Sean Murray 3:14
The Meditations is a remarkable book. It’s one of my favorite books of all time because of the influence it’s had on me. And I recommend people to read The Meditations in conjunction with your book. However, The Meditations is not a coherent narrative like your book. What I like about How to Think Like a Roman Emperor is you’ve taken the facts; what we do know about Marcus’s life, and then filled in the details to help us understand the context. It almost reads like historical fiction, where you’re kind of following along Marcus’s life, and you know, being a Roman Emperor, he’s at the seat of power. He has all kinds of wealth, but at the same time, he has lots of challenges. He’s got the Senate to deal with. He’s got the succession going on with his family. He’s got generals that are uprising and trying to revolt against him. He’s got those northern tribes that are trying to sort of invade and cause problems in the Roman Empire from the North. So all these things are going on. And he’s writing down in the meditations, kind of his thoughts. We have a view into his world. What is it about what he wrote down? And what is it about stoicism that in our modern world today, obviously, stoicism is becoming more popular, so what is it about this philosophy, Marcus’ life, and stoicism that’s so relevant and seems timely for the kind of challenges that we face, which at surface level quite different than what Marcus faced?

Donald Robertson 4:37
Well, the stoics were trying to develop a philosophy that would enable them to cope with adversity. So what they did in many ways preempts modern cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. That’s one of the reasons that I became interested in the subject. And so, because those kind of burgeoning interest in self-help and psychological self-improvement today, people are interested in the stoics. But for the stoics, they wanted more than just a therapy. They wanted to develop something that was permanent and lifelong, a whole worldview and philosophy of life that would make us psychologically stronger. So one of the reasons that people say to me that they’re drawn to the stoics is that they offer them something that’s kind of like modern self-help or modern psychotherapy, but as bigger and deeper like it, you know, stoicism is not just as for life; not just for Christmas as it were. Like, you know, we do therapy with people, and then we end the therapy, and they can move on. But stoicism offers people something that’s more philosophical. It changes their character and their attitudes at much deeper level, arguably than a few weeks or a few months of psychotherapy may. And so I think it’s that depth solver (*inaudible*) that appeals to people, and then also the fact that kind of compliments ideas have become popular and validated today through the psychotherapy field.

Sean Murray 6:03
You know, I, I agree with everything you said. And I believe that in today’s world, there’s not often a philosophy. We’re not often challenged to adopt or accept a philosophy of life. We’re sort of given a default philosophy of life and my experience from our culture, from our media. And one thing that struck me about reading your book was this taking on this challenge of, well, what’s my philosophy of life? And what can I gain from studying someone who lived 2000 years ago? And I found even though it was written 2000 years ago, what Marcus was often saying and writing down in his journal or his meditations seemed quite relevant to the challenges that I face in my daily life; anxieties, at times; fears about the future. And these sort of mental challenges are still with us. We’re, we’re human. And one of the aspects of stoicism that really appeals to me, and you talked about this in the book early on, was this idea that there are things in life we can control, and there are things in life that are outside of our control. And it’s important to make that distinction. I think you put in the book, “Events in life are never entirely up to us.” So can you talk about that principle of stoicism and why it’s important?

Donald Robertson 7:23
Well, actually, just to follow on from the last question in a way, you know? One of the reasons that stoicism is still relevant today and has been for two and a half thousand years because they sought to develop their philosophy and target ideas that’s very basic; very fundamental level. And that makes it kind of timeless. So the stoics rather than asking themselves, “How would you deal with a specific anxiety that we face today?” They wanted to penetrate right to the very core of the problem. And so they said, “Look, you know, a lot of the psychological problems if we dig deep underneath, you know, right across the board, they have to do with this kind of confusion between what’s under our direct control and what isn’t.” And that’s so deep. It’s so fundamental that it’s going to apply across a whole range of different situations. And it’s so generic, it’s gonna apply just as much today as it did during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. And so the stoics said, “We get this empire.” It’s really a, an idea that runs all through stoicism. But most famously, we have this book called, The Enchiridion of a Handbook of Epictetus, one of the most famous stoic teachers. And it’s a summary of his teachings, you know, really only about 20 pages long or so. And the opening sentence of it is, “Some things are up to us and other things are not.” And the remarkable thing about that is that, you know, many people may read that and think, “Isn’t that stating the obvious? Isn’t it just like a truism to say that some things are up to us and under our control and other things aren’t?” But the stoics was smart enough to realize that even though in a sense that’s self-evidently true, we seem to have this tendency to keep forgetting about it and getting confused about it. And that explains a lot of our frustration and a lot of our psychological problems in life; right down to the level of–in, in modern psychotherapy, when I specialized in treating anxiety disorders. And you know, when people are anxious, they often fail to distinguish between aspects of their anxiety that are under voluntary control and aspects that aren’t. So for instance, someone who’s anxious, their heart might be beating fast, and they may try to slow the heart rate down by changing their breathing or trying to make themselves relax. And they often get more frustrated ’cause they’re kind of struggling against something that’s involuntary. It’s a reflex like physiological response. And the more they focus on it and struggle against it, the worse it often becomes, when in fact there maybe other aspects of their anxiety that are more directly under voluntary control than neglecting such as whether they avoid certain situations or choose to expose themselves to them, or the amount of time that they spend worrying or ruminating about a subject. So people often say that their worrying is out of control. Actually, the research that we have in this area suggests that people have more voluntary control of our, the duration of worry than they normally assume. So they’re trying to exert control over things that are involuntary, and then neglecting to control things that are actually potentially up to them. And so the stoics were right on the money there in terms of this being central to all of the psychological problems that people have today.

