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Stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life | Massimo Pigliucci | TEDxAthens

Jun 04, 2021
Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Imagine, so to speak, that you are walking the streets of Athens 24 centuries ago, give or take. You might know this guy: Zeno of Citium. He was a merchant, a Phoenician merchant. He was doing very well until a shipwreck destroyed everything and he lost everything he had. He then came to Athens, and what did he do? One of the first things he did was walk into a bookstore and start reading books. He read "Memorabilia" by Xenophon, which is a book about Socrates. And he was so intrigued that he turned to the bookseller and said, "Where can I find one of these people, one of these philosophers?" And the bookseller turned around.
stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life massimo pigliucci tedxathens
He said, "Well, there's one right there, passing by." Because that's what Athens was like at that time: philosophers passed through there. (Laughs) The guy passing by was Crates, a cynical philosopher. And Zeno became his student and eventually went on to study with other important philosophers of Athens. And then he founded his own school, which became known as "Stoicism" because they studied the meaning in the stoa, in the open market, unlike the other schools where you had to go to a specific place - Plato's Academy or the Aristotle's Lyceum - the Stoics. He wanted to be among people, to talk to people about his

life

and how to improve it.
stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life massimo pigliucci tedxathens

More Interesting Facts About,

stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life massimo pigliucci tedxathens...

Stoicism became one of the main philosophies of antiquity. It spread first through the Hellenistic world and then to the Roman Republic and then to the Roman Empire. It produced some of the leading thinkers of the time. Seneca, who was a senator, playwright (he influenced Shakespeare) and unfortunate advisor to Emperor Nero. That did not end well for Seneca. Marcus Aurelius, one of the few philosopher kings in all of history, who wrote "The Meditations", his personal diary, which is now read by millions of people around the world. Now, unusually in ancient

philosophy

, Stoicism attracted several women. Many Roman matrons used to organize convivia, which were a type of gathering with their friends, to talk about Stoicism.
stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life massimo pigliucci tedxathens
But many of them also lived the

philosophy

. One of them, the most famous, was Portia Catonis, who turned out to be the daughter of Cato the Younger, archenemy of Julius Caesar, and wife of Brutus, one of the co-conspirators against Caesar. So she had a lot to deal with in her

