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Tag Archives: Stoicism

Some thoughts on Stoicism

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Thomas Manton, Uncategorized

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Affections, emotions, Stoicism

I read quite a bit of Stoic philosophy and thus realize that it is far more nuanced than simply detachment and reserve. But detachment and reserve; a purposeful attempt to avoid all trouble is the popular form of the concept. A cheaper and American version is to simply avoid all thoughts of something “negative”; which is a kind of ostrich happiness. I will be happy by simply not knowing. We have even medicalized this, so that feeling bad is a disease (and yes, I know there are severe cases of depression which are quite different than merely feeling sadness, loss, and such).

There is a tacit belief among som Christians, that a stoic dullness to trouble; a complete equanimity to all things is a kind of holiness.  If something bad takes place, I should not care. This is matched by a kind of stoicism to trouble as a sign of mental health.

There is much to be said for not being troubled; but that standard alone is insufficient to respond to all things. Should we be untroubled at injustice? She we be untroubled at death of those whom we love? The examples are easy to multiply.

The fault would not be in sorrow, fear, love, anger, et cetera. The trouble is the whether and when of such affections. The trouble as Christianity would have it is not that one expresses some emotion, but rather the question of whether the affection is based upon a true and right understand.  What we need is not a placid soul. What we need are rightly calibrated affections:

In this psalm you find the man of God under divers passions, sometimes of joy, sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of hope and courage, and sometimes of fear. As there is a time for all things in this world, there are several conditions and duties that we run through, and we have affections planted in us that suit with every condition. Religion doth not nullify, but sanctify our affections. Some have vainly thought affections to be an after-growth of noisome weeds in our nature corrupted; whereas they are wholesome herbs, implanted in us by God at our first creation, of great use to grace when rightly stirred and ordered:

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 8 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1872), 230.

Schopenhauer on Happiness.8 Thinking Makes it So

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Happiness, Philosophy, Uncategorized

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Affections, Arthur Schopenhauer, emotions, Happiness, Schopenhauer, Stoicism

Here, Schopenhauer makes the argument that all happiness or woe takes place not in the environment but in the mind: happiness or sorrow or merely how I feel. Or, as he puts it, is “purely intellectual”; it is a matter of the mind.

Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness. In this respect, purely intellectual occupation, for the mind that is capable of it, will, as a rule, do much more in the way of happiness than any form of practical life, with its constant alternations of success and failure, and all the shocks and torments it produces.

At one level, he makes a correct observation: happiness is not an objection in the environment, like a flower or a star. Happiness is a conclusion about that flower or star. When confronted by a flower, I see it, understand it in some manner and conclude that I am happy.

There is a “natural” movement from a pleasing event or object and a pleased contented experience: in a colloquial manner, the flower “makes” one happy.

He is right that the happiness is not in the flower, but in the person.

For instance, if I have just buried a loved-one and have put flowers on the casket, then the sight of flowers would produce sorrow rather than happiness.

It seems that Schopenhauer counsels a decoupling of the environment from response so that one routinely responds with happiness. Nothing is either good or bad, happy or sad, but thinking makes it so.

Let’s consider this a bit more. There are steps to move from observation of environment to happiness or sorrow. There are the mechanical aspects of observation and recognition.

There is then a evaluative process by which the object becomes meaningful. For instance, the flowers in a garden or the flowers on a grave will each have a different meaning. The meaning takes place in the subject’s intellectual apprehension.

The meaning assigned to the object then produces an emotion: Flowers mean death and loss of someone I loved; I feel sad. The emotion itself is not the result of a conclusion about what emotion I desire; rather the emotion is the result of the meaning I assign to the object and circumstance.

Therefore, I achieve a particular emotion, I do not lean my will upon my emotion. Rather, I must alter my evaluation of the event: I must change the meaning of the event so that the conclusion will be a meaning which produces happiness.

Here are two problems: First, and most importantly for Schopenhauer, what rational basis within the context of his worldview is there for evaluating anything in such a manner as to produce happiness? All of live is accidental, contingent, brief, meaningless. Necessity governs all things; and even my subjective experience of free will is an illusion. (One wonders how I will ever be able to alter my evaluations when they are the result of necessity.)