Sean Murray 10:38
Yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more. Often when I feel fear or anger or anxiety in my life, it’s often that I’m forgetting this very fundamental truth that some things are under my control and some are not. And when I remind myself of this truth, I can feel a sort of psychological release. And dovetailing off of this principle, there’s another principle kind of interrelated, which is that it’s the nature of things to change and to flow. And Marcus Aurelius uses the word “nature” a lot. There’s this fundamental nature; the world is changing. There’s impermanence. And we don’t have a lot of control over how things are changing, and one principle to help us deal with this–to accept that it’s in the nature of the world to change. For humans to have certain reactions, and to get angry about that, or to be overly anxious, or to expect something different is actually quite irrational.

Donald Robertson 11:36
Yeah, the–Marcus Aurelius’ two favorite philosophers, it seems, are Epictetus, who we just mentioned, but also Heraclitus, who is a much older philosopher; a pre-Socratic philosopher before Socrates even. And Heraclitus was famous for saying, “You can’t step into the same river twice because it’s always new waters that are flowing through it.” So it’s materially; it’s substantially a different thing. It’s different water that you’re stepping into. And that was a metaphor about time and change in general. Heraclitus thought that the whole universe was in flux, and nothing remained the same, and that the wise man or woman was aware of that. And they looked at the bigger picture, and they were appraising a situation; accepted the impermanence of all material things. So that became part of stoicism as well. And it’s something we can see Marcus Aurelius referring to quite often; not just as a kind of weird metaphysical theory. It’s actually a consolation to himself, and a way of managing his emotions because we become less attached to things. We cling on to things less if we remind ourselves of the transient nature. And also, we potentially become less upset about things if we view them as transients. I’ll give you a very, very simple example of that because the stoics use this in many different ways. But in cognitive therapy, techniques are hard to explain for example. But there’s also really simple things we do in therapy that anyone could understand. So somebody loses their job or their girlfriend dumps them or something like that. They have a, a situation that seems catastrophic to them. And the therapist might say, “Well, look! Suppose,” you know, if this is something they’re worrying about happening. And the therapist may just say to them, “Well, what’s probably going to happen next?” And the client might say, “Well, I’ll be really sad, and you know, I guess I’ll stay at home,” and, and then, the therapist might say, “Well, and then what’s probably going to happen next?” And the client might say, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I guess eventually I’ll have to start going out and looking for a new job or, or dating again,” and the therapist might say, “And then, what’s probably going to happen next?” And the client will go, “I guess I’ll find a job or I’ll meet a new girl or something like that.” And just expanding the chronological perspective by repeatedly asking this really simple question seems to kinda dilute the emotions. And the stoics were smart enough to realize that when people get really upset or really experience any strong emotions, it’s kind of like we’re putting things under a magnifying glass. And we’re focusing too much on the upsetting idea in isolation. But when we broaden our perspective, then we can see that things are part of a bigger and more varied picture. So our emotions become more complex in a sense, but also more moderate. And also the stoics realized that’s the truth. The truth is the bigger picture. And that when we put things under a magnifying glass and take them out of context, you could actually go as far as to say we’re committing a lie of omission because we’re deleting or ignoring information; important details about the context of the event that would actually change the way that we feel about it. So we’re kind of deceiving ourselves, when we ignore everything else, and just focus on one-time slice and the most upsetting way. And the stoics are always trying to expand our perspective in a number of different ways because they realized that would help them to cope, and one of them was reminding themselves of the impermanence of things like a, a river flowing past.

