This Drove Me Away from Stoicism

Plato is as miserable as Hitler because

Plato is as vicious as Hitler. Again,

this is just a stoic view. The Instagram

bro posting a picture of his Lambo and

captioning it with a Marcus Aurelius

quote is nothing new. Real stoicism, no

bueno either. Okay, in fact, worse than

pop stoicism. The ideas are even crazier

and more unlivable. Externals can't harm

the stoic's happiness because in the

event they can, they just kill

themselves and call that virtue. Do you

see why now that stoicism is the most

ingenious coping mechanism ever derived?

The Stoics talk a big game about agency,

power, choice, freedom. There's no free

will period in their system. They are

strict determinists. If you like stoic

intuitions, just follow Aristotle

instead.

In this lecture, I'm going to tell you

why I think stoicism is wrong, why it's

counterproductive to try and live as a

stoic, and what better philosophies we

can adopt if we find Stoke intuitions

appealing. I've spent the better part of

last year studying ancient Greek,

interviewing the greatest Stoke scholars

alive, and reading Stoke texts. But the

deeper I've dug into the theory, the

more dissatisfied I become. Just to be

clear, I'm not a Stoke hater. In fact,

at the end of this lecture, I'm going to

tell you why I will keep reading Stoic

texts despite thinking they got it all

comically wrong. In the past year, the

Stoics have genuinely become my friends

in some very meaningful sense. But

sometimes the best thing we can do for a

wayward friend is to set them straight.

So, the goal of this lecture is to

launch a systematic attack on Stoke

philosophy. It's nothing short of

declaring war against one of the most

powerful, one of the most influential

movements in the past 20 years. Frankly,

I'm not that concerned. What the hell

are Stokes going to do? Meditate on my

death? Journal ferociously? I think I'm

good. Now, the real reason that I wanted

to make this lecture is to put forth a

critique in public discourse that pushes

back against the meteoric rise of

popular stoicism.

Because I think you've often heard it

said, "That's just the pop stoics."

Okay? Go read the real stoics. And I'm

here to tell you, real stoicism, no

bueno either. Okay? In fact, maybe worse

than pop stoicism. Somehow the ideas are

even crazier and more unlivable. So what

I'm going to do in this lecture is I'm

going to first develop a critique of

popular stoicism out of Nichza and then

a critique of real stoicism out of

Cicero um before sharing with you guys

what I genuinely do find valuable about

their philosophy. Okay. So the goal of

this lecture is for you to walk away

with not just an understanding of what

the Stokes have gotten wrong, but all

the valuable parts of their theory that

I think they got right and that we

should take away and absorb into our own

lives.

So I begin with a critique of pop

stoicism and I quote Una.

Stoicism may well be advisable for those

with whom fate improvises and who live

in violent times and depend on impulsive

and changeable people. Is our life

really so painful and burdensome that it

would be advantageous for us to trade it

for a fossilized stoic way of life?

Things are not bad enough for us that

they have to be bad for us in the stoic

style.

Nichzche's point is that stoicism is a

coping mechanism for people who have

been so molested by fate for people who

have completely lost control of the

external world. And what the stoics do

is that they go to these people and they

say, 'L none of this, none of this

matters, okay? You lost friends, you're

experiencing pain, you don't have any

pleasure, uh you lost your honor. None

of this matters because external goods

are indifference. And nichch's point is

that the stoic that that people latch on

to this tenant of stoic philosophy not

because they've considered it they've

reasoned to it from first principles

certainly not because it's intuitive

it's highly unintuitive

but because it's psychologically

comforting okay and I think that's quite

a good diagnosis if not of real stoicism

than of popto stoism so in fact I got

into stoicism myself as my for first

foray into philosophy in the exact exact

same way so I dropped out of school. I

was building a company. Company wasn't

doing so well. I was in a new city where

I had no friends and family and I was

struggling in my health. And I remember

just picking up the first stoic

self-help book, not even finishing it,

just reading half of it and falling

completely in love. Not because I

reasoned through the philosophy. Right?

These pop stoic books don't don't have

the philosophy, but because it was so

psychologically comforting to be told

rejection can't hurt you, the lack of

success can't hurt you. And I've had two

conversations in the past month alone

with friends of mine who came to stoism

the exact same way.

But it's not just feeble-minded people

like me and my friends, okay, who are so

easily seduced.

Cicero, as we'll talk about today, was

often quite critical and skeptical of

Stoke ideas in most of his work. And

yet, in his book called The Tusculent

Disputations, he basically reiterates

Stoke Doctrines, hook, line, and sinker.

Okay, what are the Tusculent

Disputations about? About coping. Okay,

the Tusculent disputations was Cicero's

attempt at self-consolation

after he lost the civil war. Caesar's in

charge. his friends are dead or in exile

and on top of all this his beloved

daughter had just died in childbirth.

And it was in Cicero's attempt to cope

with all of this that he took on the

standard stoke doctrines that he so

forcely dismantles in his other works.

This is Nichzche's point. These are the

circumstances. These are the people that

stoicism is made for. And this is true

even for the stoic greats. Okay. So

Zeno, the literal founder of Stoicism,

wealthy man, wealthy foreigner, he was

shipwrecked on his way to Athens. So

suddenly overnight, he lost everything.

He was a foreigner stranded in alien

land

and uh he just had a massive turn of

fortune and it was literally in response

to this exact event, this exact tragedy

that he turned towards philosophy from

which stoicism developed. Okay. And this

is also true for the great Roman Stoics.

Like all things Nietze, once you see it,

you can't unsee it. Epictitus

was a literal slave. Okay? He was born

and raised a slave. The guy literally

had no freedom. Senica nominally was uh

uh Nero's tutor and Nero's adviser, but

was de facto Nero's captive. Okay? And

who was Nero? Let me put this way. Nero

killed his own mom, killed his own

stepbrother, killed both of his wives,

the second one allegedly,

countless senators, and almost all of

his political rivals. Okay, that's the

type of person that Senica was a captive

to. And so Senica is the poster child

for exactly as Nichza puts it,

someone who depends on impulsive and

changeable people.

All right, this is what what a stoic

might say in response. But clearly

Marcus Aurelius

was not a slave of fortune, right? He

was the opposite. He was emperor of

Rome. I don't think that's right. I

think it's precisely people on the edges

of society that are most exposed to

fortune. So Marcus Aurelius was forced

against his will to become emperor

because the the previous emperor or two

emperors before Hadrien handpicked him

despite his own scholarly incon

inclinations as well as sickly

disposition

and his entire political career was just

putting out one fire after the other in

the empire. So Marcus Aurelius first had

to deal with the Antonine plague, one of

the worst plagues in antiquity. And then

a massive barbarian horde had invaded

Rome. And just as he was getting all of

that under control, his own general

rebelled in Egypt, which he had to deal

with.

And his personal life was not much

better. So Marcus Aurelius had 13 kids.

Most of them died before they reached

adulthood. His surviving heir, Commodus,

was an absolute freak show.

and likely his wife cocked him. Okay, so

Marcus Aurelius the emperor lived no

less turbulent a life than Epictitus the

slave. It's precisely the slave and the

emperor. It's the homeless man and the

billionaire who are most exposed to the

turns of fortune.

Now if these are the people that

stoicism appeals to then I think we

should view the rise of stoicism today

in our society as uh uh a symptom that

something terrible has gone wrong. Okay.

And let me give you an idea, historical

idea of what I mean here. In the Roman

Republic, when there was relatively

quite a bit of freedom, there weren't

that many Stoics. Ko the Stoke, the guy

who killed himself after the Civil War,

was quite an odd man out for being

stoic. But when the Empire came around,

when people started losing their

political freedoms on mass, that's when

stoicism surged as a kind of collective

coping mechanism. And therefore, I think

we should be equally alarmed that so

many people today find this exact tenant

of stoicism appealing. But let me be

clear here, okay? I'm not saying

everyone who gets into stoicism uses as

cope. Just disagreeing with Nichze, I

think it's a common psychological

phenomenon that people latch on to even

unbeknownst to them. So that's

Nichzche's critique

and I think it works for pop stoicism

again if not for real stoicism. But now

I want to push this critique even more.

