The Stoics and God
The Stoics were some of the Western history’s best active mystics who emphasized following God’s will in everyday life. They had a very perceptive theory of the emotions that has been influential till the present day. They were the dominant philosophical movement for five hundred years from the death of Aristotle to the rise of Christianity. They heavily influenced Western philosophy till around 1900. Parts of the Christian Bible were influenced by Stoic ideas as were later Christians such as John Calvin. Prominent Stoics include the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Greek slave Epictetus, and Nero’s tutor Seneca.
The Stoics thought that God was not a separate being who created the world, but was nature. They also believed God or nature was a living organism. Humans were cells in this larger organism, and our purpose was to do our appropriate part in the larger whole. The Stoics had a cosmic religiosity and an acceptance of God’s will which they often expressed in hymns like this one:Lead me, O Zeus,
Unto that place where you have stationed me:
I shall not flinch, but follow.
Stoic philosophy said that if a person was virtuous and followed God, she would always be happy, no matter what happened to her. The Stoics said the important thing determining whether a person was happy was not what actually happened to her, but her response to the external situation. Because a person could change her responses to external events through psychological reframing of the situation and changing her values, a person could always be happy.
One of the major reasons the Stoics said a sage could always be happy was because of their view of emotions. The Stoics were against the doctrine that our emotions came from a non-rational aspect of our personality. Instead our emotions are a result of what we value and desire. As we can change what we value and desire, we can also change our emotions. Based on this idea, the Stoics developed three important practical ways of helping people change their emotional responses: detachment, reframing a situation, and contextualizing a situation.
Because our habits and normal ways of doing things often lead us into trouble, the first thing that the Stoics advise is that we practice detachment from the way things appear to us. Instead of getting caught up with how things present themselves to us, such as we should get angry for someone insulting us, the Stoics advise us to examine our responses to things carefully.
In reframing, a person changed how she looked at was happening to her. A person could focus on the negative things and so be unhappy, or reframe the situation to instead focus on the positive things. So if you were sad because your child died, you could reframe the situation by saying, “At least God gave me this child for a couple of years and I should be grateful for that.”
Another of the Stoics’ practices is contextualizing. This is based on the idea that something that is actually bad for us sometimes appears good because we only see part of its context. If we understand the whole context or all the consequences involved, then that fact would change our attitude.
The Joy of Torture
{This is my Ph. D. dissertation which was written in 1995.}
Surprisingly prominent in Hellenistic philosophy is the doctrine that the sage, the really wise and virtuous person who is following God’s will in his life, is always happy. Many major Hellenistic philosophers maintain that no matter what external circumstances the sage encounters, he will always be happy because of his sagacity, moral virtue and relationship to God. It does not matter if the sage has no money or food, or if he is in exile, he will still be happy as God and virtue has such great importance and power in the sage’s life. This position was held by so many philosophers that it became a major question in Hellenistic philosophy how the sage would react if he suffered excruciating tortures such as being stretched on the rack. The worst case scenario that was often discussed was how a sage would react when being subjected to the bull of Phalaris. The bull of Phalaris was a hollow, bronze bull that the tyrant Phalaris had made. [Lucian, Phalaris I, 11-12.] Phalaris would force people into this bronze bull, light a fire under the bull and then laugh while the poor person roasted to death. Even more horrifying, the bull had flutes attached to its nose so that the cries of the tortured person would make sweet music. “The man will groan and shriek in the grip of unremitting pain, and his voice will make the sweetest possible music on the flutes.”
Because it was a central contention of many Hellenistic schools that the sage was always happy, it was also a major philosophical question how the sage would react to being tortured in the bull of Phalaris or in other horrible ways. This problem of the tortured sage was frequently discussed in all the Greek philosophical schools because it was the test case for the thesis that the godly virtuous person was always happy. Many Hellenistic philosophers claimed that the sage had special powers to deal with torture because of the power of his moral virtue and his relationship to God. Some philosophical schools even maintained that the sage would not be bothered by the torture at all. While this whole question may seem strange to us, it was a crucial question for the Hellenistic philosophers because it was the test case for the importance and power of virtue in human lives. This question is a central concern for much of Hellenistic philosophy and is considered in detail by Epicurus, the Cynics, the Stoics, the Aristotelians, the Platonists and the Skeptics. This theme is a neglected area in contemporary scholarship and part of the reason Hellenistic philosophy is not given its proper due is that modern philosophers do not realize that recent pain research supports the Hellenistic philosophers’ claim.
