Stoicism and Existentialism, a conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J1TkyajLcU
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5 minute introduction to Stoicism by Massimo Pigliucci
https://youtu.be/0J1TkyajLcU?t=3m52s
So I'll get it started with Stoicism, and so Stoicism has a couple of fundamental ideas, one is that the meaning of a meaningful life, a life worth living is a life of practicing virtue. And this is virtue in the ancient Greek Roman sense of the term, there are four fundamental virtues, these are:
- Practical wisdom, which is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best possible way.
- Courage, which is not just physical courage it doesn't have to do with taekwondo or kickboxing, but it has to do with moral courage, the courage to stand up for situations and for people.
- Then temperance, the ability to exercise self-control, not to go into excesses of sorts.
- And then finally justice which is understood as treating other people with fairness, the way in which you would like to be treated.
And in fact your life will be even more worth living than the life of let's say very healthy and very wealthy person who however does wicked things, who doesn't practice virtue, takes advantage of other people and so on and so forth.
So that's one of the fundamental tenets of Stoicism, the other one is the so called economy of control. This was best articulated by Epictetus, one of the late Roman Stoics, but its present from the beginning of the philosophy, from all the way back to Zino, who was the founder of the philosophy in about 2000BCE. And the economy of control basically said that wisdom and in sort of a serene life come out of understanding and internalizing that certain things are under your control and other things are not under your control and that you should focus on where your agency can actually be effective, that is under things that under your control. So all external happenings are not under your control, you can influence them, some of them are obviously not in your control, like the weather, there's nothing I can do about the weather, but other things like you know to succeed in my job, for instance, my profession, that's technically not under my control, according to the stoics because it’s not entirely under my control. I can influence it, I can work hard, I can build a good resume or whatever it is, but I may still not feel, not get the job or it may still not get a promotion or something like that, the things that I knew my control are essentially my values my decisions and my behaviours might my judgments about things.
So what that means is that a Stoic tries to go through life by internalizing his or her goals, so my goal is not going to be to get a promotion, because that's outside of my control, but its rather going to be to do the best job that I can, in order to put my force in myself for it in the best possible way to be competitive for a promotion, whether I get it or not is not up to me, but I am happy because I've done the best that I could.
Or in the case of a relationship you know, my goal cannot be to be loved by my partner, my goal has to be, to be a lovable person, because that’s the thing that is really under my control, whether it turns out that in fact, that particular other person is going to love me or not, that is not up to me and so on and so forth.
So there's a lot more obviously to admit and probably some of it will come out during the discussion, but I think that the focus on virtue and the internalization of the economy of control are really the defining points of Stoicism.
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5 minute introduction to Existentialism by Sky Cleary
https://youtu.be/0J1TkyajLcU?t=8m38s
Sure and so existentialism is a lot less systematic than that and it's much harder to define because it's not an official school, more like stoicism is, but it's more of a descriptive term for a group of philosophers who talked about similar themes; of freedom, choice, responsibility, anxiety and authenticity. So they were reacting to the Enlightenment, when everything was about objectivity and scientific facts. And they said well what about the passionate, subjective experience? What about like concrete living? Rather than just abstract armchair theorizing.
So existentialism became particularly popular during World War two, because it acknowledged that human existence is horrifying and it's absurd. And they emphasized personal choice, so some of the key themes are that; we're thrown into the world, you know we don't choose how or where we arrive, but once we're here we need to choose how to live. Also one of the most famous maxims of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, so we exist first and then we're free to define who we are through the choices we make, so we're nothing to begin with, but we are what we make of ourselves, so for the existentialists, every action is a choice, we always have choices and as such, Sartre says “there's no exit from our freedom, we’re condemned to be free.”
And so for the existentialists we’re responsible for who we are, however Simone de Beauvoir for example, also emphasized that situations put limitations on our freedom, for example; poverty, ignorance and oppression limit those kinds of choices that we can make, so we have a responsibility to choose our lives, but also to strive for authenticity, which is about choosing what we think is genuine and right for ourselves. It means that yes certainly we can admit external influences, that as long as we know that, recognize that it's our choice and our responsibility in the end.
And we can deny that we have choices, but that's what the existentialist would have called bad faith, and so, but also the existentialists suggested that it can be really scary to realize that we can't blame everything on biology or circumstance and so that's why the existentialist say that we are plagued with anxiety.
So one of the key questions is that if we're free as Dostoyevsky put it, if god is dead is everything permitted? Well the existentialists would say no, but that's where existentialism starts. You know there's nothing to depend on, we arrived in the world, we don't have a guidebook, life is ours to make sense of and it's up to us to choose its value.
But its an, existentialism is often portrayed as a very individualistic philosophy, but they also acknowledge that we are born into webs of relationships, if we value freedom for ourselves then we value it for other people too. And they acknowledge that when we make a choice, we're affirming that it's a valuable thing to do, so we think it would be good if everyone did as we did, so if you marry, you're affirming the value of marriage, or the value of the institution of marriage and through our choices we create the kind of world that we want to live in.