Stoism is not just a coping mechanism.

It's the most ingenious coping mechanism

invented by man.

Because right when they tell you all

these external goods are complete

indifference, they then give you full

license to pursue them by calling them

preferred indifference. Okay? So all of

those external goods, health, wealth,

good looks, noble birth are again

legitimized by stoic ethics.

And what this means is is that it's very

easy to take on stoic ideas to call

yourself a stoic without actually having

to change anything radical about your

life. Because compare it to other ways,

right, people find consolation. Let's

say the Christian way. There's a God who

will judge the souls after you die or

the Buddhist way, right? Karma will give

people their fair share. If you actually

believe in those ideas, your life has to

radically change. Not just the people

you hang out with, not just what you do,

but the very targets of your striving

have to be aimed from this world to the

other world. But the target of stoic

action, what they call the scopos of

your activity remains exactly the same.

It's still wealth, health, honor,

protecting your friends and family,

right? And so even though the stoic is

supposed to evaluate is supposed to

value these goods in a radically

different way from the outside looking

in the stoic kind of just for most of

his life just looks like a regular

person targeting the goods of this

world. Okay. And it's this particular

branch of stoic philosophy the preferred

indifference that have led to the most

outrageous manifestations of modern pop

stoicism. Okay. Stoke techniques for

getting laid, stoke techniques for

making a ton of money, prosperity,

gospel stoicism. Now, you might think,

look, clearly this is a modern

perversion, right? Well, not really.

Like the greats, again, the greats

themselves were accused of this. So, uh,

let me tell you a story. Senica, when he

was in exile,

his first exile, he he he a lot of his

estate was confiscated. He lost a lot of

wealth. This is what he wrote in exile.

Okay, cope alert.

It is the spirit that makes men rich. It

follows us into exile and in our deepest

isolation. Money matters no more to the

spirit than to the immortal gods.

Gemstones and gold and silver and large

polished tables are just earthly weight.

A spirit that is free and true to its

own nature can't love them since it is

light and swift prepared to spring

toward the heavens whenever it is

released. Okay, that's what our friend

Senica wrote when he was exiled. Now he

comes back from exile. He finds his

previous uh pupil Nero in the throne and

suddenly he's one of the most powerful

people in the empire. So what does our

uh what does our free-spirited friend

do? Does he donate the rest of his

estate away? Does he, you know, create a

Roman YMCA for homeless kids in the soup

kitchen?

He proceeds to make himself filthy rich.

I'm talking 300 million cesters. He's

rich. Okay, put that into perspective.

The entrance bar for the senatorial

class, okay, this is the 1% of the 1%.

This is the very height of Roman wealth

and power is 1 million.

Senica had 300 million cesties and this

kind of moralizing against wealth while

in exile and hoarding of wealth as soon

as he got the opportunity prompted the

exact kind of responses from his fellow

senators that you'd expect. Okay, so

here's a taste.

By what kind of wisdom, by what

teachings of the philosophers has Senica

heaped up 300 million cesties in four

years as a palace insider? the childless

and their estates are being scooped up

in his net. Italy and the provinces are

being drained away by his outrageous

money lending. Okay, so the worst part

of all this isn't just the amount he

made. It's not just the ridiculously

short time, it's how he made it. Okay,

gifts from Nero, gifts from people who

sought access to Nero, confiscated

properties from political purges,

highinterest loans.

Okay. So, do you see why now that

stoicism is the most ingenious coping

mechanism ever derived because you're

out on your luck? You're not doing so

well. Money is indifferent. It can't it

can't hurt you at all. But now you want

a self-s serving narrative to justify

your greed. Oh, but money is a preferred

indifferent. Okay, it's it's only

natural that we pursue money. The

Instagram bro posting a picture of his

Lambo and captioning it with a Marcus

Aurelius quote is nothing new. Okay,

this is a common perversion of stoicism

given how they set up their theory. But

I want to be crystal clear here. This is

not real stoicism. Okay, none of these

are real stoicism. These are all

perversions of stoicism. Likely

perversions, but perversions

nonetheless. I think mutual

psychological arguments

should make us really really suspicious

of this movement, but nothing more. The

fact that it is a coping mechanism

doesn't tell us anything about whether

it is right or wrong. It could be both a

coping mechanism and it doesn't have to

be wrong. To now show you that it is

wrong, I will move on to a direct

critique of stoic ideas themselves.

Okay. So, we're done with the critiques

of the exis of pop stoicism. We're now

moving on to a critique of of real

stoicism. And the first thing I'll

highlight is that the kind of ethical

advice that seems so practical and

useful and intuitive and benign

innocuous that people go to stoicism for

doesn't really make sense outside of

their religious system. Okay. So what

we're going to do in this section is

we're going to start off with the

seemingly the most s common sensical the

most sensible advice and I'm going to

show you how that leads you to a belief

in Zeus. Okay. So here's the advice.

Focus on what is up to you. All right,

that seems pretty reasonable, right? Uh

what what do the Stoics think is up to

us? The short answer is asense. Okay, as

s. So the Stoics see man as a rational

machine as to a whole set of rational

propositions. So even when we are doing

seemingly nonrational actions,

behaviors, attitudes, we're actually

asenting to rational propositions. Okay?

So if you shove me and I become angry,

the Stoics think it's because I ascent

to I have been harmed. But if I turn

around and I see a car whizzing by and I

realized, you know, you just saved me

and my anger goes away. It's because I

stopped asenting to I have been harmed.

Okay? So that's how rational Stoics

think human nature is. These asents are

the only things that are up to you.

Everything else not up to you. Okay?

So whether it's the economy, it's the

weather, it's what your partner thinks

about you, even your body is not up to

you. So this is how far they go. Opening

or closing that door right there, they

would say, "It's not up to you,

Jonathan." What if you slip on the way

there? What if an earthquake hits the

hits the room before you get there? What

if a stoic member of your audience

tackles you to make a point? Please

don't do that.

The Stokes would say, "Look, Jonathan,

if you're going to tie your happiness

into undependable things like being able

to close or open that door, then your

happiness is not going to be fully

secured." Okay, so that's the view.

Assents are fully up to you. Nothing

else is up to you.

Here's the question I want to ask the

Stoics. It's not a critique yet. It's

just a clarifying question.

If your bar for up to you is so high

that closing that door is not up to me,

then in what way are a sense up to me?

Right? Think about something like money

is a good. I think most of us in this

room would have sense of that. Money is

a good because a sense or at least

partially socially determined. So if you

grew up in a materialist culture, if

from day one your parents, your friends,

everything in media has been telling you

money is good, money is good, money is

good, it's not so easy to treat money as

an indifferent, right? Just ask our

friend Senica.

In fact, there are people who know that

their concern for money that their greed

is costing them and they try everything

to try to stop asing to this. They go to

therapy, they journal, they still can't

stop ascending to it, right? So how can

a sense be up to me? And this is not

only true for money by the way. Think

about how difficult it is to ascent to

pain is not an evil, sex is not a good,

prestige is not a good, the death of my

kid is not an evil. These are a sense

that the stoics think not only can you

make, but that you should make. They

seem a lot less up to me than just

closing that door. Okay. Now, the Stoke

is going to say, "Well, but you're not

trying hard enough. If you move to a

socialist country, you know, if you

surround yourself with bohemian artists,

if you journal every day, eventually

you're going to ascent. Money is not a

good." Okay? But if I if I put down

anti-slip mats, if I earthquake proof

the ceiling, if I hire a bodyguard, then

eventually I'll close that door. Okay?

