The Essence of Stoicism – Part 1

Stoic ethical philosophy can be seen as an elaborate justification of the possibility of a particular sort of experience. Pierre Hadot makes the point that producing and sustaining this sort of experience seems to be the core deliverable of Stoic ethics.[1] If Hadot is right, and I feel he is, it is aesthetic experience of the world at large which in fact constitutes the wisdom of the Stoic sage. Stoic ethics, with its commitment to divine providence, seems to be aimed at attaining precisely this end. If this is plausible, this means that the Stoic description of virtue as living in agreement with nature and all that it involves is in fact a particular formulation of an existential position/state of being which stands independent of it.

But what is the essence of this existential position so sought after by the Stoics? I would like to explore this question. I do however need more than article to do this in so this will be a series.

To this end let us follow Hadot and turn our attention to considering the figure of the sage and his/her relation to the world.[2] The sage was conceived to be one of the very very few individuals who achieved the ethical ideal and attained perfect wisdom. This wisdom was thought to constitute the existential position occupied by the sage and rendered the sage completely happy where this happiness was immune from the possibility of misfortune. As we shall see the happiness of the sage will be seen to be constituted by the psychological stance he takes toward the world where this psychological stance is justifiable independently of the doctrine of divine providence.

The Experience of the Sage

We shall start by examining the nature of the sage’s experience of the world. The sage’s experience of the world is peculiar to him alone. The sage’s agreement with the will of Zeus, his connectedness to the cosmic totality, unlocks a peculiar experience of the world; it unlocks aesthetic experience of the world. As Hadot[4] points out the fundamental characteristic of the Stoic sage is his fundamentally affirmative demeanour towards the entirety of existence. The sage lives in agreement with nature and this state constitutes his wisdom. In essence, the state of agreement with nature  is a state of detached knowing, or perhaps better a form of contemplativeness, more precisely a practical contemplativeness. To see how the virtue of the Stoic sage, the state of detached knowing, renders the sage’s happiness invulnerable let us expand our understanding of the sage’s ease with all outcomes.

What is clear when we say that the sage is at ease with all outcomes is that the sage does not seek to have things happen other than they do, he is not concerned to make the world conform to his agenda. The sage views everything as willed by Zeus and consequently as a necessary part of the maximally well-ordered and complex life history of the world.[5] It is absolutely imperative that we recognize that this metaphysically grounded ease with all outcomes is constitutive of a higher and more divine perspective. The ease with all outcomes of the sage in fact seems to be constituted by a perspective akin to the perspective of Zeus which is a view of the whole, or a view of the cosmos. We see in the sage a sort of “cosmic consciousness” or “divine perspective”. The sage witnesses events from a cosmic perspective and as I will show it is this that constitutes his ease with all outcomes.

Now, the experience is termed cosmic because of the removal of any restrictions and partiality from the experience. The Stoic sage was to assume an impartial mode of observation in a manner akin to the perspective of Zeus, the impartial but appreciative observer who is at ease with all events.[6] It is this perspective that poetry was thought to aim at expressing. Stephen Mitchell[7] notes in his introduction to the Iliad that poetry must give joy, even when depicting the most desolating of human experience. Such experiences when raised to the level of poetry must be a joy to be savoured, provided one allows oneself to get lost in the words. The joy gained from true poetry, such as the Iliad, is the joy of understanding where everything – from cruelty to reconciliation, from suffering to ecstasy, from the revolting to the sublime – is appreciated for what it is, with the purest attention. Poetry such as the Iliad expresses the divine perspective of Zeus, the ideal observer, who, though deeply concerned, is in a state of pure joy.

I am concerned: so many of them will die.

But now I shall sit here at ease on a ridge of Olympus

where I can watch to my heart’s delight.

[Iliad, 20.20-2]

The ideal observer looks at the world with a deep sense of peace, he is at ease with all outcomes. Not only is he at ease with all outcomes but he also greets all events with a tranquil joy. He recognises the beauty in all he observes, even the most horrendous suffering. This is a perspective in which even the most tragic reality is accepted as it is, with tranquil joy. This is the experience of the sage and it is this that constitutes his ease with all outcomes. The sage experiences all of life in such a manner. The cosmic consciousness of the sage transforms the horrendous into the beautiful.

It seems absolutely clear that this is the experience that was sought after by the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius for example wrote:

If a person has experience and a deeper insight into the processes of the universe, there will be hardly any of these processes that does not appear to him, in at least some of its aspects, as pleasant. And he will look upon the gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than upon the imitations of them that sculptors and painters offer us [Meditations 3, 2].

In another quote we see Marcus Aurelius inciting us to raise the level of our experience towards a greater unity. We see him inciting us to strive towards the experience of the divine perspective where we can attain to the vision of the totality:

Don’t limit yourself to breathing along with the air that surrounds you; from now on, think along with the Thought which embraces all things … you will make a large room at once for yourself by embracing in your thought the whole Universe, and grasping the ever-continuing Time [Meditations, 8, 54; 9, 32].

