you can light the torch of the traveller with your own torch because you don’t really lose anything by doing that. But by contrast, when Marcus talks about justice, about living justly, he says it has to do with the distribution of indifference. So it has to do with the distribution of wealth. And that’s at least potentially quite radical. I don’t know if this is connected with the fact that Marcus actually emptied the coffers of the Imperial treasury. But indeed, the kind of attitudes of dissatisfaction with how things are going, Marcus, and this is kind of original to Marcus, takes it to be an expression of impiety. So if you don’t like what’s happening, what are you doing? You’re finding fault with Providence. And you can’t be a stoic if you’re finding fault with Providence.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism with Rachana Kametekar from Cornell University.

Ray Briggs
What can we do about all the pain, suffering and anxiety in our lives? How can we cultivate greater resilience while still remaining human?

Josh Landy
Stoic strength, human frailty. Plus commentary from Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher when Philosophy Talk continues?

Is there anything that would worry a Stoic? I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything

Ray Briggs
except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, our guest is Rachana Kametekar from Cornell University. And we’re thinking about the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.

Josh Landy
So Rachana, most of us have a fair amount of fear, suffering, pain in our lives, especially during a pandemic. What can we learn from Marcus and the Stoics, about developing mental resilience?

Rachana Kamtekar
Marcus and the Stoics can help us to differentiate between what is up to us, what is in our control, and what is not, by pointing out that what is in our control is the only thing that’s relevant to our goodness or badness, and so to our living well or badly, and I think that actually in the pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of, I guess I would call it natural resilience, or natural stoicism. So I’m thinking about how coinciding with job losses in the first year of the pandemic, many people seem to have started to revalue employment, and to think about how much they need to work to live well. Another thing I think we saw early in the pandemic was the precautions that people took to meet with only the people that mattered most to them. So people would isolate in order to spend time with family. And that again, seems like a way that all of us showed actual resilience during the pandemic, not that there hasn’t been a lot of reason to be afraid, and not that there hasn’t been a lot of reason to be grieved. And now I speak not as a Stoic, but just as a human being.

Ray Briggs
It seems like at some points, Marcus thinks that what is not in my control is outside events. And what is in my control is my attitude toward them. But I kind of wonder whether those distinctions really line up as well as he thinks they do. Seems like my inner attitude isn’t always totally under my control. Like I think one thing I’ve seen with a pandemic is that social isolation is really depressing for people, whether or not they want it to be.

Rachana Kamtekar
Yeah, I guess if we think about the inside outside distinction, external events versus inner attitudes, I think of action as bridging those two things, and so my actions express my inner attitudes, but they also make a contribution to the way things turn out to external events. And the Stoics often will identify the action with the intention because after all, the response of your limbs to the intention that you form, may not be in your control, your body may not be in your control, right. But I do think that action insofar as it’s an expression of inner attitudes, is up to us or in our control. This is a tension isn’t it? Because on the one hand, we’re supposed to be social animals, you know, along with our rational nature is our communal nature, those are the core of our identity, much more core than our body or our profession, or the circumstances that we’re in. But on the other hand, we are supposed to have the resources to handle even isolation. And I suppose that what perhaps the Stoics are not sensitive enough to is the need for actual as opposed to imagined, or entertained. communication with other rational animals. So it might be that a Stoic would think, well, even when isolated, you could still think about all that you have in common with other rational beings. But that seems not to be enough for for most of us. And I don’t know if we improved ourselves whether it could be enough.

Josh Landy
I’m interested in these tensions too in Marcus’s philosophy. I mean, the one that leaps out the most to me is that, you know, sometimes he’ll say, if you’re going to die young, who cares? I mean, it’s just all you’re missing is a few years filled with thankless labors and dubious companions, and physical infirmities. But then, you know, elsewhere, he’ll say, if you’re worried about anything, just remember how amazingly fantastic this universe is, where everything is perfectly designed. And so part of what this sometimes makes me think is look, you know, he seems to think the philosophy is really about helping you live well, right. And maybe there are parts of at least of this book, that are just designed to work as, you know, reassuring slogans, things that may or may not be true, but they’re effective in the moment to guide you back into tranquillity and benevolence, and all the things we want. So do you think that’s a reasonable way of understanding that maybe some of these things aren’t actually deeply held beliefs, but sort of helpful ways to think?

