Modern Stoicism - Wikipedia

Modern Stoicism - Wikipedia



Modern Stoicism
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Modern Stoicism is an intellectual and popular movement in the late 20th and early 21st century which attempts to revive the Stoic philosophy in the modern setting. It is not to be confused with Neostoicism, an analogous phenomenon in the 17th century. The term "Modern Stoicism" covers both the revival of interest in the Stoic philosophy and the philosophical efforts to adjust Ancient Stoicism to the language and conceptual framework of the present. 'The rise of Modern Stoicism' has received attention in the international media since around November 2012 when the first Annual Stoic Week event was organized.[1]


Contents
1Background
1.1Philosophically
1.2Psychology and psychotherapy
1.3As a popular movement
2Key concepts
2.1Problems with the appeal to nature
2.2Following nature as following the facts
2.3Virtue, agency, happiness
2.4Degrees of virtue
2.5Aspirations for universality
2.6Stoicism versus Aristotle
2.7Dichotomy of control
2.8The question of ascesis and renunciation
3Notable books
4See also
5References
6External links
Background[edit]
Philosophically[edit]

Modern Stoicism has developed in the context of the 20th-century surge of interest in virtue ethics in general. "The [...] work by philosophers like Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum, among others, have brought back virtue ethics as a viable alternative to the dominant Kantian-deontological and utilitarian-consequentialist approaches."[2]Modern Stoicism draws a lot from the late 20th and early 21st century spike in publications of scholarly works on ancient Stoics. Beyond that, “the Modern Stoicism movement traces its roots to the work of Dr Albert Ellis, who developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy,[3] as well as Aaron T. Beck,[4] who is regarded by many as the father to early versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Victor Frankl also found stoicism useful in assisting him during the war, he later developed his theory known as Logotherapy [2]

One major premise of Modern Stoicism can be expressed as, in Lawrence Becker's words, "it is interesting to try to imagine what might have happened if Stoicism had had a continuous twenty-three-hundred-year history; if Stoics had had to confront Bacon and Descartes, Newton and Locke, Hobbes and Bentham, Hume and Kant, Darwin and Marx."[5]Or, as Massimo Pigliucci puts it more concisely, "it is worth considering what it means to 'be a Stoic' in the 21st century."[6]

The first major modern work that spelled out the key premises of Modern Stoicism is, arguably, A New Stoicism[5] by Lawrence Becker, first published in 1997.[2] For other important books, see the notable books section below.
Psychology and psychotherapy[edit]

Stoic philosophy was the original philosophical inspiration for modern cognitive psychotherapy, particularly as mediated by Dr Albert Ellis' Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), the major precursor of CBT. The original cognitive therapy treatment manual for depression by Aaron T. Beck et al. states, "The philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers".[7] A well-known quotation from The Handbook of Epictetus was taught to most clients during the initial session of traditional REBT by Ellis and his followers: "It's not the events that upset us, but our judgments about the events." This subsequently became a common element in the "socialization" phase of many other approaches to CBT. The question of Stoicism's influence on modern psychotherapy, particularly REBT and CBT, was described in detail in The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy(2010) by Donald Robertson.[8] Moreover, several early 20th century psychotherapists were influenced by stoicism, most notably the "rational persuasion" school founded by the Swiss neurologist and psychotherapist Paul DuBois, who drew heavily on Stoicism in his clinical work and encouraged his clients to study passages from Seneca as homework assignments.
As a popular movement[edit]

It is characteristic of the Modern Stoicism movement that it is global and that it relies heavily on the social media and online communities. As E.O. Scott puts it "Modern Stoicism is really a “Web 2.0” phenomenon."[9]One of the key sites is the Modern Stoicism website, which harbors the Stoicism Today blog and hosts the Annual Stoic Week (online) and Stoicon (offline) events.[10] Another important place is the New Stoa, which was founded in May 1996 and is arguably the first lasting stoic community on the internet. Three key podcasts talking about Stoicism applied to modern thought are the Stoic Solutions Podcast hosted by Justin Vacula[11], The Practical Stoic Podcast hosted by Simon Drew [12]and Steve Karafit's The Sunday Stoic [13]

There are also a number of personal blogs exploring stoicism, some of them run by notable stoic scholars (e.g. Massimo Pigliucci, William Irvine or John Sellars) and some by therapists who explore stoic applications (e.g. Donald Robertson). In addition, articles on Stoicism have appeared on popular websites.[14][15] In E.O.Scott's words, "[the] potent combination of social media and a few highly publicized books and articles [...] has recently launched stoicism on an exponential growth curve."[9] There is a variety of stoic meetups and groups based in places like Australia, Denver, Dublin, Edinburgh, Fremont, Helsinki, London, Manchester, Milwaukee, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, Toronto and Warsaw - amongst others. According to E.O.Scott, "arguably the most important and influential gathering place for Modern Stoics [online]"[9] is the "stoicism group" on Facebook of ~27 000 people (as of July 19, 2017). The analogous Reddit group has amassed ~96 400 users (as of June 11, 2018). Beyond the Anglophone there is the “Sztuka życia według stoików” site run by Piotr Stankiewicz, "Stoicyzm Uliczny" run by Marcin Fabjański and Centrum Praktyki Stoickiej run by Tomasz Mazur and others.

Applications of Modern Stoicism are reported across industries. According to "Forbes," Modern Stoic thought "hold[s] fascinating promise for business and government leaders tackling global problems in a turbulent, post-recession slump."[16] However, two Stoic academics, Kai Whiting and Leonidas Konstantakos, have warned against using "life-hack Stoicism" or "Silicon Valley Stoicism", as the primary means of understanding Stoic philosophy[17]. Subsequently, they discussed on a popular Stoic blog, Stoicism's role in advocating for change in society, including when it comes to standing against gender-based discrimination in the workplace [18].

Similarities of Modern Stoicism and Third Wave CBT have been suggested as well, and its potency in treating depression has been studied.[19] There has also been interest in applying the tenets of Ancient Stoicism to the human origin story [20] and the modern challenges of sustainable development, material consumption and consumerism. [21]
Key concepts[edit]
Problems with the appeal to nature[edit]

Presumably, the single most difficult challenge that Modern Stoicism faces is its relationship to the core principle of Ancient Stoicism, that is to the principle of “following nature.” In a word, the Ancient Stoics put forward it was unquestionable that in order to live a good life, one needed to live consistently with nature. According to the Ancient Stoics, nature was by definition good and everything which was conformable to nature was deemed good. Moreover, the Ancient Stoics had a teleological outlook on the world, that is, they held that everything in the universe was purposefully and rationally organized to a good end.

However, this view is much more difficult to uphold in the present day. As Becker puts it, “science presented significant challenges to our [Stoic] metaphysical views.”[5]:3 The notion of the rational organization of the world seems much more doubtful in the 21st century than it, presumably, was two millennia ago. “When we face the universe,” Becker writes, “we confront its indifference to us and our own insignificance to it. It takes no apparent notice of us, has no role other than Extra for us to play, no aim for us to follow.”[5]:11 Even more pressing questions are raised when we face our own human realm, with the long and still expanding record of genocide and atrocity and the manslaughter that followed. These are major challenges for the ancient Stoic view of the world as a rational and essentially good being.

We happen upon an analogous problem if we narrow down our interest to human nature (as contrasted to the nature of the universe as a whole). In other words, the idea of “following our human nature” also raises serious questions. As Becker describes it, “it is ‘natural’ to find these [defining] traits in human character and conduct, but it is equally natural to find a significant number of exceptions. As a result, none of these characteristics fits into the most familiar forms of ethical argument from human nature, e.g. (a) that humans are by nature X, and that Y is contrary to X, hence, that Y is contrary to human nature; or (b) that X is what defines the unique function (the essence) of a human being, thus to flourish as a human being is to excel at X."[5] In this vein, “following human nature” yields no specific guidelines for conduct either. All told, this is one of the central problems for Modern Stoicism: that in the 21st century it is far more difficult to ground our ethical framework in “nature,” be it universal, cosmic nature, or to special human nature.
Following nature as following the facts[edit]

Becker acknowledges this problem and even goes to the point of asserting that “stoic ethics would be much better off without its ‘follow nature’ slogan."[5] Yet, he reflects that the stoics are, “however, too deeply branded with it to renounce it now. The best we can do is reinterpret it.”[5]

The reinterpretation he proposes is this. “Following nature means following the facts. It means getting the facts about the physical and social world we inhabit, and the facts about our situation in it [...] before we deliberate about normative matters. It means facing those facts - accepting them for exactly what they are, no more and no less - before we draw normative conclusions from them. It means doing ethics from the facts constructing normative propositions a posteriori. It means adjusting those normative propositions to fit changes in the facts, and accepting those adjustments for exactly what they are, no more and no less. And it means living within the facts - within the realm of actual rather than hypothetical norm.”[5]

This process of “getting the facts about the [...] world”[5] happens in some measure (but not exclusively) through science. In Becker’s words, “The biological, behavioral, and social sciences contribute to ethics in three important ways: they offer a wealth of material that can be used in the naturalistic arguments [...], they offer explanatory theories (e.g. from evolutionary biology) that help separate relatively fixed traits from transient or malleable ones and they offer powerful, elaborate analyses of learning, rationality, and rational choice."[5] Ethical reasoning of a stoic “cannot begin until all relevant description, representation, and prediction are in hand, [...] – until, let us say, the empirical work is done.”[5] This empirical work may be obtained by the scientific method and thus the principle of “following facts” can be (in some contexts) read as “not contradicting science” (not to be confused with simple “following science,” which would be reductive and misleading).
Virtue, agency, happiness[edit]

Becker organizes his reading of stoic ethics around the concept of agency. “The Development of Virtue [happens through] the Perfection of Agency,”[5] or through the “ideal agency”[5] as he calls it. In other words, this can be described as the belief in the “inherent primacy of virtue in terms of maximization of one’s agency.”[2] This agency is understood in terms of “a balance of control and stability”[5] and is executed all-things-considered, i.e. upon having obtained the most detailed information about the facts as available.