Second, if ignore the fact that Schopenhauer needs to cheat on his system to even make this argument we have to consider the cost of our reliance upon this process.

We should seek to have increasingly accurate understandings of the world, so that our emotive responses properly follow from experience (and this opens up a great series of issues, which I will bracket for right now). But I take as a self-evident that a goal of one’s understanding of the world should be rational and accurate to the degree possible.

Schopenhauer can provide no basis for why I should hope for a rational or true understanding. Indeed, a rational response would be despair. But since despair is unpleasant and I desire happiness and desiring happiness is itself rational, I should hope for a false understanding of the world. He needs to decouple reason and truth.

And then, we cannot be certain that such a decoupling will itself produce a greater happiness. With the “reasonable” goal of avoiding sorrow we transform the nature of what it is to be human. Our excessive desire to avoid sorrow and pain stunts our development as human beings. There is a depth of joy and love which comes only at excessive cost.

An awakened understanding of loss and the potential of loss and the rarity of joy and love and happiness, causes us to better treasure and better love.

A stoic distance protects us from pain, but at the cost of maturity. Again, we will bracket maturity.

Or take the matter at another level: What do we think of someone who would smile at the death of a child; who would laugh at results of a fire? Would the “happiness” of the one laughing through a cancer ward be a true benefit?

Schopenhauer is correct that happiness or sorrow are the results of “intellectual” exercise; that judgment is in the mind, not in the object. He is implicitly correct that a great deal of sorrow follows from the defects (if you will) in thought. But Schopenhauer can offer no real help in correcting our thought in such a manner to lead to any sort of increase in true (well-grounded) happiness.

The only real thing which he can offer is a Stoic resignation.

At this point, I’d offer some observations of Puritan Thomas Brooks on a Stoic resignation to trouble:

First, There is a stoical silence. The stoics of old thought it altogether below a man that hath reason or understanding either to rejoice in any good, or to mourn for any evil; but this stoical silence is such a sinful insensibleness as is very provoking to a holy God, Isa. 26:10, 11. God will make the most insensible sinner sensible either of his hand here, or of his wrath in hell. It is a heathenish and a horrid sin to be without natural affections, Rom. 1:31. And of this sin Quintus Fabius Maximus seems to be foully guilty, who, when he heard that his mother and wife, whom he dearly loved, were slain by the fall of an house, and that his younger son, a brave, hopeful young man, died at the same time in Umbria, he never changed his countenance, but went on with the affairs of the commonwealth as if no such calamity had befallen him. This carriage of his spoke out more stupidity than patience, Job 36:13.

And so Harpalus was not at all appalled when he saw two of his sons laid ready dressed in a charger, when Astyages had bid him to supper. This was a sottish insensibleness. Certainly if the loss of a child in the house be no more to thee than the loss of a chick in the yard, thy heart is base and sordid, and thou mayest well expect some sore awakening judgment. This age is full of such monsters, who think it below the greatness and magnanimity of their spirits to be moved, affected, or afflicted with any afflictions that befall them. I know none so ripe and ready for hell as these.

Aristotle speaks of fishes, that though they have spears thrust into their sides, yet they awake not. God thrusts many a sharp spear through many a sinner’s heart, and yet he feels nothing, he complains of nothing. These men’s souls will bleed to death. Seneca, Epist. x., reports of Senecio Cornelius, who minded his body more than his soul, and his money more than heaven; when he had all the day long waited on his dying friend, and his friend was dead, he returns to his house, sups merrily, comforts himself quickly, goes to bed cheerfully. His sorrows were ended, and the time of his mourning expired before his deceased friend was interred. Such stupidity is a curse that many a man lies under. But this stoical silence, which is but a sinful sullenness, is not the silence here meant.

 

Housman, When I watch the living meet

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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A Shopshire Lad, A. E. Housman, Death, poem, Poetry, Stoicism

29516065138_7395c7ba17_o
Number XII, A Shopshire Lad

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

Rhyme: The stanzas rhyme A-B/A-B, which is a typical “ballad” form.

