Broics and Stoics
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Stoicism is probably the most popular non-religious philosophy in the world It
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has millions of adherence and holds a prime place in contemporary philosophical discourse Broadly speaking
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I like this I enjoy it when people get into philosophy And this channel is after all a pop philosophy channel
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Nonetheless this form of stoicism that has seeped into popular discourse today
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has vital differences with how the ancient stoics presented their philosophy And I think it is important
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to recognize this so that we have a clear idea of our own intellectual history as well as seeing how modern
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stoicism might go wrong I'm going to use the term broicism to refer to popular
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modern stoicism in the broad sense just because it's a very catchy name but I do mean something wider than simply bros
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doing stoicism However I want to kick off on a positive note So let's first
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see the upsides of broicism My name is Joe Folly and this is unsolicited advice
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one in defense of broicism In the midst of all the
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condemnation of broicism as a dumbed down or perverted version of stoicism I
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think it's important to state what it gets right and potentially where the whole notion of getting stoicism right
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becomes a little bit spurious I would argue that there is much about modern broism that many ancient stoics might
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agree with as well as much with which they would take significant issue Firstly it's important to recognize that
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stoicism is not a neat set of propositions in the same way that some modern philosophies are While you can
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say that utilitarians are just people who believe that what is good is what produces the greatest net pleasure you
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can't quite do the same thing for Stoics Ancient schools of philosophy were more often loose networks of associations
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between particular teachers and particular students rather than strictly defined frameworks As a result different
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stoics disagree on even some of the core principles of stoicism And so there is
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considerable difficulty in defining who exactly counts as a true stoic For
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example while almost all ancient stoics thought that stoic virtue was the sole route to happiness and that a true stoic
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could be joyful even under torture this was not universally held The stoic penus
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thought that some baseline material comforts were necessary to be happy Yet he is still uncontroversially considered
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a stoic despite this being more of an Aristotilian notion Likewise while some
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stoics thought that you truly could attain sagehood and really could become
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totally blissful regardless of your physical state others thought this was simply a good ideal to strive for rather
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than an achievable aspiration Early stoic thinkers even disagreed on their picture of the soul with some arguing
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for a one-part model and others a tripartite one These fundamental disagreements are pretty noteworthy and
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it reminds us that any attempt to define true stoicism is always going to be ahistorical It does not reflect the
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actual way stoic thought developed changed and differed over time We also see differences in the emphasis placed
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on different areas of stoic thought by different teachers Whereas Epictitus is very concerned with freedom Mark
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Curelius focuses more on interconnectedness and Senica discusses death more than either of them We also
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know that the first Stoics were heavily influenced by the cynic school of philosophy whereas thinkers of the next
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generation tended to soften these aspects with the idea of preferred indifference issuing the vows of poverty
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that characterize the cynic movement And there are undeniable ways that broism does reflect some genuine aspects of
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stoic thought The idea of taking radical responsibility for your thoughts and behavior does correspond to much of what
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Epictitus said in his discourses Epictitus famously emphasize the divide
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between the internal mind and the external world and said that while we cannot control the latter we could
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control the former This is not unlike some of the ideas put forward by the broics And considering that this is
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perhaps the most important and recognizable component of Epictitus' practical ethics this is not an
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inconsiderate thing Likewise the idea that we should not be ruled by emotion
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definitely does find evidence within stoic texts Though as we will see later the devil is very much in the details
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here To quote Epictitus directly "It would be lovelier still if you could secure happiness free of emotion poised
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and dependent on no one except yourself." Eagle-eyed viewers will note that the fact that happiness is
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conjoined with being free of emotion indicates that the Stoic use of the term emotion is probably going to be slightly
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different from our own But I'm getting ahead of myself Nonetheless many stoics did suggest we should take a more
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detached view of our emotions than many of us will intuitively have today Senica's stoic ideal Kato the Younger