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So in Full: Massimo, Sky and Kauffman
(Excuse the automatic transcription errors, mostly just separated paragraphs at this point with little punctuation, but faster to read than watch and source)
Stoicism and Existentialism, a conversation
- Introducing the speakers
- Introducing the conversation
- Introducing the philosophies
- Differences and Simmilarities
- Systematic Philosophies
- Role scripts
- Free choice / Control
- Psychotherapy
- Meaning / Suicide
- Philosophy as a way of living
- Passion / Love
- Friendship
- Engagement with justice
- Summary / Mixed
_______________ Introducing the speakers ___________________
Welcome Massimo and Sky,
Hello there and welcome to the Sofia audience, I'm Daniel Kauffman, your disembodied host, we're gonna do something a little different today, we're going to have Massimo speaking with Sky Cleary.
Massimo requires no introduction, but we will give him one anyway, he is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College in the City University of New York, and his book; ‘How to be a Stoic’ will soon be coming out, will be available on May 9th from Basic Books.
I am happy also very much to introduce Sky Cleary, her recent book from 2015, Existentialism and Romantic Love, came out on McMillan Press and I understand you just said that it just came out in paperback?
Yes just last week
So if you like Sartre, and love and sex, you should buy this, or any of those three. Sky you have a very interesting background, you have both the PhD and an MBA, what's that all about? Was that sort of regret? Or poverty? or did it go in the other order or what?
No well the NBA came first, so my background in finance and management consulting and I worked for a hedge fund for a few years and…
So it is regret right?
Then I became enlightened, yeah, and then during my MBA I studied some philosophy, you know they had courses where I do my MBA, in Australia like existentialism and entrepreneurship and foundations of management thought which is very much a philosophy subject in managerial psychology, so I kind of got hooked on philosophy then and you know got into management consulting after my MBA, but then just kept being plagued by these questions and one of my professors encouraged me to do a PhD and so here I am.
Right mmm it’s very…
Sky teaches both at the City of Columbia and at the to the University of New York and she's the managing editor for the American Philosophical Association blog and interestingly enough she also served in the Australian Army Reserves which I probably would love to talk to you about in a whole other dialogue, and has a black belt in Taekwondo! Which is interesting partly a) because it's interesting and b) because apparently Massimo also has taken up the fighting arts, Massimo you said your kickboxing now and you said you did judo and kung fu, so can we have like a match later or…
We should, we should have a conversation because a philosophy of the martial arts, that's a whole other…
_______________ Introducing the conversation _______________
That’d be interesting. Okay today however we're going to do something less martial.
Massimo as everyone knows, has been not just interested in stoic philosophy, but has been exploring stoicism as a way of life, which is what it was of course for the ancient Greeks and there now is a pretty substantial community of people who are adopting the stoic philosophy as a way of life.
And Sky is interested in existentialism, not just as a philosophy, but also as a way of life and so we thought it would be or Massimo thought it would be a good idea, for maybe the two of them to talk about the ways in which stoicism and existentialism both as philosophies and as ways of life might be interestingly similar or different. So Massimo did you want to start out since this whole thing was your brainchild to begin with.
Sure, so I thought that Sky and I could just begin by presenting a very short sort of capsule version of the two philosophies. I'll start with stoicism and Sky can do the existentialism, and then we'll just explore both the similarities, which I think, I’m sure there is a surprising number and some of the differences because after all, there are some significant differences there as well and then let basically our listeners you know sort of judge well, that resonates you know, that doesn't resonate with me.
________________ Introducing the Philosophies ________________
So I'll get it started with Stoicism, and so Stoicism has a couple of fundamental ideas, one is that the meaning of a meaningful life, a life worth living is a life of practicing virtue. And this is virtue in the ancient Greek Roman sense of the term, there are four fundamental virtues, these are:
- Practical wisdom, which is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best possible way.
- Courage, which is not just physical courage it doesn't have to do with taekwondo or kickboxing, but it has to do with moral courage, the courage to stand up for situations and for people.
- Then temperance, the ability to exercise self-control, not to go into excesses of sorts.
- And then finally justice which is understood as treating other people with fairness, the way in which you would like to be treated.
And in fact your life will be even more worth living than the life of let's say very healthy and very wealthy person who however does wicked things, who doesn't practice virtue, takes advantage of other people and so on and so forth.
So that's one of the fundamental tenets of Stoicism, the other one is the so called economy of control. This was best articulated by Epictetus, one of the late Roman Stoics, but its present from the beginning of the philosophy, from all the way back to Zino, who was the founder of the philosophy in about 2000BCE. And the economy of control basically said that wisdom and in sort of a serene life come out of understanding and internalizing that certain things are under your control and other things are not under your control and that you should focus on where your agency can actually be effective, that is under things that under your control. So all external happenings are not under your control, you can influence them, some of them are obviously not in your control, like the weather, there's nothing I can do about the weather, but other things like you know to succeed in my job, for instance, my profession, that's technically not under my control, according to the stoics because it’s not entirely under my control. I can influence it, I can work hard, I can build a good resume or whatever it is, but I may still not feel, not get the job or it may still not get a promotion or something like that, the things that I knew my control are essentially my values my decisions and my behaviours might my judgments about things.