Sean Murray 15:03
There’s so much to unpack there. And there’s a term I believe you use in the book was “the view from above.” When you’re in a situation, and you feel like you’re just kind of stuck in; too focused on the situation at hand, at the particulars that taking a step back; looking at a wider frame…I love the technique of what’s going to happen next because so often, we do go to kind of a worst case scenario, when we’re facing an unknown; we’re facing a situation where, you know, we feel a tragedy is going to befall us. And sure, there’s a probability that the worst case scenario is gonna happen. But it may not be a strong probability. It may be a very, very remote probability, yet we seem to fixate on it. One of the other techniques that you mentioned in the book was this idea that, you know, when something does happen that we don’t expect or that is a negative sort of situation that we can ask ourselves: “Maybe we can’t control that this event happened, but we can control our reaction to that event.” And I think this is sort of related to “the view from above,” which is, you know, we can choose how we judge this event. And often, when we judge an event, we sort of like I said, go to the worst case scenario, or we apply all sorts of negative intent on other people. Really, you should stick to the objective truth; the objective representation of what’s going on. I found that quite helpful, too.

Donald Robertson 16:28
Yeah, the story is called, Fantasia Cattlettedecay (*inaudible*). And it’s actually a tricky word to translate; also to say. And you know, there are some things that translate really easily, and then, you know, because we’re dealing with ancient texts, there’ll be occasionally little phrases or concepts that are about a struggle to put into English. And that’s one of them. And it kind of means an impression, or a kind of perception of things, or a mental representation that grips reality. And so how do another scholar sometimes translate it as an objective representation ’cause that’s basically what the stoics mean. And so the stoics would say, “We try to be realistic and accurate in our thinking as philosophers.” And part of that, they really–for, certainly for Epictetus, and, and I think, really for the other stoics in general. Part of that being truthful, and realistic, and honest, and down-to-earth in our thinking means realizing the–there’s nothing good–good or bad, but thinking makes it so, at least in the external world. That when we lose our job, and we say, “This is a catastrophe. It’s awful. It’s a disaster.” But the awfulness of it isn’t a property that exists in the external world. They often resolve (*inaudible*); although, we cannot perceive it in the event. It’s something we project onto the event. It’s our attitude, our values that are being projected onto it. And the stoics see this is a kind of merging of what’s going on in our head with what we perceive in the external world, and they think we need to to separate those two things. Anyway, that’s one of the fundamental tasks of stoicism: to realize that the awfulness is something that we are projecting onto events. That comes from us as our contribution. And someone else might view it as an opportunity, rather than a disaster like…and that fact, the fact that other people might see it differently should remain us that there’s something subjective about this. The awfulness is our doing. It’s like the lenses; like colored glasses through which we’re looking at there then, and we could be looking at it from a different perspective.

Sean Murray 18:36
Absolutely. I mean, when I was reading about this technique and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, I was reflecting on my own life. And when I look back at some of the more meaningful, powerful episodes in my life, where I stretched and grew the most and kind of became who I am, they were turbulent times. It was difficult, challenging times. I joined a startup right out of college, and we couldn’t afford to pay our bills for a while, right? I had no paycheck for several months. It was a very trying time for me, financially. But as far as career growth, and person that was working for kind of helped me through that; who was the founder of this startup, but all this to say, it was one of the most powerful experiences; growth experiences for me, personally. But it was–I remember the time thinking a lot of, “Why me? Why did I get myself in this situation? How am I gonna get myself out of it? This is not good. I should have went and joined a Fortune 500 company instead of this small startup.” And it ended up shaping who I was. So if I could go back to whisper in the ear of that younger me, I could offer that advice. So I guess what Marcus is saying is just talk yourself off the ledge.