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was his idol precisely because of his ability to bear hardship with equinimity
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and to not be carried away into despair In this sense the Stoics were suspicious
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of emotional excess and the broics are as well although again in very different ways that we will definitely be getting
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into later Also if we try and give the broics a bit more credit we could point to other historical thinkers who have
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selectively drawn from Stoic teachings and then mix them in with other philosophies or their own ideas For
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example the ancient Roman writer and politician Cicero who comprises some of our earliest accounts of Stoic thought
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was not himself a Stoic He regarded Stoic physics and stoic logic with quite a lot of suspicion But he had
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considerably more sympathy for the practical side of Stoic ethics And this did influence the development of his own
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philosophy Picking and choosing which stoic ideas to take on board and which to disregard is not that unusual and it
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is how many thinkers throughout history have used stoic philosophy We can see this picking and choosing approach to
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stoicism in nature deontia botheus and a hell of a lot more Using your critical
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reasoning to arbitrate between aspects of a system that you want to adopt and which you want to leave behind is
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arguably a huge part of philosophy and specifically philosophical engagement with ideas If we never critically
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analyze the ideas that we heard and ascertained which ones held water and which we wanted to disregard then we
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would not be doing philosophy but becoming disciples My issues with broicism is not necessarily just that it
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picks and chooses different aspects of stoic thoughts but that it often presents itself as specifically a
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continuation of ancient stoicism And I think that is unfounded As we will see I
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think that broism leaves out some of the most interesting and fruitful aspects of stoicism in the process of its
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construction Lastly it is perhaps unsurprising that any public or popular
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face of modern stoicism would not remain true to its ancient counterpart After all there were differences in the way
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that helenic stoics and Roman stoics approached the philosophy with Greek thinkers in general placing more
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emphasis on stoic logic and grammar and Roman thinkers generally trending towards duty and incorporating stoic
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thought into a broader picture of Romanness It's not necessarily shocking that stoicism would adapt itself to the
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wider culture it interacts with as almost any philosophy or set of ideas does Italian romanticism for instance
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looks rather different from French or German romanticism even though they share some core themes Like any
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philosophy we can critique the way that modern stoicism operates But we shouldn't pretend that this is not a
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perfectly normal way that ideas change and find roots in different cultures The fact that modern stoicism and broicism
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is to my eyes excessively concerned with the individual over others and with external success over enacted virtue is
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partly an artifact of how we culturally and generally are more concerned with
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individuality and materialism Broicism is not just an outcrop of stoicism but
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an outcrop of our wider contemporary contexts and its flaws are not unique to it but more often than not are reflected
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in our wider attitudes and approaches to life Put a pin in this point as I will definitely be coming back to it at the
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end of the video But with all of that out of the way let's discuss what broism
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might be missing Because in some ways broism just skims over some of the most
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important foundations of Stoic philosophy And I think that's definitely worth exploring But before moving on I
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or a website Anyway back to the video Two the wide web of stoic thought One
The Wide Web of Stoicism
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major thing that I notice in almost all popular contemporary presentations of
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stoicism is that it is seen as a means to some other end A stoic attitude is
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presented as the path to external success in its various guises be they
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romance money or status It is not uncommon to find stoicism sold as the
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way to be impressive Classic pictures of stoicism like being calm collected and
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self-disciplined are instrumentalized to achieve worldly accomplishments There's nothing inherently wrong with that If
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you want to become more disciplined so you can achieve some external goal then more power to you as far as I'm
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concerned It's just that this is a totally different order of priorities than the one advanced by the Stoics
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Apart from a few exceptions like the aforementioned Penatius the Stoics held that virtue was in itself sufficient for
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udeimmonia or human flourishing That is they thought that a sufficiently virtuous person would find happiness
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even in the most dire of situations Virtue was thus not considered a means to an end but an end in itself The four
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cardinal stoic virtues courage wisdom temperance and justice were considered
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intrinsically good External success on the other hand is considered a preferred
