Stoicism is a complex ancient philosophical system that millions of people throughout its multi-thousand-year history have taken up into their lives to help improve themselves. Its core belief consists of aspiring toward a path of virtue using rational, intellectual means. Famously, it is a philosophy whose members have included people from slaves to emperors, exemplifying the universality and practicality that Stoicism can offer. However, abiding by the Stoic lifestyle promotes a mindset that emphasizes the indifference to every thought, action, knowledge, and emotion that does not align with either virtue or vice. This mentality leads one to practice a strict, singular ideology with no room for discovering other forms of knowledge found by immersing oneself in a variety of different philosophies throughout life. As learners and philosophers, the Stoic point of view devoids one of the human condition to viciously try to control one’s thoughts and actions in order to live a virtuous life. Instead, a better way of learning and living is found in not limiting oneself and giving oneself over to the absurdness of life.
When organizing ourselves as learners in today’s world, it may be highly valuable to look at past thinkers and what they may consider to be adequate methods of information uptake. “The Stoic Epictetus famously criticizes his students for studying Stoicism as ‘mere theory’ and encouraged them to add training to their educational program,” says Michael Tremblay in his essay “Digestion and Moral Progress in Epictetus” (Tremblay, 101). This type of learning is very rigorous, but ultimately rewarding as one can continually see how their efforts are projected into the world for oneself and others to see. If I am going to be a good shoemaker, I cannot just know everything about making a shoe, but I also have to be able to use that information to make a shoe that is durable, comfortable, specific to an environment, etc. This all emphasizes the need for the theory of shoemaking to be actualized in a form that is useful in the real world and not just in the abstract. This example allows me to emphasize the two players in Tremblay’s dissection of Epictetus’ learning style: Theory and Training.
Theory is the knowledge of a particular subject. It works in the mind, in the abstract. This allows for it to be freely contemplated and learned without any confounding variables. Training, on the other hand, is the act of practicing a certain knowledge in the world. It is introducing what one knows into situations that involve things outside the self (other people, the environment, etc.). These outside variables in life introduce unpredictability where failure can emerge. The abstract “perfectness” (in the sense of the knowledge in its most pure form) of Theory thereby allows it to remain as the romanticized goal for anyone who wants to incorporate the knowledge into Training, with those who then try to use the knowledge from Theory into practiced Training never actually being able to assert complete mastery of the knowledge, at least in complicated subjects such as philosophy. An example of this falling short of the Theory can be seen in the most famous Stoic philosophers. Seneca was known to be one of the most intelligent and wise men of his time, established sufficiently with his surviving works (Theory); however, he was also known to fall short of what he preached on occasion (Training). Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a sort of reflective and reminding journal for himself, emphasizing all that he knew he needed to improve on. Both these great philosophers were intelligent and highly proficient at understanding the Theory of Stoicism, but could not always live up to it completely. Of course, this is because they were human just like all of us. In our innate humanness, we can know everything that we need to know for a task and still fail. I am confident that if I somehow became all-knowing, my humanness would still cause me to stumble in actualizing my knowledge in some way.
So now it is known that Training cannot completely live up to the abstract Theory in our heads, but that does not mean that not doing the practice leads to a better understanding of said knowledge. Tremblay exemplifies that “Theory alone is insufficient to live well, because living well extends beyond the domain of theory, thus we complement our theory with training,” then quoting Epictetus to support his view: “‘For this reason philosophers exhort us not to be contented with mere learning, but to add practice also’” (Tremblay, 103). I can understand the value of practicing knowledge in the real world as a way of further instilling its lessons as well as making it “useful” in regards to making it tangible (not in the abstract) to oneself and others, but I also disagree with the view of Theory alone as not valuable: to invalidate the meaning of Theory in the mind exclusively is to waste one’s overall potential in learning.
