Stoicism's Fatal(ism) Flaw

Why I'm a Philosophy Bro but Not a Stoic

I’m kind of a bro and I really like philosophy. Naturally, everyone thinks I lOvE the broiest philosophy out there, Stoicism. But I don’t really know what to think of Stoicism if I’m being honest, I kinda think it has a major problem right at the nexus of some of its core doctrines. [I’m going to be leaning pretty heavily on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Stoicism in this post. It’s really great, but so are all the SEP articles. Check out the Stoicism one here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism]

Stoicism is a big tent today and the name has been absconded with by at least 3 different groups that bastardize the word and the accompanying philosophy—at least according to Dr. Michael Tremblay (a dyed-in-the-wool modern stoic (and great dude!)). According to Tremblay, there’s the gym culture bros (broicism): be tough, hard, lift weights because… Marcus Aurelius! Then there’s the money grubbers ($toicism) who invert the tenets of Stoicism by using them to pursue money as the ultimate good instead of virtue. Then there’s little ‘s’ stoicism which is what most people think of when they use the term, but which doesn’t have a whole ton to do with the philosophy behind it, e.g. “he is very stoic”, meaning he just doesn’t show or have emotions.

Tremblay also lists Academic Stoicism and Modern Stoicism as those which seek to get Stoicism right but which don’t embrace Stoicism as such. Academic Stoicism seeks to understand the philosophy as acurately as possible but these folks don’t actually embrace it as a philosophy of life—it’s merely subject matter, it’s a historical artifact to be studied. Modern Stoicism, on the other hand, grabs the ethics of the Stoics and jettisons the rest of the Stoic philosophy. These are in contrast to ‘Traditional Stoicism’, which Tremblay affirms, and which says, “sure we need to update some of the physics and stuff, but you can’t jettison the Stoic metaphysics and Stoic logic and still keep the ethics.” Check out this Parker’s Pensées episode with Dr. Tremblay here:

So, there are a lot of disparate views on what exactly Stoicism is. But then what is it? Well, it’s an ancient philosophy of life, that is a systematic philosophical world-and-life view. As such, it has something to say about just about everything, including rival world-and-life views like that of the Peripatetic philosophers (who followed Aristotle) and the Academic philosophers (who follow Plato and carried on his Academy).

The Stoics emphasized virtue as the only good. Why? Because only virtue benefits a human being and allows them to live the good life, or so they say. What is virtue? It’s the perfected condition of human reason, of course. While the Peripatetics and Academics viewed virtue as necessary for happiness, they didn’t think it was sufficient for happiness. So no one could be truly happy (a deep ‘eudaimonia’ type of happiness, the happiness which comes from fulfilling one’s telos, human flourishing type ‘happy’) without virtue, but the virtuous could still fail to achieve happiness. The Stoics disagree; for them, virtue is necessary and sufficient for true happiness. If you’re virtuous then you are happy.  

So in distinction to other philosophies, the Stoic argues that human agents have everything they need to be happy within themselves. Sure you may not be able to control things outside of yourself, but you can control how you feel about those things and how you respond to them—external circumstances aren’t an excuse for embracing vice over virtue and the Stoic ought not let said circumstances unduly affect their affections or passions. Thus, the Stoics promote a volitional apatheia, that is, the choice to feel no passions. One’s happiness ought not be determined by things outside of oneself. You can choose to be happy and virtuous regardless of your circumstances.

Part of the reason that the Stoics embrace and teach a volitional apatheia is because of their view of God. They put forth a corporeal god (‘corporeal’ meaning a ‘material thing’). For them, god is nature—not just trees and mother earth or whatever—but God is in a sense the universe, diffused throughout and immanent within it. Yet there is still a divine plan shot through all of nature, the Logos, which directs all of life, but their god is not a personal God like the Logos of the Gospel of John chapter 1. The Stoics Logos is an impersonal force, like a fire or breath, but somehow it guides all things through a divine providence.

[As a brief aside, it’s been argued, convincingly I think, that John wrote his prologue (John 1:1-18) with Stoics in mind. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He (the Logos, is a ‘He’, that is, it’s a person, not an was impersonal ‘it’) was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5). It looks like John picked the word ‘Logos’ here to reach the Stoics of the time and correct their view: “hey, you guys are right that the Logos guides all things and is the light or fire of all men, but the Logos is a ‘he’ not an ‘it’. He entered into human history in the person of Jesus Christ! Come follow him.” And this same word ‘Logos’ translated ‘Word’ in English Bibles, may also have been an evangelistic tool to reach the 2^nd Temple Jews who emphasized the Word of God, dabar in Hebrew, as active and almost personal in its own right based on the efficacy of the Dabar in the Old Testament—God creates by his Word: God said let there be light (Genesis 1), God breathed out the stars (Psalm 33). So all that to say, the Apostle John was a wise evangelist, picking one word, Logos, to reach two very different people groups. But back to the Stoics.]