So what that means is that a Stoic tries to go through life by internalizing his or her goals, so my goal is not going to be to get a promotion, because that's outside of my control, but its rather going to be to do the best job that I can, in order to put my force in myself for it in the best possible way to be competitive for a promotion, whether I get it or not is not up to me, but I am happy because I've done the best that I could.
Or in the case of a relationship you know, my goal cannot be to be loved by my partner, my goal has to be, to be a lovable person, because that’s the thing that is really under my control, whether it turns out that in fact, that particular other person is going to love me or not, that is not up to me and so on and so forth.
So there's a lot more obviously to admit and probably some of it will come out during the discussion, but I think that the focus on virtue and the internalization of the economy of control are really the defining points of Stoicism.
Sky do you want to [inaudible]?
Sure and so existentialism is a lot less systematic than that and it's much harder to define because it's not an official school, more like stoicism is, but it's more of a descriptive term for a group of philosophers who talked about similar themes; of freedom, choice, responsibility, anxiety and authenticity. So they were reacting to the Enlightenment, when everything was about objectivity and scientific facts. And they said well what about the passionate, subjective experience? What about like concrete living? Rather than just abstract armchair theorizing.
So existentialism became particularly popular during World War two, because it acknowledged that human existence is horrifying and it's absurd. And they emphasized personal choice, so some of the key themes are that; we're thrown into the world, you know we don't choose how or where we arrive, but once we're here we need to choose how to live. Also one of the most famous maxims of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, so we exist first and then we're free to define who we are through the choices we make, so we're nothing to begin with, but we are what we make of ourselves, so for the existentialists, every action is a choice, we always have choices and as such, Sartre says “there's no exit from our freedom, we’re condemned to be free.”
And so for the existentialists we’re responsible for who we are, however Simone de Beauvoir for example, also emphasized that situations put limitations on our freedom, for example; poverty, ignorance and oppression limit those kinds of choices that we can make, so we have a responsibility to choose our lives, but also to strive for authenticity, which is about choosing what we think is genuine and right for ourselves. It means that yes certainly we can admit external influences, that as long as we know that, recognize that it's our choice and our responsibility in the end.
And we can deny that we have choices, but that's what the existentialist would have called bad faith, and so, but also the existentialists suggested that it can be really scary to realize that we can't blame everything on biology or circumstance and so that's why the existentialist say that we are plagued with anxiety.
So one of the key questions is that if we're free as Dostoyevsky put it, if god is dead is everything permitted? Well the existentialists would say no, but that's where existentialism starts. You know there's nothing to depend on, we arrived in the world, we don't have a guidebook, life is ours to make sense of and it's up to us to choose its value.
But it’s an, existentialism is often portrayed as a very individualistic philosophy, but they also acknowledge that we are born into webs of relationships, if we value freedom for ourselves then we value it for other people too. And they acknowledge that when we make a choice, we're affirming that it's a valuable thing to do, so we think it would be good if everyone did as we did, so if you marry, you're affirming the value of marriage, or the value of the institution of marriage and through our choices we create the kind of world that we want to live in.
_________________ Differences and Similarities ________________
------------------------------ Systematic Philosophies -----------------------------
Alright great, so what I was thinking of doing, you know I had some notes here about possible topics for discussion, maybe. I divided them for my own sort of usage in sort of potential differences and potential similarities, maybe we can just start and alternate the two, so we don't want to go through all the differences first and all the similarities, also because we may not actually have time to go over everything.
So for instance, let's starting with the differences, so as you just said, that existentialism is often defined as an approach that rejects systemic philosophies, while Stoicism is probably the paramount example of a systematic philosophy, so maybe we can talk a little bit about that, so what does it mean to be or not to be a systematic philosopher, because when you started describing existentialism, you started saying well there are certain things that are firm about them in your, if you don't accept a certain number of notions or a certain crucial concept then you really shouldn't call yourself an existentialist. And I know that there is some disagreement on who is an existentialist and who is not but nonetheless it seems to me that perhaps it’s not a complete coherent logical system, but it is nonetheless.
I mean when you do have a philosophy of some sort, it seems to me that you sort of automatically, you have a system in a certain sense or is that something that is a different way of looking at it?
Yeah I think why it’s not considered to be systematic, is yes sure there are some certain principles underlying you know the foundation of existential philosophies, but there are so many different, I mean truly every different philosopher had a different philosophy and also they change their ideas on philosophy throughout their lives, for example we could probably only call Sartre an existentialist in “Being and nothingness” and in his early writings because then later he kind of explored Marxism.
So okay, well first of all you should be wary of anyone who calls themself an existentialist, because that's anti existential, because it means we're being defined by a role or categorized and the existential philosophy says, well no we can't be reduced to one thing.