Firstly, there is a major contradiction that presents itself in learning through Training. This problem exists in the notion of learning more than one philosophy. Say if I wanted to learn Platonic philosophy and Aristotelean philosophy as many do in the same semester of an Ancient Philosophy undergraduate course, how can this be possible when Plato and Aristotle differed in their opinions on topics such as Forms? Plato believed in abstract, perfect versions of every possible thing of being, while Aristotle was more practical in his descriptions of what it means to be something. If one truly wants to follow Epictetus’ Stoic way of learning, it is paradoxical to incorporate these two ideas into Training in the real world, whereas, in the abstract, knowledge of their existences can be easily pondered about. This also introduces another positive in pure Theoretical learning: being patient with ideas presented to oneself and pondering through them. With Theoretical learning, one can work through a philosophy in their head, examining it from all sides, and debating with oneself or others about whether it is worthy to pursue or not. Tremblay says that “digestion [is] utilized by Epictetus to account for the function of training,” which is his way of explaining the process of moving Theory into the mode of Training for oneself (Tremblay, 104). This also exemplifies the opposite, vomiting, as still a way to discuss what one has learned with others, but it is just spewed out from one’s mind in pure Theory regurgitation, instead of the product of working through said Theory. This vomiting, however, is still a way people can disperse information. Tremblay even calls “the lecturers” on information as people who circulate learning in this way, but is that not how all of us have learned or taught information in our lives (Tremblay, 108)? All of this together shows how Theory on its own is still valuable even if Training does not succeed it.
This may all make sense, but an argument against it may be: “Why are you trying to learn more than one philosophy? These discussions of paradox, not being able to be patient with ideas, and learning through lecturing only exist when one is exploring multiple philosophies. If one stays committed to Stoicism and uses the Theory-Training method, one will simply ascend to a more virtuous self in the long run.” This is a valid claim that many may agree with, but the argument of it proves the flaw that I see with Stoicism: it is too serious of a philosophy and limits one potential in life. To have to constantly worry about Training the Theory learned, one is narrowing the focus of life through one type of philosophical practice. To put oneself in a box in this way is ignoring other potential avenues of living, thereby cutting oneself off from what it actually means to be human. The Stoics view aspiring to virtue in accordance with nature as the highest meaning to life, but I will now introduce an argument that shows why the true meaning of human life is instead one that explores multiple avenues of learning through the plurality of simply being human:
P1: To be human is to experience humanness.
P2: Humanness is doing things that a human can do (think in a human way, act in a human way, rationalize in a human way, feel emotions in a human way, etc.).
SC1: To be human is to do human things.
C: To limit oneself from doing human things is to limit oneself from being human.
Firstly, to see if this is a valid argument, I must see if the premises connect well toward the conclusion. P1 states a quality of being human: humanness. P2 states the definition of humanness: to do human things. SC1 syllogistically combines these two premises to say that to be human is to do human things, thereby equating them. The conclusion then proclaims the statement for what happens if one limits one of the variables (doing human things) then the other will also be limited (being human), which is supported since they are equated posits. Therefore, with all the premises connecting well to the conclusion, this is a valid argument, meaning it is impossible for the scenario of the premises being true and the conclusion being false to occur. However, for it to be a sound argument, I must go through the premises again to see if they are all true.
Starting with P1, this premise is true because humanness is the quality of being human. It is all that encompasses what it means to be a human and also insinuates that no other quality of being is sufficiently equivalent to humanness. Dog-ness cannot be a quality of a human just as much as humanness cannot be a quality of a dog. One can think of this quality as intrinsic as “oneness” being an essential quality of the Abrahamic God.
Next with P2, it is true because taking the definition of humanness, it is the quality of being everything that it means to be human. Just as “oneness” is the encompassing of something as singularity, “humanness” is the encompassing of something as being human. To be a human is to think more rationally than any other animal; to feel the emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, guilt, fear, etc. in a human way; to drive a car in a human way; to snap one’s fingers in a human way; to have blood move through veins in a human way; to create a political system in a human way. Humanness is to be a human doing human things in the world.
SC1 takes the previous two premises and combines them in syllogistic fashion. With all of the premises being true and all connecting well to the conclusion, I can say that this is a sound argument and that to limit oneself from doing human things is to limit oneself from being human.