Donald Robertson 19:45
Yeah. Again, the very simple example that always comes to my mind is just to say–as a therapist and a counselor over the years, you know? I’ve met a lot of people who’ve been through relationship, relationship breakups are actually probably the easiest example, you know? Like how many people feel as if it’s a terrible thing like it’s the end of the world kind of scenario because their wife’s left them or they, their relationship’s broken up. But then, you know, most of the time people go on to form new relationship(s). And maybe end up being happier in the long term. I mean, we all probably had girlfriends or boyfriends, when we were in our teens and stuff. And it seemed like the end of the world when, you know, you got dumped, or your, your things came to an end or whatever. But then, decade later, when you look back on it, you know, it seems very, very different. It’s just a stage in the process of life that everybody tends to go through. And it’s the same also with people losing their jobs. It seems like a really catastrophic thing usually to people or often to people. But for many of the clients that I’ve worked with, it’s turned out to be the best thing that could ever have happened to them. And you know, and they’ve, they’ve gone on to start their own business or to find an even better job, you know? It’s just part of the, the process of transformation and, and learning that they have to go through. Although, it seems painful at the time. I was going to tell you another little story, actually. I guess it’s related to–to what you said because this “talking yourself off the ledge” expression you used to kind of make it pop into my mind. Epictetus had a hero. He had several heroes, and one of them was a guy called, Paconius Agrippinus, who was a Roman senator, and he was a–lived under the Messenian. And he was persecuted by these bad Roman emperors. And he was part of a political movement called, The Stoic Opposition, to these more despotic emperors. And he had this technique that Epictetus tells us about, he says, Paconius used to write letters to himself, when something bad happened. And they were like eulogies like praising the catastrophes that befell him. So he got sent into exile at one point, and he would write a letter to himself saying, “Exile’s fab! Like what a great opportunity; like for me to work on my book and stuff like that.” So he’d write this letter praising what seemed like a catastrophe to highlight the opportunities that are presented; just as a kind of thought experiment to see if he could turn it into a positive. And the story goes that when the guards came, and told him; they interrupted him hanging out with his friends, and they were getting ready to have lunch, and they said, “You’re going to be sent into exile,” came as a shock to everybody. And Paconius reputedly said, “Well, that’s great because, you know, there’s a really nice village like down the road or on the way to the island that I’m going to be exiled in. We could stop off there and have a nice picnic.”

Sean Murray 22:31
I love it. Yeah, it reminds me of–I recently read a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It’s In the First Circle. I don’t know if you read that one, but I got to know this author. He wrote, The Gulag Archipelago, which I think is what he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for. But as I was researching Solzhenitsyn because I became kind of fascinated by him. He said at one point he had spent years in the Gulag himself in this kind of Russian–these Russian camps after World War II. And he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. And if you read about what he endured at these camps, it’s quite amazing that he has the courage to say that. But he really did believe that it changed his life in a very positive way. And it gave his life meaning. And it forced him to kind of channel this gift of writing and become the best person he could be through this gift and this art. And it wouldn’t have happened without that. So that’s kind of an extreme example. You know, I’d like to look at extreme examples sometimes ’cause I don’t think most of us are gonna go through something quite to that extent. But when you do come across a great person like this, and an example from Epictetus’ life, it does give you, give you some some strength and hope. That does bring up another technique that you mentioned in the book, which is finding people like this: mentors, or whether it’s Marcus Aurelius, or somebody else in your life, or it could be a historical–someone from history, and use that person as a sort of mental mentor to ask yourself, “Well, what would they do in this situation? How would they turn this challenge-tragedy into an opportunity?”

Donald Robertson 24:12
Yeah, absolutely. We call that “contemplation of the sage” in stoicism. So sometimes these are modern terms that scholars like Pierre Hadot that we, we mentioned earlier; “the view from above” is another modern term that we use to describe these techniques ’cause the stoics just use the techniques. They don’t always tell us what they, what they might call them. And so we, we tend to say that the sage or soft force; the wise man or women in stoicism is kind of a mental construct; a hypothetical ideal. You know, one of the things I actually liked about the stoics is that some of the ancient schools of philosophy were kinda like personality codes. So epicureanism, for example, and pythagorarianism–ancient schools of philosophy were named after their founders, and their followers had to memorize by rote their sayings. They celebrated the founders’ birthday. They viewed them almost as kind of semidivine figures. Whereas the stoics were originally founded by Zeno. And they were originally for a while called Zenonians. I’m glad they didn’t stick with that name because it’s kind of hard. It’s a bit of a mouthful. But they abandon that very early on and named themselves after the place that they used to hang out and meet, the Stoa Poikile in Athens. And I think that’s partly because they didn’t want to claim that their founder was a guru. They claimed that there was not even the founders of stoicism they said are not perfectly wise. It’s a philosophy, not a religion. And everybody has to think for themselves, you know? And Seneca, a much later stoic, I think, explains what perhaps the founders of stoicism would have said. He says to his friend, Lucilius, “Don’t think of me as an expert like a doctor, like a physician.” You know, you’re coming seeking help like someone seeking psychotherapy or medical advice. And he said, “Think of me rather as the patient in the bed beside you, who’s just been in hospital for about longer. And you know, I’ve been going through therapy for longer than you, so I can share my experiences with you. But I’m not like some guru, or expert, or like a doctor, or something like that. We’re all in the same boat together.” But it’s more like a kinda peer support approach, rather than an expert-student-came of approach. But nevertheless, the stoics thought as a mental exercise, it was important to ask yourself, “What you would imagine somebody wiser than you; with a stronger character than you; with greater self-discipline than you doing in the situations that you face?” And that could be a kind of hypothetical ideal. What do you imagine a perfectly wise person doing when they lose their job, or the relationship breaks up, or they, they’re faced with chronic illness or something? Or it could be thinking about examples of people who were near-sages? Like, the stoics would often say literally, “What would Zeno do or what would Socrates do if faced with the same situation?” But it could also be what would you do if you had more self-discipline, and you were faced with this challenge? These are all what I like to call perspective-shifting exercises. They just encouraged us to kind of use our imagination; to think about things a bit more flexibly, and possibly to do some creative problem-solving. We do very similar things in, in therapy with clients today.

