Just curious, why aren’t you a fan of stoicism? If you don’t mind sharing some thoughts on it I’d appreciate it. I’ve been exploring it and I enjoy reading various takes on it. I’m not married to the philosophy and looking for a battle by any means.
My experience with stoicism so far has been fairly different, but it might be because I'm cherry picking things I like. One thing I have enjoyed about it though is how objective it seems rather than subjective. I have a feeling if I delve more into modern stoicism I'll find more of what you're talking about.
> concepts of control
This one seems to me to be something like:
1. Anything external is out of your control 2. Anything internal is in the realm of possibility to control if you're healthy and willing 3. Having the faculties to control yourself is a gift/incredibly fortunate, and to hone that ability is very virtuous
If you lack control it's either because a) you're unable to due to some affliction like mental disability or sickness (not lacking virtue) or b) you don't practice enough (lacking virtue). I suppose there's room for a c) both a and b, too. This is where you're right - this becomes very subjective. There's a blurry, blurry line between hard, limiting disabilities and resolvable illness. I would say though that each of us can only do our best, and believe others are also doing their best. To split hairs on why people act the way they do would be pointless. Instead we should focus on supporting them to do better if they evidently need the help.
> create too many discussions that aren’t worth having
This has seemed to be something that's resented by a lot of classic stoics. Take Marcus Aurelius in Mediations here:
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." - 10.16
"Be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds." - 3.5
"[I’m grateful to the gods…] that when I had my heart set on philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist nor sat alone writing, *nor untangled syllogisms* (emphasis mine) nor preoccupied myself with celestial phenomena." - 1.17
Mind you, Marcus (to my knowledge) never self-identified as a stoic, though he was surrounded by and taught by stoics and his philosophy seems to pound on the 4 cardinal virtues relentlessly.
Here, Epictetus alludes to the futility of certain trivial diversions in philosophical debate:
"[...] What Nature is, and how she administers the universe, and whether she really exists or not, these are questions about which there is no need to go on to bother ourselves." - Fragment
"Be mostly silent; or speak merely what is needful, and in few words." - Enchiridion, 33
I think the problem of trivial diversion, specifically when it comes to subjectivity, is a widespread problem in philosophy and not necessarily specific to stoicism. I do think that debating subjective interpretations without some common good in sight or at hand is contrary to stoic philosophy.
Maybe what you're saying is undeniable evidence of the subjectivity being a problem, though. I certainly can't argue that, and I know others struggle with that too. It could be that I'm just taking what I like and silently rejecting the rest. I think this is why what many stoics did in taking what made sense from other schools of thought, purely because it seemed truthful, is still wise today. Many stoics weren't even opposed to slavery for example - it's clearly a product of a different time. I'm not sure that I'd ever identify as a stoic either, but I do enjoy a lot of what it has to offer so far. It's fascinating to see how much we're like people from 2000 years ago, too.
Therefore no, even if something more effective than wine had been available at the time, I do not think "taking drugs to feel happy/satisfied/virtuous" would be advisable.
Being virtuous was "being a virtuous citizen"; no matter if you were a slave or an Emperor. If anything they tried to teach you not to care about the conditions you were in (rich, poor, young, old...) and focus on the outcomes only.
( I do not consider myself an expert, but I mantain a small page about Stoicism: https://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/Stoicism.html )
But stoicism tells you to focus on this "virtuousness" in defiance of the actual outcomes: it tells you you shouldn't care whether other people acknowledge you as virtuous or not, or whether you succeeded or failed in a contest, as long as you acted rightly. I think this is actually a contradiction, because you can't decide which actions are virtuous through pure reason without regard to their outcomes; or even if you could, how would you ever know whether your reasoning was correct or not?
I've never seen the result of a contest being something that really mattered in stoicism.
The 4 cardinal virtues don't seem to be relevant in any conventional contest I can think of. Maybe I'm interpreting your comment wrong.
> in defiance of the actual outcomes
Is that true, though? I think wisdom comes into question here, and if you do "virtuous" things with bad outcomes, it's not very wise and therefor not very virtuous. Good intentions with bad results are nice in that you meant well, but good intentions don't make us virtuous on their own.
Yeah, my point is that's explicitly given as an example of something you shouldn't care about IIRC.
> I think wisdom comes into question here, and if you do "virtuous" things with bad outcomes, it's not very wise and therefor not very virtuous. Good intentions with bad results are nice in that you meant well, but good intentions don't make us virtuous on their own.
At that point doesn't the whole stoic idea just become circular? The wisdom to act virtuously seems to be no simpler than a complete philosophy. And all of the rest of stoicism seems to depend on being able to know whether your acts were virtuous - e.g. if I acted virtuously but had poor results because of things outside my control, I shouldn't be saddened - but that advice is no use if I don't know whether I acted virtuously.
Not as far as I understand it. Virtue is fairly objective, and doing that for your own sake wouldn't be virtuous. Classical stoics believe humans are a social animal, and truly virtuous behaviour is pro-social.
> The stoics say that you should care about whether you acted virtuously rather than whether your actions lead to a good outcome
I'm not sure I understand this, but I doubt that's your fault. All I can think is that if your actions lead to a bad outcome, ultimately you didn't act virtuously - even if the intent was there. There's a sort of tricky spot in the philosophy which I don't fully understand yet though. Take Cato the Younger for example. His virtue and integrity stats were so buffed that he brought ruin to himself and those close to him, and history seems a little torn about it. Was it virtuous to stick to his guns and end up dead, or was that actually foolish and ultimately not virtuous because it served no one around him? I don't fully understand the classic or modern stoic take on this kind of situation.
However I do think in most cases that if your actions have bad (bad as in Stoic Objective Bad) outcomes then you didn't act virtuously. I suppose if it couldn't have been anticipated, then maybe you did.
> solipsism-lite
Interesting - my take is the complete opposite. I see it as though Stoicism describes the ideal human as quite selfless and pro-social.
> I think it's ok, even good, to actually care about real-world outcomes sometimes.
I believe this is actually all that matters in stoicism, since real-world outcomes are all that matter to the people around you. I could be wrong - I've just read a couple translated books and listened to some podcasts at this point.
I think you're understating it; this seems to be a major point of stoicism, that you shouldn't be sad if your favourite pot was broken or your wife died or your fellow citizens denounce you and exile you, so long as you acted virtuously. You should only worry about what you can control, your own actions, not what you can't control.
All the stoic writings I've read seemed to take it as a given that you already knew what was virtuous. So if what's virtuous is solely a function of what's in your own head, then the whole thing seems solipsistic. If you define virtuous actions in terms of their results and their effects on other people then it wouldn't be solipsistic, but in that case stoicism seems to tell you very little about how to live; judging which actions are virtuous doesn't seem any easier than just judging what you should do in the first place.
I think that's very much contrary to utilitarianism, which says you should measure your actions by their consequences. If you did x and got a world with utility y where you could have done z and got a world with utility w, and y < w, that's the very definition (under utilitarianism) of a bad action.
Similarly you didn't make the wrong bet when you lose to a bad beat.
Any non omniscient actor can at best act to maximize expected utility.
If you ignore a pattern of bad outcomes that would lead you to improve your estimate of expected utility, then you are out of bounds, but my limited knowledge of stoicism does not make me think that it is opposed to such self reflection.
Are there any? Perhaps the tenets of Stoicisim depend on there being no such drugs.