In the first chapter, after analyzing different conceptions of happiness, I will show that recent pain research supports the Hellenistic philosophers’ position: it really is possible to be tortured and still feel perfectly happy. I will then demonstrate that Aristotle, Epicurus, the Cynics, the Platonists, and the Skeptics all had inadequate positions on this issue.
In the second chapter, I will explain the fundamental philosophical positions of the Stoics and show that their position on how the sage is happy even if tortured is supported by modern pain research.
While modern research supports the view that the Stoic sage can be happy even if tortured, this raises the question whether the Stoic sage is ever happy in his normal life. For a common critique of Stoicism is that the Stoic eradicates her emotions or her emotional bonds, so she cannot really be happy. In the third chapter I will show that this charge is false as the Stoics do not eradicate their emotions or emotional ties. In fact modern psychological research supports the position that the Stoic approach to emotions is the best way to happiness.
Thus two common charges against the Stoic position that the Stoic sage is always happy are false. The Stoic sage can indeed be completely happy even if he is tortured and the Stoic way of dealing with emotions is a good way of making the sage happy. This does not mean, though, that the Stoic sage really is happy. For the Stoics claim complete happiness comes from realizing our oneness and connection to God or the cosmic logos of which we are all part. I think they are right on this point and I present some modern scientific research that lends plausibility to their position. Nevertheless, judged by the Stoics’ own claim that we are part of God and awareness of this fact makes us happy, their account is deficient for two reasons. First, they maintain that we are born centered on our own interests and they are not able to describe a method by which we change from this selfishness to concern for our deep connection to God. Secondly, they are unable to offer a convincing argument that once someone becomes centered on her part in the whole, this will make him happy. So their account is deficient in what they considered to be the foundation of their whole ethical system.
In the fourth chapter, I maintain that Indian philosophy can improve on the Stoic deficiencies. For contemporaneously Indian philosophy was dealing with the same concerns as the Hellenistic philosophers and they offer a way to improve the Stoic position. First they offer a better method of realizing our connection to God–meditation. Secondly they give a more convincing argument that the sage is happy when he drops his selfish concerns and is instead concerned about the cosmic whole.
The last chapter shows that my modification of Stoicism is not an unreasonable modification as the Stoics themselves were already taking major steps in this direction. Lastly, I will argue that Stoic ethical theory has two important contributions to current ethical concerns. First, it is a synthesis of impartialism and partialism that deserves much more consideration as it emphasizes both a concern for justice and for particular relationships. Secondly, it has a better understanding of the emotions and their relation to reason and value than any of our current ethical theories.
Thank you for sharing your very lucid and well-written article on the Stoics. Like you, I also see a linkage, a certain symmetry even, between Indian thought and the Stoics.
I like to try to understand the Stoics by putting their school of thought in opposition with the Epicureans where one can really see a kind of epistemological symmetry of ideas at play. The atomist, dualist Epicureans on one side, face off the monist Stoics on the other. This fundamental opposition between dualism and monism is a long recognized constantly recurring refrain right throughout the history of ideas. It is so fundamental in fact, that it seems that there are inexorably two diametrically opposed takes on reality. The psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master and the Emissary, sees this dynamic playing across history, and drama also playing out in the very architecture of the two hemisphere of the brain. McGilchrist sees people of modern times becoming ever increasingly left brain dominant. He doesn’t mention the times of the Stoic though. I see the Epicureans as being particularly left brain dominant thinkers whilst the Stoics were right brain dominant. Here on can laugh a bit, as Zeno was known as always walking around with his head tilted to one side!
So the modern trend is towards the atomistic, dualist abstract world of the Epicureans rather than the unified monist world view of the Stoics. Our present day sciences and mathematics are all based on a “left side” kind of abstract formalism. Personally, I am working on an alternative but complementary formalism to modern day abstract science. I call it the generic. According to me, the Stoics were generic thinkers, not abstract thinkers. For example, Stoic logic only deals with particulars and shuns generalisations. Unlike Aristotle’s syllogistic logic, there are no species or genera in Stoic logic. Stoic logic and reasoning is restricted to what is called first order logic. Abstraction requires second order logic and set theory.
For the Stoics, only particulars exist. Abstract generalisations don’t exist and so are ignored in the Stoic perspective. Restricted to non-abstract first order logic and only reasoning in terms of particulars seems to be an immense price to pay for the purity of their doctrine. However, there is an upside. The downside with abstract thought is that it only uses first order semantic. This is where the Stoic generic right side paradigm can come to the fore. Even though only first order logic, it can employ second order semantics.