So, again, no critique so far, just a

clarifying question. In what way are a

sense up to me? If like the external

world, they also seem to be determined

by prior causes. Okay, the Stokes have

an answer to this question. In fact,

they agree with the intuition

because they believe in fate. Okay,

here's the plot twist. This this is one

of the biggest misconceptions that the

pop stoics have of real stoicism. The

Stoics talk a big game about agency,

power, choice, freedom. There's no free

will period in their system. They are

strict deterministers. And so it's very

misleading. It's going to happen a lot.

What they say, what they mean when they

say up to you is nothing like what it

sounds like. When the Stoics tell you

happiness is up to you. They do not mean

they do not mean you have an inner

citadel that is above the causal chain.

They do not mean you can overcome the

tribulations of fate and become happy

even when fate dictates you shouldn't.

They do not mean you could have acted

differently in the past to be happy now.

They don't even mean the future is open

and you have the choice of becoming

happy. Okay? Whether you are, were, or

will be happy fully determined.

When they say happiness is up to you,

all they mean is that happiness proceeds

out of your character. Here's more the

more technical way to put it.

Your character is always and only the

primary cause of your happiness. Okay?

And what your character is is simply the

disposition to ascent to different

things. So it's just another part

deterministic part of the machinery of

the universe. Okay? If that's confusing,

here's an analogy from um Chrysopus.

This is one of the greatest analytical

philosophers in the Stoic tradition.

Let's say I'm pushing down a cylinder

and a cone equally down a hill. The

cylinder rolls, the cone kind of does a

little U-turn and comes back halfway up.

Okay, so in this analogy, the shape of

the object is the shape of your

character. And his point is to show how

the exact same external circumstances

when reacted to differently by different

characters can result in radically

different outcomes. Okay. So, if your

kid dies and you're miserable, but

Marcus Aurelius's kid dies and you know

he's still happy, then the cause of your

misery is not your kid dying because

Marcus' kids died and he's still happy.

It's your character. It's your vicious

character that is sented the wrong way.

That is what they mean by happiness is

up to you. Okay? Not that you could have

asented differently, but the reason you

are miserable is because of your

character. So, it's not a a statement

about choice or free will. It's a a

statement about causation and

responsibility.

And this analogy really really gets the

point cross because it's evident.

Neither the cone nor the cylinder have

free will. The cone turns because it's a

cone. You ascented poorly because of

your vicious character. Okay? And so,

this is why I said the Stoics fully

agree with the intuition behind my

clarifying question.

Given my character at this moment, given

my entire causal history, given the

external circumstances right now, I

can't do anything differently but to

ascent to money is a good. Okay, to

summarize where we're at, I asked the

Stokes a clarifying question. What the

hell do you guys mean up to you? And

their answer is that up to you only

means whatever proceeds out of your

character. That's where we're at. That's

the view. Here's the critique.

What determines if I'm a cone or a

cylinder? Okay, here's another way to

ask it. If you tell me what proceeds out

of my character is up to me by that very

standard, is my character up to me?

At first glance, the stoic answer seems

to be yes because because they think

that uh your sense shape your character.

Okay, so if today uh I'm I'm I have a

moneyloving character. I sent money is

good. tomorrow I'll be more money loving

but it can go the other way too right so

today I'm money loving but for some

reason I ascented against that impulse I

say money is not a good and tomorrow

I'll be less greedy

and so what the so paint is a picture of

character giving rise to a sense shaping

character giving rise to a sense so it

seems like your character is up to you

but here's the issue

this is not an infinite chain

your character your sense need to start

somewhere and the stoics think that

reason develops in your youth And so

there is a moment when you make your

first proper asense.

But what is your character at that

moment determined by? It's not proper

asense. You haven't made any. It's by

biology heritability

sociality, and environmental factors.

All of which are not up to you. Okay? So

it turns out the first link in this long

chain that has deterministically led to

who you are is not up to you. But if

that's not up to me, then my current

character can't be up to me either.

Okay, so here's again, I'll just

summarize the critique. The Stokes tell

me what proceeds out of your character

is up to you. But by that very same

standard, we can show your character is

actually not up to you. But if your

character is not up to you, then what

proceeds out of your character can't be

up to you either. Okay? So the Stoke

definition is not only misleading, it's

self-defeating.

If as a child I was raped, I was uh

molested, I was abused, I was drugged

up, and I formed a vicious character.

And because I keep I kept on doing vice,

do we really want to say that my vicious

actions now are fully up to me? And let

me be clear here. The Stokes don't think

like if you're you have if you start off

with a vicious character, you're just

kind of screwed.

The Stokes fully recognize a virtuous

character can perform vice and cease

cease to be virtuous. a vicious

character can progress significantly

towards virtue. But that doesn't help

either because whether you choose to

ascent against your dispositions,

there's no free will either. Everything

is determined by the initial state of

the character, the external circumstance

and your ascent. All of which in the in

the origin point is uh is not up to you.

Okay, this might sound sound like

academic equivalent, but there's a very

very practical point I'm trying to drive

home, which is that the Stoics are wrong

to cut the world so neatly into the

internal world that is up to me and the

external world that is not up to me.

Doing that not only comically reduces my

agency in the real world, closing that

door is not up to me, but it also

overlooks all the different ways that my

internal world is shaped by factors

outside of my control. Okay,

so this is what Epictitus would tell

you. To have wealth is not within our

power, nor to be healthy, nor to be of

good repute, nor in short, anything

other than our sense. This alone is by

nature immune to hindrance and

restraint.

And this is what Marcus Aurelius would

have you believe. How easy it is to not

ascent to every disturbing or alien

impression and then be at once in

complete calm.

But there's a clear bait and switch

going on here. When the Stoics talk

metaphysics, up to you just means this

thin whatever proceeds out of your

character. When they give ethical

advice, they bloat up to you until it

sounds like a libertarian free will. But

Epictitus and Aurelius are wrong on the

stoic's own grounds. Okay.

Contraptictitus

ascents are hindered by the initial

state of your character. That's not up

to your control and all the ascents up

to up until this point. And so, Contra

Marcus, it's not easy at all to not

ascent to certain things.

This is a perfect example, by the way,

of what I think to be a great intuition

just rendered completely unusable by the

Stoic system. Okay, after reading the

Stoics, I genuinely think to myself, I

thought about this yesterday. Is this

thing up to me? If it's not, what what's

the point? That's great advice, but the

only way I can absorb that advice is by

transplanting it out of the stoic

definition of up to you onto a much more

reasonable view. Okay, but there's an

even deeper issue here, which is let's

say let's say that the stoke up to you

definition is totally fine. Why should I

only focus on that which is up to me?

What if I just put my foot on the ground

and I say, "Look, my child's life is

crucial for my happiness, even if it's

not up to me." It turns out this simple

prescription,

focus on what is up to you, is not

self-standing, but actually grounded on

a deeper ethical claim that all

externals are indifferent, including

your child's life, to your happiness. So

you should focus on your ascents not

just because they're up to you but

because they are the only things that

matter for your happiness. Okay. So

that's the next claim we're going to

critique. So what we did is we

interrogated this one claim and we found

out it's not self- sanding and we need

to go now deeper into the stoke system.

And this is going to happen again and

again. So many of the Stoke doctrines

that at first sight sound so good are

actually reliant on a lot more

foundational claims that get more and

more radical until we get to Zeus. Okay.

So the claim we're going to examine now

is that externals are indifference.

Virtue alone matters for your happiness.

What virtue is is responding well to

whatever circumstances you're in. Okay.

So what virtue is is essentially

everything that comes out of your

ascent. It's your behaviors. It's your

attitudes towards life. It's your

desires. It's your emotions.

There's a very very good and solid

intuition here. If you react, if you

respond well to bad situations, right?