And so it reminds me of the film The Life of Brian, where Brian is up in front of the crowd and saying “you're all individuals!” And yes, which is very existential and the one person in the crowd says “I'm not!” Which is ironic because he is the only individual, and then Brian says “You've all got to work it out for yourself! And the crowd says “Yes we've all got to work it out for ourselves!” So they’re like tell us more, which is like they're not working it out for themselves at all.
So yeah although there are these basic principles, how people live those? I mean the existentialist philosophers lived it differently and have different ideas about how we should live, but I mean they're all dealing with the same question which is how should we live? And not just how should we live? But what should we do? And are very excited about dealing with concrete problems of existence and everyday living, which is why existential philosophy has also inspired existential psychoanalysis, which is still a quite a big school.
But it is about everyday living and there's a story, did you hear the story that existentialism was started over an apricot cocktail? Cause yeah Satre and Simone de Beauvoir were sitting at a cafe with their friends Raymond Aaron, and Aaron had just been studying phenomenology and he came back and said to Satre and Beauvoir, you know if you were a phenomenologist, you could make a philosophy out of this apricot cocktail, and Jean-Paul Sartre was so excited and he said to himself at the time, finally there is philosophy because he could philosophize about concrete everyday things.
-------------------------------- Role Scripts ----------------------------------
Ok I do prefer my Martini’s over apricot cocktails, but you know that’s a question of taste. Okay so what you were saying brought to my mind a couple of things, I think we should talk about the psychotherapy actually later, hopefully because there are there some interesting similarities and differences with Stoicism. But you talk about rules right, so you're not, we're not defined by our role, so which means that even calling yourself an existentialist, it's like it's a weird thing, now Stoics also do typically don’t call themselves Stoics, but that's not because they don't like the label in general, it’s because think it’s pretentious and so they refer to themselves as pprokoptôn, which in Greek means somebody's who is hopefully making progress, right, so it's a student basically.
But, the thing about roles is interesting, so there's an entire book that came out recently about dictators and it's called the dictators role in ethics, because if dictators actually do insist that we don't have roles and we are defined by our roles in an important sense, but we don't have just one roll and some of these roles we choose, and others are sort of part of I think what it might define, you can tell me if this is correct, what an existentialist would call it facticity.
That is they just ‘come with,’ you know you're born in a certain place, at a certain time, and a certain place, so there are certain things that are part of your background and then you don't choose, you can decide what do about them, or how to use them, but you know, you don't have a complete freedom of about the fact that in the circumstances of your existence.
So for dictators we all have different roles but it's not, we're not defined by one role, we are actually simultaneously different things, right so I am a father, I can be a companion that can be a teacher, I can be a friend, I can be all sorts of things. And for Vegetius what's important is how you play that role, now of course he doesn't use the word authenticity there, but I guess there is a similarity because he says you know you can play your role as badly, as being a bad actor essentially, you know he really does see life as a stage on which we play different parts and the part that we play not necessarily up to us, or it's certainly not all the details and all the aspects of that part.
But how we play it is, and so if I'm a father I can be a good father or a bad father, if I’m a teacher I can be a good teacher or a bad teacher, and so on and so forth and of course what makes a difference between a good and a bad interpretation of that role, in general is whether you follow the virtues or not, where you trying to be a virtuous father or teacher and so on and so forth. I don't see that necessarily as dramatically incompatible with an existential view of things do you?
Yeah no that sounds, there are some similarities there and I think the existentialists would probably say that actually choosing that role of what roles we play are up to us. Like they're not imposed on us from the outside but it's up to us to choose whether we become a father or what role we play in society so I'm not sure if the roles we play would be necessarily included in the facts or facticity effects of our existence but and I think Sartre gives the example of a waiter in Being and Nothingness who's playing the role perfectly but if they also realize that there is a part of it like you've been cannot be reduced to just a waiter because we're always part of a project or we're always transcending and watching ourselves into the future and we always have multiple projects and so just we can't be just defined by one thing or even mean if a waiter and a father I mean we can't just reduce our being to be described by that but I'm not sure I mean that doesn't mean to say that we can't take on actively choose and take on different roles in life but as long as we know that it's our choice and as well as our choice how to live them.
Right, oh yeah so I think that there's similarities, I mean Epictetus of course would say that some of the roles are chosen, you know you decide what career to do, you decide whether to become a father or mother or something, and the other ones are not. Because you remember that in this case he was a slave, started out his life as a slave and that certainly wasn't his choice right, that was something that was imposed on him and that it was not in his power to change. Until much later on when he was freed and then he you know in chose to become a teacher, but yeah it doesn't seem to mean much to mean to me they are fundamentally incompatible.
------------------------------ Free choice / Control ------------------------------
Now here's something that I put on the common list of similarities is a quote by Kierkegaard, who said that "a person's unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over external conditions, since this would only make him completely unhappy."