To exemplify this point in regards to it being able to show that Stoicism is trying to overly control one’s thoughts and actions to live a virtuous life, I will bring in the example of the emotion of anger.
In Teun Tieleman’s essay “Chrysippus’ on Affections,” he continues chapter five with Cleanthes’ famous dialogue consisting of the soul’s internal argument between reason and anger:
“What, Anger, is it that you want? Tell me that.”
“I, Reason? To do everything I wish.”
“Why that is royal; but still, say it once again.”
“In whatever way I desire, that this will come about” (Tieleman, 264).
Here, Cleanthes shows a personification of our emotions versus our reasoning; something that we as people battle with multiple times a day from trivial to serious situations. Tieleman then references the four-line dialogue by Cleanthes and makes this comment on the conversation: “Although anger’s claim is preposterous, reason is interested after all. On the other hand, reason is still able to see that it would be bad if anger took over” (Tieleman, 270). To me, it makes sense that Tieleman views anger’s claim as preposterous, but I disagree with the connotation that this means that it is bad. Anger, as with any emotion, is irrational in its thinking because of the subjectivity surrounding its motivations due to our own individual past experiences influencing the said emotion which makes it different than anyone else’s. For instance, if my friend stubs her toe, she may get slightly annoyed, but no impact comes from the event other than mild pain. However, perhaps I stub my toe after a day in which my allergies are bad, I forgot to bring a lunch for work, and my clothes got drenched in the rain. In this situation, my anger toward the injury is going to be exponentially worse based on my previous experiences that only are attributed to my existence. Perhaps also I associate stubbing my toe with a significant traumatic event from my past; all the prior positions my life has been situated in influence me uniquely compared to any other individual. A Stoic would try to view the injury as indifferent no matter the previous experiences they have faced because of their philosophy of living in accordance with virtuous nature, and dwelling on pain more than rationally necessary in favor of dwelling on it for emotional reasons is an unnecessary distraction from the path of virtue.
Importantly, however, ignoring the memories and feelings of one’s past removes the significance of said past. This is very well what a Stoic may be trying to do in order to stay virtuous, but this ignorance of what makes one individual’s human experience different from the rest is detrimental to living as a human. If we are all supposed to feel indifferent to the same experiences, then that invalidates what has got us to those experiences in the first place and instead treats us all as the same person (and a person who is only defined by the present no less). This way of life shields us from living diversely and prevents us from exploring the possible differences we all may have with one another. These differences in the way humans live are integral to learning throughout life. To all stay the same gives us no comparison to draw from in order to learn in a meaningful way. If one philosophy is all one learns, then the person learning it is not a person, but only the philosophy that they embody. If a person explores multiple philosophies, then one cannot put oneself in a box and say, “You are this thing.” Instead, the person themselves is the definition of themselves, and that plurality of existence is what it means to be human, to have humanness attributed toward oneself.
To be human is to exemplify that plurality through rationality and emotion. Anger is a part of us just as much as reason is, just as much as our hands are. Anger is not a stick twenty feet away that we can interact with on an inter-object level. Anger is not another person that we can interact with while they have their own consciousness and soul. The fact that we can experience anger in the way that we feel anything at all means that it is a suitable aspect of the human experience. To devoid oneself of anger is the same as purposefully cutting off one’s own hand. Anger is a tool that yes, can put us in difficult circumstances or make us do things that our rational mind would not do, but anger wills through us based on our previous life experiences, which means it is built upon learning. There are many positives of anger such as intimidating in the right circumstances, letting out pent-up feelings to eventually return us to a more rational state, and learning about one’s true desires in life through emotionally driven epiphanies. There are no bad emotions; they all are a part of us as modes of expression that the rational side of us can learn from. Just like how sometimes we need the rational side to become dominant over our emotions, there are times when irrationality through emotional expression is just what our souls need to feel right.