If you're res resilient through poverty,

if you're uh brave against danger, that

can be a good thing. And conversely, if

you respond poorly to good situations,

right? If wealth makes you prideful, if

health makes you immodderate, that can

be a terrible thing. So there's a very

good intuition here. But again, the

issue is that the Stoics have completely

radicalized this intuition in at least

four different directions.

Now the first way they radicalize it is

to say

it's not just that virtue is important.

It's the only thing that matters. It's

not that externals are secondary.

Externals don't matter at all. Okay? The

outcomes of your action just don't

matter. Now this sounds cool. Cool. I

mean, it certainly sound cool to to

19-year-old me,

but Cicero gives us an example to show

just what this actually means. Okay, so

Cicero gives an example of two noble

Roman statesmen, Quintis Matelis, Marcus

Regulus. So, both of these guys were

consils, highest office in Rome. They

led armies. They were they were generals

and they were both remembered as

basically as good as you can get in

terms of uh uh Roman heroes. But there's

a key difference between their lives

which is that Quintis Matelis won his

key wars and so he came back as a war

hero. He was he he was given a triumph.

Right? This is the best thing a Roman

general could receive. And he watched

his own sons become consoles as well. So

he lives happily ever after and he dies

uh in old age surrounded by his loved

ones.

Regulus, Marcus Regulus loses a key

battle, is captured by the barbarians,

and the barbarians send him back to Ro

Rome to negotiate a peace treaty. Marcus

Regulus openly when he's back in Rome

openly uh uh suggests against accepting

the peace treaty and then of his own

will this is this is legendary but of

his own will returns to the barbarians

to honor an oath saying that he would so

Marcus Regulus did what was good for the

republic right he he argued against the

peace treaties and then to honor his

oath he went back knowing full well that

he would be tortured starved humiliated

and eventually killed which he was.

Okay. So, so no one is doubting whether

either of these guys are virtuous.

They're as good as you can get. But

that's kind of Cicero's point. We might

say Regulus was admirable. We might even

want to say, look, Regulus lived perhaps

a good life, but do we really want to

say Marcus Regulus lived as good of a

life as Quintis Matelis?

The Stoic answer is yes. in so far as

they were fully virtuous. Quintis and

Regulus were both happy and equally so.

Okay. The results of your action do not

matter for these guys. Only what you do

and how you do it. So if you win your

war, you have this amazing family legacy

or you lose the war and you're tortured

and humiliated and sickened and starved

and eventually killed. Doesn't matter.

Okay, this is the view.

Now you might think, look, the reason

that I'm defending the Stokes here, the

reason that Regulus and Quintis lived

equally happy lives is because of the

type of virtuous activity they did,

right? They uh they commanded armies.

They helped the republic. They were

these noble statesmen. So

even though the outcome of their actions

were radically different, it's the type

of their virtuous activity and the

nobility that comes with it that's what

makes them live equally happy lives.

But that's not the stoic view.

If the first radicalization is to say

the outcome of your virtuous action does

not matter, the second radicalization is

to say the type of your virtuous action

does not matter. And that is a huge

problem for the Stoics because the

domain of virtue spans so much of our

lives that goes a lot beyond just these

noble and shiny examples of of of uh you

know leading an army or like creating

great pieces of art. The Stoics say

when a sage lifts his finger he performs

a virtuous action. That's how broad the

scope of virtuous activity is. Okay.

Okay. So, I'm going to give you an

extreme example now just to tell you

what's at stake here. So, let's think

about the most boring, tedious,

demeaning, uh, uninteresting task you

could do.

Wiping your ass after you take a

Okay,

that could be a virtuous action. You

don't wipe too soft as to leave any

residue. Uh, you don't wipe too hard as

to damage the structure.

That's virtue. Okay, that's according to

nature. That's virtue. And the Stoics

think that is as virtuous an action.

This is one of the paradoxes that Cisero

highlights as anything that Quintis or

Regulus did.

So let's forget the comparison between

Quintis and Regulus. Okay? Because

Cisero is letting the Stokes get off too

easy. Let's say the comparison is

between Quintis Matelis and a sage with

uncontrollable diarrhea. Okay? And let's

say that the sage, he was never a

console. He was never a general. never

lived a a high life in Rome. He was

captured as an infant. And the only

domain that his captures allow him to

express his agency is how he wiped his

ass. And don't get me wrong, he gets it

right every time. Okay? Not too soft,

not too hard. That's why they pay him

the big bucks. That's why he's a sage.

But let's say that's the only thing that

he gets to spend most of his agency on.

Who lives the happy life? Quintis

Matelis or Captain Underpants?

In so far as they're fully virtuous,

they're both happy and equally so. This

is the stoic of view. Okay, I'm not

you, pun intended.

Now, look, this is clearly an extreme

example, but it's legitimate. They would

be forced to say this. Um, but I'm

trying to use this to drive home a

really important point here. Virtue

sounds noble and high. Okay, it calls to

mind uh a general in shining armor, an

artist at the peak of his creative uh

abilities. And with those activities,

it's more easy to see why the activity

itself is sufficient to sustain a good

life regardless of the outcome. But

virtue spans so much more for the Stoics

and for a lot of the mundane activities,

it's not so clear to see why. So by not

drawing a hierarchy between the virtues,

what the Stoics are implicitly saying is

meaning variety richness impact

legacy, none of these factor into their

conception of the good life, of what

happiness is. All that matters is did

you respond well? Regardless of what

you're responding to, okay? Whether it's

the onslaught of noble foe or it's the

onslaught of diarrhea, doesn't doesn't

matter. And this is a serious problem

even outside the edge cases because if

all you end up doing in your life

because I don't know you you were a

slave or a peasant or homeless. If all

you end up doing is just lowly tasks

really well they think that is as good

of a life as if you live this rich

vibrant um and also virtuous life where

you get to exercise the highest and most

noble faculties of man. Okay,

that's the second way the Stoics

radicalize virtue, which is to say that

the type of virtuous activity does not

matter for happiness.

The third way is even crazier.

The type of vicious activity does not

matter for your happiness. Happiness is

a strict binary, and we're going to see

why later on. Strict binary for the

Stoics. You're either a sage and you're

happy or you're not and you're

miserable. I quote to you Cicero.

Oh, the sheer force of Zeno's intellect

that every person's foolishness,

injustice, and other vices are alike,

that all wrongdoing is equal, and that

those who have progressed by nature and

training far along the path to virtue

are utterly miserable unless they have

attained it. So Plato, that great man,

supposing that he was not wise, was no

better and lived no happier life than

the most wicked of us. Okay, Plato in

the Stokes view is not just unhappy,

he's miserable. But he's not just

miserable, he's as miserable as Hitler.

Plato is as miserable as Hitler because

Plato is as vicious as Hitler. Again,

this is just a stoic view. I'm there's

no critique here. I'm just relaying the

view. All right. Okay. That's pretty

crazy. But I guess what that means then

is that I just have to work really hard,

right? All right, I just got to work

really hard, be a sage, and then I'll be

happy.

How many sages have there been the

entire human history? Let me I want to

know my odds. Zero. Okay, there's been

zero sages in all of human history.

Sometimes the Stoics say Socrates was a

sage. Sometimes they say, you know, as

as frequent as a phoenix, like once

every 500 or thousand years. But when we

talk about what the sage is, you're

going to see why the most likely answer

is zero. Okay. So, let me just be

crystal clear here. This is the view.

You can improve your virtue all you

want, but until you are a full sage,

you're not happy before you're happy,

you're as miserable as the most vicious

person who's ever lived. And in human

history, there's been zero sages. Okay?

So, therefore, everyone who has ever

lived, no matter what they did,

including the greats Aurelius,

Epictitus, Senica, have failed equally.

And that's the key term that really

bothers me equally at living the good

life.

