Transcript for Critique of Stoicism Lecture

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0. Introduction

In this lecture, I'm going to tell you why I think Stoicism is wrong, why it's counterproductive to try and live as a Stoic, and what better philosophies we can adopt if we find Stoic intuitions appealing. I've spent the better part of last year studying ancient Greek, interviewing the greatest Stoic scholars alive, and reading Stoic texts. But the deeper I dug into the theory, the more dissatisfied I've become. And just to be clear, I'm not a Stoic hater. In fact, at the end of this lecture, I'm going to tell you why I will keep reading Stoic texts despite thinking they got it all comically wrong. In the past year, the Stoics have genuinely become my friends in some very meaningful sense. But sometimes, the best thing we can do for a wayward friend is to set them straight.

So the goal of this lecture is to launch a systematic attack on Stoic philosophy. It's nothing short of declaring war against one of the most powerful, one of the most influential movements in the past 20 years. Frankly, I'm not that concerned. What the hell are the Stoics going to do? Meditate on my death? Journal ferociously? I think I'm good. Now, the real reason that I wanted to make this lecture is to put forth a critique in public discourse that pushes back against the meteoric rise of popular Stoicism. Because I think you've often heard it said, that's just the pop Stoics. Go read the real Stoics. And I'm here to tell you, real Stoicism? No bueno either. In fact, maybe worse than pop Stoicism. Somehow the ideas are even crazier and more unlivable. So what I'm going to do in this lecture is I'm going to first develop a critique of popular Stoicism out of Nietzsche, and then a critique of real Stoicism out of Cicero, before sharing with you guys what I genuinely do find valuable about their philosophy.

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So the goal of this lecture is for you to walk away with not just an understanding of what the Stoics have gotten wrong, but all the valuable parts of their theory that I think they got right, and that we should take away and absorb into our own lives.

1. Pop Stoicism

So I begin with a critique of pop Stoicism, and I quote you Nietzsche:

Stoicism may well be advisable for those with whom fate improvises and who live in violent times and depend on impulsive and changeable people … is our life really so painful and burdensome that it would be advantageous for us to trade it for a fossilized Stoic way of life? Things are not bad enough for us that they have to be bad for us in the Stoic style!

(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science)

Nietzsche's point is that Stoicism is a coping mechanism for people who have been so molested by fate, for people who have completely lost control of the external world. And what the Stoics do is that they go to these people and they say, "Look, none of this matters. You lost friends, you're experiencing pain, you don't have any pleasure, you lost your honor. None of this matters because external goods are indifferent." And Nietzsche's point is that the Stoics, that people latch on to this tenet of Stoic philosophy, not because they've considered it, they've reasoned to it from first principles. Certainly not because it's intuitive, it's highly unintuitive, but because it's psychologically comforting.

And I think that's quite a good diagnosis, if not of real Stoicism, than of pop Stoicism. So in fact, I got into Stoicism myself as my first foray into philosophy in this exact same way. So I dropped out of school, I was building a company, company wasn't doing so well. I was in a new city where I had no friends and family, and I was struggling in my health. And I remember just picking up the first Stoic self-help book, not even finishing it, just reading half of it, and falling completely in love. Not because I reasoned through the philosophy, right? These pop Stoic books don't have the philosophy, but because it was so psychologically comforting to be told, "Rejection can't hurt you, lack of success can't hurt you." And I've had two conversations in the past month alone with friends of mine who came to Stoicism in the exact same way.

But it's not just feeble-minded people like me and my friends, okay, who are so easily seduced. Cicero, as we'll talk about today, was often quite critical and skeptical of Stoic ideas in most of his work. And yet in his book called The Tusculan Disputations, he basically reiterates Stoic doctrines hook, line, and sinker. Okay, what are the Tusculan Disputations about? About coping. Okay, the Tusculan Disputations was Cicero's attempt at self-consolation. After he lost the civil war, Caesar's in charge, his friends are dead or in exile, and on top of all this, his beloved daughter had just died in childbirth. And it was in Cicero's attempt to cope with all of this that he took on the standard Stoic doctrines that he so forcefully dismantles in his other works. This is Nietzsche's point. These are the circumstances, these are the people that Stoicism is made for.

And this is true even for the Stoic greats. So Zeno, the literal founder of Stoicism, wealthy man, wealthy foreigner, he was shipwrecked on his way to Athens. So suddenly overnight he lost everything, he was a foreigner stranded in alien land, and he just had a massive turn of fortune. And it was literally in response to this exact event, this exact tragedy, that he turned towards philosophy from which Stoicism developed.

And this is also true for the great Roman Stoics, like all things Nietzsche, once you see it you can't unsee it. Epictetus was a literal slave. He was born and raised a slave, the guy literally had no freedom. Seneca nominally was Nero's tutor and Nero's advisor, but was de facto Nero's captive. And who was Nero? Let me put this way, Nero killed his own mom, killed his own stepbrother, killed both of his wives, the second one allegedly, countless senators, and almost all of his political rivals. That's the type of person that Seneca was a captive to. And so Seneca is the poster child for exactly, as Nietzsche puts it, someone who depends on impulsive and changeable people.

All right, this is what a Stoic might say in response. "But clearly Marcus Aurelius was not a slave of fortune, right? He was the opposite. He was the emperor of Rome." I don't think that's right. I think it's precisely people on the edges of society that are most exposed to fortune. So Marcus Aurelius was forced against his will to become emperor because the previous emperor or two emperors before Hadrian handpicked him despite his own scholarly inclinations as well as sickly disposition.

And his entire political career was just putting out one fire after the other in the empire. So Marcus Aurelius first had to deal with the Antonine Plague, one of the worst plagues in antiquity, and then a massive barbarian horde had invaded Rome, and just as he was getting all of that under control, his own general rebelled in Egypt, which he had to deal with. And his personal life was not much better. So Marcus Aurelius had 13 kids. Most of them died before they reached adulthood. His surviving heir, Commodus, was an absolute freak show. And likely his wife cucked him. Okay, so Marcus Aurelius the Emperor lived no less turbulent a life than Epictetus the Slave. It's precisely the slave and the emperor. It's the homeless man and the billionaire who are most exposed to the turns of fortune.

Now if these are the people that Stoicism appeals to, then I think we should view the rise of Stoicism today in our society as a symptom that something terrible has gone wrong. And let me give you an idea, a historical idea of what I mean here. In the Roman Republic, when there was relatively quite a bit of freedom, there weren't that many Stoics. Cato the Stoic, the guy who killed himself after the Civil War, was quite an odd man out for being Stoic. But when the empire came around, when people started losing their political freedoms en masse, that's when Stoicism surged as a kind of collective coping mechanism. And therefore, I think we should be equally alarmed that so many people today find this exact tenet of Stoicism appealing.

But let me be clear here, okay, I'm not saying everyone who gets into Stoicism uses as cope. Just agreeing with Nietzsche, I think it's a common psychological phenomenon that people latch on to, even unbeknownst to them. So that's Nietzsche's critique. And I think it works for pop Stoicism, again, if not for real Stoicism.

But now I want to push this critique even more. Stoicism is not just a coping mechanism. It's the most ingenious coping mechanism invented by man. Because right when they tell you all these external goods are complete indifferent, they then give you full license to pursue them by calling them preferred indifferent. So all of those external goods, health, wealth, good looks, noble birth, are again legitimized by Stoic ethics. And what this means is, is that it's very easy to take on Stoic ideas, to call yourself a Stoic, without actually having to change anything radical about your life.