It is worth noting again that the pursuit of this higher perspective was not only central to Stoicism. We see in other schools the same mode of experience held as an ideal. The Epicurean Lucretius similarly seems to capture the phenomenology of the cosmic consciousness of the sage when he describes how the world would look to one who saw it for the first time.[8] Implicit in this quote is the idea that the ideal mode of experience involves bringing what is usually outside one’s awareness squarely and lucidly into one’s experience:

First of all, the bright, clear colour of the sky, and all it holds within it, the stars that wander here and there, and the moon and the radiance of the sun with its brilliant light; all these, if now they had been seen for the first time by mortals, if, unexpectedly, they were in a moment placed before their eyes, what story could be told more marvellous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe beforehand? Nothing, I believe; so worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining quarters of the sky [On the Nature of Things, 2, 1023-5].

What we see in writings about the sage is that the experience of the sage was thought to be an uncoloured experience of broadened awareness where the world manifests itself to him as it is. This constitutes the elevation to the more divine perspective noted above. It is this experience that constitutes the sage’s ease with all outcomes. It is very important to remember that this ease with all outcomes is to be attained by attaining to wisdom.[9] Wisdom for the Stoics, as with other ancient schools is purely a matter of elevating the soul to a higher and more divine perspective, the existential position which constitutes an ease with all outcomes.[10] Given this relation between the sage’s ease with all outcomes and wisdom we can come to an understanding of the essence of wisdom through distilling the cosmic consciousness of the sage.

There are two parts to the experience of the sage which illustrate the nature of wisdom. The first thing we see in the experience of the sage is that each thing is experienced for what it is and for the relation it bears to the things around it. This is commensurate with an exceptional broadening of one’s attention; the sage takes in the world as whole. There is thus a universality present in the experience of the sage, what would usually be outside one’s awareness is to be brought squarely and lucidly back into one’s awareness.

The disposition of the sage is thus essentially contemplative and when contemplating individual things the thought of the sage spreads out beyond the obvious to include all those aspects of the thing that sit outside of the customary domain of awareness. This can perhaps be described as an expansion in understanding. The sage has an immense understanding of all things and events insofar as he is simultaneously aware of all of the diverse aspects of a given thing or event, many of which will customarily pass us by.

The second essential part to the experience of the sage is the transcendence present in it. We see in the expanded understanding of the sage the absence of any limit to understanding. The sage does not experience things as they relate to any agenda he may have; there is no barrier to understanding in the experience characteristic of the sage – there isn’t anything preventing him from being aware. He has transcended those things that commonly limit our awareness to open up those aspects of the world which usually pass us by.[11] This is very significant. The expanded consciousness/understanding of the sage constitutes a transcendence or a “rising above” of the customary, practical way of looking at things.[12] We see the presence of this transcendence clearly in the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius tells us that we are to:

Look on earthly things below as if from some place above them – herds, armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, the noise of law courts, lonely places… a mixture of everything and an order composed of contraries [Meditations, 7, 48].

This view from above bids us consider the whole of human reality from the perspective of the immeasurable dimensions of the cosmos that dwarf it, not only to see each thing as it is but to see each thing as it exists in relation to everything else. Marcus Aurelius is asking the philosopher to transcend the ordinary way of looking at things which grants central significance of the things of human pursuit and limits one’s awareness.

The philosopher is strive to attain to a more divine and holistic understanding such that he recognizes that the things of human pursuit are trivial. The sage’s experience is cosmic insofar as he has attained to complete transcendence. From this perspective all the indifferents such as health, wealth, fame, etc. are reduced to completely trivial dimensions. They are reduced in dimension to the degree that they are no longer deemed worthy of desire. If the sage is to pursue them it must be from some motive other than desire.[14] We see here why virtue is inconsistent with the desire for external goods.

Wisdom for the Stoics is best understood as this existential standpoint or outlook; the detached perspective of Zeus. This is the perspective of an immensely broadened understanding and a transcendence of the things that limit understanding with the recognition that the things of human pursuit (indifferents) are trivial. We can see here the validity of describing the wisdom of the sage as a knowing detachment, i.e. as a form of contemplativeness. He is detached insofar as he has come to recognize the things of human pursuit as trivial. Wisdom thus described constitutes an ease with all outcomes because things that would otherwise be troubling come to be seen as trivial and not worthy of desire.

The wisdom of the sage reduces human troubles to a more trivial dimension such that they are no longer troubling and as such constitutes an ease with all outcomes and is accompanied by a tranquil joy. The reader should keep in mind that it is this ease with all outcomes (cosmic consciousness) that renders the happiness of the sage invulnerable. This is therefore the grounds for the possibility of the sufficiency thesis. My defence of the sufficiency thesis will therefore be deemed plausible only insofar as the cosmic consciousness of the sage is deemed to be a plausible existential position. The challenge now is to show the plausibility of the cosmic consciousness of the sage.

[1] Hadot (1995:251-252)

[2] Hadot (1995: 251-252)

[3] I am not going to say anything to justify this claim. For a justification of this claim see Hadot (2002) & Hadot (1992)

[4] Hadot (1995 : 251)

[5] Cooper

[6] Hadot (1995: 152)

[7] See Introduction to Homer. Mitchell (2012)

[8] Hadot (1992: 258)                              

[9] Again, wisdom (phronesis) for the Stoics constitutes the entirety of virtue.

[10] Hadot (1995: 244-255) It is worth noting that this perspective seems to be accurately describable as wonder. We will have more to say on the connection between wisdom and wonder at the end of this chapter.

[11] This will be developed more fully in the next installemnt.

[12] Hadot (1995: 254-261)

[14] If the sage is to act then it is not action as we commonly understand it.