life

and she dealt with it in a stoic way. Now, Stoicism, like all ancient schools of philosophy, eventually died out or closed with the rise of Christianity, but it continued to influence people for the next two millennia. The reason many people today are familiar with some of the Stoic ideas is because they influenced Christianity, beginning with Paul of Tarsus, arguably the founder of Christianity, and continuing with Thomas Aquinas, the most influential theologian in the world.
stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life massimo pigliucci tedxathens
Middle Ages, and then in more modern times with René Descartes, arguably one of the most important modern philosophers, and Baruch Spinoza, whose ethics were, in fact, based primarily on Stoicism. But enough of his story. What is Stoicism about? Well, the first thing is that it is based on a crucial premise: we must live our lives in accordance with nature. Now before you go and run naked into the forest to hug the trees, that's not what this is about. The Stoics thought we should take human nature seriously. And human nature is fundamentally made up of two things, two aspects.
First, we are very social animals. We can survive alone if we have to, but we only thrive in groups of people, we only thrive when we have healthy social networks. And two, we are capable of reasoning. As you know, that doesn't mean we're reasonable all the time. In fact, on the contrary, we fight for it. But we are capable of reasoning. For the Stoics, it followed that the best kind of human life one can have is one in which he applies his reason, his intelligence, to improve social life, to improve the lives of everyone else. There are two fundamental pillars of Stoic philosophy, which we will see, in a minute, applied in a very practical way to our lives.
One is the four cardinal virtues: practical wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. Practical wisdom is the knowledge of what is good for you and what is not good for you. Courage is not only physical but especially moral: the courage to stand up and do the right thing. Justice is what tells you what is right, how to interact with other people, how to treat other people. And temperance is the idea that things should always be done in the right measure, without exaggerating or underestimating. The second pillar is called "control dichotomy." This is the basic idea that some things depend on us and others do not.
Now you can divide everything you do into these two categories and only worry about the first and not the second. For example, I came here thinking I could control the slides. As you have seen, that is out of my control. Do I worry about that? No. Let me introduce you to Epictetus. He was one of the most important Stoic philosophers of antiquity. He was a slave. He was born in Hierapolis, in present-day Pamukkale, in Türkiye. He was acquired; in fact, his name means "acquired." We don't know his real name; Epictetus simply means acquired. And they took him to Rome, to the court of Emperor Nero, where he did quite well.
Finally, he was released. He was, you know, a brilliant guy, so he started walking the streets of Rome preaching Stoicism. And for his trouble, he got punched in the nose. So he thought that was not a good approach. It was within his power to change the approach, so he started over and established his own school, which was very successful until the Emperor Domitian expelled all the Stoics from Rome because he did not appreciate them "speaking the truth to the people." can". " as we would say today. Then Epictetus moved and went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, reestablished his school and became one of the most famous teachers of antiquity.
The reason I like Epictetus is because he is direct and He has a sarcastic sense of humor. And I'll give you a sample of this in a second. Here's what he says in "The Speeches": "I'll have to die. If it's now, well, then I'm dying now. If later, then now I will have my lunch, for it is time for lunch, and dying, I will attend to it later." Don't worry about death; worry about lunch. (Laughter) You know you're going to die; that is not under your control. Lunch, on the other hand, is under your control. Now I talked to you about how the dichotomy of control is one of the two fundamental pillars of Stoicism.
This is how Epictetus himself explains it. He says: "Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire and, in a word, everything that is our work. Our body, our property, our reputation are not within our power, and in a word, everything that is not our work." And he notices, if you stop for a second and think about it, it's like it's weird. Are you saying that my body, my property, my reputation are not in power? What do you mean? I can decide to go to the gym and eat healthy;
Of course my body is under my power. Unless a virus knocks you down. Unless you have an accident and break your leg. The idea is that you can do things, you can make decisions about your health, your reputation, etcetera, etcetera, but ultimately, you don't control the outcome. So what does that mean in practice? It means that we should try to walk through life internalizing our goals, not worrying about the results, because they are out of our control, but worrying about our intentions and our efforts because they are largely within our control. One of the beautiful metaphors that the Stoics introduced was that of the archer.
Imagine that you are trying to hit the target. What is under your control? Well, archery practice: you can practice for hours and hours. You can choose the best bows and arrows that are available to you. You can take care of those bows and arrows. You can concentrate until the second you release the arrow. But after that, things are completely out of your control. A gust of wind can ruin your best shot. The target can move, especially if it is an enemy soldier and you missed. Then what do you do? According to Cicero, hitting the target would be something chosen, but not desired.
So you don't attribute your own self-esteem to the result; you only attach it to what is under your control, to your intent. In practice, in today's life, these can change the way we see practically everything. Let me give you a couple of examples. Let's say you're up for a promotion at your job. Now, the normal thing would be to worry about whether you are going to get the promotion or not. According to the Stoics, that's the wrong way to look at it: the promotion itself is out of your control. Your boss may have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, is upset, has something else on his mind, and the interview isn't going to go well.
Or maybe someone else deserves the promotion better than you even though you did well and, again, that's not up to you. What's up to you, of course, is to prepare as best you can for your interview, put together the best resume possible, work very hard to truly deserve that promotion. That is the place of your control; That's where you should focus your efforts. Or think in terms of relationships. You know, everyone wants to be loved. But that's not up to us. It depends on the person who can love us or not. What's up to us is to be the most adorable person, to be loving, to be there for them.
Whether they decide to stay with us or not is not under our control. So if you take this seriously, says Epictetus, you will indeed have a happy life because a large part of happiness lies in serenity, in the idea that you always walk through life knowing that you have done the best you can and that besides that nothing else could be done. It says: "If you have the right idea of ​​what really belongs to you and what does not" - in other words, what you control and what you do not control - "you will never be subject to force or obstacles.