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indifferent and not properly good or bad in and of itself Stoics are only meant to desire them in as much as they are
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means to the end of becoming more virtuous This is in some ways the most
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distinctive part of stoic ethics as compared with its contemporaries While the Epicurans aimed at pleasure as the
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highest good and the parapotetics which I almost always mispronounce thought that udeimmonia had external and
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internal components the Stoics held that virtue itself was their end goal
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Although ancient Stoics were fans of improving their lives in the sense of making themselves more sage-like they
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also thought that stoicism was capital G good They thought it was the most ethical way to live In some ways the
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fact that it benefited their experience of the world from a firstperson perspective was just a very pleasant
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side effect Stoic ethics is heavily based on the stoic view of reality itself To start roughly from the
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beginning and to oversimplify things considerably the Stoics held that the world is composed of two principles The
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active principle which comprised reason structure and divine fire and matter
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which was acted upon and structured by this reason reason including the famous logos was thought to govern the cosmos
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and as a result truly everything did happen for a reason This is what underpins the stoic notion of
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indifference towards external events Those events were by definition in line
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with universal reason and thus providence and fate They hold that we too have access to this reason through
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our reasonable and rational faculties and as a result we can internally align
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ourselves with providence or alternatively we can try to rebel against it The stoics just thought that we would do best to align ourselves with
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it and thus align our internal reason with the external reason of the universe An analogy from the stoic thinker Creus
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can be helpful here He compares the effect of events on us to a cylinder being pushed down a hill How the
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cylinder falls will partly be a result of the effect of the push but also the shape and the internal constitution of
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the cylinder Allying ourselves with the universe or following nature as it's sometimes put would mean ensuring that
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we fall most in line with our reason which is that little divine spark of
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logos inside each of us This is why the Stoics praise reason over the passions
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They consider reason to be divine logic and it's the faculty that allows us to align ourselves with the universe and
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they consider stoic virtues to be downstream of this reason In a sense stoicism is a pantheist doctrine They
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conceive of the universe as a thinking morally legislating thing that shares our own rational nature And both what is
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good and what is conducive to human flourishing is what aligns with this universal nature The closest comparison
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with a modern philosophy would be acting in accordance with God's will on many religions But whereas the classic
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monotheistic god is an agent the stoic logos is often more vaguely defined with some considering it more agential and
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characterful and some seemingly conceiving of it as an impersonal force This forms a key difference between the
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stoics and the broics because this is an intensely teological picture and traditional stoic arguments have this
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teology working in the background Now of course most non-religious people today do not subscribe to a teological
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worldview and so they would need to reconstruct stoicism in non-teological terms There have been quite a few modern
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attempts at this most notably Lawrence Becker's a new stoicism However his recasting of Stoic ethics in terms of
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practical normative reasoning is highly sophisticated It takes up hundreds of pages and even then I personally doubt
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that it recaptures the uncompromising ethical normativity of ancient stoicism But anyway I'm getting distracted My
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broader point is this Stoic ethics is embedded in a broader structure comprising ontology logic epistemology
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and more And when divorced from this framework it can quickly cease to resemble stoicism at all When it's
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repurposed to ends that are antithetical to stoicism it is doubtful whether the label stoicism is appropriate It would
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be like a would-be Christian saying "I don't go in for all of that God stuff but I quite like the parable of the good
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Samaritan." This person is not a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word They are an atheist who likes
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aspects of Christian thought In some ways broism is quite similar to this
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Broics often talk about particular stoic teachings like withholding judgment from events and attempting to be courageous
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but they tend to ignore the philosophical underpinning behind this The practices of stoicism were serving
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an overall goal of cultivating virtue in line with the universal logos Whereas
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modern broism tends to repurpose these practices for their own ends which are largely to do with worldly success It's
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pretty difficult to find academic sources on broism So I'm just going off what I've personally watched for this