Irrationality is usually seen as a bad thing because it cannot be consistently rooted or tracked. It is devoid of logic and reason, but that does not mean it cannot be useful. To connect with the irrational, the emotional, one learns to put faith in oneself. In this faith, if one truly lets go of oneself to their emotions, then and only then can one really understand oneself. This is because, as I explained before, emotions are a part of the human experience, and if we do not let them guide us on occasion, we are limiting ourselves to understand what it means to be human. So to be human is to understand both our emotions and rationality because they are both innately parts of us. One moves through a logical progression while the other is driven by a freefall that may not always feel good once landed, but a lesson will always emerge as a bruise.
In Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, the Danish philosopher obsesses over the Biblical story of Abraham deciding to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because God told him to. Kierkegaard takes a deep dive into Abraham’s motivations in an act that almost everyone would say is completely horrible, and out of it emerges an idea called the “Leap of Faith.” In this way, Faith is a discordance between my opinionated belief of something and the statistical probability of that same something occurring. A valid argument works where what I believe is the chance for something to happen is equal to the statistical probability for that same event; a Faith based argument has those two variables separated with the belief standing higher. I can see that the Denver Broncos have a 2.5% chance of winning the Super Bowl and can believe that probability through valid methods; however, a bias may cause me to believe they have a 100% chance of winning the Super Bowl, causing a discordance between what has rational data behind it and what I believe opinionatedly: this is irrationality at work. This thought process works most familiarly with religion where rational science tells us that no God exists since there is no logical proof; however, a theist may just have some intrinsic belief inside of herself that is ineffable and non-veridical, making her believe with 100% certainty that God exists.
Abraham does not decide to sacrifice Isaac for any rational reason; he seeks nothing to gain from this act as it ruins the bloodline he has tried to create for himself. The act is out of a blind Faith toward God; Abraham merely believes the task is the correct one to make solely because God wants it to occur. He could just as easily reject the order from God through the rational viewpoint that killing one’s own son is nonsense, but he takes a “leap” into an abyss of absurdity. Faith is the belief in something without rational cause; it is absurd rationality in its purest form; it is the possibility of good without a reason for it; it is one about to die from gunpoint by their worst enemy, but the enemy just suddenly changes his mind; it is taking a spontaneous walk through the woods in hope that some epiphany will emerge to learn more about life; it is that discordance that causes the distinction between rationality and irrationality as I explained earlier; it is putting a knife into your son because you believe God knows best. Faith does not always guarantee a good result, and can often lead one to disappointment; however, the randomness and unpredictability of life leads to “miraculous” events that can just “spontaneously” happen for no discernable reason at all, and to embrace that on occasion is to be human.
Letting oneself go by jumping into the abyss of absurdity is to embrace humanness in its purest form. The fact that any one of us could be born is a probability so implausible that it is impossible to imagine. To open oneself up to the possibility of hurt, mistake, failure, and even death lets one learn lessons about oneself more than sticking to a strict regimen of “this is virtuous, this is vice, and the rest is indifferent.” If I don’t address a pent-up sadness, feel it, and let it take me over into tears and cries and screams, I will limit my future self from understanding that these feelings are due, for example, to some childhood event; I will limit myself from feeling tears running down my face and drying to stiffen my cheeks; I will limit myself from knowing the strength of my screaming voice; I will limit myself from the future comparison with myself a year later where I remark, “I am so much better than him, and I am so happy because of it.” Labeling emotions as indifferent gives no power to the level of human expression that one can conjure. Yes, this can get us into trouble, but it is just as true that it can breathe life into oneself that can make one realize their purpose, what their limits are, and who they are as their own individual self. If I do not try to learn multiple philosophies (most simply rationality and irrationality), I will limit where my mind can wonder, I will purposefully destroy my humanness.