Happiness, in this view, is also explained and achieved through agency. “We hold,” this is Becker again, “that happiness as understood by mature and fit agents is a property of whole lives, not of transient mental states. We hold that it is achievable only through a proper balance of stability and control in the exercise of agency.”[5] And, “this sort of happiness with one’s life also appears to be a psychological consequence of healthy agency [...] The life of a stoic sage is filled with such happiness, as a consequence of virtue."[5]
Degrees of virtue[edit]

In Becker’s version of Stoicism, several dogmas of Ancients Stoics are questioned or challenged. For example, the traditional stoic all-or-nothing understanding of virtue is questioned (to some extent). In the original, Orthodox Stoicism one was either a perfect sage or no sage at all, there was no “middle ground,” or “in between.” The Ancient Stoic virtue admits of no degrees. And yet, Becker lays ground for a softer, more nuanced approach. “You can drown,” he writes, “face down on the calm surface of the sea as surely as at the bottom. [...] We [i.e. the Modern Stoics] follow later colleagues in thinking that these doctrines are untenable.”[5]
Aspirations for universality[edit]

Another dogma of the Ancient Stoics that is sometimes questioned in Modern Stoicism is the idea that the gateways of stoic philosophy are open to everyone and that living a stoic life is definitely the best option for every human being. E.g. in Becker’s New Stoicism suggests that “acting appropriately, as understood here, is a special kind of optimization project – one that it is logically possible to reject. (Which people with compulsive, obsessive, or addictive personalities may in fact reject.) [Modern Stoic] claim is, only healthy agents, at least those well along the road to fitness in their deliberative powers, cannot plausibly reject it.”[5]
Stoicism versus Aristotle[edit]

Another example of possible discrepancies between the Modern Stoic approach and Ancient Stoicism is the question of whether a certain amount of external goods is required for a good life. In the Orthodox Stoic view there are absolutely no entry conditions to living a stoic life. One can become a sage no matter the circumstances: be it poverty, illness, physical adversity and so on. This issue has been traditionally the bone of contention between the stoics (who held the mentioned position) and the followers of Aristotle (who held that a certain amount of external goods is necessary for development of virtue). In this context, Becker’s words are quite non-orthodox coming from the stoic position. He writes that “it is [...] plausible to conclude, however, that there is an identifiable kernel of bodily and psychological health that is a necessary condition of all further development. If this kernel is damaged, so is the capacity to develop agency.”[5]
Dichotomy of control[edit]

A very important concept of Traditional Stoicism is the distinction between things within one’s power and not within our power. While this concept is embraced fully by many Modern Stoics, some reinterpret it. Becker, for instance, points out that the whole idea of the dichotomy is in fact a major oversimplification. As he puts it, “[the] distinction between things that are within our control, or ‘up to us,’ and those who are not [...] [is] misleading.”[5] Instead, he proposes to read it along the lines of “it is wise to calibrate the strength, depth, and dissemination of our attachments to the fragility and transience of the objects involved.”[5]

On the other hand, William Irvine goes even further and undermines the central premise of the dichotomy, i.e. that the distinction between things “in our power” and “not in our power” is sharp and that there is no third option. In other words, Irvine suggests the possibility of turning the “dichotomy of control” into a “trichotomy of control.” Irvine argues “We can restate Epictetus’s dichotomy as follows: There are things over which we have complete control and things over which we have no control at all. As well as suggesting "the dichotomy is a false dichotomy, since it ignores the existence of things over which we have some but not complete control.”[22] Pigliucci describes it as follows: “some things are up to us (chiefly, our judgments and actions), some things are not up to us (major historical events, natural phenomena), but on a number of other things we have partial control. Irvine recasts the third category in terms of internalized goals, which makes more sense of the original dichotomy.”[2]
The question of ascesis and renunciation[edit]

There is also no unity in evaluating the ascetic elements in stoicism and in defining the sage’s attitude towards the ordinary pleasures of life. Becker mentions “the confusion, both among stoics and their critics” and the “false notion that the stoic ideal is a life devoid of the ordinary pleasures of sex, food, drink, music, wealth, fame, friends, and so on”[5](according to Becker this confusion happens because “stoics have occasionally claimed that, for the sage, eudaiomonia somehow replaces ordinary happiness”.[5] In this vein, Stankiewicz argued against the “ascetic misinterpretation,” saying that “stoicism is not asceticism and a stoic is not a monk. In fact, it is the school of The Pale Epicureans that is closer to the ideal of abstemiousness. The stoic proposal is far broader and it extends far beyond the narrow passage of the ascetic way.”[23]Thus, “we [the Modern Stoics] must face the lushness, diversity and – yes! – sensuality of life and we have to live and thrive inside this world, accepting it as it is. Unlike a monk, a stoic doesn’t dodge the myriad of different aspects of the earthly and sensual life.”[23]

On the other hand, Kevin Patrick refutes this argument, ridiculing it as “hedonic stoicism” and saying that the mentioned position “falls into the more common trap and misinterpretation, that since externals are indifferent to us, we should go ahead and indulge in all of those things for which we have a proclivity.”[23] “Modern Stoics,” he concludes, “ought to be stoics.”[23]

Irvine takes a more modest stance and he proposes a program of “voluntary discomfort.” As he describes it: “By undertaking acts of voluntary discomfort – by, for example, choosing to be cold and hungry when we could be warm and well fed – we harden ourselves against misfortunes that might befell us in the future. If all we know is comfort, we might be traumatized when we are forced to experience pain or discomfort, as we someday almost surely will. In other words, voluntary discomfort can be thought of as a kind of vaccine: By exposing ourselves to a small amount of a weakened virus now, we create in ourselves an immunity that will protect us from a debilitating illness in the future.”[22]
Notable books[edit]

The following list, arranged by the time of first publication, includes positions representing modern Stoicism only, while it excludes purely scholarship books on ancient Stoics, biographies, etc.)
James Stockdale, Courage Under Fire, (Stanford University: Hoover Essays, 1993)
Sharon Lebell, The Art of Living. The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectivness, (New York: Harper One, 1995)
Lawrence C. Becker, A New Stoicism. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)
John Sellars, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; 2nd edn London: Duckworth, 2009)
Vernezze, Peter. Don't worry, be Stoic: ancient wisdom for troubled times. (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005)
Keith Seddon, Stoic Serenity: A Practical Course on Finding Inner Peace, (Stoicon Foundation, 2006).
Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, (Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 2007)
M. Andrew Holowchak, The Stoics. A Guide for the Perplexed,(London: Continuum, 2008)
William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life. The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Cooper, Ray. The stoic homilies: a week-by-week guide to enlightened living. (Burleigh, Qld: Zeus Publications, 2009)
Natalie Haynes, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, (London: Profile Books, 2010)
Marcin Fabjański, Stoicyzm uliczny. Jak oswajać trudne sytuacje, (Warsaw: Czarna Owca, 2010)
William O. Stephens, Marcus Aurelius. A Guide of the Perplexed, (London: Continuum, 2012)
Jules Evans, "Philosophy for Life: And Other Dangerous Situations", (Rider, 2012)
Donald Robertson, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy (Karnac, 2010)
Donald Robertson, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness (2013)
Tomasz Mazur, O stawaniu się stoikiem, (Warsaw: PWN, 2014)
Piotr Stankiewicz, Sztuka życia według stoików, (Warsaw: WAB, 2014)
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. The daily stoic: 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. (2016)
Ryan Holiday. "The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs" (Penguin Publishing Group, 2014)
Patrick Ussher [ed.], Stoicism Today: Selected Writings vol. I, (Stoicism Today: 2014)
Patrick Ussher [ed.], Stoicism Today: Selected Writings vol. II, (Stoicism Today: 2016)
Massimo Pigliucci, How To Be a Stoic, (New York: Basic Books, 2017)
See also[edit]


Alasdair MacIntyre
Aretaic turn
Arete
Applied ethics
Eudaimonism
Glossary of Stoic terms
Lawrence Becker


Martha Nussbaum
Massimo Pigliucci
Neostoicism
Oikeiosis
Phronesis
Pneuma
Rationality


Virtue
Virtue epistemology
Virtue ethics
Virtue jurisprudence
Sage (philosophy)
Stoic categories
Stoicism



References[edit]