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video but the main goals of broics tend to be business success or monetary success becoming attractive and
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achieving social gains They may be using Stoic methods but these are not stoic purposes Again I'm not saying that there
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is anything inherently wrong with desiring any of these things but this is not an incidental disagreement with
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Stoicism It is a central one A key part of stoic philosophy was specifically
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devaluing this sort of materialist success In early stoicism this was even more stark with some more cynicleaning
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stoics like Aristo suggesting that we should follow Dioynes of syninnop and spurn material wealth entirely Even
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though later stoic thinkers like Senica sometimes became successful they were still clear that this was not good or
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bad in and of itself and that a stoic should be able to live without material luxury if need be Senica used to undergo
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periods of voluntary poverty to show that his peace of mind was not in any way dependent on these external things
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Epictitus compares the rich man who is emotionally reliant on his riches to a slave suggesting that just as the slave
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is owned by their master the rich man is owned by his possessions And Epictitus
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would know having himself been a slave for many many years For such thinkers
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stoicism was never the tool by which material success is achieved But any material success should be used to
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facilitate one's development as a stoic Broicism treats stoicism as an arrow and
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external success as the target The ancient stoics did precisely the opposite of this And this is part of a
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wider theme Modern broism often separates certain aspects of stoic philosophy from its overall structure
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Whereas the ancient stoics conceived of it largely as an inseparable whole For example stoic ethics came with a strict
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system of logic and epistemology that would help the stoic see the world as it actually existed Stoic epistemology
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taught that reality made impressions on us through our senses and that we could use our reason to agree with or reject
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these impressions The Stoics recommended that we scrutinize our impressions brutally to see if they promoted
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justified beliefs or if they were deceiving us in some way Early Stoics and many later ones thought that to be
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virtuous just was to know certain things and to think about the world in a certain way For them if we truly knew in
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the deepest possible sense that the world was ordered according to divine providence and that we were totally
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responsible for our rational faculties and the virtue was all that mattered then we would achieve the tranquility of
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the sage It's just that in practice basically no one ever reaches this level of full enacted knowledge Remember this
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picture as we'll be coming back to it in the next section when we deal with the stoic and broic treatments of emotion
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Furthermore there is a pretty stark emphasis on the individual as an isolated agent in broicism that
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contrasts pretty heavily with many ancient stoic writings While it's true that the Stoics thought that you can
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only control your own feelings and your own mind and that the external world itself was beyond your reach that does
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not mean that you should never act to affect the external world in certain ways Likewise simply because the Stoics
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held that we are all responsible for our own emotions and our own reactions does not mean that we can relinquish all of
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our care for other people declaring that it's just their problem if they're upset As pointed out by Jack Vishnik in his
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analysis of Stoic duty stoicism held that we all had extensive obligations
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towards one another and that there were appropriate and highly inappropriate ways that we can behave with other
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people The grounding for this is the divine reason inside all of us And just
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as we recognize that it is valuable within ourselves so too it is valuable within other people Thus especially
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according to the founder of stoicism Zeno we actually owe one another quite a
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lot This is pretty at odds with the focus on specifically individual achievement that's often found in
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broicism Eagle-eyed or batared viewers might notice the similarity between this
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type of reasoning and the Canian Foundation for Ethics 2,000 years later And Jack Vishik does talk about that as
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well Similarly an ofted feature of Stoicism in the modern day especially
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early stoicism is cosmopolitanism or the belief in a world community This was a
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key part of Zeno's thinking that he inherited from cynicism and it is an explicitly anti-individualistic stoic
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precept The stoic conception of ethics is to become personally virtuous But
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developing this virtue is totally inseparable from our duties to other people Virtue personal happiness and
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your obligations to others are all threads in the same knot By attempting to extricate personal happiness from the
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mix and by making virtue subordinate to external success broicism unravels this