Sean Murray 27:27
All these techniques that we’ve been talking about so far seem to be related to our mental state; reducing anxiety; reducing negative emotion. Also, achieving the sort of tranquility or equanimity, which it seems to be closely related to the goals or what we’re seeking in through stoicism. The question I have for you is: Well, what is–what would stoics say is really the purpose of life? What are we really after? I mean, if these techniques are going to help us live and flourish, what is it that we should be doing to achieve the good life or to have a life well lived? What’s the higher aim that we’re going after?

Donald Robertson 28:07
Well, there were, and in fact, there are two points here. One is there were schools of ancient philosophy that made “ataraxia” or equanimity of tranquility, the supreme goal in life. What we call the “telos” in Greek: the goal of life. You could say that’s kind of like what we mean, when we talk about something being the meaning of life. There are many schools of philosophy in the ancient world in Greece and Rome. And they tended to be distinguished in terms of how they defined the most important thing in life; the supreme goal of life; the meaning of life if you want to put it that way. And they love to debate this and argue about who had the best definition of the goal of life. And the epicureans, who I mentioned earlier, for instance, well, one of the schools that were known for saying that the goal was “ataraxia,” a particular kind of tranquility or equanimity. And the stoics do think of the goal of life as consisting in part in a kind of equanimity, but they define it a little bit differently. And I’ll explain why. The epicureans allegedly had a slogan that said, “Live in obscurity.” And the founder, Epicurus, lived among a close circle of his best friends and a private garden on the edge of Athens. And he taught his students not to marry or have children, and not to engage in public life and politics. And the stoics said polar opposite, right? Modern readers think, “Oh, aren’t all these philosophies basically saying the same thing?” So from a modern perspective, they’re not that so different from us. Like maybe it seems that way, but they all thought they were loggerheads; and epicureans and stoics were giving quite opposite advice. So stoics said that, “Generally speaking, we’d encourage you to marry and have children; engage in public life.” And the stoics taught in the Stoa Poikile in the Agora, which we–like teaching in a shopping mall today. You know, it was out in public; in the marketplace where anybody could come and argue with them. So the stoic said, “You should put yourself out in public and engage with trouble and stress within reason.” And so stoic equanimity didn’t consist in living a quiet life, necessarily; a kind of reclusive life. The epicureans thought we should avoid stress and pain. And the stoics thought, “Well, no, I mean, you can’t can avoid those things.” But what matters; what equanimity insists is the way that you respond to these things; by responding to them in a rational and kind of balanced way, and, and not placing too much importance on pain and discomfort; learning to cope well with it. So I guess what those two schools would say is those different ways of understanding what tranquility or equanimity would look like. And the stoics thought is about keeping a level head, even when everybody around you is going crazy, and, you know, in the middle of battle, and so on; whereas, for the epicureans it was, it was more about just staying out of the situations in the first place. And then, the other part of the question is: “Well, what then is the supreme goal of life?” The stoics had this argument really that originates in Socrates, which is that what’s really distinctive about human nature is that we are self-aware, we use language, and we have the ability to reason. You know, that’s kind of what makes us different from other animals. Other animals may have the ability to communicate and have self-awareness, but nothing like the same degree of it that humans exhibit. And the stoics and Socrates said, “Well, we kind of have an obligation. If we’re able to reason at all and apply reason to our lives, you could argue that we have a sort of obligation to ourselves; to reason properly; to use it to full capacity.” You know, nature has given us ability to think. We should do it properly. We should reason as effectively; reason well about life. And that’s really how they define the, the goal of life, and of course, to reason well; to reason optimally would be to exhibit wisdom. And the virtue of wisdom, the stoics call it. To reason well and exercise wisdom in our relationships with other people would be to exhibit social virtue, which they called the “kayosuni” (*inaudible*) or justice; moral virtue in our relationships with others. So all of the other virtues really the stoics thought can be seen a–as forms of practical wisdom or moral wisdom being applied to different areas of life. So the goal for stoics is usually described as achieving “aditi” (*inaudible*), or virtue, or excellence of character that really consists in a form of, of moral wisdom. And that’s the, the kind of foundation of everything else as far as they’re concerned.