Now I got to be fair to the stoics. They

talk often a lot about progress. There

is a notion of progress. In fact, the

components of Stoic happiness,

contentment joy affirmation these

things do come in degrees even if

happiness itself doesn't. So the Stokes

are fully willing to say, okay, I don't

want to make this too ridiculous. The

Stokes are fully willing to say

Plato has progressed more towards virtue

and therefore he is more contented,

affirming and joyful than Hitler. They

will say that.

But again, like I just said, they won't

they refuse to say the happy point.

Okay? They mean it when they say it that

Plato is as miserable as Hitler. And

here's a stoke metaphor relayed to us

from Cicero to really get the point

across.

When submerged in water, one can no more

breathe. If one is just below the

surface and on the verge of getting out,

then one can in the depths. In the same

way, one who has made some progress

towards the acquisition of virtue is

just as unhappy as one who has made no

progress at all. Think, okay, this is

supposed to be a metaphor about how the

Stokes conceive of happiness. And think

about what that implies. When you're

drowning,

it doesn't matter if you drown a

millimeter below the surface or in the

depths of the ocean. The only thing you

care about for all intents and purposes

is can you breathe. That is what

happiness is supposed to represent for

the Stoics. If you have this, life is

worth living. If you don't, it's not.

Happiness is supposed to be this

all-encompassing goal that's supposed to

capture everything about a life that is

well-lived and worth living. And what

they're saying is you can progress,

okay? You can increase in the components

of happiness all you want. You can

progress along your path to virtue all

you want. But in the same way, until you

rise to the surface, you don't have the

one thing that you're trying to get, the

one thing that really matters for life,

it doesn't matter how much you progress

until you hit the surface. Okay? For all

intents and purposes, you drown in the

exact same way that Hitler drowns

because both of you failed equally at

getting the one thing that matters.

Neither of you guys are breathing. Okay,

if you're wondering why they they say

this, um this will be more clear when we

talk about their equally bizarre view of

human nature. Okay, so just put a pin in

that. So these are the first three

radicalizations on virtue.

the outcome of action, the type of

virtue, the type of vice,

none of these matter for happiness. And

by the way, I'm willing to bet a lot of

money that most modern pop stoics don't

even know that these are the positions

that they're committed to. So hopefully

by just laying them out in the sun to

dry, so to speak, it's enough to

discredit them. And I think the funny

thing is usually when you contextualize

a philosophy, it starts to make more

sense, right? Usually when you put it,

you know, against the other schools and

the intellectual tra tradition that it

burgeoned out of, things start to make

more sense. It's the reverse for the

Stoics, okay? When you put the Stoics

next to the much more reasonable schools

that it broke away from, like Aristotle,

the whole thing makes even less sense of

why they structure their philosophy this

way. If you take away one message today,

it's if you like stoic intuitions, just

follow Aristotle instead. Okay? You get

the focus on virtue. You get the

resilience. You get the agency. You

don't get any of these radicalizations.

Aristotle recognizes differences between

between vice. Of course, right?

Aristotle also recognizes a hierarchy of

virtue that's most suitable to man. But

most importantly, Aristotle recognizes

that externals do matter

even if not as much as usual usually

people think. Okay. Okay, so this is

what the debate between Aristotle and

the Stoics are over. Do externals matter

for happiness? The Stoics say no, they

don't matter for happiness. That's why

they call externals indifference.

Whereas Aristotle says yes but not that

much. Okay. So Aristotle has like a 95%

virtue 5% external view of happiness

whereas a Stokes have a 100% virtue 0%

externals view.

So now that we've clarified the terms of

the debate, I'm going to give you my

critique of how the Stoics have

radicalized this position on virtue. And

I'm going to show you why Aristotle I

think is right in this debate with again

another imminent critique from the

Stoics. And the thread I'm going to

start pulling on this time is the Stoic

philosophy of suicide. Okay. So for the

Stoics, they have a very well-developed

system of suicide. Suicide can be a

virtuous act that even the sage

performs. But why? You told me externals

are indifference. You told me you can be

happy in any if you can be happy in any

circumstance, why would you ever kill

yourself? There's a few explanations

here, but the most convincing theory,

okay, this the steel man is that the

sage kills himself when living itself

becomes vicious. Okay, so here's an

example. Ko, Ko the Stoic, who committed

sapuku basically after he lost to

Caesar.

It wasn't that Ko was worried about uh

let's say getting tortured by Caesar. It

wasn't worried about uh uh losing his

money to Caesar. He wasn't even worried

when he killed himself because uh you

know Caesar might drag along his family,

right? Those are all just externals.

Ko had to kill himself because to live

would be to accept Caesar's clemency

which would be to recognize Caesar's

legitimacy which would be a betrayal of

the republic. Okay. So the very act of

Ko's living is vicious and that's why he

had to kill himself.

But I thought you said all externals are

indifference. Right. But now you're

telling me after this after the civil

war the externals were such that there

was no way Ko could have lived a

virtuous life. It it just had to be

vicious or death.

This is how the Stoics try to wiggle

their ways out out of this one. In the

event that the sage recognizes

externals are inhospitable to virtue, he

kills himself and the Stokes call that

virtue. And so so you see what I'm

trying to say? He never loses his

happiness because he's always virtuous,

including the act of killing himself. So

the Stoics are technically right.

Externals can't harm the Stoke's

happiness because in the event they can,

they just kill themselves and call that

virtue. Okay, I quote to you, Senica. Am

I to think that fortune can do

everything to a person as long as he

remains alive?

Rather, fortune can do nothing to a

person as long as he knows how to die.

Okay, I I hope you guys can see how

unsatisfying this is. I go to the Stoics

trying to learn the art of life. Okay,

the art of life. Let me emphasize that

word because I hear, you know, Zeno has

this crazy new technique that can make

me happy no matter what. And then I find

out that's only technically true by

killing yourself when you can't be

happy. Okay? And this argument, by the

way, this argument only works because of

the fourth radicalization of Stoic

ethics, which is the length of a

virtuous life does not matter for your

happiness. Okay? The only way that the

Stoic argument works is if they don't

discriminate, which they don't, between

the length of virtuous lives. So, let's

say I'm 27 now, just turned 27. Let's

say I become a sage right now.

Congratulations, by the way. First one

in history. Uh, and let's say an

asteroid comes and just squashes me

right now. They would say, "So, I have

like one millisecond as a sage." They

would say, "That is as happy a life,

equally well-lived as if I had lived to

100, taught all these other people how

to be sages, and done all these good

deeds." It's only with that crazy

premise, okay, the fourth

radicalization, that their argument

around suicide works.

So if you take this crazy premise away,

then the debate becomes, do externals

matter for happiness if I want to keep

on living, the Stoics would be forced to

concede the ground to Aristotle because

otherwise their own theory, their own

philosophy of suicide makes no sense. So

if Ko wanted not just to be happy but to

live and be happy, that guy needed to

win the civil war. Okay.

So all we have to do is to add this one

I think quite reasonable qualification

of wanting to keep on living and the

stoics themselves disprove themselves.

Okay.

I quote you Senica.

If he encounters many hardships that

banish tranquility he releases himself.

Nor does he do so only in the extremity

of need. Rather, as soon as he begins to

have doubts about his fortunes, he makes

a careful assessment to determine

whether it is time to quit.

Remember, this is what the debate with

Aristotle was about, right? Do externals

matters for happiness? Can many

hardships banish a sage's tranquility?

And here we have Senica on the record

saying that it can.

All right, so those are the four

radicalizations and my imminent

critique. And to summarize, the issue I

have with Stoke ethics is that they draw

an equal sign between completely unequal

phenomena. Okay? And here's Cicero

making that exact point with a lot more

eloquence.

What then are your conclusions? That all

who are not wise are equally miserable.