You will never blame or criticize others. no one, and whatever you do will be done willingly." And this would be a significantly better world than the one in which everyone goes around blaming other people for what they have no control over. Now, my colleague Brian Johnson at Fordham University explained Epictetus' approach as a type of role ethics. The idea is that we all play a variety of roles in life and that a happy life is about balancing these roles as best we can. In fact, there are fundamentally three types of roles. First, our basic role as a human being: we are all members of the human polis.
The Stoics were the ones who introduced the term "cosmopolitan", which literally means "citizen of the universal polis." We are all human beings, we are all in the same place and we have to take care of the same place. Then there are the roles that circumstances give us. You could be, you know, someone's son or daughter. That was not your choice; it just happened. And then there are the roles we choose depending on the circumstances: our career, being a mother or father, things like that. These three sets of roles are related in the following way: Your basic role as a human being takes precedence over everything else.
In everything you do, you must first ask yourself: Is this good for humanity? If not, don't do it. It is a simple test. By the way, you will end up doing a lot less if you follow this, since we save you energy. And then the rest, you just balance things out. These roles come with compensations. Yes, you want to be the best mother or father and son or daughter and colleague and friend and so on, but there are trade-offs, and a lot of what Stoic philosophy tells you or teaches you is how to balance these things.
How do you play these roles? Well, the most important thing is that you play with integrity. What does that mean? Well, Epictetus explains again: "You are the one who knows yourself, how much you are worth to yourself and how much you are selling yourself for. Consider what price you sell your integrity for, but please, for the love of God, Don't sell it cheap." What that means is that the goal here is not to achieve perfection, whatever that means; It's just being the best you can be. Don't compromise and sell yourself cheap, because you only have yourself to sell.
That's it: once you've sold out, there's nothing left. The idea is not to be perfect, but simply better than you were yesterday, one small step at a time. Now, let me give you a couple of examples. Epictetus tells of a father who is very distraught because his daughter is sick and he simply cannot bear it. He leaves the house and leaves his wife in charge of his daughter. And Epictetus says, "Wait a minute. Do you think you were right to act that way?" The father thinks for a minute and says, "Well, I was just being natural.
I was, you know, distraught. I couldn't help it." Well, that brings up the distinction between what is natural to us, our feelings. You don't control your feelings. If he is distraught because his daughter is sick, there is probably nothing he can or should do about it. But that is different from the ethical duty you have towards your daughter: you are her father. You're supposed to stay there even if it costs you in terms of emotional energy. So the two virtues that come into play here are courage, really doing the right thing, staying with your daughter, and justice, that is, doing the right thing, the right thing, for your daughter.
We also have to, as I said before, balance the differentsocial roles. And this has to do with two other virtues: practical wisdom, the idea of ​​knowing the difference between what is good for you and what is not good for you, and temperance, the idea that you can balance things by putting the right amount of energy in everything you do. Epictetus explains it this way: "Reflect on the other social roles you play. If you are young, what does it mean to be young? If you are old, what does age entail? If you are a father, what does it mean?" What does the father imply?
Each of our titles suggests appropriate actions for it. He imagines that you are an actor, you play a role. Now, the role is not completely determined. You can play the role of a mother, for example, in many ways. You don't have to play the way society tells you to. You just have to play the way you think is the right way to do it. But you're still a mother or a father, so "You have certain duties. The way you charge those duties, the way you actually exercise them, is up to you. But you have them. Now, how do we learn to perform our duties well?" roles in life?
There are many ways: the Stoics were famous for a series of exercises, practical exercises, about these things, but fundamentally, one of the best ways to do it is to simply imagine people who are really doing well, people They are your role models, people you can see and use as a pattern after which you change your own life. The ancients used people they knew, people they had heard of or even imaginary people. One of their favorite models was Cato the Younger. I mentioned this before; he was the father of Portia Catonis. He had such a level of integrity that when people in Rome did something wrong (made a mistake, didn't live up to expectations) they said, "Well, not everyone may be a Cato." He was used as an excuse.
It was like, “Not everyone can be that good.” Well, sure, but you can try. One favorite ancient role model was Odysseus, who twice renounced immortality and endured 10 years of travel just to return home to his wife and their son. But there are also modern role models, and there are many of them to choose from. Some of my favorites are Nelson Mandela, who, as we know, spent more than 20 years in prison fighting the apartheid regime. Understandably, he was very angry during that period. But one of the turning points in his life was when one of his fellow prisoners smuggled a copy of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations." Mandela read it and understood that the way forward was not through anger or hatred, but on the contrary, also reaching out to the people, even to the people who were his captors and his executioners.
And that changed his life and it changed the lives of people in South Africa. Another of my favorite models is Susan Fowler, who a couple of years ago came out of the closet and confronted the Uber motor company to denounce its culture of sexual harassment that was quite widespread at that time. She risked a lot personally, in terms of career, in terms of friendships, and she did it from a stoic perspective. I happen to know Susan and she is, in fact, a practicing Stoic. My favorite fictional role model is Spider-man, who famously said that with great powers comes great responsibility.
Well, we don't have great powers (we're not superheroes), but we do have power. We have the power to exercise options, and with that power comes the responsibility to exercise the best option we can make. So the general idea, according to Epictetus, is that just like actors in the ancient world, in ancient Greece, we wear various masks and continually change them. The same actor would come out on stage and wear a different mask, and the mask would tell the audience which character he was currently playing, and would remind the actor himself that he was now playing a different character.
And the idea is that a happy life is, in fact, a well-balanced life, in which you play all these roles as the best actor possible. Thank you so much. (Applause)

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