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knot Again in itself this isn't necessarily bad It just doesn't much
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resemble ancient stoicism It is something quite different and I will leave it up to you to decide if it is
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better or worse or what its strengths and weaknesses are And now I want to
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hone in on an aspect of broicism that has come under quite significant fire
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Its approach to the messy world of human emotion If you want to help me make more
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videos like this then please consider signing up to my Patreon for occasional exclusive content including most
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recently my full interview with Alex O' Conor Three stoicism and emotion The
Stoicism and Emotion
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modern image that we have of a stoic is less tranquil and more emotionless They
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are the kind of people you might want to have around in a crisis and yet they also do not allow themselves to feel
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This is echoed in a lot of modern rhetoric around broism where feeling itself is sometimes demonized as bad As
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I said at the beginning there are shadows of this attitude in ancient stoicism as well but their approach to
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emotion is much more nuanced than we often give it credit for And it once again ties back into their wider picture
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of the world Stoics considered feelings to be particular kinds of impressions And in line with the previous section
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they thus held that feelings came upon us involuntarily in much the same way that when I look at my desk I can't
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simply opt out of perceiving it However these initial reactions were not
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generally what stoic thinkers meant when they said emotion or the everfeared passions They are more like
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protoeotional impulses that are then turned over to the rational faculty in order to be asented to or rejected If
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they are asented to then they do become fully developed emotions and if they are not then they are gently dispensed with
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For example imagine that I am walking along one day and I trip and graze my leg A proposition is immediately forced
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upon me Namely I have grazed my leg and that is bad That automatic evaluation of
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and that is bad is what stoics mean when they talk about this involuntary protohealing Next the thought is turned
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over to my rational faculty and I can judge it A classic stoic style judgment would be to say something like to graze
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my leg is not necessarily bad It does not make me less virtuous nor is it out of line with divine reason Moreover I
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can't go back and ungraze my leg It's out of my control So it's best to not judge it as bad and move on with my life
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I thus use my reason to reject the characterization of my grazed leg as bad and the distress is somewhat alleviated
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The first thing to note here is that the stoic response partly relies on their broader metaphysical picture of the
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universe not just on the idea that I should not react to pain And secondly the Stoic does not say to repress the
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feeling but to address it directly and learn to understand it It involves challenging our automatic reaction to
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situations rather than simply assuming that all emotional reactions are inherently awful As pointed out by
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Margaret Graver in her book on stoic conceptions of emotion Stoic philosophers did not tend to say that
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all emotional reactions are bad Instead like everything else they judged them on
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whether they were in line with reason or not Reasonable emotional reactions included joy at virtue and goodwill
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towards others but also appropriate types of pain For example just as stoic
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thinkers held that it was right to be happy at virtue they held it was also right to be disturbed by vice Epictitus
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uses the term idos to mean the guilt that someone feels at having done wrong or desiring to do wrong This is an
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unpleasant emotion but Epictitus also thought it was an appropriate one if people were to become more virtuous I
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think the confusion comes about because the figure of the stoic sage is not meant to feel these negative emotions
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But this is not because they are repressed but because the sage is supposed to have extinguished all vice
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within themselves and so no longer has anything that would rightly distress them Stoics also don't deny that people
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can feel sad or upset at external circumstances They just think that in
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theory these could be overcome with a sufficiently virtuous character and a completely internalized knowledge of the
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world Again their point is not that we should never feel things but they want us to approach those feelings with a
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critical eye grounded in stoic ethics and stoic metaphysics We can see again
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how unmoring stoicism from its broader philosophical context can turn a nuanced
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treatment of emotion feeling judgment and reason into a simple denigration of
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emotion regardless of circumstances Additionally the stoic consideration of emotion doesn't come from nowhere It's
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part of their wider framework where virtue is the sole and only good and the route to udeimmonia It's not that
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unpleasant emotions are inherently or intrinsically bad but that they don't think there is much to get upset about