Sean Murray 32:44
I can buy into that. We had Ryan Hanley on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he’s a scholar that wrote a book about Adam Smith. And Adam Smith was writing in the 1700s, and basically said the same thing. But where does that leave wealth? Where does that leave, you know, money? Where does it leave my health? We spending a lot of time here as we’re chugging along on earth; trying to accumulate.

Donald Robertson 33:05
Yeah.

Sean Murray 33:06
What, what are we doing there?

Donald Robertson 33:07
The stoics say a lot about this stuff, but I’m one of these people, who would argue that the stoics are essentially Socratic philosophers; very much seeing themselves as the descendants of Socrates. And we get–in Socrates in the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, Socrates forming more detailed arguments to support this possession, which the stoics kind of take for granted. So if I was being very glib, I’d say what we have in the stoics is kind of a bullet point version of Socrates. The stoics wanted to see how–what was the conclusions we arrived at here and how do we actually apply them in practice? In Socrates, we get more of the argumentation in favor of things. In particular, Socratic dialogue by Plato called, The Euthydemus, and in it Socrates argues about what constitutes good fortune in life. And all these Socratic dialogues, Socrates always acts off by asking what seemed like really stupid questions, and his interlocutors, the people he’s speaking to seem to, sort of puzzled at first. They think, “Why are you even asking me these kind of obvious questions?” So Socrates says, “What does good fortune consistent in?” And his friends say, “Look, well, having money, and good looks, and good birth, and health, and fitness, and everybody knows that, right? Like all this stuff that people want in life. All the good things like…you know, do you really need us to draw you up a list, Socrates? Li–you know, like all that kind of stuff; having a roof over your head. All these kind of things, you know? Like what’s our philosophy as this, is (*inaudible*) these kind of childish questions that you’re asking us?” And then Socrates always does the same maneuver, where he stuns people by then flipping everything around on its head. And, and Socrates says, “Well, you said that good fortune consists in, for example, having wealth, right? But surely, if somebody is foolish and vicious, then they’ll use wealth to do foolish and vicious things like a tyrant or a dictator with, right? So surely that’s not really what you mean by good fortune. That’s a bad thing isn’t it for the man; for everybody else? Like when you say that, for in–for instance, wealth and all of these other things are, are good, don’t you really mean that they just give you an opportunity? They give you more opportunity to exercise your will and your character. And there would be more opportunity for a bad person to do bad things if they were strong, and fit, and healthy, and wealthy, and had lots of power and influence. Whereas a good person may be given more opportunity to do good things, model things, or wise things if they had wealth and support from other people, and status, and, and all that, so you really are just describing practical advantages or opportunities in life. Wealth is good in the hands of a good person, but bad in the hands of a bad person, in other words. And he said also, ironically, a good and wise person with tremendous self-discipline and strength of character may even be able to turn poverty to their advantage; may even be able to turn persecution to their advantage like you mentioned earlier. So he said, “Look, maybe this is a little bit more complicated than you assumed at first.” But also, I think one of…and the stoics realized this that one of the fundamental problems in life is that because we look at other people, and we see them pursuing all of these external things, we naturally get kind of brainwashed into assuming that the goal of life is having money, or status, or you know having like a 10,000 followers on Instagram, or whatever; like a–all of these kind of like trivial things are at best opportunities or, or a means to an end. And we confuse the means with the, the end in life, and get overly preoccupied with, with relatively trivial things, and, and neglect the truly important things in life. But we do that because we’re, we’re kind of learning from what we see other people doing. And Socrates would say, “Look, you have to think for yourself, though.” Like…and when you look beyond appearances and think about things more, you should realize that nobody really wants money for its own sake. I mean, it’s just a piece of paper, right? Like…you know, there, the only real reason to want money is because it allows you to do things that you think are worthwhile and more fundamentally important; maybe it allows you to help other people, or protect your family, or spend on educating yourself, and stuff like that. It’s merely a means to an end. And when you realize that maybe you, you know, you’re more able to identify and pursue the truly important thing in life, which in his eyes is the kind of moral wisdom that allows us to, to flourish in life.

Sean Murray 37:41
Wow, that’s, that’s pretty powerful. I love that story. You talk in the book about character and the pursuit of wisdom as being something that is a good in itself. And it’s intrinsically good, right? I think that’s what you’re getting at, when we talk about what Socrates was getting at which was that we can pursue this purely because it is the good. It allows us to pursue the good. It’s not a means to an end like wealth, or good looks, or other aspects. What about say, seeking pleasure, you know? Whether it’s indulging in alcohol, or you know, going from relationship to relationship, you know like–it seems like the hedonistic sort of lifestyle many people have in their 20s, where you’re, you’re trying to find yourself, and it doesn’t seem to work out well, yet our society seems to, you know, kind of put it out there as this path to happiness. Where does that fall into this view of the world?