Meter: The meter is interesting. Other common ballad structure would be iambic lines of 8-6-8-6 syllables, such as number XVIII

Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave

Or, number II, 8-8-8-8

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough

Each of these forms give a different feel. Number XII uses 7 syllable lines. This forces the first syllable to be accented. The effect is to give the feel a forced march: the step is quite, the pace insistent.

This matches the imagery of the first stanza: There is a march along the street “the moving pageant file”. The poet is watching a parade pass-by: the whole world is marching from this world into the next.

Basic theme: Be mindful of death, because it is coming and will bring all this life to naught.

Perspective: The poet writes in the first person. He realizes himself to be temporarily alive. He thinks of what will happen when he (and everyone else) dies.

Imagery:

Parade:

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street

A lodger:

Where I lodge a little while,

Heat/inside a hot house:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,

Dust/Lodging

Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

The imagery is interesting, because it picks up on the imagery of the parade and heat. The parade could easily be on a dirt street — the poem was published in 1896. The combination of dirt, heat and parade naturally suggest “dust”. Dust alludes to “dust-to-dust”. Here is the selection from the Book of Common Prayer, which Housman would have heard:

Then, while the earth shall be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the Minister shall say,

Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.
Nation:

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;

Passions:
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Love, marriage, sleep, death:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.
Observations:

The heat, passions and pageantry of life, and even more the brevity of it all, are contrasted with the silence and endlessness of death. He makes the observation that while he lives, he must come to the realization that he will die and all this will be nothing, will be silent, will be unknown to the citizens of that “nation”. Even the most profound of relationships, marriage, will have no effect upon one after death.

What does not happen here is the most interesting: Housman draws no conclusion, he merely observes. He has no answer to death.

There is an implicit argument for stoicism:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
[The] Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

If I am feeling passion (hate and lust); remember, these passions will soon become nothing. The effect of such a realization would be to deflate the importance of the present passion. If I am filled with hate, right now, remember this “revenge [will be] forgot.” If I am filled with sexual desire (lust), even that — even if there is a marriage — that will have no effect upon in the very near future.

The poem merely counsels, at most, resignation and detachment from the present loves and hates. In this sounds a stoic theme (such this from book 4 of Aurelius’ Meditations):

It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any one else like them, who have carried out many to be buried, and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

It is very difficult for this resignation to bring one to any action. Yes, it may alleviate at times the pain of some current event: who cares, I’ll soon be dead. But that also has a tendency to drain lovely things of their beauty:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

This offers a freedom from fear of vengeance,

There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

But it also robs us love. It is good to contrast this with Shakespeare’s sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.).

Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor to Himself (Meditations), Book 1 Complete

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Greek, Greek Translation, Marcus Aurelius, Philosophy, Uncategorized

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Greek, Greek Translation, Marcus Aurelius, Philosophy, Stoicism

A translation of book 1 of The Emperor to Himself , a principle source text for the philosophy of Stoicism may be found here: meditations-book-1

Rather than a discussion of how to live, Marcus begins with a discussion of what he has received from others (friends, family and the gods).

Marcus Aurelius Meditations 1.15 (Claudius Maximus)

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Greek Translation, Marcus Aurelius, Philosophy, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Greek, Greek Translation, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, NT Background, Philosophy, Stoicism, Thesis

The previous post in this series (a new translation of the Meditations) may be found here

claudius_maximus_1

15.1:
From Maximus:
Self-control – not to be carried about by anything; to be in good spirits in troubles and illness; to have a well-proportioned character, gentle but reverent; and to not be sullen with the work at hand. [2] To believe that everyone spoke as he thought; that which one might do, he did not do for an evil purpose. He didn’t startle, wasn’t fazed; didn’t shrink back or clinch his teeth. [3] Nor was he angry, or suspicious; he was beneficent, indulgent; he wasn’t easily changed rather than giving the appearance of man being improved. He never appeared to anyone to be haughty, nor did anyone suppose himself to be better than him. Oh, and he was gracious.