That all who are wise are supremely

happy. That all right acts are equally

right and all wrongdoing is equally

wrong. These maxims sound wonderful on

first acquaintance, but become less

convincing on mature reflection. Common

sense, the facts of nature, and truth

herself proclaimed the impossibility of

being persuaded that there was really no

difference between all the things which

Zeno made equal.

This isn't where the craziness ends.

This is where the craziness begins.

Because right after completely

flattening out the ethical landscape

with these four radicalizations, right

after putting their stake, externals

don't matter. External goods don't touch

your happiness. They seemingly do a

complete 180 and they say external goods

are indifference, but they're preferred

indifference.

So just as they take away these goods

with their right, they then relegitimize

it with their left. And suddenly wealth,

health, power, reputation again become

legitimate targets, scopos for the

stoic.

And just as we saw how odd stoic ethics

was when compared to the much more

common sensical Aristotle, we're now

going to see how odd stoic ethics is

when compared to the much more congruent

cynics. Okay? So the cynics were another

school that developed, you know, roughly

around the same time period. And like

overly simplifying here, but like the

Stoics, they disagree with Aristotle.

All those externals are indifference.

They don't matter at all for your

happiness. Unlike the Stoics, they act

congruently to that belief. Dioynes, the

cynic, the most famous of them, chose

poverty, slept in a barrel with dogs,

jacked off in public, shat in the

theater, spat in people's faces in their

houses. Okay? Why? That's what you do.

If you really think wealth isn't

indifferent, if you really think, you

know, all these are just silly

conventions that corrupt society has

made you believe, why would you do

anything else? So, it's really on the

backdrop of the cynic just jacking off

in his barrel that the stoic running

around looking for wealth and and good

looks and and honor and protecting his

family look increasingly bizarre. Right.

You literally told me these things were

indifference and the obvious tensions in

the philosophical views here are

mirrored in the awkward language the

Stoics had to invent to describe this

view. Okay. So I quote to you Cicero in

the voice of Zeno.

Those things that you mentioned health,

wealth, and freedom from pain I call not

good but brought forward. On the other

hand, I call disease, poverty, and pain

not evil, but if you please, worthy of

rejection.

So in the case of the former category, I

speak not of seeking, but of selecting,

not of wishing, but of adopting. While

its opposite, one does not avoid, as it

were, sets aside.

Okay, so this is what a stoic sounds

like. Fine sir, how dare you? I am not

pursuing money. I'm only selecting

money.

Fine, sir. How dare you? I'm not I'm not

avoiding danger. Okay, I'm no coward.

I'm merely setting danger aside. Okay,

they had to invent this new language to

describe this equally awkward

philosophical view. Okay, so why did the

stoics why did they do this odd second

move? Right, their answer is nature. If

we observe nature, observed let's say

human history, we'll see that life tends

to go smoother when you're healthy

rather than you're sick. So health is a

preferred indifferent. Okay? It's it's

natural that we pursue health.

But this answer opens up the stoic to

just more surface area of critique from

both schools. Okay? Aristotle is going

to say, pulling all his hair out, that's

what I've been trying to get you guys to

say. If it is natural to be healthy, if

life goes smoother when you're healthy,

why the hell do you guys not factor it

into the calculus of happiness?

But the cynics, the cynics have an

equally compelling critique. All right,

the cynics will say, look, let's say I

grant you health. Okay, that's natural.

We can all see how that works.

Why is wealth? Why are good looks? Why

is noble birth in their list of

preferred and different?

This is just these just seem like Roman

values that they smuggled in through the

back door because like Senica, they're

still greedily attached to these vain

and worldly things, right? So that's

that's the mystery. Why did the Stoics

break away from these two much more

reasonable views? And you know it's bad

when compared to your school the cynics

are reasonable. Okay?

And we aren't going to find the answer

to the question just within stoic ethics

itself. So just like the up to you

argument was not self- sustaining

neither is stoic ethics. The most

idiosyncratic features of stoic ethics

can only be made sense of when we

examine their view on human nature of

who they consider you to be. So that's

what we're going to move on to. Okay. So

we looked at the up to you. We critiqued

that the virtue ethics. Now we're going

to look at the third part of their

theory which is human nature.

So to put it simply, the Stoics think

you are just your soul. More

technically, you are the faculty of

ascent, the thing that does all those

asense. But we'll just use soul for now

to not confuse you. And there are two

radical things about their picture of

human nature. The first one is you are

just your soul. They mean it when they

say it. Okay, I quote to you Marcus

Aurelius. Epictitus used to say, you are

a little soul dragging around a corpse.

Okay, that's what your body is. You're

not a living body. You're not a body

animated by a soul. Hell, you're not

even a body and a soul. You are just

your soul. And your body is dead weight.

It's a corpse that you have to lug and

drag around.

So that's the rad first radical view of

human nature. We are just our souls.

Second radical part about this is just

how extremely rational the stoics

thought the soul was. Okay. So if you

remember at the beginning of this

lecture when we were talking about up to

you in a sense they think that behind a

whole host of human agency behaviors

emotions desires were actually asenting

to different things. So if you shove me,

I'm angry. It's because I asented. I

have been harmed. Okay, shoving harms

me. But it's actually a lot more logical

and propositional than that. What you're

asenting to is physical intrusions harm

me. If I am harmed, it is appropriate

for me to feel anger. A shove being a

physical intrusion is now present.

Therefore, the conclusion of this logic,

it is now appropriate for me to feel

anger. This is what the Stoics think is

going on in your soul when you get

angry, right? This is just how rational

they think human nature is. You are just

your soul. Your soul is basically just a

computer. Okay, that's the stoic view.

And I think it's only under the light of

this radical view on human nature can

the most extreme the most extreme most

idiosyncratic, let's put it that way, um

parts of their ethics be made sense of.

Okay. Okay, so take for example why is

happiness a binary? Okay, why is Plato

is as miserable as Hitler? The rational

part, right? The computer analogy really

helps you with this. If I'm running a

computer program, it doesn't matter if

I'm missing one semicolon or my entire

code base is gibberish. The thing is

just not going to compile either way.

Okay, so either way, the thing's not

going to run. And so in like manner, the

soul,

which is again, you can think about it

like a computer, has a database of all

the ascents you're asenting to at every

given moment. And they're all

interconnected in this hyperrational way

that I just listed out. If you have one

so much as one ascent wrong, whole

thing's corrupt. Okay? So what the sage

is is someone who only strongly ascends

to clear propositions. What the

technical term is catalyptic

impressions. Okay? By the way, that's

probably why there's never been a single

sage in the history of the world. That's

how high the bar is. So, it doesn't

matter if you're Plato. You're just

missing one semicolon. Otherwise, the

thing is going to compile or you're

Hitler. Whole thing's gibberish. Both of

you guys don't compile. Both of you guys

don't live the good life. The reason why

things always come out as binaries for

the stoic, right? happiness uh misery,

virtue, vice is because of their

rational view on human nature grounded

on propositions. Propositions are either

true or false. Okay.

Now, here's another thing that this

extreme view of human nature helps us

explain, which is why does the type of

virtuous activity not matter? Okay, it

doesn't matter if you're Quintis Matelis

or Captain Underpants

because all that matters is are you

asenting to the right propositions.

If you wondered back then why is the

Stoic view of happiness so impoverished,

right? Like why is meaning, variety,

legacy impact? Why are none of these

factors into their notion of happiness?

It's because the subject for which they

think happiness can be achieved is so

circumscribed, right? The stoke view of

human nature retreats to the singularity

of reason.

So more so than tranquility, joy and

contentment, right? The things that we

usually associate with stoic practice,

what is defining of stoic happiness is

just knowledge. Are you or are you not

making the right sense?

Now finally um I think this view on

human nature also explains the stoic's

big break from Aristotle

becomes a lot more obvious why externals

don't matter to you if you are not your

body

wealth and poverty pain and pleasure

honor and dishonor these are the goods

of the body which are not you. If

they're not you it makes a lot more

sense why they don't factor into your

conception of happiness.