Donald Robertson 38:38
There were other competing schools of philosophy that tried in different ways, the sereneics (*inaudible*) and epicureans, I’m looking at you guys. Like there were other schools of philosophy that tried in their own way to, to formulate a hedonistic…and the stoics just thought that didn’t work. And actually, to be honest, most of the ancient schools of philosophy found hedonism, (*inaudible*) pretty unconvincing as a philosophy of life for a number of different reasons. And one of them is the stoics thought work i–is sometimes tempting for people to think that it may be good for them to embrace a hedonistic philosophy of life. But not that many people would say that they’d want to live in a society, where everyone else was fundamentally had an estate, and mainly interested in achieving pleasure, you know? Would you want your welfare to depend on a bunch of people that didn’t really care about you as a human being, but we’re only interested in doing stuff that–doing things that they gave them pleasure. It’s not a pro-social philosophy. And the stoics would say, hey, look, you know, one of their most fundamental goals was to have a philosophy of life that’s consistent. Like they thought–and Socrates as well thought–our philosophy should hold up under scrutiny. It shouldn’t be riddled with inconsistencies. And one of the main inconsistencies that Socrates and the stoics identified was this kind of hypocrisy that consists in embracing values ourself, but applying a different standard or a different set of values to the, the character of other people. So they thought if you’re going to have a philosophy of life, it should be one that you could also consistently would desire that other people around you would embrace. And hedonism doesn’t really pass that test. Some people may try and argue that it doesn’t defend it. But on the face of it, it’s problematic in that respect, you know? If you lived in a society, where your welfare was dependent on a bunch of hedonists, it’s not clear why they should want to do you any favors, and or if it was trouble for them or painful for them; whereas, the stoics can argue that acting with moral wisdom and exhibiting justice and self-discipline would be something that would be more collectively in, in the interest of the, the rest of society. So that’s one of the reason(s) that they’re not super attracted to hedonism. And there are several others. I mean, one of them, oh, I just want to mention briefly because it’s been very relevant in modern psychotherapy. And you’ll notice that psychotherapists are quite keen on stoicism, but they’re not keen on epicureanism or hedonism as a philosophy of life, generally. And one reason for that is, is especially over the last 10 or 20 years, there’s an old, nuanced, subtle psychological observation that the stoics and other ancient authors were a–aware of, but it’s become much more prominent in psychology today. And that’s the idea that if people try to directly pursue feelings of pleasure that often seems to be counterproductive. And to put it very simply, it seems that feelings of happiness and pleasure are best viewed as something that comes as a kind of byproduct or side effect of trying to do what’s healthy like–so trying to live a healthy life, and develop your character, and develop psychological strength, and do things that are good for your body and mind; may sometimes means enduring discomfort like you may have to go to the gym and do exercises that are kind of uncomfortable or painful or tiring like…and all that kind of flourish. And maybe you experienced in the long run feelings of well-being, and happiness, and pleasure as a consequence of doing that. And, but you have to be willing to endure some discomfort in order to get there. And the story is rightly understood that when people try to pursue pleasure as the number one goal, often it makes them pretty miserable. And therapists will tell you, you will never meet anyone, who is so fixated on feelings of pleasure and clinging on to happiness as clients who suffer from clinical depression like…which isn’t a good sign in terms of that being a healthy philosophy of life. You know, the people who are most preoccupied with how they feel inside are often clients that suffer from clinical depression because this kind of extreme introspection like causes people to become very withdrawn, very self-focused; doesn’t seem to be very healthy for us in the long run. What seems to be more healthy is a slightly more extroverted or outward-looking philosophy of life, where we, we kind of engage more with activity, and pleasant, subjective feelings are more kind of something that follow on as a consequence of that.

Sean Murray 43:11
Well, you just hit on two really good points. One being that if everyone had a hedonistic lifestyle and pursuing pleasure, what kind of world would that be? And that’s a good question to ask. And also this idea that hedonism is a very selfish kind of pursuit. It’s all about you. And one of the qualities that, that I really enjoy about stoicism, and you talked about this in the book, too; and Marcus Aurelius talks about it is–this idea that we are all part of a brotherhood or sisterhood of humanity. It really struck me that here’s this Roman emperor, who doesn’t necessarily have to take in the idea of the welfare of others, and not many Roman emperors had this sort of worldview, but Marcus did where he felt I’m part of this greater community, and I should be serving this community. I have a duty to this community. We’re essentially social animals; our social ability is very important, as you mentioned, kind of an intrinsic essence of our humanity. And therefore, it’s important that we connect with others; that we serve others. We have a duty towards others and the community. And I think that seems to be another part of achieving the good life, right, is living for others?