Jump up^ Joe Gelonesi (November 17, 2014). "The rise of Modern Stoicism". ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Pigliucci, Massimo (December 14, 2016). "Stoicism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Jump up^ "REBT Network".
Jump up^ "Arron T Beck". Wiki.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Becker, Lawrence (1997). A New Stoicism. Princetion University Press.
Jump up^ Pigliucci, Massimo. "How To Be A Stoic?".
Jump up^ Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery (1979) Cognitive Therapy of Depression, p. 8.
Jump up^ Robertson, D (2010). The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoicism as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy. London: Karnac. ISBN 978-1-85575-756-1.
^ Jump up to:a b c Scott, E.O. "A Quick Map of the Online Stoic Community".
Jump up^ AM, Timothy Willis On 12/1/14 at 7:33 (1 December 2014). "Meet the Real Stoics Taking Psychology Back to the 3rd Century BC". Newsweek.
Jump up^ "Stoic Solutions Podcast - Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life". Stoic Solutions Podcast. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
Jump up^ Development, PodBean. "The Practical Stoic Podcast with Simon Drew". Retrieved 2018-04-09.
Jump up^ "Home | Sunday Stoic". Home | Sunday Stoic. Retrieved 2018-05-05.
Jump up^ "7 insights from the ancient philosophy of Marcus Aurelius that will change the way you think about life, death, and time". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
Jump up^ Shammas, Michael (January 23, 2014). "Want Happiness? Become a Practicing Stoic". The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
Jump up^ Sheffield, Carrie. "Want an Unconquerable Mind? Try Stoic Philosophy".
Jump up^ Whiting, Kai; Konstantakos, Leonidas (2018-04-17). "Life-Hack Stoicism—Is It Worth It?". The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
Jump up^ Whiting, Kai; Konstankos, Leonidas (5 May 2018). "Taking Stoicism Beyond the Self: The Power To Change Society". The Daily Stoic.
Jump up^ Evans, Jules. "Anxious? Depressed? Try Greek philosophy".
Jump up^ Whiting, Kai; Konstantakos, Leonidas; Sadler, Greg; Gill, Christopher (2018-04-21). "Were Neanderthals Rational? A Stoic Approach". Humanities. 7 (2): 39. doi:10.3390/h7020039.
Jump up^ Whiting, Kai; Konstantakos, Leonidas; Carrasco, Angeles; Carmona, Luis Gabriel (2018-02-10). "Sustainable Development, Wellbeing and Material Consumption: A Stoic Perspective". Sustainability. 10 (2): 474. doi:10.3390/su10020474.
^ Jump up to:a b Irvine, William (2009). A Guide to the Good Life. The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. Oxford University Press.
^ Jump up to:a b c d Ussher [ed.], Patrick (2016). Stoicism Today: Selected Writings vol. II. Stoicism Today.
External links[edit]
William Irvine's website
"Stoicism" entry on the IEP, by Massimo Pigliucci
Lawrence Becker's biography and blurb
Modern Stoicism website
Stoicism Today website
Stoicism group on Facebook
New Stoa website

n terrorism | How to Be a Stoic

What Would a Stoic Do? On terrorism | How to Be a Stoic



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What Would a Stoic Do? On terrorism


Last Friday I was in Pittsburgh, PA, to deliver a talk on science and pseudoscience for the local annual “Sagan Fest,” named after the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan, one of my intellectual role models. It was an engaging, constructive moment of critical reflection, and even fun over drinks and dinners with the students and faculty of Carnegie Mellon University that organized the event.



Then, when I got back to my hotel room, I was greeted by a text message from my companion, which simply said “Did you see what happened in Paris?” I hadn’t, but I knew instantly that whatever it was, it wasn’t good news. I also knew that it had to do with a terrorist attack.

I loaded the front page of the New York Times on my browser, and I was greeted to the images and descriptions of events that we are all familiar with. At current count, the ISIS orchestrated attack has resulted in 129 dead and 352 hospitalized, many in critical condition. I’m sure the death toll will eventually be higher.

I have not read much in the way of commentaries and analyses as of yet. First, because I don’t believe they will tell me much that is going to be new or insightful about the event or their context — these things are becoming part of “normal” life, unfortunately. Second, because I wanted to think things over on my own, and see if my recently adopted Stoic perspective would be at all useful under this sort of circumstances.

Perhaps the most obvious difficulty for a Stoic when faced with horrors such as the Paris attacks (and let’s not forget the ones in Beirut, or Kenya), is the idea that people don’t do evil on purpose, but out of ignorance. Here is how Marcus famously puts it:

“Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. … I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him.” (Meditations, II.1)

Right, go tell the friends and relatives of the victims that they should not hate the perpetrators, or not be angry at what happened.

Of course, Stoicism is not alone in this. Both Christianity and Buddhism have similar sentiments, and so do a number of other religious and philosophical traditions. But maybe they are just all mistaken.

Then again, perhaps it is precisely the occurrence of events like the Paris attacks that can be used to seriously probe our most fundamental assumptions and test our most cherished beliefs. So let’s consider for a moment what it would mean, from a Stoic perspective, to try not to get angry or hateful, and to really entertain the thought that ISIS fighters do what they do out of ignorance. What would that mean in terms of our response to acts of terror and their perpetrators?

Shock, anger and even hate are natural human responses to tragedies like this one. We cannot avoid them, they originate from the depths of human psychology and nature. But shock is paralyzing, and anger and hate are negative, destructive emotions. If we simply yield to them, as Seneca remarked, they will lead us to act under the spell of a temporary insanity. What a Stoic should do, then, is to turn the initial destructive emotion into a constructive one, which will take the deployment of at the least three of the four cardinal virtues.

To begin with, we need to summon courage, specifically the moral courage to stand up and be counted among those who oppose all that ISIS stands for. I don’t mean just adding yet another hashtag to your social media stream, or temporarily changing your Facebook profile photo. I mean something a bit more substantial, like standing with the majority of Muslim in your country who themselves reject ISIS, or opposing politicians who are already using the attacks for cynical purposes, like blocking asylum for refugees of the conflicts in Syria and surrounding areas — apparently oblivious to the fact that those refugees are abandoning their homes and countries precisely because they don’t want to live under ISIS or other oppressive regimes.

Next, we should channel our anger and outrage into a renewed exercise of the virtue of justice, demanding of our elected representatives that they truly do whatever is in their power to help react in the proper way to the threat of Islamist terrorism, to keep in mind that the goal is to bring about a safe and flourishing human community, not to use external threats for political gain, or to push agendas that result in the demonization of minorities and immigrants and in the restriction at home of those very liberties that we are allegedly trying to protect from the assault of ISIS.

Which brings me to the most difficult of all virtues to practice and deploy: wisdom, particularly the practical wisdom of knowing what the best thing to do is under difficult and complex circumstances. This requires critical reflection as well as what I would call principled pragmatism — seeking what works in practice, even if not ideal, while at the same time keeping in mind the fundamental principles we cherish and wish to defend. What the exercise of wisdom certainly does not mean is what we we will surely see plenty of in the next days and weeks: demagoguery, fear mongering, and simplistic slogans that fit on a bumper sticker but do not advance serious discourse. We ought to resist all of this, and that is possible only if we work to overcome our natural anger at what happened and hatred of those who made it happen.

Finally, let me go back to this entirely counterintuitive, superficially even outrageous idea that people — even terrorists — don’t do what they do out of evil, but because of ignorance. Setting aside the philosophical point that to talk of “evil” as a metaphysical category is highly problematic in itself, I think this attitude — with practice, since it certainly doesn’t come spontaneously — will allow us to see more clearly what is going on and what to do about it.

If we simply label something or someone as evil we give ourselves an automatic pass for not thinking about complexities, root causes, and responsibilities. ISIS exists for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with still widespread perniciously regressive cultures of fundamentalism in the Middle East, but others that have to do with both recent and not so recent Western intervention in that area of the world, often for anything but altruistic reasons.

This does nothing to justify the Paris attacks, but it does a lot for us to understand why they happened and, ideally, what to do to prevent future ones. I am reminded of a controversial editorial written for the Italian magazine L’Espresso by Umberto Eco in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers. The title of the piece was “Understanding Bin Laden.” Eco’s point was precisely the one I’m making here: understanding is an altogether different thing from excusing. There is no condoning either 9/11 or Paris, nor an increasingly large number of similar episodes. But if we do not make a genuine attempt at understanding why so many people think that they are doing the right thing by massacring others in what they see as a necessary defense of their own lands and way of life then we will keep acting unthinkingly, giving in to a simplistic us-vs-them mentality, and simply perpetuate the cycle of violence. As Stoics, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and indeed as members of the man cosmopolis, we ought to have the moral courage and the wisdom to do better.

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37 thoughts on “What Would a Stoic Do? On terrorism”
EugenRNovember 17, 2015 at 11:03 am

If my i to add, i wonder according to your statistics, how many European Muslims are redy to condemn the Caliphate as an imperialistic aggressive idea, that if successful will bring end to human civilization. ( viz my comment below.)
https://rodeneugen.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/islam-and-the-monotheism/

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Patrice AymeNovember 17, 2015 at 12:59 pm

Dear Massimo:
Trying to understand ideas without their genealogies is impossible. Trying to understand regional moods, without their genealogies, is also impossible.

The history of morals, and the reality of morals, is dominated by the reality of regional, or religious moods.

Ideas, moods, morals are complicated, because so is history. There is no royal road to either mathematics, nor history. (Nor physics or sociology.)

When eager admirers of Nietzsche sat in front of him in a restaurant in Nice or Turin, they found he was not eager to talk to them. The philosopher’s preoccupations were too far removed for whom he viewed as children to condescend to address them.