Now that does sound to me actually, remarkably stoic, because as I said earlier, the dichotomy of control says that you shouldn't be putting your happiness or you know the meaningfulness of your life into the external circumstances because external circumstances can change on a dime. That doesn't mean that they're not important, I mean often Stoics are sort of caricatured as saying 'oh y'know that they don't care about your education, health, wealth and so on and so forth,' of course they do, but they realize that you could be a wealthy person one day and then lose it all the following day, or that you can be very healthy one day and then you get sick you know the following day and so on and so forth. And so that if your happiness is tied to the external circumstances that you're bound to be an unhappy etcetera.
But now, I'm not too familiar with the context in which that quote by Kierkegaard would actually fit in general existentialism sort of idea and also Kierkegaard of course is a very early existentialist right? I mean he certainly didn't use the term at the time, but does that strike you as something that modern day existentialists would accept, what I quoted from Kierkegaard?
Yeah and I think Sartre would also agree with that. Yes so Kierkegaard was retrospectively labeled an existentialist, but yeah so it reminds me of what Sartre said, is “you’re never so free as when you're in chains” and what matters is how you view the situation. And I also found a quote from Epictetus, “a podium in a prison is each a place, one high and the other low, but in either place, your freedom of choice can be maintained if you so wish.”
Right,
So very much these sorry beating maxims, not to get upset by the things around us, but by the views we take of them. So the goal is to kind of own our thoughts, control you know how we view things and Satre talks specifically about like a rocky crag or rocky mountain that's blocking our path and he says well it's only an obstacle if we see it as an obstacle. And should we take that into account, into our facticity and we change our path and choose not to view it as an obstacle, then it's no longer a problem. So, now Simone de Beauvoir on the other hand, would disagreed with that and she says, yeah well we have the freedom to think as we choose, but if we come across a craggy mountain or a locked door, I mean banging against that locked door, is certainly completely useless, but just changing our view of that situation isn't necessarily the answer either and her point was that if you can't act on your freedom, then it's meaningless it's a Pyrrhic victory. Her philosophy was very much about action, and she and Sartre used to argue about this and she would get sea-sickness and Sartre told her it was all in her head and she just had changed her thinking about it, and she's like no! I think that...
She should have thrown up on him.
Well...
Actually there is a story of stoicism about sea-sickness which is kind of interesting because it sort of I think he actually strikes a compromise between those two positions that Satre and Beauvoir position. Because, so there's this story about a stoic philosopher who embarks on his on this voyage and then there is a storm, and the storm is very frightening and you can get sea-sick and in fact he gets also scared by the whole thing right and then when the storm is over and he recovers his composure and he goes about the ship as if nothing happened. And the captain makes fun of him, he says; "oh so you're the stoic philosopher, you're supposed not to care about external circumstances, but I saw you you were sick and you were you know afraid during the storm." And the stoic responds; "yes but I am not now." That is, how to think about the experience is up to me, of course I'm scared when something happens that is scary, that's a human thing to do. I have no control over sea-sickness or I've no control over you know being scared, what I do have control over is how I react and how I think about it. "Do you see me dwelling on the experience now?" No, it's done and it's in the past, it's no longer under my control and so I move on, so there is actually a way to sort of balance those two things, meaning that it's certainly the case that if the door is closed and you want to get in, well you're not going to get in, unless you find a way to force the door right, but it is also the case that sometimes in life we find closed doors and instead of keep banging on it and waste a lot of energy and time over it, you know obsessing over the door, perhaps we turn around another corner and there's another door, there's a window, well there is another street and another place to go somewhere.
-------------------------------- Psychotherapy ------------------------------
Now that that seems to be, you mentioned a couple of times already psychotherapy, so I think we should get there because you mentioned IBP, which for our listeners is a rational emotive behavioral therapy and then Viktor Frankl often comes up in discussions of both stoicism and existentialism. Frankl was the surviver of the Holocaust, and he wrote very influential books in the 1950s and 60s and established something called logo-therapy, which is a type of rational emotive behavioral therapy, although the two are actually distinct.
Now, the thing that strikes me as interesting, is that both the Stoics and the existentialists claim Frankl, I've read existentialist authors who say that, logo-therapy is a type of existentialist therapy. But I also know that Stoics consider Viktor Frankl one of the founders of the modern cognitive behavioral therapy that is informed very much by stoic techniques and stoic think-tanks.
So it seems to be kind of an overlap between the two philosophies, but outside of that, you have my understanding is that existentialist psychotherapy is very much into the Freudian and Jungian sort of tradition of doing psychotherapy.
While on the other hand, the stoic one is definitely very much in the tradition of a cognitive behavioral therapy, which is very different, it completely rejects the Freudian approach. So I wonder what you think about the relationship in general between sort of philosophy and psychotherapy I suppose and also specifically about existentialism and Viktor Frankl.