Rachana Kamtekar
I see the temptation of that. I see the temptation of saying, you know, attributing that to Marcus. But I wonder if that isn’t just to do with the nature of his book. So his book is kind of unique, because it was written for himself rather than for other readers. And so he doesn’t need to give an exposition of Stoic doctrine in order to justify his attitudes. He only needs to draw on those features of Stoic doctrine that will, as you say, get him it to have the right attitude. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe those pieces of Stoic doctrine fully. So take, for example, the things that you cited about dying young. I thought that the core idea here is that when we think about what’s ours, and in our control, it’s really only the present. And that’s why what you lose, the future that you lose, or the past that you lose, you, they aren’t really yours to lose. So there’s not only like, think about only your reason as who you really are, but also think about the present as the only thing that is yours. That’s a pretty hard but core Stoic idea. The other thing that I think is not such a core Stoic idea, but seems like a really nice development of a Stoic idea is that when he’s thinking about old age and dying, he says, well, old age doesn’t just wither your body, it also withers your mind. And that’s a reason not to regret death. Because if you’re going to suffer rational infirmity, so that your judgments can’t be astute, then really, what’s you isn’t going to continue. But there again, I think it’s not just a comforting thought. That’s not a very comforting thought at all. But it’s really, it’s really taking very seriously this identification of oneself with one’s reason.

Ray Briggs
So is this a way to think about what’s going on? It’s not that like, dying young is great for me. It’s that my options aren’t like, die young or live for a long time and be happy for a long time, because like living for a long time and being happy for a long time really would be preferable. It’s that my options are like much more limited. They’re like, except that I’m going to die young, or kick and scream against it and I don’t have those options except that I’m gonna die young is a better option. So it’s not that like I have to radically revalue the possibilities, I have to radically re examine my feelings of control about those possibilities. Is that what Marcus is saying?

Rachana Kamtekar
That’s nice. I mean, I think that’s exactly right. I wish I had a line of Marcus to this effect. But Epictetus, who was the philosopher he says most influenced him, does cite the second leader of the Stoic school [unintelligible]. And he says, according to [unintelligible] poem said, lead me Zeus to whatever place you’ve assigned me, I’ll follow without reluctance. And if I’m not willing to follow, because I’m bad, I’ll follow nonetheless. Right. So I think that that’s exactly what you’ve just said.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I don’t know how that’s supposed to work out. You know, there’s many things I love about stoicism. But I think that you know, if everyone in the world controlled their anger and controlled their desire for consumer goods, probably be a better place. But this part of Stoicism really troubles me, you know that there’s a story about the Stoic philosopher who, you know, lost his wife and children after an invasion and said to you know, well, I don’t know where my children are, but they’re just transitory blessings. Isn’t there something a little inhumane? Proust says, like, this kind of way of thinking, where you think nothing in the world is of any value can help resign you to death, but I don’t recommend it. What do you think? Is this a good life?

Rachana Kamtekar
So, you know, remember that the death of children especially, was a far more common event in antiquity than it is now. And, you know, we can afford to ignore that as a possibility, because it’s so uncommon because of developments in modern medicine, also, nutrition. So this, these are responses to things that may very well happen. And it’s not to say that, to have no children or to lose your children, is absolutely indifferent. It’s not like to use examples of absolutely indifferent things, it’s not like the color of your skin or the number of hairs on your head. Those are really absolutely indifferent. It’s something that one should try to avoid. Right, one should try to avoid the death of one’s child or the loss of one spouse. But to the extent that it’s not under one’s control that they live or die, it does seem important to carry on.

Josh Landy
Well, that’s, that’s encouraging wisdom. It’s been a wonderful conversation definitely fated by providence, Rachana. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Rachana Kamtekar
Thanks so much. It was great to talk to you.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Rachana Kamtekar, Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University, and author of “Plato’s Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul and the Desire for Good.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
So all of this talk about Stoicism has me thinking about two novels that seemed kind of relevant here. The first one is John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces,” whose hero actually is is not really a Stoic, but I’d say he’s a neo-Platonist. So he, he reads, [unintellgible] who was influenced by the Stoics and had some similar ideas to Marcus Aurelius, about not worrying about things that are outside your control and taking consolation in your mental attitude, which you can control. So I think the hero in “A Confederacy of Dunces” tries to follow this advice, and it’s kind of utterly miserable, really, like I don’t, I don’t think it helps them at all. And then I thought more and I thought maybe a better sort of Stoic example is Mehitabel the cat from Don Marquis’ first novel “Archy and Mehitabel,” whose motto if I can say it on the air is what the hell what the hell. And she prides herself in being able to thrive even in difficult circumstances by toughening herself up and she’s a much better stoic example, I think.