Italy, say in Mussolini’s sense, did not exist before Mussolini, indeed. The dictator spent enormous amounts of energy to “Italianize” parts of “Italy” where Italian was not even spoken (I have good friends from there).

Until the bloody, self-entranced Corsican “noble” who became dictator of Europe cancelled it, the Roman empire was, nominally, ruling Europe. For more than a millennium. France was the one and only exception, as the Paris area declared the king of the Franks “emperor in its own kingdom”. Said kingdom was long tiny.

This is why considering that nation-states did not exist in Europe is not a pertinent notion. Although all nominally part of the Roman empire, regions such as Bavaria, Savoy, Piedmont, Catalonia, Burgundy, Aquitania, Venice, Firenze, Genoa, Provence, Artois, Palatinate, Bohemia, Brittany, etc… were all rather independent entities submitted to the theoretical authority of either the (elected) Roman Emperor or the king-emperor of France.

Hundreds of these states shared a common currency, the Thaler (“Tollar”, dollar).

Those states fought very hard with each other. For example Savoy and Dauphine’, both quasi republics, both speaking some sort of “French” had an active war for centuries, with a sort of Chinese wall separating them across the Alps (still standing, but not advertised much)..

So there were nation-states of sorts throughout Europe for centuries, and they created regional moods still in evidence today.

To come back to the subject at hand, the mood created by the 80,000 words Qur’an has been extremely favorable to war. Thus Islam created the world’s largest empire in less than 80 years, by using enormous violence which baffled and surprised both Persians and Romans. The reason? Hundreds of verses in the Qur’an are calls to mayhem, if not outright murder, of most categories of people.

As ISIS was saying, 200 million Shiites are “apostates”. Penalty according to Qur’an and Hadith? Death. Just staying stoic will not help. Prepare to die, or prepare to fight.

Although military men have to know how to be stoic, they do not limit their emotional arsenal to that. No baboon ever could, and to ask less of man is to no little of that creature.

Sorry for all the history, but, as you said, nobody has to read it.

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MassimoPost authorNovember 17, 2015 at 5:16 pm

Patrice,

of course one cannot understand current events if one does not understand their genealogy, though one hardly has to go all the way back to the Pleistocene. But your continued lessons in history are both unnecessary (at the least for me, I’m well aware of all the factoids you mentioned), and indeed misleading, since you keep inferring incorrect notions from them.

For instance, your insistence that just because words like “Italia” or “Europa” have been in use for millennia they actually referred to anything like the same entities that we label with those terms today. Not to mention that Italy was a country with a cultural identity before Mussolini took over, thank you very much.

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Daniel MannNovember 18, 2015 at 3:28 pm

Massimo, I am glad to see that you are speaking out against the horrors of ISIS and recognize the need to strenuously combat such evils. However, I feel that you undermine the most important element for a confident and concerted moral response, when you deny evil motivations:

• “People don’t do evil on purpose, but out of ignorance.”

• “If we simply label something or someone as evil we give ourselves an automatic pass for not thinking about complexities, root causes, and responsibilities.”

Here are several problems with your analysis:

1. You haven’t provided any argumentation to rule out evil motives.
2. If ISIS is merely acting out of ignorance, then the prescription should merely be education.
3. Punishment is not the appropriate way to address ignorance.
4. To use punishment/warfare to address ignorance is unjust, unless it is purposeful ignorance.
5. Instead, punishment is appropriate to address evil.
6. It will be hard to motivate a concerted response against ISIS if their problems consist only of ignorance, poor cultural conditioning, or poverty.
7. Such an analysis will ultimately give ISIS a relatively free-pass.

While you state that our analysis of the causes of ISIS “does nothing to justify the Paris attacks,” it seems that this evil-less analysis will defuse the necessary moral outrage:

• So let’s consider for a moment what it would mean, from a Stoic perspective, to try not to get angry or hateful, and to really entertain the thought that ISIS fighters do what they do out of ignorance.

Sadly, this analysis will doom our efforts. However, I do agree that we need to genuinely understand ISIS:

• “But if we do not make a genuine attempt at understanding why so many people think that they are doing the right thing by massacring others… [We] simply perpetuate the cycle of violence.”

However, the West is in denial about the very thing that all of the Islamic terrorists claim to be their motivation – Islam itself. It is an unassailable fact of history that we live out what we believe.

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MassimoPost authorNovember 18, 2015 at 4:38 pm

Daniel,

I think we are using words like “ignorance” and “evil” in somewhat different ways. I don’t mean to say that ISIS doesn’t know what they are doing, I mean that it does it out of a failure to know the chief good for humanity, which — according to Stoics — is the application of reason to peaceful and flourishing societal living.

At any rate, on your specific points:

“You haven’t provided any argumentation to rule out evil motives”

I don’t believe in “evil” as a metaphysical category. If you have any good arguments to establish that ontological claim I’d be happy to entertain it.

“If ISIS is merely acting out of ignorance, then the prescription should merely be education.”

No, some people are beyond education passed a very early stage of their life, so this doesn’t follow.

“Punishment is not the appropriate way to address ignorance”

That’s right, punishment is *never* appropriate in my view. That doesn’t mean one cannot do anything to stop bad things from happening, up to and including the use of violence, when absolutely necessary, which looks like is indeed the case with ISIS.

“To use punishment/warfare to address ignorance is unjust, unless it is purposeful ignorance”

It should be clear from my two answers above why this is not the case, from a Stoic perspective.

“Instead, punishment is appropriate to address evil”

Since evil doesn’t exist, metaphysically, punishment is never appropriate.

“It will be hard to motivate a concerted response against ISIS if their problems consist only of ignorance, poor cultural conditioning, or poverty”

Not at all. The immediate response will very likely have to include violence to stop them and revert their gains. But the long term problems that made ISIS possible to begin with will simply not go away unless we do address ignorance, cultural conditioning and poverty.

“Such an analysis will ultimately give ISIS a relatively free-pass”

It should be clear from my answers above that this is not the case.

“the West is in denial about the very thing that all of the Islamic terrorists claim to be their motivation – Islam itself”

You could say the same thing of Judaism itself, and of Christianity itself. And yet, by and large, those two religions have gotten over their worst phase. There is nothing intrinsically bad about Islam, and indeed there have been periods of history when Islam was far less violent and more tolerant than Christianity. So we just need to figure out how to help the world’s Muslim community get out of their current rut. To accuse them all of being evil is, obviously, a non-starter.

Liked by 3 people

Daniel MannNovember 18, 2015 at 6:51 pm

Massimo, For evidence of objective moral absolutes, you might start by reading that essay:

http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2009/08/moral-absolutes.html

You wrote: “I don’t mean to say that ISIS doesn’t know what they are doing, I mean that it does it out of a failure to know the chief good for humanity, which — according to Stoics — is the application of reason to peaceful and flourishing societal living.”

You appeal to the concept of “peaceful and flourishing societal living.” However, if peace and human flourishing have no objective truth value, you are wasting your time with ISIS. They claim to have a truth that transcends your concern for a peaceful society. Admittedly, they too believe in a peaceful society, but one that will result when the entire world is under Islam. Your pragmatic reasoning about peace will have absolutely NO effect upon those who believe that their truth comes from above.

Instead, we have to demonstrate that their truth does NOT come from above. Without this, you will have no leverage in this culture war.

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MassimoPost authorNovember 19, 2015 at 8:44 am

Daniel,

“For evidence of objective moral absolutes, you might start by reading that essay”

As you know, I don’t believe morality is “out there.” It is a human construct, and as such there are no absolutes to be had, sorry.

“if peace and human flourishing have no objective truth value, you are wasting your time with ISIS”

Forgive me but that’s a non sequitur. Even if they did have objective value there would be people who would reject them. The theory of evolution is, as far as we can tell, true, yet millions of people reject it. Contrariwise, plenty of non-objective conclusions are accepted by many people, for instance that to live a life of comfort is “better” than to live one of misery.

Besides, Stoicism does hold that there are objective truths about the human condition, but these truths are derived from a study of human nature and the nature of the cosmos (Stoic “Physics”), not from any belief in the transcendental.

“Your pragmatic reasoning about peace will have absolutely NO effect upon those who believe that their truth comes from above”

Indeed, which is why ISIS needs to be defeated by force. But that would be futile if we also do not address the underlying causes of ISIS and like movements, which have to do with marginalization, poverty and ignorance.

Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation - Oxford Scholarship

Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation - Oxford Scholarship




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Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation
Richard Sorabji
ABSTRACT


The Stoics (Chrysippus, Seneca, Epictetus) tell us how to get rid of unwanted emotions by re-evaluating situations (cognitive therapy). In their view, an emotion is a pair of value judgements that harm or benefit if at hand, and that it is appropriate to react. Bodily and mental shocks (e.g., crying) are not part of the emotion. One Stoic, Posidonius, protested that such judgements are neither necessary nor sufficient for emotion, not necessary, for example, for emotion produced by melody, or in animals. Seneca replied that what is produced by music and the arts, or in animals, is only preliminary shocks or ‘first movements’. Others (Galen) suggested that bodily factors are important and need separate physical treatment, and recent brain studies (LeDoux) explain why. But the Stoics are right that cognitive therapy can often on its own remove unwanted emotion. Moreover, their two judgements are the right targets for re-evaluation, and it is a muddle to be sad (William James) because I cry. Crying is only a shock. We need not share the Stoic ideal of apatheia — freedom from all emotions — just freedom from unwanted ones. Some Christians (Origen, Evagrius) took up the idea of first movements and converted them from preliminary shocks into preliminary ‘bad thoughts’, which act as temptations. They worked out a whole art of nipping them in the bud to achieve the Stoic ideal of apatheia. But Augustine favoured Aristotle's emotion in moderation, except for example for lust, which he saw as disobedient to will.