So it's in existential psychotherapy I mean especially the one that thought you talked about anything in nothingness the emphasis is on consciousness raising to understand what to become aware of what choices we have and become aware of you know how we can be free so it's overcoming the limitations of ignorance on and understanding the different options that we have so the emphasis on creating choices and freedom and coming to terms with things like anxiety and death and a lot of these issues that existential philosophy raises so and in terms of my view on whether that's a good idea or not so i guess I'm torn which I'm not an accidental psychotherapist and i haven't done any training there but if my question is that if we raise our consciousness to be aware of anxiety and deafening like that then that might not make us feel any better um and you know coming to terms with the existential absurdity of life I mean it can help in some cases and I acknowledge that that it might not help in all cases so that's my hesitation with you know pinus to therapy.
What what about the one thing what about Massimo's question about the fact that regarding the fact that existentialism seems to have at least two psychotherapeutic tracks that has pursued one that's more along the lines of this logical rational what declutter behavior rational irrational behavior therapy and then on the other hand it's very well known in historical connection with psychoanalysis.
Mhmm yeah, and I mean it is very much like I was talking about with you know the rocky crag that it was very sorry and philosophies very similar to that rebt principle of not being upset by the things around us but by the views we take of them and you know I think there's a lot of value in doing if existential psychotherapy is you know I think that's a valid option.
What about the relationship to depth psychology which is well to get psychology to psychoanalysis this is a totally different tradition I mean there's actually something called existential psychoanalysis, is that this not a tradition you're familiar with.
Yeah no I haven't done any study in that area.
Yeah so that striking it is interesting and wherever that the distinction between philosophy and psychotherapy right I mean or therapy general instead of in general so obviously philosophies are not therapies although they may have therapeutic sir component or effects and vice versa therapies are not philosophies although they may be based or inspired by a philosophy so one one of the things that happened last year at the stoic on conference which is this gathering and you were there sky as an existentialist lurking in the middle of storage and one thing that we had was a presentation on Roger most emotive behavioral therapy and its connections with stores and the the connection usually that if philosophy is supposed to give you this sort of overall framework for how to think about stuff right and that framework in the case of a practical philosophy especially like I consider both stores minute in extra centralism practical philosophies that is the kind of thing that is supposed to basically give you general guidance about you know priorities in life how to think about your life where how to make your decisions you know in a sensible way in a way that actually reflects your values your choices and so on and support if there be on the other hand is much more specific it's like oh I got fear of death how do I deal with that by my side wake up in sweating terror at the iodine either way we'll deal with that and you're right of course the advocacy of psychotic upset set up is in generally there's I mean the unmarked familiar with the CBT variety watch which actually has a significant amount of sort of evidence-based you know support but even so you know the advocate is certainly not ninety percent I mean some people get over their anxieties and some people don't get over there and daddies and but I wouldn't consider that a failure of the philosophy necessarily i would say yeah well the philosophy still gives you the general framework and it sounds reasonable or coherent or whatever it is whether that's going to help you you specific case or not that depends on a number of circumstances
------------------------------- Meaning / Suicide ------------------------------
right now the other another sort of different day I think comes to the treatment that the two philosophies give to the question of suicide so camo who I understand actually rejected the label of sex essentially especially after a certain people healthy he had a falling out with Sarge but he said and I quote rezoning one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide so I'd like to hear a little bit about what what are you meant by that and if that's a serious philosophical problem do we have an existentialist answer to that problem because the soil do have an answer and I'm I'll get to that in a minute to that question and I suspect it's going to be very different from being centrally sponsored but we'll see maybe I'm gonna be surprised.
Mhm yes, well I think what's at the bottom of that is from in a potential view is well why should we not kill ourselves you know why should we r going to die anyway why should we not commit suicide now what is their silly forum what is the meaning of life and so do the essential question is what meaning do we give and infuse into our life now let's move our took a different approach change said no don't gamble on the future change your life today and her view was that yes we're going to die we don't know when so that means we need to make everyday meaningful and live fully so I think Camus is also famous i'm not sure where he said this but we shall I kill myself I'll have a cup of coffee like although I have a cup of coffee and I think it's about appreciating what is beautiful in life and what we should live for and what I'm at extension existential philosophy is it's about embracing life and living passionately what's stoics?
