Recent popular books are selling Stoicism as a guide to self-mastery, psychological resilience, inner tranquility and happiness. However, the answers the Stoics offered to these questions are, in the end, deeply problematic, and should not be used as a philosophy of life.
What is up to us and what is not
Popular treatments of Stoicism stress the Stoics’ point that some things are “up to us” and other things are not, and it is important to distinguish correctly between these
- Stoicism endorses determinism – the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control
- For a philosophy to be useful as a guide, it must acknowledge that we have some genuine, volitional control over our actions & choices – actions that make a difference to where we end up in life
- Although Stoicism leaves us with no causal power to impact events, there is a difference between what we have influence over and what we do not
The Stoic Approach to Valuing
Your psychological well-being is deeply affected by what you value, and so you need to think carefully about what is truly valuable in life and what is not
- The Stoics hold that you should only value things over which you have control
- This means primarily your judgments and, derivatively, your resulting emotions and moral character
- If you value anything that is not under your control, you’ll cherish things fate may take from you at any moment, and that sets you up for a life of pain and frustration
- Intensely valuing life and the things you love involves the possibility of pain, loss and disappointment
Philosophy and the need to integrate one’s principles
To take seriously and to benefit from advice about what is up to us and what is not, we would need to reject any form of determinism (Stoic or modern) and embrace the fact that we have free will
- This requires thinking carefully about what precisely is within our power to change and what isn’t so that we can formulate our goals and orient our efforts rationally
- Contrary to Stoicism, we live in a universe in which the achievement of genuine happiness is possible, provided we understand what is required to achieve it and we put forth the thought and effort it requires
- And thus life can be, and properly ought to be, an ambitious and unrelenting quest for personal happiness and joy because the pursuit and achievement of these values is what makes life meaningful and worth living