To address this act of willingly impeding my sense of being human, I will turn to the term “Bad Faith” as described by twentieth-century existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre. The term “Bad Faith” implies the idea of one lying to oneself about oneself. In this situation, one is limiting their own freedom of their humanness by defining oneself in a lie that limits one’s options in life. People who live a life of monotony in a certain job may tell themselves: “I am a shoemaker, and therefore my life goal solely consists of making shoes.” This is a lie that one can make to oneself in order to ease the anxiety of the other opportunities that one may have available in life. Our very freedom within our humanness can give anyone this sort of anxiety because of the vast limitlessness of humanness. To combat this fear, many will then lie to themselves, only presenting to the world their personality, occupation, whatever results in someone as a “fixed” thing in the world that is equivalent to a chair or a table or a shoe. To transcend this lie of Bad Faith, one has to take hold of their inherent freedom that allows one to exhibit a diverse consciousness of oneself that includes the idea of “I exist as a human, and because of that fact, I am free to exhaust my human limits in order to create an essence for myself beyond my existence.” This is stimulating the possibilities within humanness and promoting Sartre’s famous idea “existence precedes essence.”
The importance of lying in Bad Faith as opposed to other types of lying is because it should be impossible to lie to oneself since something cannot be thought of as truth if one knows that it is not truth. “Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood,” says Sartre. “Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here” (Sartre, 49). This then leads one to not have the duality described, but a single consciousness of the event; the liar intends to deceive and does not hide this from himself. This fact makes the lying of Bad Faith even more substantial than other falsehoods.
The Stoic philosophy exhibits Bad Faith in their limiting of one’s humanness. On discussing emotions, Tad Brennan says in his essay “Stoic Moral Psychology” that, “The average ethical agent… spends his or her life pursuing health, wealth, and comfort with the false belief that they are good, and avoiding and fearing disease, poverty, and pain from the false belief that they are bad” (Brennan, 270). In this sense, Brennan shows us that exploring such things as health, wealth, and comfort as “positive” goals and disease, poverty, and pain as “negative” goals have certain emotional connotations built around them that the average person elicits. For Stoics, these types of goals concerning these ideas should be seen as indifferent because they do not relate to orientations of virtue or vice. However, one example I can counter with is that part of human nature is to ascend to greed in a variety of circumstances. Once being situated in an occupation for a few years, one desires to move up through a promotion to gain more wealth/title; when one becomes proficient in scoring two three-point baskets in a row consistently, one eventually sees that success as mundane and desires a higher streak; if $100 is found on the ground with no one around, why not grab it? It is within our humanness to keep wanting more and more because it keeps us goal-oriented, never staying too stagnant (which could lead to a contentedness more susceptible to our environment enacting failure upon us), and (in an evolutionary sense) allows us to survive longer and survive better for the benefit for our progeny. Having your house robbed and striving to feel indifferent to it is lying to oneself in Bad Faith. As a human, one is supposed to feel bad because the desire to prevent that feeling is good for oneself in the long run; losing all one’s possessions does in fact set one back and it is okay to elicit emotions of frustration, anger, sadness, jealousy in order to work through that horrible event. To be human is to obviously continue being human, and evolutionarily, this should be attractive to occur for as long as possible, so to strive toward health and away from disease is inertially human, and therefore good to desire as a human. For the Stoics to prevent these emotions from controlling their actions is lying to themselves about their own humanity; it is them practicing in Bad Faith; this is a self-limiting of one’s own freedom. To act in this way is to put oneself closer to a table, something that is strict in its identity, determined in its actions, instead of a human who has conscious autonomous control of who they can become within the means of the freedom they can conjure. The control and strictness of a Stoic’s view on emotions evidently devoids their freedom away from their own humanity.
But one may quickly ask: “Why is this bad to limit our humanness? Perhaps the Stoics are just streamlining what is really important to living.” It is then convenient to us that the universe has an answer to this, an answer of silence.
Albert Camus introduces the “Absurd” in his famous essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Camus defines the Absurd as the “conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any meaning in a purposeless, meaningless, and irrational universe” (Eternalised). When one “calls out” to the universe or God or oblivion, no direct response can ever really be heard. The Absurd is that uneasy silence felt on a quiet night when some sound should arouse; it is the realization out of nowhere that “I exist… what am I really doing right now?”; it is a form of irrationality as described before due to its contradictory nature; it is more formally the disconnect between an intrinsic desire for meaning and an unavailable acknowledgment of that desire by something greater than us. This empty comment left for us is not a curse, however, and is instead an invitation for our own devices.