Donald Robertson 44:26
Yeah, I mean, you could even see just, again, we have to go back to the kind story of the history and so on. Marcus Aurelius is probably an extreme case in that respect, compared to other Roman emperors, right? Like so there were other good Roman emperors, but he–especially if we look at Meditations–like he really seems to take the role of emperor very seriously indeed. And he sees himself as being put by the gods or by fate, destiny in this situation. It was his obligation to try and help people as much as he can. He trained and studied like almost in a workaholic like manner to fulfill his role as Roman emperor. And we really see other emperors didn’t take it. They just saw it as an opportunity to kind of cash in, and live like Playboys, and be celebrities; take advantage of the status. As for Marcus Aurelius, it was a job with tremendous obligations that went along with it. And, and stoicism, I guess it’s a chicken and egg thing. You know, did the stoic philosophy come first to Marcus or the sense of obligation as emperor come first to him? It’s, it’s hard to say, I think. But he…certainly stoicism helped him to conceptualize his duty as emperor. And he understood it very much as an obligation. And this is very intriguing. I don’t think anywhere really in The Meditations does he mention his obligation to Roman citizens, but he frequently over, and over, and over again describes his obligation to the rest of mankind. So he saw himself very much in what we call cosmopolitan terms. Although, he was the head of a vast empire like he actually saw himself as having a moral obligation even to people that lay outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire. And that would include the so-called barbarians that they were at war with. Like Marcus at no point really says that they’re excluded from this. He says he has an obligation to all rational like sentient; all human beings, anyway. And that, that would include the people that he’s currently engaged in battle with. He, he saw those and he talks about this idea. That although they’re are set against him, he nevertheless has this obligation to respond as best he can to them like–and to, to wish that they should become enlightened; and then to wish that he should be able to, to live in harmony with them, and they should become like his friends. So we use the term cosmopolitan. It’s generally attributed to the origin of the cynic or the some ancient sources say that even Socrates used this word. It means a citizen of the cosmos or a citizen of the universe. And the stoics consider themselves first and foremost as being part of this brotherhood of man or brotherhood of humankind, and citizens of this kind of global cosmic community. So that’s very much how Marcus envisages his role. And he would go further and say that if you get angry with any other human being, and again, that would include the people who are currently at war with him, then something fundamental, something existentially has gone wrong. Like your fundamental obligation as a stoic in a sense is not to alienate yourself from the rest of nature or the rest of humanity. Marcus goes as far as to say that if you allow yourself to genuinely become enraged with one of your enemies, even someone who has betrayed you. He was betrayed on a world historic scale by Rome’s enemies. Then, as soon as you allow yourself to genuinely resent that and become angry with it, a mystical, metaphysical, existential level, you’ve allowed yourself to become alienated from the rest of nature. And that’s something the stoics see as fundamentally toxic, and to be resisted. You know, even our enemies we have to see ourselves as being put all in the same boat together. And in a sense paradoxically for stoics, we live in harmony even with, with traitors and enemies as long as we respond to them with wisdom.

Sean Murray 48:30
Well, that’s great that you mentioned community, and in closing, Donald, I wanted to ask you if there’s anyone out there, who wants to learn more about stoicism, is there a community out there, or is there a way that people can learn more about how to apply stoicism in their life?

Donald Robertson 48:45
So Modern Stoicism Organization is a nonprofit organization run by a multidisciplinary team of volunteers. It was set up by Christopher Gill, professor of Ancient Thought; Professor Emeritus of Ancient Thought, Exeter University in England; and I’m one of the founding members also of Modern Stoicism. And that organization does lots of things for people, who are interested in stoicism. So its main remit is to adjust people to the ways in which stoicism can be used today and carry out research on it. Everyone is a Stoic Week Event, which is a free online course every year; organizes the Stoicon Conference every year in a different city; in a different country. And spin off can have many conferences called StoicOnex, which happened in different cities around the world each year. We had about nine in different countries this year, so people can find out more about Modern Stoicism; the website: modernstoicism.com. There’s also a blog there with over 600 articles from people from all walks of life, all over the world, talking about how they used stoicism in daily life. Really valuable if you’re just beginning to learn about the subject, and also my website has information about my blog, and about courses that I run online, and my publications, and so on. That’s just my name, it’s Donald Robertson or one word; dot name instead of dot com.

Sean Murray 50:08
Donald Robertson, I really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you for being on The Good Life.

Donald Robertson 50:14
No problem. It’s a pleasure. Thanks very much for inviting me on!

Outro 50:18
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