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apart from vice and that there's not much to rejoice about besides virtue And they thought that attaining peace
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involved recognizing this philosophical viewpoint as true This was again a point
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of disagreement they found with the Epicurans and the followers of Aristotle's philosophy This marks
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another difference between many popular bros and classic stoicism Broicism often
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presents itself as simply not caring or not giving a but what Stoics actually
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argued for was caring about particular things and not caring about other
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particular things They cared incredibly deeply about virtue and vice but thought
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that the rest of reality was of far lesser concern and that a true stoic sage would not be affected by this
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external reality But importantly Stoics were extremely invested in issues of
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virtue and vice since they considered virtue the sole good worth striving for Once we realize this we find that
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stoicism is not uncaring but consciously caring and caring about those things
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clear thinking wisdom moderation and self-nowledge that they think
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incorporate the whole of human experience rather than merely to sacrifice the affects at the altar of
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cold rationality Because for most stoics reason was anything but cold It was
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intimately concerned with the inner workings of our feelings and tirelessly striving to bring out the spark of
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virtue and logos that lay within every human being While the Stoics did decry
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the passions they often use this term to mean out of control excessive or
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untempered emotions They explicitly considered our initial proto feelings as
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something to be unashamed of and asked how we could guide those impulses in the
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direction of wisdom Again this more caring tender side of stoicism often
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comes out in their idols A key figure that almost all stoics looked up to was
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Socrates and specifically the way that Socrates dealt with his imminent death When Socrates's friends were mourning
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his incoming demise Socrates did not admonish them harshly but turned to them
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with a smile and gently explained why he was not afraid of death and why they
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should not be either Socrates's approach to his friend's emotional distress was
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not to judge them or tell them to get a grip or grab them by the shoulders and shake them but rather to argue that
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their fear of death stemmed from a false worldview and that as soon as the correct one was learned and internalized
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their distress would lessen Although Socrates believed in the immortal soul and the Stoics were materialists the
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general process is still instructive The idea is not to condemn emotions themselves but to realize when they
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reflect a false philosophy and to ease them with wisdom rather than with curses
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or insults The Stoics did think that we should not be carried away by emotions
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and this has led many to consider them repressive But it's not like we endorse
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people's unfettered emotional outbursts today When someone loses their temper we do tend to criticize them for it and
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view it as a failing in character In some ways the Stoic view is far more compassionate and patient than our own
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since they would view the angry person as suffering from a flawed view of reality and then aim to introduce them
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to a different path To suggest that the Stoic way of dividing emotions and emotionally charged behavior into
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appropriate and inappropriate camps is somehow radically more emotionally restrictive than our own views is just
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to blind ourselves to the moral categories and ethical judgments we use when we evaluate emotions It's just that
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we don't tend to notice our own divisions since we are highly accustomed to them Nonetheless much of this stoic
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patience with feeling and emotion and the acknowledgement that achieving equinimity and tranquility is a long
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process of learning cultivation and effort gets lost in popular
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presentations Instead we are often left with the simple idea that emotions or
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passions should not control us This is not wrong but it's a bit like boiling down Titanic to a film about a big boat
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or Pride and Prejudice to just people going to one another's houses and talking By viewing things in this way
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you miss out on much of what's on offer and caricature the subject matter in the process But despite all of these
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critiques I do think that we should be careful about condemning or mocking broism wholesale Because as I said at
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the beginning of the video the way that broism simplifies stoicism down into something that's not quite recognizable
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as the original thing is hardly unique And there is a danger that we put people
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off studying philosophy entirely with our reactions Four snobbery learning and
Snobbery, Learning, and Popularization
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popularization It is pretty well known that as a set of beliefs or ideas becomes more popular they will