Keywords: Aristotle, Chrysippus, Posidonius, Galen, Augustine, first movements, judgement, apatheia, Seneca and Epictetus

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Print publication date: 2002 Print ISBN-13: 9780199256600
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2007 DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256600.001.0001


AUTHORS
Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Richard Sorabji, author
Wolfson College, Oxford
-----------------

Contents
Go to page:

Front Matter

Introduction

Part I Emotions As Judgements Versus Irrational Forces

1 Emotion As Cognitive and Its Therapy

2 The Emotions As Value Judgements In Chrysippus

3 Seneca's Defence

4 Seneca's Defence

5 The Arts
Aristotle, Philodemus, and the Stoics

6 Posidonius On the Irrational Forces In Emotion

7 Posidonius

8 Posidonius

9 Aspasius and Other Objections To Chrysippus

10 What Is Missing From the Judgemental Analysis?

Part II Value Of the Emotions, Cognitive Therapy, and the Role Of Philosophy

11 The Role Of Analytic Philosophy In Stoic Cognitive Therapy

12 Stoic Indifference: A Barrier To Therapy?

13 The Case For and Against Eradication Of Emotion

14 The Traditions Of Moderation and Eradication

15 How the Ancient Exercises Work

16 Exercises Concerned With Time and the Self

17 Physiology and the Non‐Cognitive Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion

18 Sex, Love, and Marriage In Pagan Philosophy and the Use Of Catharsis

19 Catharsis and the Classification Of Therapies

Part III Emotional Conflict and Structure Of the Mind

20 Emotional Conflict and the Divided Self

21 The Concept Of Will

Part IV From Stoic Agitations To Christian Temptations

22 First Movements As Bad Thoughts

23 From First Movements To the Seven Cardinal Sins Evagrius

24 First Movements In Augustine

25 Christians On Moderation Versus Eradication

26 Augustine On Lust and the Will

End Matter
------------------------

Emotion and Peace of Mind Lecture

The Gifford Lectures
Over 100 years of lectures on natural theology

You are here
HomeLecture Books

Emotion and Peace of Mind
Lecture:
Emotion and Peace of Mind
AVAILABLE CHAPTERS
Abbreviations
Introduction
1: Emotion as Cognitive and its Therapy
2: The Emotions as Value Judgements in Chrysippus
3: Seneca's Defence Third Movements as Harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno
4: Seneca's Defence First Movements as Answering Posidonius
5: The Arts First Movements and Controversies on Drama and Music Aristotle Philodemus and the Stoics
6: Posidonius on the Irrational Forces in Emotion Galen's Report
7: Posidonius Judgements Insufficient for Emotion Exhaustion and Lack of Imagination
8: Posidonius Judgements Not Necessary for Emotion Disowned Judgements Animals Music
26: Augustine on Lust and the Will
9: Aspasius and Other Objections to Chrysippus
10: What is Missing from the Judgemental Analysis? Brain Research and Limitations on Stoic Cognitive Therapy
11: The Role of Analytic Philosophy in Stoic Cognitive Therapy
12: Stoic Indifference: A Barrier to Therapy?
13: The Case for and against Eradication of Emotion
14: The Traditions of Moderation and Eradication
15: How the Ancient Exercises Work
16: Exercises Concerned with Time and the Self
17: Physiology and the Non-Cognitive: Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion
18: Sex Love and Marriage in Pagan Philosophy and the Use of Catharsis
19: Catharsis and the Classification of Therapies
20: Emotional Conflict and the Divided Self
21: The Concept of Will
22: First Movements as Bad Thoughts: Origen and his Legacy
23: From First Movements to the Seven Cardinal Sins: Evagrius
24: First Movements in Augustine: Adaptation and Misunderstanding
25: Christians on Moderation versus Eradication

Oxford University Press
2003
SUMMARY

In Emotion and Peace of Mind, Sorabji examines how the Stoics developed the idea of emotions as judgements internal to the mind, differing from Platonists, who regarded emotions as rooted in the irrational faculties of the soul. He argues that for ancient philosophers and early Christians alike, philosophical analyses on the human emotions provided useful therapies for emotional disturbance. For the same reason, he expects that the ancient philosophy of emotions will contribute to current strands in psychotherapy and psychology.

The book consists of four parts. The first part is devoted to the formation of the Stoic idea of emotions and peace of mind in ancient philosophy. Chapter 1 sketches how the idea of philosophy as psychotherapy and the view of emotions as cognitive were developed in the period of the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle. Chapter 2 presents Chrysippus as identifying emotions with ‘mistaken judgements of reason’. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to Seneca’s defence by ‘harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno’ and ‘answering Posidonius’. Chapter 5 deals with the Stoic reply to Aristotle’s theory of tragic catharsis. The next four chapters (6–9) introduce the Stoic Posidonius’s main objection—“judgements are not necessary for emotion”—to Chrysippus’s analysis in Galen’s report, with further objections from Aspasius and others. Chapter 10 analyses the modern brain research of Joseph LeDous, who reduced the role of cognition in emotion.

The second part focuses on the value and therapy of emotions in a non-Christian context. Chapter 11 considers how Stoic cognitive therapy would work. Chapter 12 argues that the theory of indifference was not an essential part of Stoic therapy. Chapter 13 considers Chrysippus’s radical thesis that all emotions should be eradicated by examining the reasons for and against eradication. Chapter 14 looks at the debates on whether the emotions should only be moderated or actually eradicated in the Pre-Socratics, Plato, the Epicureans, the Neoplatonists, Aristotle and the Stoics. Chapters 15 and 16 analyse the ancient exercises regarding the dimension of time (past, present, future) and the diversity of the self. Chapter 17 is devoted to Galen’s non-Chrysippan alternative approach, called ‘the physiology of emotion’, which gave a central role to the body in emotion and recognized the need for non-cognitive therapies. Chapter 18 considers the value put on erotic emotions. Chapter 19 explains what catharsis might relieve us of.

Explaining how different views on the nature of emotional conflict bear on the structure of the mind, the third part (chaps. 20 and 21) details the Stoic controversy on the psychology of emotion and supplies a background to Christian treatments of temptation, will and divided will. In the last part, Sorabji analyses how the Stoic concepts of emotions were transformed in Christian traditions. Chapters 22 and 23 address how the concept of first movements was devised by Christian thinkers such as Philo, Origen, Jerome, Augustine and Evagrius. Chapter 24 discusses the influence of the Stoic analyses on emotions on Augustine. Chapter 25 traces the developments of Christian attitudes to the Stoic idea of apatheia, freedom from emotion in the Alexandrians, the Cappadocian Fathers and the Latin tradition. Chapter 26 analyses Augustine’s argument against lust as ‘disobedience to the will’ in his debates with Julian.

Emotion and Peace of Mind - The Gifford Lectures

Emotion and Peace of Mind - The Gifford Lectures





The Gifford Lectures
Over 100 years of lectures on natural theology

You are here
HomeLecture Books

Emotion and Peace of Mind
Lecture:
Emotion and Peace of Mind
AVAILABLE CHAPTERS
Abbreviations
Introduction
1: Emotion as Cognitive and its Therapy
2: The Emotions as Value Judgements in Chrysippus
3: Seneca's Defence Third Movements as Harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno
4: Seneca's Defence First Movements as Answering Posidonius
5: The Arts First Movements and Controversies on Drama and Music Aristotle Philodemus and the Stoics
6: Posidonius on the Irrational Forces in Emotion Galen's Report
7: Posidonius Judgements Insufficient for Emotion Exhaustion and Lack of Imagination
8: Posidonius Judgements Not Necessary for Emotion Disowned Judgements Animals Music
26: Augustine on Lust and the Will
9: Aspasius and Other Objections to Chrysippus
10: What is Missing from the Judgemental Analysis? Brain Research and Limitations on Stoic Cognitive Therapy
11: The Role of Analytic Philosophy in Stoic Cognitive Therapy
12: Stoic Indifference: A Barrier to Therapy?
13: The Case for and against Eradication of Emotion
14: The Traditions of Moderation and Eradication
15: How the Ancient Exercises Work
16: Exercises Concerned with Time and the Self
17: Physiology and the Non-Cognitive: Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion
18: Sex Love and Marriage in Pagan Philosophy and the Use of Catharsis
19: Catharsis and the Classification of Therapies
20: Emotional Conflict and the Divided Self
21: The Concept of Will
22: First Movements as Bad Thoughts: Origen and his Legacy
23: From First Movements to the Seven Cardinal Sins: Evagrius
24: First Movements in Augustine: Adaptation and Misunderstanding
25: Christians on Moderation versus Eradication

Oxford University Press
2003
SUMMARY

In Emotion and Peace of Mind, Sorabji examines how the Stoics developed the idea of emotions as judgements internal to the mind, differing from Platonists, who regarded emotions as rooted in the irrational faculties of the soul. He argues that for ancient philosophers and early Christians alike, philosophical analyses on the human emotions provided useful therapies for emotional disturbance. For the same reason, he expects that the ancient philosophy of emotions will contribute to current strands in psychotherapy and psychology.