 It’s unclear to me whether Logos and Fate are one in the same in Stoic philosophy or whether fate is something higher which even the Logos is subject to. But whatever the case, the Stoics were determinists, that is, they believed that the present state of affairs is wholly determined by past events. The Logos, or fate (or both) determines whatever comes to pass. Since that’s the case, you can’t really control things outside of yourself, so you’d be a fool to let those things which are outside of your control hamper your happiness or negatively affect your virtue. Hence apatheia. Control what you can control, your passions, and don’t sweat the rest.

Now just as the Stoics viewed god as being corporeal, so too they proposed a corporeal philosophical anthropology, that is, man is a wholly corporeal, or material (or physical) being. And herein lies the fatal problem for Stoicism. They’re determinists and materialists yet their entire philosophy hinges on doctrines like apatheia, the power of rational ascent, knowledge, and virtue—I don’t think these things can go together. If you’re determined to do what you’re going to do, then it looks like you’re not free. So then how could we freely choose apatheia and virtue over their contraries? How could we rationally deliberate and ascent to true propositions and get the knowledge needed for virtue and happiness?

The Stoics were aware of this apparent contradiction and dealt with it as two separate objections to their view. The first is called the Laziness Problem, and the second is the Moral Responsibility Problem. The Laziness Problem goes like this: if everything is determined by prior events then it doesn’t really matter what I do at all, so I’ll just lay around on my couch and what will be will be anyways.

Stoic philosopher, Chrysippus, responded to the laziness problem by arguing that some events are co-fated together such that you can’t have the one without the other. So you’re sick. You can’t just sit around expecting the doctor to heal you without you causing him to see you and prescribe a treatment for you. So for the Stoics, the outcomes are predetermined, you being sick, seeing a doctor, and being healed, but they wouldn’t happen without the deliberations and choices which brought them about, you recognizing you’re sick, calling the doctor for an appointment, the doctor prescribing your medicine, you taking the medicine and it healing you. Your choices do matter after all, even though they’re likewise determined by antecedent causes.

But what about the moral responsibility problem, that is, how can we hold anyone morally responsible for their actions if they were determined by antecedent causes to do what they do? Chrysippus responds to this problem by arguing that there are different kinds of antecedent causes, some are merely necessary conditions and others are sufficient conditions. He gives a cylinder and cone analogy to flesh out his point. Imagine a big cylinder and a big cone on top of a sledding hill. You push them both down the hill at the same time but the two objects take different paths down the hill. Why? Because of their intrinsic natures, their distinct shapes. The cylinder will roll straight down, whereas the cone may oscillate left and right down the hill, or veer all the way off the side of the hill completely. So, both objects receive the same ‘auxilary and proximate’ cause of a push down a hill, which is sufficient for them to begin rolling down, but their own natures are what determine the manner in which they roll. Bringing it back to the human agent, Chrysippus argues that an agent’s psychological profile is analogous to the shape of the geometric object. Two human agents may receive the same antecedent ‘push’ and yet they will react differently to such a push based on their own psychological profiles. Two people can both be presented with the external stimulus of a delicious birthday cake at the office party, one may eat their piece in moderation and be content while the other eats their piece and then gluttonously seek out more of the cake or becomes envious of others for receiving larger pieces. Thus, while both people received the same stimulus, the same antecedent causes, they respond differently based on their character, desires, reasons, etc. and thus can be held judged differently.

Now I like both of these replies. I am a determinist myself—a theological determinist to be specific. I think God is completely sovereign and His will determines all things. People often ask me why we should pray or try to evangelize people if God is that flavor of sovereign, to which I reply with something similar to Chrysippus’s reply to the laziness problem: God has determined it all, including the prayers I pray, and He’s determined that some of my prayers will be efficacious, whether that means in causing His to act in the world in specific ways, or directly causing things to happen, or in causing my own psychological profile to change in various ways based on the prayers I pray.

And I like Chrysippus’s reply to the moral responsibility problem as well. I think we can be judged to be morally responsible based on our reasons, intentions, and the other things that make up our psychological profiles, even if we don’t have the libertarian free will required to choose other than we did.

