It may be that i'll end up posting a lot about Stoicism, but then again, maybe not.
I have a number of thoughts on this. There is the issue of Stoic physics and psychology and whether it fits with the way Western academics generally understand the nature of the physical Universe, and there is the matter of whether Stoicism is a good thing.
Firstly, the issue of Stoic physics. Some Stoics are not terribly concerned with the physics and divorce the philosophy of life quite neatly from it. Even these, though, probably assumed it. For the early Stoics, the two were inseparable.
This is roughly how i understand Stoic physics. It is physicalist and vitalist. There are no atoms or voids. The two eternal principles of Logos and Hyle are inseparable aspects of a single body, and the soul and God both exist and are physical. God is an eternal creative fire which is also found in humans, whose souls are also eternal. There is a more and a less refined fire. The distinctive human soul is pneuma, a mixture of fire and air. The less refined fire is not the eternal creative fire.
This is difficult to reconcile with contemporary Western physics. However, there may be another way, through the concept of prana. Breath is the lowest human need which can be voluntarily satisfied in Maslow's hierarchy. There are more fundamental needs such as for the heart to keep beating, but it is unusual for these to be subject to the will. Breath is special because it is both a reflex and a conscious action. Humans have, by a lucky chance, come across language, and this has made them distinctive from many other species. Human culture is based on language, and to the extent that thought is verbal, so is our special human consciousness, though not consciousness itself. Stoicism would concur if representations are seen as statements, and the Logos is rationality as the Word, that is, language. The historical basis of human language seems to be speech, though there are now other forms of language in which speech does not feature, and therefore breath is also absent, such as sign language and writing. I am therefore a little uncomfortable with this model because of the status of deaf experience.
There is another sense in which the soul is breath and fire. The central nervous system depends intimately on oxygen and differences in charge across membranes to maintain consciousness. Such a difference in charge is analogous to the refined fire known as plasma, that is, the fire of the sun and lightning rather than that of oxidation. The brain also needs a constant supply of oxygen to maintain consciousness, to a greater extent than the rest of the body. Therefore, the soul is in a very literal sense composed of fire and air.
The trouble is, what am i doing here? Am i merely painting a pretty picture of the soul, or am i saying something practically meaningful? I don't know. I do feel there is mileage in pursuing the notion of plasma as God. Another reason for disquiet is the nature of consciousness. It is reductionist and mechanistic to focus the seat of consciousness solely as within the central nervous system, and it doesn't correspond to my experience. I have irritable bowel syndrome. When i am stressed, this is expressed through my digestion. My colon contains millions of neurones. Similarly, i have gonads, a thyroid and adrenals. All of these are part of my consciousness. Therefore, I would say that my soul consists at least of a much larger portion of my body than just my brain. Although there is a blood-brain barrier, there doesn't seem to be such a firm line between my consciousness and the rest of me. Then again, the endocrine system and the enteric nerves rely on refined fire just as much as the brain does, if not on air. There is also a lot of scope in the notion of breath as the basis of the human soul through language.
Now to the other concern. Stoicism teaches indifference to the world and self-control. This means that one treats success and failure in the same way. Recently i have been very poor and found a Stoic approach helpful in coping with this. However, we recently received more money, and i found i was not particularly joyful about this, regardless of looking a gift horse in the mouth, something i'm very much in the habit of doing. Emotions are an important part of life, and i don't know that i really want to be cut off from the negative ones at the cost of also being cut off from the positive ones. Is this what Stoicism does or have i misunderstood?
2 comments:
I'll try to post a comment
Right, That seems to have worked.
I hope it does this time also because I would like to share some of my own thoughts on stoicism.
I became interested in philosophy when I was 18 in my history class when my teacher allowed me to do a paper on it instead of on ww2.
When I was about twenty I came across a book called Letters to Vergilius by Seneca. Philosophy became very important to me because of that book. It was like he was talking to me and I took his advice.
It seems to me that virtually everybody, from the experts to the not so expert, thinks that stoicism means that you do battle with your emotions and supress them as hard as you can. Not showing emotion in your face or speach, not allowing yourself to feel it. This is utter bullshit and it makes me very angry, to even find such nonsense in respected philosophy books.
In stead stoicism is all about feeling and living your emotions, being in touch with the core of yourself which is your emotions.
When you feel something, express it. By expressing it as you feel it you ensure that the feeling does not stay inside to rot and fester into something that controls you. You must not become a slave to your emotions and the only way to achieve this is to 1) feel them as they occur 2) express them straight away 3) avoid having emotions building up inside untill they become unmanageable 4) choose to express emotions at the right time(which is immediately).
Offcourse people say you are being stoic when you exhibit a pokerface and complete selfcontrol. this is not an accurate discription of stoicism but it is logical that people should think that. This is because stoics do not whine. When a stoic is angry he shows anger to the degree he feels it right then and there. When he is sad he cries to that degree.
But what he does not do is let all his past anger from all his life shine through in the anger of the moment because he has allready dealt with them by expression and internal self knowledge.
Stoics are emotional beings through and through and they know it.
In the same way I love hedonism. I can't remeber the name of this one hedonist (greek I think) that had this garden that said "come in and enjoy" over the gate. People (men offcourse) came in expecting to drink much wine and mede, to eat lavish meals, to be fed grapes by slaves, listen to wonderfull music and even, dare I say it, to be sexually satisfied by young boys of the age that they would first begin to grow a beard (as was highly sought after by respectable men in those days)
Instead when they came in they found a simple well kept garden. They could drink water from the stream to quench their thirst, there was bread to make hunger go away. There was intelligent, thoughtfull discourse for the soul. And this philosopher would say to the dissapointed: You are not thirsty anymore, you are not hungry anymore, you are not cold, you are not alone. What more can you possibly want? your every need is satisfied is this not perfect hedonism?
I hope this made sense to you. You said I might want to email you and I will when I get around to it. My wife [susan] beat me to it though and I just did not find the time yet or the right frame of mind. But when I came across this blog I just had to react because the topic is so dear to me.
Greetings,
Zeno from the netherlands.
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