The book consists of four parts. The first part is devoted to the formation of the Stoic idea of emotions and peace of mind in ancient philosophy. Chapter 1 sketches how the idea of philosophy as psychotherapy and the view of emotions as cognitive were developed in the period of the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle. Chapter 2 presents Chrysippus as identifying emotions with ‘mistaken judgements of reason’. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to Seneca’s defence by ‘harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno’ and ‘answering Posidonius’. Chapter 5 deals with the Stoic reply to Aristotle’s theory of tragic catharsis. The next four chapters (6–9) introduce the Stoic Posidonius’s main objection—“judgements are not necessary for emotion”—to Chrysippus’s analysis in Galen’s report, with further objections from Aspasius and others. Chapter 10 analyses the modern brain research of Joseph LeDous, who reduced the role of cognition in emotion.

The second part focuses on the value and therapy of emotions in a non-Christian context. Chapter 11 considers how Stoic cognitive therapy would work. Chapter 12 argues that the theory of indifference was not an essential part of Stoic therapy. Chapter 13 considers Chrysippus’s radical thesis that all emotions should be eradicated by examining the reasons for and against eradication. Chapter 14 looks at the debates on whether the emotions should only be moderated or actually eradicated in the Pre-Socratics, Plato, the Epicureans, the Neoplatonists, Aristotle and the Stoics. Chapters 15 and 16 analyse the ancient exercises regarding the dimension of time (past, present, future) and the diversity of the self. Chapter 17 is devoted to Galen’s non-Chrysippan alternative approach, called ‘the physiology of emotion’, which gave a central role to the body in emotion and recognized the need for non-cognitive therapies. Chapter 18 considers the value put on erotic emotions. Chapter 19 explains what catharsis might relieve us of.

Explaining how different views on the nature of emotional conflict bear on the structure of the mind, the third part (chaps. 20 and 21) details the Stoic controversy on the psychology of emotion and supplies a background to Christian treatments of temptation, will and divided will. In the last part, Sorabji analyses how the Stoic concepts of emotions were transformed in Christian traditions. Chapters 22 and 23 address how the concept of first movements was devised by Christian thinkers such as Philo, Origen, Jerome, Augustine and Evagrius. Chapter 24 discusses the influence of the Stoic analyses on emotions on Augustine. Chapter 25 traces the developments of Christian attitudes to the Stoic idea of apatheia, freedom from emotion in the Alexandrians, the Cappadocian Fathers and the Latin tradition. Chapter 26 analyses Augustine’s argument against lust as ‘disobedience to the will’ in his debates with Julian.

war - Philosophy for life

war - Philosophy for life



war
You think 2017 is politically polarised? Try 1968
Protests outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968



This week I finished watching the new PBS documentary series, The Vietnam War, made by Ken Burns and Lynne Novick. It’s a massive piece of work – 18 hours of footage from the last war when American journalists were allowed to roam pretty much wherever they wanted on the battlefield, and when presidents recorded their private conversations. You’ve never seen a war so close.

And it’s a shock. I knew a bit about the Vietnam War, mainly from movies like Platoon and Apocalypse Now. But I was still shocked by the atrocities committed by the American army, by the futility of so many of the battles – hills taken at huge cost and then immediately abandoned – and by the awful suffering of the Vietnamese people, who were at war continuously, from the war with France in 1945 to 1954, to the civil war (also involving the US) from 1955 to 1975, to the war with Cambodia from 1975 to 1989.

The US involvement in Vietnam’s civil war looks, from the perspective of history, like a monumental error. It arose from a fundamental misreading of the conflict. Successive US presidents, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson, thought that if the communist North Vietnamese succeeded in their war with South Vietnam, South Asia would turn communist, and eventually Europe would topple too.

The domino theory turned out to be wrong. In fact, it was a domestic civil war, and the US picked the wrong side – the South Vietnamese government, nominally democratic, was deeply corrupt, authoritarian, and unpopular. The US thought, when it intervened, that the Vietnamese would see them as liberating heroes. In fact, many saw them as racist imperialist invaders, just like the French before them.

The US initially sent in ground troops to Vietnam when it thought its ships had been attacked by North Vietnamese forces, in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This too was an error – the supposed torpedo was a blip on the radar. But, as defence secretary Robert McNamara said years later: ‘We saw what we wanted to believe’.

What’s truly shocking is that as early as 1963 the American government knew the war was going badly and was unlikely to end in victory. Yet the war lasted another decade, costing the US around 60,000 lives, several million Vietnamese lives, and poisoning the political culture of both countries for decades.

You think American politics is polarised now? Look at 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, when it became horribly obvious to Americans watching the TV news that they were losing the war; a year of race riots, of the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, a year of police brutality and domestic terrorism by radical leftist groups, a year when protests outside the Democratic National Convention were so violent, the convention had to be carried out in an improvised security bunker.The Baltimore riot of 1968

It was a clash of ethics, as much as anything else. Thousands of young Americans were going through hell to honour the ethic of serving their country. Back in America, other young Americans were choosing a different ethic of personal development and authenticity. Or they were deciding that the best way to serve their country was to protest against an immoral and futile war.

The ideological clash between liberals and conservatives became ever more bitter. The liberals, in many ways, were right. The war was futile. But the tactics of anti-war protestors were often misguided and self-defeating.

Hippies screamed abuse at returning vets as they arrived home at airports, calling them baby-killers; they burned American flags, and waved the flag of North Vietnam; they called the police ‘pigs’, and America a Nazi police-state. Liberal Hollywood icon Jane Fonda travelled to North Vietnam and denounced American prisoners of war as criminals who deserved to be executed, then let herself be photographed laughing on a North Vietnam anti-war gun used to shoot them down. And groups like the Weathermen and the Black Panthers declared that best form of resistance was violence. No wonder Robert Kennedy said, a few weeks before his assassination, ‘the centre cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.Jane Fonda larking around on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun

The consequence of these radical tactics was to hand Republican candidate Richard Nixon a landslide victory in the 1968 election, in which he won every state except two. He won by appealing to the ‘silent moral majority’ who didn’t want to see America over-run by hippy terrorists – even though, by that point, most Americans actually opposed the war. It took the left over a decade to recover, and Nixon only lost power when his own paranoia led to Watergate.

There are lessons here for the left today, and how it opposes President Trump and other nationalist parties across the west.

This decade is a time of comparable polarisation in western politics. There are protests, riots and police shootings on the streets, and angry clashes on campuses. There is fear and loathing on both sides. The left labels the right as Nazi, while the right labels the left as totalitarian. Violence and hate speech are gradually normalized as political tactics. The intense complexity of global politics is reduced to simple black-and-white narratives of noble heroes and evil sick villains. The centre-ground of politics diminishes. Which side are you on?

As in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, people see what they want to believe. This is true of both sides.

I’ve been following a psychology professor called Jordan Peterson on Twitter. He’s a well-known evolutionary psychologist, but more famous as an outspoken critic of political correctness on campuses, which he sees as a totalitarian threat to western civilization. He’s so terrified of this existential threat, he sees it everywhere.

This week, for example, Nassim Nicholas Taleb tweeted about how political correctness was destroying western education. The British right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins tweeted him a flyer in which she offers free classes to schools, where she offers her unique take on subjects like Black Lives Matter or transgender rights. Jordan Peterson seized on this, and retweeted it as an example of ‘radical leftist indoctrination’. When one bemused follower asked him what his problem was with Katie Hopkins’ classes, he said ‘If you can’t see the difference, then you’ve already been indoctrinated.’


Jordan B Peterson
✔@jordanbpeterson




The substitute for education: trendy ideology https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/911579813030264832 …
7:00 AM - Sep 24, 2017
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Jordan B Peterson
✔@jordanbpeterson




It's not education. It's radical left indoctrination. If you can't see the difference, then you've already been indoctrinated.
7:16 AM - Sep 24, 2017
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That’s political culture in the West in the early 21st century – people scanning the net, looking for things to be outraged about, torpedoes to be repelled and revenged, without taking the time to investigate. People seeing their own side as heroes and the other side as evil. Complexity and nuance are the first casualties of this toxic climate.

Ken Burns says he hopes his documentary can act like a vaccination against the virus of the Vietnam War, and the distrust, alienation and polarisation it engendered. You see the suffering of all sides in the war, you see their honourable intentions, and their moral doubts. You see a protestor who fled to Canada, deeply regretting renouncing his American citizenship; you see a soldier who accepted the draft, who feels his acceptance was a defining moment of moral cowardice; you see a former protestor tearfully apologising for the insults they hurled at traumatized veterans as they came home. You see the wounds people have carried for decades.

Both the left and the right today need to try and understand each other’s reasons – the noble intentions and basic emotions driving their calls for social justice or economic freedom or controlled borders or human rights. They need to make the effort to see the other side as humans, rather than Nazis, hippies, SJWs, snowflakes, Remoaners, gooks, cuks etc.

There’s a pragmatic reason for being able to take the other side’s perspective – it makes it more likely you win over public opinion, more likely you achieve your political goals, and less likely that your campaigns backfire and empower your opponents, as they did in 1968. And there’s a moral reason too – being able to see the other side’s perspective makes it more likely that democracy will survive.