Greek Text and Notes:

Continue reading →

Christian Resignation: Samuel Rutherford to Lady Kenmure (Letter 3)

19 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in 1 John, Biblical Counseling, Hope, Romans, Submission

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1 John, 1 John 4, All Things for Good, Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Epictetus, good, Hope, Lady Kenmure, love, Resignation, Romans, Romans 8, Romans 8:28, Rutherford, Rutherford's Letters, Samuel Rutherford, Stoicism, Submission, Wisdom

In July 1628, Samuel Rutherford wrote to Lady Kenmure (who outlive Rutherford, and be one of his longest standing friends. Their last correspondence being 1661, the year of his death) on the occasion of an illness. He writes to her to live with Christian resignation to God’s will. Rutherford well lays out the two strands of Christian resignation. We resign ourselves to God’s will (1) because he loves us and (2) because we love him. It is submission bound up with and flowing from love. It is submission founded upon and flowing through the cross of Christ.

First, we must submit because The Lord acts in love toward us.

The Christian must submit her will to the greater will of Christ. Note how he presents the command. One could baldy state, we must submit to God’s will, because is simply stronger than us; thus, resisting such will would be madness — like trying to resist the sun from rising. Epictetus speaks of this a matter of freedom, the world may be able to compel my body, but it cannot compel my thoughts and affections.

Rutherford stands the resignation on a different ground. Christian submission must be grounded in the greater wisdom and power of God (who can resist him?), and upon our freedom to respond (else, why would he counsel her as to how to respond?) — but (and this is the key difference), upon love: The Lord loves us and acts in wisdom, power and love toward us:

It is then best for us, in the obedience of faith, and in an holy submission, to give that to God which the law of His almighty and just power will have of us. Therefore, Madam, your Lord willeth you, in all states of life, to say, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven:” and herein shall ye have comfort, that He, who seeth perfectly through all your evils, and knoweth the frame and constitution of your nature, and what is most healthful for your soul, holdeth every cup of affliction to your head, with His own gracious hand. Never believe that your tender-hearted Saviour, who knoweth the strength of your stomach, will mix that cup with one drachm-weight of poison. Drink then with the patience of the saints, and the God of patience bless your physic.

Love lies at the very heart of what God is:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:7-12.

The Trinity of God is boudn together in love. The redemption of human beings takes place by means of this Trinitarian love. Redemption does not release us from guilt and leave us alone, rather the love of God is worked out in and through us. We take on the stamp of God’s love. That love is not a love which merely prizes that which pleases us. Rather it is a love which prizes God and flows in action toward those who do not “deserve” that love.

If this is the end sought by God is God’s love working through our hearts and lives, then the trials God sets upon us must be to fit us for such love. Therefore, knowing that God does love us, we know that God does not mix “poison” into our trials but fits them for our stomach.

The Christian must resign herself to trial, for trials come from God who has already demonstrated love by sending the Son. Such a God would not keep from us any “good”. Therefore, the trial must be “good”:

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died-more than that, who was raised-who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:28-39

Second, Christian must submit, must be resigned to trials out of love for Christ.

Christian submit to trials as such lie between us and Christ — much as one submits to travel with eye to come home. Who would ever willing pay to locked in a metal box in a small unpleasant seat suspended thousdands of feet above the ground, all the while in danger of death — and paying a great sum of money for the privileged — were it not that the airplane will land in a place one desires?

Ye have now, Madam, a sickness before you; and also after that a death. Gather then now food for the journey. God give you eyes to see through sickness and death, and to see something beyond death. I doubt not but that, if hell were betwixt you and Christ, as a river which ye behoved to cross ere you could come at Him, but ye would willingly put in your foot, and make through to be at Him, upon hope that He would come in Himself, in the deepest of the river, and lend you His hand. Now, I believe your hell is dried up, and ye have only these two shallow brooks, sickness and death, to pass through; and ye have also a promise that Christ shall do more than meet you, even that He shall come Himself, and go with you foot for foot, yea and bear you in His arms. O then! O then! for the joy that is set before you; for the love of the Man (who is also “God over all, blessed for ever”), that is standing upon the shore to welcome you, run your race with patience. The Lord go with you.

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