From ancient to new Stoicism: VII—Some modest suggestions

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

The Stoa of Attalos, in the Athenian Agora; notice the Acropolis in the background. Photo by the Author.

Well, it is now my turn! After having examined the ancient versions of Stoic physics (i.e., science), logic, and ethics, as well as three modern attempts to update Stoicism (Becker’s, Stankiewicz’s, and Gambardella’s), this essay is devoted to a series of modest suggestions by yours truly.

Let us begin with a couple of disclaimers. First, this is very much a work in progress, and therefore incomplete and likely not at all what it will look like by the end, if an end will at some point be reached. Second, though I did publish a book proposing an updated version of Epictetus’s Enchiridion, I have not written anything that is comparable to, say, Larry Becker’s A New Stoicism, which in my mind remains the mandatory point of reference. Fate permitting, I will.

Next, I wish to lay down two assumptions that are informing my thinking on the matter at hand. One is that, in proposing a version of Stoic practical philosophy for the 21st century (and, hopefully, beyond) I am trying to stick as close as possible to the original. This is because the original was so darn good that it has inspired people for close two and a half millennia, and there is no sense in changing things just to satisfy one’s own ego. After all, I ain’t neither Zeno nor Chrysippus.

Conversely, and this is my second assumption, I accept as a given that the ancient Stoics were wrong on a number of things, and that therefore there is nothing odd about suggesting improvements to their philosophy of life in the light of all the science and philosophy that has been developed since the time Zeno taught at the Stoa Poikile.

Let me give you just two obvious examples. Galen, the most famous medical doctor of antiquity and the personal physician of Marcus Aurelius, criticized the Stoic Chrysippus for locating the seat of the psychic pneuma, the basis of our “ruling faculty,” in the heart (specifically, oddly, the left ventricle), arguing instead that it is located in the brain [1]. Modern neuroscience has identified the seat of what we call the executive function in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. So the Stoics (and, for that matter, Aristotle) were wrong and Galen was closer to the truth.

A second example of the ancient Stoics getting things spectacularly wrong is their support for the notion of divination, the ability to predict the future on the basis of things like the entrails of sacrificed animals and the flight of birds. This was a consequence of their idea that the world works as a consequence of a vast web of cause-effect. If that is the case, then it stands to reason that carefully examining one aspect of such web will yield information about other aspects of it. Here too the Stoics were (harshly) criticized by their contemporaries, particularly Cicero, who mounted a devastating attack on the whole thing in his book On Divination, rightly considered by modern philosophers of science to be the first treatise on what we refer to as pseudoscience.

The rest of this inquiry, then, will be inspired by Seneca’s immortal words, which I noticed I keep quoting throughout my writings:

“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.” (Letter 33.11)

There are, of course, many ways to go about the project of updating Stoicism, as we have seen when we examined three other attempts to do so. However, since I decided to stick as close to the original as possible, I will proceed by discussing which aspects, if any, of the three classical fields of study—physics, logic, and ethics—need to be revised and how. It will be convenient, therefore, for the reader to keep the first three essays of this series handy for cross-reference.

The Stoa Poikile, the birthplace of Stoicism; although it doesn’t look like much at the moment, excavations have resumed in recent years and are progressing at a good pace. Photo by the Author.

(New) Stoic physics

The ancient Stoics, in my opinion, got a lot right in their science and metaphysics. They were physicalists, meaning that they thought that everything that has causal powers is made of some kind of stuff. They were, of course, wrong about the specifics of such stuff, but the general idea is the same that characterizes the contemporary scientific image of the world. A modern Stoic should simply take on board whatever latest picture emerges from fundamental physics and treat it as the best bet currently available. Until a better bet comes into play.

Intriguingly, the Stoics adopted something that nowadays we call process metaphysics, which they inherited from the Presocratic Heraclitus of Ephesus. Fundamentally, this says that the world is not made of more or less static objects but of constantly fluctuating patterns resulting from ongoing underlying processes. Panta rhei, everything changes. The most daring contemporary philosophy of physics pretty much presents us with the very same picture, as argued in detail by James Ladyman and Don Ross in their Every Thing Must Go.

The Stoics were determinists, meaning that they believed that everything is the result of cause and effect. They were also naturalists: not supernatural stuff, no miracles. Again, exactly right, on both counts. As a consequence of their determinism, the Stoics were compatibilists about free will, thus embracing what is today the most widely accepted philosophical account of human decision making and moral responsibility.

When it came to their psychological theories, the Stoics got quite a bit right, though of course, not everything, and certainly not the details (see above about the location of the ruling faculty!). Their idea that our “impressions” are automatic reactions to sensory data or to internal thoughts, and that we have the capacity to slow down, examine such impressions, and give or deny assent to them, is essentially the basis for modern cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as backed up by research of psychologists like Daniel Kahneman. The latter’s distinction between system I (fast, imprecise) and system II (slow, accurate) ways of thinking would not have surprised Epictetus in the least. The Stoics were even aware of the importance of sub-conscious mental processes, though modern science has shown just how pervasive they really are.

One bad move on their part, I think, was the their denial of akrasia, or weakness of the will, a phenomenon first recognized and described by Aristotle. This means that it is not enough to just know what the right thing to do is in order to actually do it. That said, acknowledging akrasia doesn’t mean denying that emotions are at least partly cognitive and that, consequently, we can “talk” to them and, with practice, align them with reason. Again, this is the basis for CBT, which works very well.

The big thing the Stoics got wrong in their science-metaphysics is the notion of the cosmos as a living organism endowed with reason (the famous logos). There simply is no such thing, according to modern physics and biology, notwithstanding currently fashionable and very annoying speculations about panpsychism. Nothing in modern physics or biology warrants either the conclusion that the universe is akin in any way to a living organism or the idea that consciousness (and therefore the ability to reason) is a fundamental property of the cosmos. That stuff simply has to go, unless and until modern science should embrace such ideas. I am willing to bet a significant portion of my retirement that it won’t.

As we shall see below, rejecting the hypothesis of a living cosmos cum logos does have major consequences on modern Stoic ethics. But first, let’s talk about logic!