Josh Landy
So a happy stoic, and a sad stoic, pick your poison.

Ray Briggs
Yes.

Josh Landy
We’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website philosophytalk.org, where you can also become a subscriber and get access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk, and we may feature it on the blog

Josh Landy
Now, faster than a Roman emperor on the way to Gaul, it’s Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. A sample, quote, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, unquote. How would you know? Marcus Aurelius and his cousin Lucius were the adopted heirs of the Emperor Antonius Pious, and end up being co-emperors of Rome. This is a move to protect the blood relatives of the Emperor from murder and to rule more efficiently. Rome is too big for just one king. Another Meditation quote, the opinion of 10,000 men has no value if one of them knows anything about the subject, unquote. I had an instructor say the same thing about me and yet here I still am with worthless opinion. So anyway, as co-Emperor, Lucius set up for Persia to fight encroachments from Iraq. Emperor 2, Marcus Aurelius, meanwhile, settled into public administration which suited him just fine. Meditation, quote, no one can keep you from living as your nature requires nothing can happen to you there’s not required by nature unquote. That’s good information. Good to know. When Lucius came back from the war in Iraq, he and the soldiers brought back a disease with him. Still don’t know what it was, smallpox is the most guessed but it became a pandemic that killed Lucius and years to come, 5 million more, the beginning of the end for the glory that was Rome. So Lucius is gone, down to one emperor, there are incursions coming across the Danube. Roman defenses were thin, what with the recent war in Persia, so Marcus wound up leading forces there to fight Ostians and Serbs, never a fun prospect with no previous military experience. There were some losses then some wins but in the course of the Civil War, while working up strategies, he began to write his Meditations which were notes to himself. He had trained as an orator as a young man, later came to study and embrace Stoicism as a worldview, to this reader his Meditation seem a bit of both. The pith and punch of the Meditations aspire to persuade the reader, that is himself I guess, to come at life in a stoical frame of mind to cultivate apathia, not apathy, apathia to to denote an absence of passion in decision making, like Mr. Spock, you dig? Meditations is a classic work that remains popular with many, regardless of political belief. It is read by politicians, movie producers, generals and such, career criminals, also became popular among crypto fascist academics, lefty street organizers and run of the mill stoics everywhere. Bill Clinton and James Mattis have been cited as fans. You can see the range of the appeal. Marcus Aurelius as a kind of Guru and yet he is an emperor. He tries to maintain distance from holding hopes about the future, and yet, he is a general, he acts like being Emperor is no different than being a beggar. And yet, he is an emperor. That can seem his worldview the seeds of our peculiar American character, the laconic mixes it up with a Calvinist to get a preordained God, do not aspire vibe, do not desire, but just that is sinful. But should riches come to you, it is a blessing. Prosperity eventually gave rise to self entitlement. We have it we did not ask for it. It was given to us. We don’t deserve it. We are blessed. But none of it matters. We may not deserve to be the ruler of the world. But here we all are, and I could be down there in the dirt with your foot and my neck. But instead it’s my foot on you in a nice shoe I got on sale. Marcus Aurelius could be our patron saint. Through his worldview, we process deep misgivings about the nature of reality itself. Think about the other side of the job, family and vague anxieties about the future ave Marcus Aurelius from him came Reader’s Digest and Saturday evening post articles, blurbs, self help books, post its, refrigerator magnets, sermons, Ted Talks, accessories, they all owe him a debt. But so what, we’re all just dust in the wind. And then Marcus wrote, quote, the object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane unquote, isn’t that cute and isn’t that true? Those are words I can live by. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW San Francisco Bay area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2022.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Ben Trefny, the senior producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from subscribers to our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or misexpressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders,

Ray Briggs
not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org where you can become a subscriber and gain access for our library of over 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy,

Ray Briggs
and I’m Ray Briggs, thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking

Alec Guinness
Wherever you live, whatever the color of your skin. When peace is achieved, it will bring to all the supreme rights of Roman citizenship.