So, like the Stoics, I’m a compatibilist about free will and determinism as well as about moral responsibility and determinism. (I’ll post more on how I go about making sense of these in later posts, but for those with ears, I hold something like moderate reasons-responsiveness and I motivate it with an Authorial Analogy for the God-World relation). But unlike the Stoics, I’m a substance dualist, so I think human agents aren’t wholly corporeal beings but have an immaterial aspect to them, namely, their minds. This seems like a crucial move in affirming compatibilist theories that want to make room for agent causation and responding to reasons.

Rational volition, ascent, deliberation, knowledge and all things rationality are all very big for Stoics. But on physicalist determinism(s), I don’t see any room for minds to respond to reasons. Why did agent A choose to ascent to proposition P? On physical determinism, there has to be some story about the antecedent *physical* causes which made A ascent to P. But what do physical causes have to do with rationality and ascent? What we want instead are *rational* causes for our beliefs—reasons that we can point to in explaining why our beliefs are justified.

But it looks like physical causes are at best non-rational causes. Here’s a physical cause for A to come to believe a proposition: A has recently developed a brain lesion which causes A to spontaneously believe the proposition < it is currently raining in New York>. That’s a physical cause of a belief, but that kind of cause is not the right kind of cause if we want to have knowledge. A affirms < it is currently raining in New York > but A is not justified in his belief, even if it happens to be raining in New York when the belief was formed. Why not? Because it wasn’t caused by rational means but by non-rational means, a brain lesion.

For those in the know, this is pretty standard ‘Argument from Reason’ type stuff which goes back through C.S. Lewis, Arthur James Balfour, all the way back to Plato. So, let’s say the argument from Reason is sauce for physical determinist theories—why pick on Stoics in particular? Well as I noted above, I don’t think it’s determinism simplicter that is the problem, but corporeal (materialist (or physicalist)) determinism which faces this problem of having physical causes for beliefs where rational causes or reasons are needed. The Stoics make this kind of corporeal determinism a key element in their philosophy and thus they should be uniquely picked on for it. Other physical determinists often just bite the bullet and drop free will, or moral responsibility, or both. But the Stoics exacerbate the problem by expressly positing a deterministic universe, a corporeal human agent, bidding us to be virtuous, and proposing apatheia as a panacea. But how are we expected to choose to be virtuous if we are wholly physical beings which are wholly determined by physical, non-rational causes? Where can we find space for rational deliberation, logical ascent, and virtuous knowledge on such a picture?

Stoics seem to view the human agent as what Charles Taylor calls the ‘buffered self’, which he says represents the modern view of the self as a closed off, self-contained, self-determinative self, buffered off from the outside world. Taylor puts the buffered self in contrast with what he says is the pre-modern view of the self, which he calls the ‘porous self’. This self is ‘porous’ in that is more open to influence than the modern view. The porous self received its identify and boundaries from its social life. It could be influenced by spirts and even from inanimate sacred objects like relics, talismans, or from proximity to things like a sacred mountain. Taylor says “for the porous self, the source of its most powerful and important emotions are outside the “mind”, or, better put, the very notion that there is a clear boundary, allowing us to define an inner base area, grounded in which we can disengage from everything else, has no sense.”[1] If the porous self is feeling melancholy it’s because melancholy itself has a grip on the self in some sense. I can’t remember if Taylor deals with Stoic philosophy in his analysis or not, but the Stoics are definitely premodern, while their philosophy fits more with his modern view of the self.

I bring up this buffered-porous distinction because I think the Stoics claim a buffered self for their ethics which is able to step back from the circumstances it finds itself in, rationally deliberate, practices apatheia, and choose virtue over vice; while their anthropology and physics entail a porous self whose psychological profile is wholly determined by antecedent physical causes just like all the rest of the physical universe. Based on the tenets of Stoicism, I don’t see how both can be true.

Is the gluttonous employee in the office party scenario to blame for his vicious state of gluttony? How can he be? He’s causally determined by the antecedent events which produced him and his psychological profile—and since he’s wholly physical, there’s no reason to think that his mind or corporeal soul is buffered off enough to escape the physical causal determinism running straight through him.

Now is this an intractable problem for Stoicism? Not necessarily. They can give up physical causal determinism… but then maybe the impetus for their distinctives like apatheia diminishes. Or they can give up wholly physical, corporeal philosophical anthropology, jump in on substance dualism, and truly buffer the self off from physical causal determinism… but then they’re over on my side getting hammered about the interaction problem (how does the immaterial mind interact with the physical body?).

As usual, I don’t think this is the final word on any of this. I love my Stoic friends, but people ask me if I’m a Stoic or why I’m not a Stoic and this is my main reason.

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[1] Charles Taylor, “Western Secularity” in Rethinking Secularism by Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) 41.