Nationalism - Philosophy for life

Nationalism - Philosophy for life




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Nationalism
The best of times, the worst of times


This is the best time ever to be alive and human. Global life expectancy has doubled in the last century, from 31 to 71. A century ago, 20% of babies died in childbirth, now it’s less than 7%. You’re far, far less likely to die violently than in the Middle Ages, the 19th century, or even in the 1960s. In the last 30 years, the percentage of the world living in abject poverty has fallen from 37% to below 10%. Global literacy has risen from 40% in 1950 to 86%. In 1900, girls in Sub-Saharan Africareceived 7% of the education (in years) that boys’ received, now they receive 82% – and its close to 100% in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

The world is better off in terms of health, education, wealth, gender equality, democracy, and peace, than it was 50 years ago, and far, far better off than it was 200 years ago.



Yet if you ask people in the UK, Germany, the US, France and elsewhere if they think the world is getting better, only around 4% of people think it is.



Why has the west got the blues? Why aren’t we celebrating the incredible progress we have made? Why do we say things like ‘2016 was the worst year ever’, based on two right-wing election victories and the death of some celebrities?



Firstly, I think it’s fair to say we are spoilt. We have been spoilt by 50 years of peace and affluence. We thought the 90s were normal, when the biggest problem the US faced was Bill Clinton’s zip, rather than a decade unusual for its lack of serious crises or major wars. When we returned to the historical norm of crisis and war, we were bewildered, and we wailed.

Secondly, while the world is doing better, the West, by some measures, is doing worse. Western countries are seeing less dramatic gains in measures like literacy or life expectancy, a relative decline in our global share of GDP versus emerging markets, and actual declines in domestic measures like real income, living standards, home-owning and inequality. The 2008 financial crisis eroded our faith in democracy and capitalism. Liberal capitalist democracy is less obviously the globally triumphant system it was in 2000. It doesn’t seem to be working very well in the US and elsewhere, and the percentage of those in the West who support the idea of military dictatorships is rising, particularly among millennials.

Third, migration has rapidly reshaped the demographics of western countries, with the share of immigrants in some populations almost doubling in the last 20 years. This has changed the look and feel of many European cities – they have become far more multicultural or, sometimes, more segregated. Unfortunately, this sharp rise in immigration in the last 20 years has come at the same time as a period of war and international terrorism in the history of Islam. Every terrorist attack in the West emboldens and amplifies far-right voices saying Western civilization is heading for Islamic destruction.



Fourth, we’re growing up with the prospect of species-threatening climate change in the next few decades, and we don’t know what to do about it. Some scientists, including James Lovelock, tell us there’s nothing we can do – the world will, in the next 30-50 years, become largely uninhabitable, much of humanity will become refugees, and the human population will be literally decimated. It’s such a dark prospect, and we’re so obviously failing to deal with it, that we don’t really talk about it. But I think it profoundly shapes our emotional and psychic reality.

Finally, there may be an emotional crisis in the West – a rise in loneliness, and in emotional problems like depression and anxiety. I’m not entirely sure on this – I think the rise in those seeking treatment is probably because of greater awareness and access to treatment. Nonetheless, George Monbiot may be right, in his new book Out of the Wreckage, when he argues we’re facing a crisis in meaning brought about by a lack of an over-arching narrative or myth.

Instead, we look to social media for meaning and narrative. We out-source our thinking to pundits like Owen Jones or Glenn Beck, or to a handful of trusted Twitter heroes like Gary Lineker and JK Rowling, who never disturb us with new or contrary ideas, but instead comfort us by articulating what we already feel, and shape the incredibly complex world of global politics into simple narratives of good versus bad, heroes versus villains. This is a perfect recipe for emotional disturbance, social division and political disfunction. Twitter is making us stupid, and sick.

Such is the complexity of the ‘wicked problems’ we face, a part of me feels the allure of unplugging and dropping out. The public space has become too noisy, too bitter. We feel we must have an opinion on everything, yet much of what is happening is beyond our individual or collective control. Perhaps now is the time for a tactical Daoist retreat – the wise man ascends the mountain, and lets nature take its course.

But I think a better response than Daoist retreat is Stoic engagement: you accept that much of the situation is beyond your control, you accept that some fairly dreadful things are going to happen this century, but you engage politically anyway, with firm resolve, and a hope and faith in the long arc of the cosmos towards wisdom and justice.

We must keep hope, and remind ourselves of humans’ natural bias to negativity. We must remember how often, over the last 2000 years, humans thought the end of the world was nigh, and were proved wrong.We must remind ourselves loudly of the victories we have achieved and are achieving, even if these victories happen thousands of miles away. We must remind ourselves how sudden technological innovations have utterly transformed human existence in the past, and are likely to do so in the future. We must consider the ‘long now’, and plan not just for five years in the future, or 50, but 500.

I think my country – the United Kingdom – needs a ‘Doomsday Trust’, like the Rand Corporation, to go away into a farmhouse in the countryside for five years and think deeply about the challenges our country faces from climate change – to face difficult questions about arable land, dependency on food exports, mass migration, relations with the EU, the possibility of social breakdown – and find a way to help our nation survive this century. That thinking can’t be done on Twitter.

We must re-learn to engage not just through social media, but through face-to-face neighbourliness – speaking personally, I must shake myself out of a period of withdrawal from community organizing and start to organize again, for the common good and my own good.

Finally, what about the crisis of meaning in western culture, and the need for a new narrative? I can only repeat my brother, Alex Evans, whose book The Myth Gap earlier this year called for a new myth to change our relationship to nature and each other.

I also think the new narrative will be a shift from the Cartesian / Hobbesian narrative of the individual rational ego competing with other humans and exploiting a world of inanimate matter and soulless animals, towards a narrative where our consciousness is extended and deeply connected to each other, to other species, and to all of nature and all matter.

When I develop my consciousness into wisdom and love, you benefit, even if we never meet. When you suffer, I suffer, even if we never meet. When the corals bleach in Australia, I am poorer. When literacy rises in Nigeria, I am richer. We are literally one organism, one consciousness, one interlocking eco-system, one vast I AM. That, I think, is the astonishing and in some ways terrifying truth that humans have been groping towards for millennia.

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How the alt-right emerged from men’s self-help


Like a lot of people, I’ve been scrambling to make sense of the Trump victory and what it says about public attitudes in the US and western culture generally. I’ve spent this week researching the alt-right movement and reading some of its literature. We don’t yet know to what extent the alt-right helped Trump to victory, and to what extent its beliefs appeal to the general population. But let me suggest some points about alt-right philosophy, and the way to engage with it at a grass-roots level.

Aspects of alt-right culture overlaps with men’s self-help, and with classical virtue ethics like Stoicism.

This may come as a surprise to those who think of the alt-right as gamer-nerds and illiterate meme-fanatics, but a lot of it appears to be driven by disaffected young college-educated men looking for a code to live by. Some of them are drawn to classical virtue ethics like Stoicism because it offers a way to feel strong in a chaotic world. Clearly, they misinterpret ancient philosophy. But their interest in it offers a way that educators can engage with them.

If I was Muslim I would be engaging with young men drawn to toxic variants of Islam, to try and steer them away from it, for their good and the good of my culture. I think that’s necessary with the alt-right too – we should engage with those young men who are genuinely looking for a path to self-improvement, to try and steer them away from the toxic aspects of alt-right culture, such as white supremacy and misogyny.


What is the alt-right?Pepe the Frog – one of the alt-right’s favourite memes, as found on anonymous image-based websites like 4Chan.

So what is the alt-right? The best intro I found was from the Breitbart news site, formerly edited by Steve Bannon, Trump’s new senior advisor, which styles itself as an alt-right platform. It features ‘an establishment conservative’s guide to the alt-right’, by Milo Yiannopoulos and Allum Bokhari. This article divides the movement into four groups.

Firstly, the ‘natural conservatives’ – those who, in social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s formulation, naturally feel disposed to an emotional politics of order, honour and harmony, as opposed to a leftist emotional politics of justice, fairness and equality. Secondly, the ‘meme gang’ – young men on the internet who spend hours joyfully constructing memes to support Trump and shock liberals. They don’t necessarily believe in Nazism…or anything, they just like to shock and get lulz. This group has been associated with trolling campaigns like gamergate or the harassment of the female Ghostbusters cast. Thirdly, the ‘1488-ers’ – straight-up Neo-Nazis, so-called because of the 14 words uttered by the founder of the American Nazi party – ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children‘ – and the two 8’s at the end represent the letters HH, Heil Hitler.

The manosphere

Finally, there are the ‘intellectuals’. Yanniopoulos and Bokhari write: ‘The so-called online “manosphere,” the nemeses of left-wing feminism, quickly became one of the alt-right’s most distinctive constituencies.’ I studied three particular writers in this ‘manosphere’, who connect the alt-right with male self-help: Mike Cernovich, author of ‘The Gorilla Mindset’ and ‘The MAGA Mindset’; Jack Donovan, author of ‘The Way of Men’; and Roosh V, pick-up artist and editor of a popular men’s website called Return of Kings. Cernovich has been called ‘the meme mastermind of the alt-right‘, Roosh actively supported the Trump campaign as a means to the return of patriarchy, while Donovan speaks at white supremacist forums like American Renaissance.

