From ancient to new Stoicism: IV—Becker’s update

A conceptual map of where Stoicism came from and where it may be going

Larry Becker

How do we update ancient Stoicism so that it becomes a viable philosophy for the 21st century and beyond? We start, as we did in this ongoing series, with a solid understanding of ancient Stoicism: if we don’t know the starting point we can hardly chart the way forward. Now that we have a grasp of ancient Stoic physics (i.e., science), logic, and ethics, we can begin to tackle four explicit attempts, made by different authors, to come up with a modern rendition of Stoic philosophy.

We’ll look in turn to Lawrence Becker’s New Stoicism (this essay), Piotr Stankiewicz’s Reformed Stoicism, Steven Gambardella’s new modern Stoicism, and my own modest attempt. We will, of course, not settle the matter once and for all. I hope, however, to provide some food for thought and a venue for continued discussion. Stoicism is a big tent, and together we can make it even bigger and more relevant to today’s living.

It is not going to be easy to summarize Becker’s attempt in one essay. He wrote a whole (somewhat hard to read) book about it, and I published a ten-party synopsis of it (authorized and corrected by Becker himself, as he was still alive when I first wrote it). Still, out of fairness to the other projects I will comment on during this series, one essay it shall be. (Fair warning, though: this is going to be a bit long, even by my standards…)

The way things stand

Why would we want to update Stoicism, and what does that mean, exactly? Because Stoicism is a philosophy, not a religion, and as the Stoics themselves clearly expressed, we need to constantly seek new and better ways, even though we are duly respectful of well tested paths:

“Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.” (Seneca, Letter 33.11)

Becker asks himself a simple question: since Stoicism got “interrupted,” so to speak, by the rise of Christianity, what would it have looked like if it had had a chance to organically respond to the philosophical and scientific challenges of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, modernity, and post-modernity?

Stoicism has been “pillaged,” claims Becker, first by Christianity and then by modern psychotherapy, though arguably it is precisely that pillaging that has allowed Stoic ideas to make it to the 21st century. Especially modernity and post-modernity have been, in his view, largely problematic: “Pluralism, relativism, and irony abounded, alongside various forms of dogmatism about natural duties and the intrinsic moral worth of human beings. … It is a complete disaster. Only a few are escaped to tell you.” (p. 4)

Science has raised challenges for Stoicism, particularly in the rejection of the sort of organismic view of the universe the Stoics embraced. The cosmos—to the best of our understanding—is not a living being endowed with reason, but a set of processes described by empirical regularities we call laws of nature. Romanticism, on its part, has rejected the Stoic emphasis on logic and fully embraced the emotions, including the ones that Stoics think are unhealthy. And much modern moral philosophy sees ethics in terms of universal statements that are arrived at autonomously from an understanding of the way the world works, again contra Stoic thought.

After considering all of this, Becker proposes that a modern Stoic has to accept science as it comes, not attempt to rationalize it in order to fit ancient preconceived ideas about the nature of the world. Ethics must be a naturalistic enterprise, informed by facts about human nature and elaborated by way of practical reason in order to meet human concerns and needs.

Given all the above, what does Stoic training, and hence a Stoic life consist of? To begin with, Stoics evaluate the facts on the ground that shape their own and other people’s lives. They derive their values from practical reasoning applied to such facts, and they try to make their values into a coherent set, rank ordering their motivations to pursue a lifelong eudaimonic project. Moreover, Stoics aim at shaping their motivational dispositions (i.e., emotions) so that they align with and reinforce their chosen lifelong project:

“Stoic training aims to make it possible for us to salvage some form of a good life under adversity, and to be able to handle sudden, massive changes in our circumstances. … Living virtuously is the process of creating a single, spatiotemporal object—a life.” (pp. 20, 21)

In summary, a Stoic is a person who reflects on the facts of life and makes human-appropriate choices, who values agentic autonomy, and who thinks of her life as a virtuous project to be pursued, as logicians say, “all things considered.” And speaking of logic…

Normative Stoic logic

In his book Becker develops the rudiments of a modern Stoic normative logic, that is, a logic that is capable of helping us make decisions about how we ought to live our life. “Norms,” in this context, are facts about the behaviors of agents, their goals, their projects, and their endeavors. The crucial bit to grasp is that Becker builds Stoic logic as a series of conditional imperatives, similar to modern virtue ethicists like Philippa Foot. There are no universal imperatives (e.g., something like the Ten Commandments) but only IF…THEN conditionals: IF I wish to be a happy and well regarded member of a human society THEN I need to act cooperatively and prosocially with other human beings. That sort of thing.

This is the kind of means/ends practical reasoning that connects “is” and “ought,” that is, facts (about the world and human nature) with values. Such a connection is possible because ethics, as mentioned above, is not an autonomous discipline, but a result of science and logic. Ethics is practical reasoning applied to the human condition, as it was so understood by the Greco-Romans (but not by most modern moral philosophers).

There is no space here to delve into the details of Becker’s logic, but I wanted to point out that, like all systems of logic, it too is based on a set of axioms that are taken for granted. Four axioms, to be precise. They are:

The Axiom of Encompassment: the exercise of our agency through practical intelligence, including practical reasoning all-things-considered, is the most comprehensive and controlling of our endeavors. That is, we try our best to live rationally.

The Axiom of Finality: there is no reasoned assessment endeavor external to the exercise of practical reasoning all-things-considered. Meaning that no other considerations (e.g., the alleged wishes of a god) shape our eudaimonic project.

The Axiom of Moral Priority: norms generated by the exercise of practical reasoning all-things-considered override all others. Even though you may like to indulge in pleasures all the time, you recognize that you have a prosocial life to live.

The Axiom of Futility: agents are required not to make direct attempts to do (or be) something that is logically, theoretically, or practically impossible. What falls into such categories, of course, is up to your judgment. Which is why refining one’s judgment is crucial.