So that strikes me as interesting because um back again there are actually some signal is there so there are two issues are entangled one is the issue of death of our mortality right in the other one is the issue of meaning or for lack of meaning which may lead to desperation to serve and suicide right so so anytime with the suicide so the story taken suicide is that it is ethically acceptable only under extreme circumstances this is what I picked it is referred to as the open door policy the open door policy is uh uses these analogies that look if the house gets really smoky there is a lot of smoke and aspire no letter and it's impossible to breathe then walk to the door the door is open you can get out and of course the house the smoking house is the a metaphor for a really really difficult life a really hard life that it's hard to actually cope with and says we all if that's the case for whatever reason then you have the possibility and your your freedom as Seneca put it is constantly in your wrist you can you can slit them and then you're done um but the converse of that is that epic series also says if you stay however in the house if you decide to stay then don't complain because it means that you actually found that there is enough meaning or there is enough reason for you to step because if the door is open you can walk out every time if you decide to stay that means that actually you find enough reasons to stay right and then you then you should take responsibility or for what it is that you're going to be doing for those reasons so that um that is the answer to the suicide question for the stories but the answer to the and that may be very different from the existentialist one on the other hand the answer to the question of you know mortality I think it's much or what to make of the question mortality is much more similar because the story an answer there senegal would agree we don't with the review we will we don't know where my god I you know the saiga says sometimes there's an entire I said he wrote on the shortness of life where he says you know people often say when somebody young dies they say oh he's gone before his time and they say he said what does that mean I mean nobody nobody knows what his time is right the universe decided that that was the time and what the hell i use why argue with the universe right this happen it is what it is so to say that the things happen before their time or not makes no sense but precisely because we are in a situation where we don't know when life is going to end then Teneycke actually all the major Roman Stoics including Marcus Aurelius said very explicitly then you need to take to take advantage of every moment you should live every moment to the fullest you should focus on the hick at nunc in Latin the here and now precisely because you don't know how much longer you can I have and you know if you are engaging in activities there are wasteful of your time and energy and resources you do things you don't want to do it if you're doing things just because it's no proper the proper thing to do from a social perspective or something society perspective or something like that you're just wasting precious in its that could be the last day of your life and the question is you know how do you want to spend it in a faculty meeting probably not right so I net that I think there is actually significant amount of similarity between the two.
------------------------ Philosophy as a way of living ------------------------
Okay so my next point was about Gabrielle Marcel, who was a Bentley you know I don't know much about him but it was a little as an existentialist at some point and then interestingly he rejected the label of existentialist, apparently that's a normal thing to do for a existentialists,
It is.
But in favor, and this is what struck me as weird, in favor of the term neo-Socratic, and apparently that was in honor of Kierkegaard's essay; "On the concept of irony." Now I wouldn't be I wouldn't label the existing should I would sort of similar gave his century to Socrates or to neo Socrates's but you think there's something in there I mean what was the what is the existentialist a consort ancient philosophy ancient Greek philosophy in general? its purest neo Socratic presumably mean it means that you have some affinity for for whatever it is that socket is thought and taught or the way he lived so maybe is it because Socrates had an authentic life in some sense he was living an authentic life
Possibly i'm not really familiar with several Marcel um but I mean certainly I mean welcome to my eyes meet shut and he very much admired the ancient Greek way of living I think that he said we're men were warriors and women will for their recreation mystic it yeah I mean what made you laugh about the ancient Greek society was that it was very structured and orderly and everyone knew what their roles were and niche was very critical of marrying for love he's like no let's go back to ancient Greek model where you couldn't get divorced and so because I sort of saw romantic love is something that was all sexual love is something frivolous and fleeting and what you can't face an institution on an idiosyncrasy like romantic loves I know let's go back to like order and structure that the ancient Greeks had already yes so...
Although he was famously not a fan of the Apollonian strand of I mean I mean he was that he was he was a fan of the Dionysian strain of valve of Greek partying and I he certainly was not a fan of the Socratic rationalism although I guess the this is Craddock authenticity might have appealed right i mean the fact that the socrates rather drink would rather drink the poison then escaped from the prison i guess would have a certain existentialist appeal if you want to sort of think of it that way but but i always thought that he is his aversion to the Apollonian side of the or his belief that it was there wasn't that the Apollonian side dominated too much and dominates too much our recollection of ancient greek thought would have made him not a fan of the Socratic Socratic side which is certainly not a stoic approach yeah.
Yeah.
------------------------------- Passion / Love -----------------------------------
Yeah I mean Neitzsche was um I mean yeah he was currently criticized you know this over emphasis or insulting the Apollonian and the rationale at the expense of the passion if you said the passions are important too we need both it's like the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain and you need to balance reason and passion together.
Yeah so that actually brings me to talk about a little bit about the passion so you wrote a book about love from a nexus centuries perspective and maybe maybe you can give us a sort of a little so many of it of that in a minute but one of the things as you know that is often thought about stories as men I do think is that understanding is that stoicism is about surprising the passions impressing the emotions and he said I'm using those two terms passions and emotions for a specific reason because the stories what a lot of modern talk confuses the true that we refer to as an emotional person is passionate and vice versa but for the stories actually used those terms in a technical sense and they distinguish between the passions and emotions and they they thought that the passions are destructive emotions so things like fear and hatred and anger especially those are destructive and yet those they do they did cancel to suppress to control to eliminate the possible you know Seneca wrote an entire book on on anger and which is sore this management you know the earliest d on anger management that we have in the Western tradition but they also started themselves of their philosophy as a philosophy of love just kind of surprising if you know so usually not so this person is usually not associated with that word but that's because they thought that love in the broadest possible sentencing of the Greeks had a different several different understandings of the word love unlike the modern English language one of the things that I find frustrating about in modern English language is that you know in English it use the word love for everything you know I love my daughter a lot my companion I love my friends I love my pizza like you know wait a minute those are very different things you should be using different words with those and the you integrate did with different words but the story says that you should actually cultivate the point is required to cultivate the positive emotions because you do want to develop in love in the broadest possible sense including the sort of a love for humanity itself in there were among the first to use the concept of cosmopolitanism for instance that you should you should really consider they refer to each other as brothers and sisters the humanity at large is a brotherhood and sisterhood for our people but so what about existentialism in love so since you're you wrote the book about it maybe we should talk about that for a minute.