All three offer a form of self-help for young men looking for a strong identity.

All three believe that masculine identity is in crisis in the west. They believe it’s been emasculated by feminism, threatenend by multiculturalism, enfeebled by corporate and consumer capitalism, and betrayed by older men who failed to provide strong role models. As a result, they say, western men have ended up miserable, weak, lonely, addicted and suicidal.

And who speaks for these wretched men? Every other interest group has their spokespeople and their movements. Feminism has its consciousness-raising circles, its heroines, its academic conferences. And men? The closest thing is a new and small field in academia called ‘masculine studies’ . But ‘masculine studies’ academics mainly wring their hands about traditional male identity and try to make men more like women.

Watch the documentary ‘The Mask You Live In’ (or the trailer, here), which is about the ‘male crisis’. It’s made by a woman, features more female experts than male, and focuses entirely on the problems with masculinity: men don’t show emotions, men binge drink and take dangerous risks, men play violent video games, men are drawn to casual sex, men are addicted to online porn, men humiliate women in ‘locker-room talk’, men are taught only to value sports and not other activities. And so on. Masculinity is apparently a disorder. And the solution to masculinity disorder is to become more like a woman, perhaps literally, like Grayson Perry, the transvestite artist and author of a new guide to What’s Wrong With Men.

Into this ethical vacuum step alt-right preachers of ‘neo-masculinity’, like radical Imams, if radical Imans were also pick-up artists.

The alt-right antidote to the ‘decline of men’ is to celebrate male identity and look for a code of living that leads to male strength.

Like me, some alt-righters in the manosphere are drawn to ideas from classical philosophy and modern therapy, which help people take control of their emotions. Roosh V, the pick-up artist and editor of Return of Kings, has frequently written on classical Stoicism as a ‘means to serenity’. He’s also written on ‘neo-masculinity’, a movement which looks to classical philosophy for an ethical foundation. Mike Cernovich’s Gorilla Mindset re-packages techniques for emotional self-management from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Stoicism, and mixes in some evolutionary psychology. And Jack Donovan has written on the need for a male virtue ethics, which emphasizes traditional values like courage, honour and self-discipline.

However, there’s also an aspect of alt-right neo-masculinity that is less drawn to virtue ethics and more to a sort of primitive tribalism or gang-culture. In the Way of Men, Jack Donovan defines male identity in the context of the male gang – men seek identity through the approval of other men, and through finding their place in the gang hierarchy, as chimpanzees do. Men are judged, Donovan says, by the extent to which they are a ‘real man’ – i.e, would they be good in a fight, can they defend themselves and others, do they defend their or their group’s honour, or are they a cissy?

The principle mission of the male gang, Donavan writes, is to secure the perimeter, and defend Us against Them – the outsider tribe. It doesn’t entirely matter who They are – Muslims, Jews, Republicans, zombies. They are really a means to Us bonding as a gang. It can be a little unclear who exactly is in the alt-right ‘Us’ – are gays like Donovan and Milo Yanniopolous? Are Jews? Are non-whites like Roosh? The movement smooths over these inconsistencies by focusing on Them, the threat to western civilization – feminists and Muslims.

Where do women fit in to this male gang world? For Jack Donovan, who’s gay, they’re purely a means to an end – men need them to reproduce and keep the tribe / gang going. He’s inspired by chimpanzee culture, in which he notes rape and female battering is common. Women are breeders, that’s all. For Roosh, they’re playgrounds and trophies.Fight Club – violent apocalypse as the means to male bonding

At the extreme, Donovan looks forward to the collapse of civilization and the flourishing of gang war, because then men can finally be men. Peace and prosperity make life boring, miserable and unheroic, he thinks. Bring on the apocalypse, as an exercise in male bonding. War is the game men play. Violence is the test, the means to ecstasy. War makes men. Peace makes half-men.

This ideology seems to me the white version of Jihadism – the sense of cultural grievance, the ‘elimination of the Gray Zone’ into Us versus Them, the desire for a global projection of heroic male strength, and the desire for a battlefield where one can play at war, not just in a video-game, but for real.

I can’t really engage young Muslim men, because I’m a kafir, an unbeliever, and I don’t really know the Koran. But I can engage with young men drawn to classical philosophy and self-help, because I was also drawn to this when I was a miserable and alienated young man. So how could one engage with this group? Here are some possible talking points:
We are more than chimpanzees. There is more to male strength than just brute force. Jack Donovan says we all admire immoral strong men like Al Pacino’s Scarface, but that’s not true – some adolescent boys do, but most grow out of that. Humans have the capacity to reflect on what’s right and wrong and to agree on a code of ethics. That’s what makes a tribe strong. When a tribe throws out its ethical culture and descends to the level of animal brutality, as the Nazis did, it doesn’t last long.
Women are, on average according to IQ measurements, just as intelligent as men. They also appear to score higher on empathy than men – a quality much needed in organizational culture and apparently lacking in the manosphere (see Donovan’s casual normalization of rape). Look at the cultures where women are encouraged to participate in public life, and the cultures where they’re not. Which cultures are stronger? Which are doing better? How strong and successful do you think Saudi Arabian culture is, or Afghan culture? At an ethical level, do you really want your daughter / sister not to have the same capacity to flourish as you or your son? There’s a weird paradox in the alt-right – on the one hand, they see themselves as the defenders of western civilization against Islam, on the other hand, they actually want to make western civilization more like Middle Eastern cultures (more patriarchal, less democratic and less respect for the rule of law).
The classical philosophers that some alt-righters claim to revere put virtue before brute power. On gender, Plato said his ideal Republic should be run by women and men, while Stoics like Musonius Rufus argued for equal education for boys and girls, on the principle women are as rational as men. On race, the Stoics were cosmopolitans, believing in a universal moral code that transcends race, gender or nationality. They did not believe ‘might is right’ – Thucydides criticized precisely that attitude for leading to the undermining of Athenian influence during the Peleponnesian War. The Roman Empire flourished partly because it had an amazing army, but also because it offered a universalist culture – the Pax Romana – which other ethnicities and tribes could join. Likewise, Islam and Christianity flourished because they were ethnically universalist. A culture based on ethnicity, by contrast, or on the brutal power of a despot, is a weak culture, it won’t attract cohorts, it won’t last.
Strong man cultures – in which a strong leader is revered and given all power – have typically not done well in modern history, they haven’t lasted. They may initially lead to a wave of conquests (Hitler, Napoleon) but they then rapidly collapse. Strong cultures that last are based not on personalities but institutions. The alt-right has a strange reverence for Putin’s Russia – having lived there, I know what a flawed, corrupt and disfunctional state it is.
Alt-righters in the manosphere are obsessed with honour and reputation, with being perceived as alpha men, not beta weaklings (see the chapter on honour and reputation in Donovan’s Way of Men). But Stoicism believes male strength comes from virtue, not honour or reputation. If you’re incredibly prickly about your honour, you’re weak and insecure – you fly off the handle at any perceived diss. You’re no better than hysterical campus liberals scanning for ‘micro-aggressions’. Honour cultures – like, say, Pakistan, or Sicily in the past – have traditionally been weak, because the men are constantly killing each other or their wives and daughters for any perceived slight to their honour. Strong men are secure enough in their self-respect to ignore a diss – unless something genuinely threatens their person or their culture, in which case they act.
If you’re obsessed with winning other men’s approval and appearing Alpha in their eyes, that’s not strength, that’s weakness. You’re enslaving yourself to their approval. Your whole life becomes an attempt to impress others – you pump iron to impress other men, you pull women to impress other men, you end up miserable and alone all because you spent your life trying to impress other men. Strong men don’t obsess over how Alpha they appear to other men.
If you think western culture has become a ‘culture of grievances’, as Milo Yiannopoulos put it, that doesn’t mean masculinity has to give in to victimhood as well. Marcus Aurelius wrote, ‘the best revenge is not to be like that’.
Trolling is a desperate bid for attention. Again, that’s not strong at all, that’s weak.
European culture went from rag-tag gangs in the Dark Ages to a powerful civilization that spread across the world partly through the invention of chivalry – strong warriors were persuaded to obey a moral code, which protected the weak. Alt-righters mock chivalry, but that makes their culture weak – who wants to join a chimpanzee culture that only values force? The foundation of Judeo-Christianity is also love for the oppressed and the weak – again, alt-righters like Steve Bannon describe themselves as heroic defenders of Judeo-Christian civilization, but they’re really more Nietzschean in their contempt for the weak.
If you really want to risk your life in a heroic adventure, join the army. Test yourself by fighting ISIS, not by harassing women on Twitter. That’s not being a man. Join the army. When you’re in it, you’ll find yourself fighting side by side with people of other ethnicities – 30% of the US military is non-white – and you might decide you can trust and bond with men whose skin is a different colour.

Those are some of the talking points one could use. One should not go in with name-calling – that triggers their honour-defenses and Us v Them mentality. Go in with respect. Recognize the emotional hurt beneath the toxic ideas. Focus on ideas not personal attacks. Epictetus wrote: ‘A guide, on finding a man who has lost his way, brings him back to the right path—he does not mock and jeer at him and then take himself off. You also must show the unlearned man the truth, and you will see that he will follow. But so long as you do not show it him, you should not mock, but rather feel your own incapacity.’
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