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inevitably get watered down This framework was first introduced by Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge and has
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found considerable academic support in the field of religious studies Religious movements that start off as strict sets
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with rigidly followed practices must make certain alterations to accommodate new adherence and just adapt to being a
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larger group of people To draw from Pope Benedict the 16th's essays on charity and biblical history the first 12
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apostles held everything even material possessions in common But this couldn't
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be maintained if Christianity was to become a global phenomenon You can even
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argue that stoicism itself went through this process Whereas Zeno Aristo and a
32:12
few other early stoics maintained strict aesthetic practices this became less and less popular as time went on and
32:19
especially as stoicism migrated to Rome As it stands stoicism is maybe the most
32:25
popular philosophy in the world that's not a major world religion And that's going to come with a certain break from
32:32
Stoic tradition and a certain watering down of its core precepts Additionally
32:37
when we consider the audience of popular stoic or broic authors today they are not necessarily people with prior
32:44
interest in philosophy but people with practical problems This is again not out
32:50
of line with ancient stoicism Large sections of Epictitus' discourses
32:55
concern people who've come to him with everyday issues hoping that a stoic worldview would be able to help them In
33:02
these conversations Epictitus did often lead with the more practical parts of Stoicism leaving the ontology or logic
33:10
or more abstract areas to more in-depth students To begin teaching stoicism with
33:15
how it can improve your life is by no means a bad idea And outside of an academic setting I don't think that
33:22
introducing stoicism as a complex web of ideas involving metaphysics epistemology
33:28
logic ethics and teology would be particularly appealing As someone who
33:34
really loves philosophy and chooses to spend most of my time reading learning
33:39
and writing about it I'm also quite wary of a kind of academic snobbery that can
33:45
arise about these subjects Just because I am interested in the different ways you can translate the word Cathacon in
33:51
Stoic texts and whether or not the Stoic conception of duty influence later deontological thinkers or the similarity
33:58
between stoic logical systems and 19th century propositional calculus does not mean that someone more interested in the
34:04
broader strokes of stoic ideas is doing something wrong I don't think it's very helpful for online philosophy to turn
34:12
into flurries of accusations of not being a true fan of various different thinkers or philosophical schools I'm
34:19
reminded of something that a very senior member of my faculty at university once
34:24
told a slightly intellectually arrogant student and I can remember it almost
34:29
word for word This is what he said Listen there is always more to learn
34:34
about something and almost always someone who knows a lot more than you about any given topic Whenever you catch
34:41
yourself sneering at someone who knows less than you remember all of the people that know more than you And this should
34:48
red address the balance Personally I think that many of us would do well to
34:53
bear this idea in mind On any given topic we are along a continuum of
34:58
knowledge And on almost every subject we are not going to be near the top of that
35:04
continuum My knowledge of stoicism is basically nothing compared to someone like John Cers I can't read ancient
35:12
Greek or Latin and I'm largely relying on translations and the work of people who know far far more than me about the
35:20
subject I also think that much of the focus on individual and external success
35:25
in broism is just because of how much we value those things in wider society It's
35:31
unsurprising that a whole host of philosophical movements be they Buddhist
35:36
stoic existentialist or nitian are now tuned towards these aims in popular
35:42
discourse It's sort of the same effect that the prosperity gospel has had on areas of contemporary Christianity In
35:49
the haze of critique leveled at Bricks we can forget that their misinterpretations of Stoic thought are
35:56
largely reflections of what we collectively speaking have told people to value and to measure themselves
36:03
against And broism can be a very good potential foot in the door both for
36:08
stoic philosophy and for philosophy more generally I know a good few people who began their study into stoicism with the
36:15
more broic tinged forums online and who now do see virtue as the ultimate aim of
36:21
all of their endeavors and do think carefully about what their stoic duties might be towards other people I even
36:28
know a couple of people for whom broism was the start of their whole love affair with philosophy more generally and who
36:34
now largely focus on entirely different areas of the subject So I would suggest
36:40
that in approaching broism there are a few key things to bear in mind The first
36:45
is just to recognize how different it is to classical ancient stoicism and that
36:50
perhaps the most significant of these differences is the order of priorities between virtue and external ends with
36:57
broics tending to view virtue as a means to an end and Stoics viewing it as an end in itself The second is to consider
37:04
the stoic emphasis on understanding emotional states rather than simply dismissing them And the third is to
37:11
remember that while being a stoic is an individual project stoicism itself is
37:17
not just a self-directed philosophy and also includes duties and obligations towards others and that it conceives of
37:24
other people as valuable shards of the divine logos that it holds in such high
37:30
regard Because if thinkers like Epictitus Marcus Aurelius Zeno Senica
37:36
Crescipus and more truly are correct then this will not only allow Broicism
37:42
to become more similar to its ancient counterparts but will also further the aim of becoming tranquil equinimous
37:50
peaceful and kind in a world of chaos confusion and disorientation And I want
37:57
to leave you with one final observation If you peruse the pages of Marcus
38:03
Aurelius's meditations you'll notice he devotes basically the entire first
38:08
chapter not to his own accomplishments but to other people's He takes the time
38:14
to thank each significant figure in his life who has aided him on his path to
38:20
virtue And he ends it by recognizing the interconnectedness of the world and the
38:27
patience gentleness and forgiveness that he owes to others How much less he would
38:34
be remembered if he had opened by boasting of his own individual
38:39
achievement instead But if you want to explore more ideas about popular
38:44
discourse and philosophy then check out my latest video on the importance of narrative and story for making sense of
38:52
the world I hope you enjoyed this video and have a wonderful day
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