Sure um yeah well I'll just give a brief overview of my book I do that a lot of the frustrations and disappointments in romantic relationships come from misplaced expectations and unrealistic ideal about what we should do in relationships what roles we should take on what's Hollywood telling us what our family's telling us and this sort of thing so and I argue that in order to be free to create authentically meaningful relationships we need to free ourselves from these destructive expectations and ideals and also free ourselves from being slaves to our passions and I actually came has very consistent with the stoic view in fact there's a Marcus Aurelius quote where he says don't be pulled like a puppet by every impulse and the essentialists would absolutely agree with that especially Kira God who talked about the aesthetics fear being like the lowest sphere of existence and it's where it's a very childlike spirit impulsive it's where where slaves to our passions he talked about Mozart's Don Giovanni being like the ultimate representative of that fear because he's always like just chasing the next woman he's a slave to his lusty desires so to God recommended leaping to a higher ethical sphere, more rational sphere and then ultimately to another religious sphere but I mean include Assad even though he advocated leaping to his high irrational fear he he also said let's not forget like the beauty and the you know the amazing things that come along with the ecstatic sphere because being in love is wonderful and sex is great and there's an epictetus quote where he says freedom isn't secured by filling up on your heart's desire but by removing your desire so the edge attention is like no don't remove desires noting it desires are a beautiful and important part of life so that they should be balanced in concert with reason so yes free it let's free ourselves remain slaves to our passions but not free ourselves from our passions entirely and nature says how wise it is at times to be a little tipsy we're having a little of both is really important.
Well that actually reminds me so that the interesting quantity pulled up from the big hitters but it reminds me of a contrast between the potatoes in Seneca so you right if this says exactly that in fed several several occasions but but it to be fair I picked it was also arguably the most cynic like of the Stoics you know so the cynics were the extreme version of the stoics there were the the the people that were living in minimalist life and your no property no relations no nothing no it's like it's it's all about future and that's it there were beggars basically there lived in the streets and there are very colorful characters but if it didn't actually write an entire chapter in the discourses in praise of cynicism and essentially says you know if you can't be a cynic at least be a story like your second choice Santa has a very different kind of character and actually says something very much along the lines of what you just mentioned there's a wonderful passage in Seneca where he said look sometimes you want to just go out and enjoy a fresh air and you drink some wine sometimes even drink a little too much one because you know why not once and why this is what Life offers and you need you need to embrace it so long as the wine or the pleasure or something and that doesn't control you so long as you own the pleasure and not the other way around and of course so long as you remember that pleasure in life is a preferred indifferent to use the story terminology meaning that it's something that if you have it or you don't have it you know you prefer it it's preferred but it's a different meaning that it makes no difference whatsoever to your ability to preserve virtual and that you will never trade it with aperture you don't compromise your moral character in order to get pleasure unlike Don Giovanni who clearly really got that at every turn in any paper the ultimate price for it at the end of the Opera right so in that sense I think that sometimes I think it's fair to say write that in existentialism what counts as an existential is preceptor existentialist idea does depend a lot on the individual philosopher right is one thing niches and other things sorry the third thing that really is another one is tron and support i mean the same can be said for storage but to a much lesser degree that is stories also did disagree on in terms of emphasis and in terms of you know on a number of deep they also impose ido news is one of the lesser-known Stoics because the comparatively less the boy wrote that actually survived today there's only fragments but it was one of the stories of the middle store the transitional period between when the stories moved them from a dense to ram and apparently it was a rebel I mean easily studying as you know disagreeing with with a destroyed about sort of some important manners and certainly in terms of emphasis but you would expect that within every philosophy right so it's like you don't you don't I mean philosophies are not religious prescriptions then I it's not like that just because if it fails wrote something or sorry too broad something then we have to take it as an article of faith but you disagree with it.
Yeah absolutely, but I just going back to Epicurus said was something that i came across city he said that i really liked and that was he said avoid having sex before marriage but don't like slut-shaming people who do right by then again you have marcus aurelius back to the wine example again who says innocence just treat fine wine as if it's what moldy grape juice and sex is just you know friction between private parts with a discharge I mean it is is point was you know don't close too much value on sexual relationships I understand that I know Ryan holiday in his book kind of says old that was a joke but in a bill Irvine is what kind of takes it a bit more seriously and proposed that sex is destructive and lust as a distraction but I mean I think this is one of the main areas an extension list would disagree because yes it's not about being slaves to our desires but desire and sexual desires certainly plays a key role in understanding ourselves and it's one way that we try and connect with other people and yes it can be a distraction but it's also a fundamental and valuable part of existence that we should embrace and celebrate I mean some might say that Saturn de Beauvoir embracement celebrated it like too much I'm not making that judgment but yeah so.