Okay. So, I hope you can see why the key

tenants of Stoke ethics requires their

equally radical view on human nature

being right. And now I'm going to argue

why I think it's wrong. Okay.

The first thing I'll say again in

defense of the Stoics is that again

there is a great and profound intuition

here. So much of our lives that seem to

be nonrational are actually grounded on

rational propositions. This is why

cognitive behavioral therapy works so

well, by the way, where you go to a

therapist and you try to uncover what

unproductive a sense you're making. CBT

was created largely inspired by the

Stoics, okay? Which just shows you how

much value there is in this intuition.

But again, the issue is that they just

radicalized it to the nth degree. So

here's what the debate is over. The

Stoics don't think the man is just

reason. There's other stuff. There's

habit, there's appetite, there's

mimisis. The debate is over whether

things always have to go through reason

to motivate you. Okay? So let's say I'm

hungry. Reason doesn't have to operate

yet. But if I act on that hunger, the

stoics think it's because the hunger

changed one of the ascents, changed one

of the propositions in my database where

now I ascent to it is appropriate for me

to act on hunger. Now me and I think

most contemporary philosophers think

that no a lot of these faculties can

just motivate us directly without going

through this rational process. Okay. So

what I take issue with is not just the

breadth of reason that that reason is

seemingly behind everywhere in human

nature but also the extraordinary power

that the Stokes invested with. Okay. And

here here's a story to give you an idea

of of what I mean by that. When his

master was twisting his leg and

torturing him, Epictitus said smiling

and unmoved, "You're going to break my

leg." And when it was broken, he added,

"Did I not tell you that you would break

it?"

The stoic claim is the reason that that

Epictit is so resilient is simply

because he ascented. Pain is not an

evil. So the claim is if you ascent pain

is not an evil while you are being

tortured you're just cracking jokes and

giggling and like smiling.

Does reason have that kind of power?

Okay. So I simply told you what my

issues are. Now I'm going to raise an

imminent issue. Okay. It's not an

imminent contradiction this time. It's

just a really big issue that the stoics

have to deal with because of their

hyperrational view of human nature. And

it's how do you transition

from a non-rational toddler to a fully

rational man? Okay, here's the issue.

When a toddler is feeling joy, when

he's, let's say, being breastfed, it's

not because the toddler is asenting,

well, titties are good. Uh, if there's a

good that's present, uh, I ought to feel

joy. Titties are present, therefore I

ought to feel joy. Okay? Toddlers do not

ascend to that. I on the other hand

would have sent to you that and I'll

tell you all about it when the cameras

turn off during the Q&A. But here's the

issue, okay, which is how does Toddler

grow up to be a fully rational man where

now his joy is grounded on all these

rational propositions? And look, I think

I can tell a congrance story for the

Stoics on the Stoics's behalf if not for

the fact that again they think

rationality is a binary. You're either

fully rational or you're fully not

rational. So the story that the Stokes

themselves are forced to tell is that,

you know, little Jimmy goes to bed

either when he's seven or 14. He goes to

bed like an animal. Okay, it's just all

impulse going there. They say that

little Jimmy's speech is like that of a

parrot and not a human.

Seven or 14, his birthday hits. He wakes

up rational. Okay, which you know to put

it lightly doesn't seem very plausible.

So again there's no contradiction this

time, right? It's just a huge imminent

issue. I just want to show you the

strain that this hyperrational and

binary view uh on of human nature uh

puts on the stoic system.

But even if we pretended this issue

doesn't exist at all, there's still a

major question. Why are we just our

souls? And why are our souls just pure

reason?

And again, like we saw with up to you,

like we saw with stoic ethics, stoic

human nature is not self- grounding and

it requires a reliance on stoic cosmic

nature, stoic religion. Okay, so now

we've arrived at Zeus. Okay, so we're

now going to move on to the third part

of the critique, human nature. to the

last part cosmic nature.

So the Stoics believed in a rational

universe governed by nature, logos,

reason, Zeus, these things are all

interchangeable. So Zeus, he's pure

reason. He permeates the cosmos,

including us. Okay? So do do you see now

why the stom nature starts to make a lot

more sense? If there's a purely rational

god and we have a part of Zeus in us,

there's also a part of us that's purely

rational.

Stoke religion, I think, is also needed

to explain

why the Stoics broke away from the

cynics. Okay, so remember the debate

over here is okay, I thought you told me

externals don't matter. Why are you

going out pursuing all this all this

stuff? The Stoics believed in divine

providence that Zeus has a benevolent

and all good plan that this is the best

of all possible worlds and that we ought

to be co-authors in that providence.

Okay? So even though wealth and good

looks and noble birth are indifference,

we ought to shepherd them in our

imitation of Zeus. So it's by looking at

how Zeus I don't know uh grows plants to

feed the animals and then uses the

corpse of animals to again nourish the

plants we see the incredible harmony

that exists in the universe and as a

result we are being invited to be

co-rulers with Zeus okay I quote to you

Cicero relaying this view

man himself was born for the sake of

contemplating and imitating the cosmos

he's not at all perfect but he is a

certain small portion of what is perfect

okay so to summarize this entire our

journey. We started off the very benign

and innocuous advice, focus on what is

up to you. But to truly make sense of

that, to truly understand why they

prescribe that, we've had to arrive at

Zeus. Stoicism is a religion. And it

requires those cosmological commitments

just as much as the other religions like

Christianity and Buddhism for its ethics

to work. There's a lot more about this

religion that we haven't covered. Okay?

There's big bangs, big crunches, there's

an eternal recurrence. There's a whole

theory around divination, right? Trying

to figure out what uh what Zeus is

trying to tell us.

And so the cosmological claims of

Stoicism, this is the point I'm trying

to make, are no less extravagant than

the kind of organized religions than a

lot of modern rational stoics laugh out

the door.

Now in defense of the Stoics they have

no need of anything like Christian

revelation or Christian faith for them

all these religious claims don't come

from super rational revelation but it

comes from their natural philosophy

right they think it can be grounded on

reason okay so for example uh

intelligence design arguments for divine

providence

but frankly I take that as a knock

against stoicism okay in favor of

Christianity because that just

grotesqually exaggerates It's what

reason can do. My favorite parts of

Christianity when I are when I'm being

told I'm a complete idiot. I'm a puny

little earthworm. I should stop trying

to figure out by myself and just do

what God tells me. Okay. When God comes

down to Job. Who the hell are you? Where

were you when I was making the cosmos?

You tell me if you know. Or when Dante,

right, he's in paradise goes to the

eagle of justice and he says, "What

about the per the poor pagan, the poor

virtuous pagan who never had an

opportunity to come to Christ? Why is he

in hell?" You know what the eagle

justice says? None of your damn

business. Okay, you sit there, a

short-sighted human from afar trying to

judge God. And in the next Kanto, he

says, "Dude, I'm the eagle of justice. I

don't even know how this thing is

supposed to work. Okay? I just follow

God's will and I take pleasure in that.

If you're going to give me radical

cosmological claims, at least have the

decency of telling me I'm a complete

idiot. Okay? That that has no hope of

figuring out for himself. I'm not saying

that's convincing, but I'm saying that's

a lot more compelling than what the

Stoics are trying to do, which is uh

here's a syllogism QED. Okay? So,

Stoicism is just as much of a religion

as Christianity, and it's a lot weaker

because it attempts to ground itself on

reason.

Now

I need to be fair again to the Stoics.

There's a huge debate going on right now

in the literature about whether the

ethics can be pulled apart from its

cosmology and used as a standalone.

There are serious scholars who think

that this can be done. I'm on the other

side for all the reasons we described

that you like. How do you justify the

death of your kid not mattering for your

happiness from regular moral intuitions?

