Stoic Values X
25 November 2023
If you’re reading this, you are probably dedicated to understanding how human life works. This blog is the tenth in a challenging series seeking to understand Stoic indifferents by first understanding Stoic metaphysics against on-the-street application of those (metaphysically) contextualized ethics.
Last week we left off with the understanding that the Stoics seem to have ignored the wonderful variety between the characters of any two human beings. This inference was drawn from the Stoic assumption that the virtues are inter-entailed: that having one means possessing all which I argued against, in last week’s blog, here. In this, the Stoics seem to have exaggerated the effects of logic when it meets the eccentricities of lived life i.e., we are decidedly hierarchical creatures meaning I prefer butterscotch over chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry on ice cream dishes while others prefer one of the others. To get to the main event, we’ll review two quotes from last week’s blog where we tested theory against addictive behaviours.
- If the Stoic position were true, we would balance the four primary virtues in preference and practice.
If having one virtue, say justice, meant that we necessarily had moderation, wisdom, and courage, does it also not follow that these would have to wax and wain with equal intensity. For example, an easily understood inter-entailment is a four-vehicle line of train cars. If one of the end cars is an engine, then the engine dictates the behaviour of all four cars i.e., when the engine speeds up, the other three cars necessarily do the same and when the engine stops, so do the other three cars.
As such, if the primary virtues of Stoicism are similarly related, increasing the intensity of your courage, increases the intensity of your use and deployment of justice, wisdom, and moderation. Yet, when I think of acts that require serious courage, it seems we often sacrifice wisdom and moderation to raise our courage to the level of a conscious action. For example, breaking up an unfair street fight would be an act of courage, but it is arguably foolish and immoderate, even if aiming at a more just outcome. In that case, courage (and perhaps justice) rise while wisdom and moderation fall. So, the four cars of our train of virtues are neither pulling in the same direction nor with the same speed.
We can take this further. If that courageous act involved the intervenor getting badly beaten, wounded, or disabled, would that be an enactment of justice? Methinks that is poor payment indeed for a charitably motivated act. In this scenario, the acceleration of courage has resulted in very poor service from moderation, wisdom, or justice. In short, the inter-entailment of virtues is questionable.
2. To become addicted requires imbalance and to leave addiction requires imbalance.
To continue that questioning, if we take a quick look at the addictive cycle:
In less academic terms, the beginning of the addictive cycle involves increasing doses of one’s DoC (drug of choice) to kill the hangover. This vicious increase in dosage, with consequent deepening of lows, is the royal road to addiction. By nature, it is excessive, immoderate, unwise, unfair, and terrifying. If pursued for any length of time, it results in profound shame, decreased self-regard, isolation, avoidance, and the express lane to low social status.
What this tells us is that becoming addicted involves a preoccupation with an addictive substance or behaviour. As above, in point #2, this is imbalanced behaviour. More interestingly, to leave the cycle of addiction also requires an obsessive and imbalanced preoccupation with a new way of being. I cannot count how many people I have seen leave addiction to alcohol or cocaine or other drugs only to begin exercising addictively or smoking cigarettes in the same manner. And what that tells us is that the pain beneath the addiction has not been addressed and needs some sort of avoidance to keep one’s mind from the hurt. The cigarette smoking or exercise provide that avoidance.
In terms of the Stoic inter-entailment of virtues, getting out of and getting into addiction are acts of excess and, in my estimation, getting out is one of the most ethically laudable acts of agency a human being can perform. Yet, in terms of the Stoic virtues, leaving addiction requires obsessive preoccupation with courage and immoderate resistance long before any sense of wisdom or moderation is perceived or gained. As such, if inter-entailment of virtues does exist, it exists in varying asymmetrical dollops i.e., the four-car train consists of four engines with each taking turns determining speed and direction depending on the goal at hand.
3. Logic alone won’t pull that imbalance into eudaimonic equilibrium (because everyone’s is different) but conscious, disciplined habituation will.
Here, we approach the end of the inter-entailed (have one, have all) discussion of virtues. Eudaimonic equilibrium is well-spirited balance. As we have all heard endlessly, we need to eat vegetables, exercise, complete the stress cycle, and take more time off. And with the same tiredness of hearing it, we all know that we cannot do all of those things with equal intensity, conviction, or regularity. Different priorities at different times. That, as I see it, is the nature of life. The Stoics disagreed.
The conclusion of Hecato’s thought is Nietzsche’s Amor Fati which I’m having a harder and harder time accepting—pun intended! There’s a blog on that very subject, here. It states that, in some contexts, hope can destroy you and I have no quibble with that. But the context is everything. And the readiness for changing contexts (a way of seeing human lives) comes more from habituation than absolutes. I am not a Christian, but I have taken comfort in some New Testament ideas, particularly Romans 8:24, For we are saved by hope (Holy Bible, 1957, p. 166).
If we adopt Amor Fati, loving of one’s fate, regardless of its apparent bleakness, there is a measure of hope that we relinquish. And the Stoics beseech us to do this as they believed it would bring tranquility to the soul. But…they also believed that the universe was providential and good, and that everything happened for a reason. A rudimentary knowledge of astrophysics (like the number of galaxies rivalling ours: estimates now vary between 200 billion to 2 trillion) and an equally rudimentary knowledge of natural selection leaves me understanding the Earth as a wonderful chance intersection of biology, astrophysics, and time. That is, if you don’t believe things happen for a G-d given reason, you may find comfort, as I do, in the beauty of chance.
And that, folks, is why Aristotle trumps the Stoics, in this scribe’s opinion. In short, he was our first scientist who held that the way we apprehend knowledge (epistemology) and the way it is deployed, in individual lives (ethics), was the product of habitual excellence in both observation and action. The Stoics, who came to fruition in common with Christian thought, were more dogmatic and less scientific. For my money, there’s more value in openly discussed, evidence-based ideas than in any dogma I’ve yet encountered. One is an open process, the other a prescription.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
References
Chalykoff, D. R. (2021, 16 April). A narrative analysis of agential movement from addiction to recovery in Erin Khar’s Strung Out (2020). www.understandings.ca
Granfield, R., & Cloud, W. (1996). The elephant that no one sees: Natural recovery among middle-class addicts. Journal of Drug Issues, 26(1), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/002204269602600104
Holiday, R. & Hanselman, S. (2016). The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. Portfolio/Penguin.
Holy Bible, King James Version. (1957). Collins’ Clear-Type Press.
Shinebourne, P., Smith, J.A. (2011). ‘It is just habitual’: an interpretive phenomenological analysis of the experience of long-term recovery from addiction. Mental Health Addiction (2011) 9:282-295.
Stephens, W. O. (2023, September 1). Stoic Ethics. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/stoiceth/#:~:text=All%20other%20things%20were%20judged,be%20used%20well%20and%20badly.
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