Instead of giving up because of a lack of meaning and turning to nihilism, one can think that due to the universe remaining silent in us asking “What is the meaning of life?” it invites us to create our own meaning, to explore a variety of philosophies and ideologies, and especially to not consider one to be utmost truth. Camus invites us to rebel against the Absurd because it is more impressive to live in the face of it than to succumb to it and reside in despair or even commit suicide; to live is to rebel against designed death for as long as possible. And so with this opportunity set in front of us, a blank canvas to learn from called life, it is completely positive for one to rebel against the Absurd by doing as many different things as possible to affirm one’s existence in the name of oneself despite the universe being indifferent toward that fact. This then gives in to the idea of us humans being free entities that should not be bound by any constraints toward living a life full of expression, adventure, mistake, ridicule, celebration, failure, and excitement. The fact of the universe being indifferent to us gives us humans the opportunity to not be indifferent to anything that it provides. Limiting oneself to a strict path with a narrow focus purposefully denies what life permits one to act upon. To assert aspiring to virtuous activity as the only right way to live insults the opportunity of existence. There is no streamlining of conjuring a “right” way to live concurrent with one philosophical approach as that is the same as one who adamantly put weights on their ankles when running a track mile while the free-spirited jogger laps you for the second time listening to his favorite song. The infeasibility of one’s existence should not deter one down a path of singularity but should excite one to explore the immeasurable plurality of knowledge to be learned. Letting oneself go from the strictness of any single ideology gives one a better chance to explore oneself to see who one truly is or who one truly wants to be.
Yes, there are many who feel an instance of Faith as described earlier when pondering on the meaning of life; however, this is not a universal principle of willful epiphany, but a personal relationship that may or may not be shared in the sense of religious communities. The intrinsic calling of Faith to religion is still one of rebellion from the indifference of the universe toward a spiritual path of learning. Exploring this side of life can conjure many lessons, but like Stoicism, it does run the danger of keeping one on a singular path of knowledge that shields one from the positives of other religions or ideologies.
The philosophy of Stoicism is one of singularity and strictness in its approach to achieving a meaningful path in life for those who practice it. To combat this line of thinking, it is advantageous to approach life with an open mind to multiple philosophies throughout, looking toward studying the various Theories they put forward through an abstract mode of reflection. Embracing such illogicalities as irrational emotional contemplation, Faith in some intrinsic non-veridical feeling, and opening oneself up to the Absurd contradiction of what we call life, are all sufficient starting points in this process. To limit oneself by pretending that the human condition should not exhibit certain attributes is acting in a self-denying manner about what makes us humans special. Some may say that freedom is on the other side of discipline, that with enough strictness through life, there will eventually be a time when one can relax in the beauty of the prior labors; I disagree. If one lives a life of strict discipline and negation of freedom, that will then become their nature. Once that person has the opportunity of freedom, they will have no knowledge of how to traverse it and feel good from the benefits; they will just end up feeling bad for straying away from the mindset of hard work oriented in a tunneled-vision fashion. To enjoy freedom, one has to seek it out and live within it, to feel the breath of “I am alive and that fact is unimaginably improbable,” and then soak oneself into that absurdness. Irrationality fuels freedom and to be free is to be human.
Works Cited
Brennan, Tad. “Chapter 10: Stoic Moral Psychology.” “The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics”, edited by Brad Inwood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2006, p. 270.
Eternalised. “The Absurd, Revolt and Rebellion – Camus.” Eternalised, 3 May 2021, https://eternalisedofficial.com/2020/10/26/absurd-revolt-rebellion-camus/.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Part I, Chapter 2: Bad Faith.” Being and Nothingness, edited by Hazel Estella Barnes, Citadel Press, New York, NY, 1965, p. 49.
Tieleman, Teun. “Chapter 5, Part 8: Cleanthes’ Dialogue Between Reason and Anger.” “Chrysippus’ on Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretation,” Brill, Leiden, 2003, p. 264–270.
Tremblay, Michael. “Digestion and Moral Progress in Epictetus.” Journal of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, p. 100–119., https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v13i1p100-119.