If you're interested in the other side,

by the way, um you you can watch my

lecture on Marcus Aurelius, which is an

attempt to justify positively all of

their crazy radicalizations without an

appeal to Zeus, just by appealing to

regular moral intuitions. I don't think

I was successful, but you know, I'll let

you get guys decide for yourselves.

But let me just give you one example to

show you how intimately tied its ethics

is with its religion. Okay? And again,

it has to do with this idea of divine

providence. Zeus has this provident

providential plan for us. This is the

best of all possible worlds. So when

your kid dies for seemingly no reason,

it's not just a disprob.

You affirm that.

You affirm it because it is a necessary

and rational step in the progress of the

cosmos. This is the best of all possible

worlds. So, if your kid had actually

lived, the world would have been worse

off either because, I don't know, your

kid's going to grow up and be Hitler or

uh Zeus needed to open up another spot

in the kindergarten for the next

Einstein. You don't know, but you affirm

it because you have this background

assumption of divine providence. Okay,

here's another example. The Stokes often

say, "If I know what Zeus wants me to

do, I do that. But if I don't, then I

focus on the preferred indifference." So

if I don't know what Zeus wants me to

do, uh, I be fruitful and multiply.

Okay? I have children. I take care of

them. That's what seems to be natural.

But if Zeus tells me, like he did

Abraham, I want you to kill your kid

right now. You kill your kid right now.

Okay? This is what the Stoics tell us.

The religious imperative of following

Zeus supersedes the ethical imperative

of selecting preferred indifference. So

this is how core religion is to

stoicism.

And I think it's only under the light of

stoic religion can the most puzzling

questions about their ethics be made

sense of.

But of course, okay, this cosmology

raises a bunch of questions and imminent

issues of its own. Right? Here's a very

simple one. In the same way that the

death of my kid was affirmable because

it was a necessary step towards the the

best of all possible worlds,

so is my vice.

all the vicious actions I've done, it

would have either been impossible or the

world would have been actually worse off

had I performed virtue instead. Okay, so

this is just classic problem of evil.

And the Stokes don't have any better

resolutions than the one you you hear

from other religions, right? So the

point is the even the religion is not

just a magical wand that just waves all

these problems away. Okay, that's the

end of the lecture. That's my critique

of stoicism.

To summarize,

we looked at four key components. There

there are parts we haven't looked at yet

like the logic and epistemology,

but we looked at four key components of

the stoic system. We looked at uh up to

you. We looked at virtue, its ethics,

human nature, and cosmic nature. And

what we found in each step were three

big issues. Number one, the ideas sound

good. There's radical implications if

you think them through. Number two,

there are often massive imminent

tensions, if not just downright

contradictions within each step and

between steps sometimes. And number

three, even if none of those imminent

contradictions existed, it requires

grounding from more and more

foundational parts of the theory that

become more and more radical until we

get to Zeus. Okay? And this is how that

goes. Focus on what is up to you. All

right? But why should I focus on what is

up to me? Because virtue is the only

thing that matters for your happiness.

Okay. But why is virtue the only thing

that matters for your happiness? Because

you are just your soul and your soul is

pure reason. Okay. But why am I just my

soul and my soul is pure reason? Because

of the nature of Zeus and your

relationship with him. Okay.

And what's so frustrating about all of

this is that within each of these, I

would call them missteps contains so

valuable intuitions that deserve to be

pulled out and applied to our lives.

Reading stoism this past year has been

just been like watching that uh that

Jordan Peterson interview in Channel 4.

you know the one I'm talking about where

where he's being quizzed by this British

journalist and then Peterson just makes

a benign comment and then the the

journalist just says so you're saying

and then proceeds to completely

misrepresent what he said by

radicalizing it. Okay. So Peterson goes

um men are more disagreeable than women.

So you're saying women are slaves and we

should repeal the 19th.

I'm paraphrasing here. Uh, that's how

reading stoicism feels like, okay? Where

you're like, "Man, that's a good

intuition. Virtue is important." So,

you're saying you don't give a rat's ass

if your kid died right in front of you.

Or, uh, you know, man is a rational

creature.

So, you're saying our bodies are corpses

that we lug around. And Plato is as

vicious as Hitler.

That's what reading stoicism feels like

for this past year. Welcome to my world.

But now to end this lecture, I want to

make right on my promise like Regulus

and uh give you guys um an answer, a

reason for why I'm going to keep on

reading the Stoics despite thinking they

got it all fantastically wrong,

comically so.

It's because they got it wrong, but in

the right direction. Okay, and this is

what I mean.

Let's say we painted a spectrum of how

much external goods and how much virtue

matters for happiness.

I'm I'm on this side. Okay. So, I'm a

vicious little man. 95% external goods,

5% virtue. Aristotle's over here. 95%

virtue, 5% external goods.

The Stoics are even further right, more

extreme than Aristotle. 100% virtue. 0%

external goods. The cynics are even more

extreme. Okay, 100% virtue, no preferred

indifferent.

And it's precisely because of that

extremism that wrestling with the Stoics

in the past year has been so

philosophically fruitful and impactful

for me.

Because it's by having to wrestle and

defend and attack these extreme

positions that made me truly understand

how important virtue is, how not

important external goods are, how out of

control the world is, and how rational

the human psyche is, even if it's not as

extreme as the Stokes claim it is.

Right? And so what's ironic is that I

feel like if I had just read Aristotle,

I would have been too complacent, right?

Because Aristotle says stuff like,

"Well, you know, sometime health

matters, wealth matters, and if you're

not good-looking and tall with a deep

voice, it's over for you." And that

reading that you can get the wrong

impression of the 955.

But with the Stoics, you're never going

to make that mistake, right? The Stoics

were able to shock me into the

arisatilian position in a way that

Aristotle I think couldn't have

directly.

So the way I feel about the Stoics is

the exact way that the Stoics feel about

the cynics, the people who are even more

extreme than them. Because you might

think, look, these noble stoics,

senators, they're they're emperors,

they're going to look down on these

bums, right? they're going to see these

people as low lives essentially. That's

not the case at all. In fact, whenever

this the cynics are brought up, the

stoics are often openly admiring, if not

just drooling and fawning.

Marcus Aurelius speaks about Dioynes in

the same breath he speaks of Socrates.

Zeno the the founder trained with a

stoic trades and Epictitus calls the

cynics messengers from God.

They're messengers from God because even

if the cynics, this is from the stoic

position, right, got it all wrong, they

were wrong in the right direction. And

so their extreme aestheticism, even if

it's completely outrageous from the

Stoic's perspective, is a useful

reminder of what man is capable of, of

how little these external goods really

matter for happiness. And it pushes the

Stoic along their path of progress. And

that's my exact attitude towards the

Stoics. They are heroic. They show us

what man is capable of. Okay? Even if

that showing was completely unnecessary

and unproductive. And so in the exact

same way,

the Stoics point to the cynics and they

go, "Look at these crazy bastards

jacking off in a barrel,

everywhere, spitting on people's faces.

But it's awesome because it reminds us

what man is capable of."

I point to the Stoics and I go, "Look at

these crazy bastards.

being all happy when their kid dies,

giggling and making jokes when when when

they're getting tortured. But it's

awesome. They showed me what man is

capable of.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I

will keep reading the Stoics, my

admirably weward friends. Thank you.

[Applause]

Thanks for watching my lecture. If you

want to go even deeper into these ideas,

then go join my email list at

jonathanb.com.

You'll not only get full length

episodes, but also transcripts,

booknotes, and invitations to future

lectures and events. Now, after this, I

suggest you check out my lecture on

Marcus Aurelius, which is my best

defense of Stoke ethics, or my various

interviews with Stoke Scholars to hear

what they have to say about my

criticisms. You can find the links to

those episodes in the description as

well as on my website jonathanb.com.

Thank you.