You're Probably Not "A" Stoic

We, as socially modern humans, have a tendency to self-select into groups whose superficial layers seem (to us) to reflect ideals and characteristics we want to believe align with our individual characters (or that we want to work toward embodying).

There are plenty of wonderful effects of this tendency, but one of the less wonderful ones (in my opinion) is that very few of us any longer see the value in dedicating ourselves to a single group identity. We’re no longer an X, Y, or Z, we’re an synthesis of the whole alphabet.

Of course, in some ways, this has always been the case.

We’ve always identified as many different things — for example, as parent and as a child of parents, or as a family member and as a member of society. It is undeniable that we all have more than one identity of these kinds because we have more than one role.

From the perspective of moral and ethical identities, however, the hodgepodge of moral and ethical frameworks we now pick and choose from to create our own “personal life philosophies”, is very much not in keeping with tradition.

These days, these moral mashups (as I call them) are as common as the sunsrise. Last week I met a Agnostic Hindu, earlier today I exchanged emails with a Buddhist Catholic. And a few years ago I remember speaking with a young man who claimed to be a Wiccan Atheist.

These mashups are, of course, impossible. One cannot be a Sikh Pagan, or a Catholic Zoroastrian, or a Rastafarian Nihilist — by mixing these competing worldviews (or life philosophies), we pervert each one and wind up practicing nothing coherent.

We can enjoy listening to Bob Marley’s soothing, life-loving jams every weekday morning as we fawn over Nietzsche’s glorious mustache and übermensch-ing, but we cannot say we are Rastafarian (capital “R”) Nihilists (capital “N”) and be, in any way whatsoever, truly embodying either of those schools of thought.

This is especially true when the “doctrines” of any philosophy and/or religion explicitly necessitate that we reject competing doctrines (because they don’t line up with ours).

This is what it means to be a something. Whether that something is a Buddhist, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or, as we’ll see, a Stoic.

In this week’s edition I’m going to talk about the phenomenon of “moral identity crises” through the lens of Stoicism and how the same thing is happening here.

Stoicism is a heavily nuanced and holistic philosophy whose individual aspects, all of them, even the most seemingly innocuous ones, rely on one another as if Stoicism were a skyscraper constructed entirely of lynchpins.

This makes Stoicism, structurally, a bit like a religion.

Take a moment to breathe here, and to make sure you read exactly what I said in that last sentence: I said structurally, Stoicism is like a religion.

I did not say Stoicism is a religion.

Imagine we identify as a member of a specific religion. Let’s say Christianity.

There are certain things, as a Christian, one must believe. One of the most important of those things, perhaps the second most important thing next to belief in God, is the belief that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins.

When enough people disagree with the details of a religion, and they can successfully defend the changing of those details (without breaking Christianity), they create a new sect.

This happens, or has happened, a lot in Christianity:

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Restorationism are the major branches and, within those, there are sects like the Armenian Apostolic Church, Calvinism, Methodism, the Baptists, Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The list is longer than this, but you get the point.

There are important disagreements on the details and the practice of Christianity between these groups but each of these groups can justify their “unique brand” of the faith with sound logical reasoning (and by that I mean, each sect is a closed logical system that adheres to all of its own rules).

None of these groups break Christianity as none of them abandon the core “requirements” of that particular strain of the Abrahamic Religions: belief in Jesus as the Son of God, the idea of the holy trinity, baptism, the concept of prayer, and the idea that the church is part of the body of Christ.

If we were to read the Bible and discover in its pages some inspiring ideas or ethical positions, and we began folding those few things into our daily life, would we be a Christian?

Certainly we would not.

This is because Christianity (regardless of the sect) is both not modular and greater than the sum of its parts.

Stoicism and Religion share this feature.

While I do not personally believe Stoicism has any sects, it does share, with religion, a lack of modularity and the fact that it is a practice which is greater than the sum of its parts.

The reason I feel there are no sects of Stoicism is that, as of yet, no one has been successful in finding a way to adjust the aforementioned “skyscraper of lynchpins” (by either reforming it into, let’s say, a condominium of lynchpins, or adding new lynchpins to it to make a taller skyscraper) without causing one of the existing lynchpins to fail and the entire structure to fall.

And yes, this means I don’t think “Modern Stoicism” is a so-called sect of Stoicism because I think Modern Stoicism breaks Stoicism.

Before that gets you too upset, let me first say I don’t think it matters much anyway and then let me explain why I feel that way… I promise it is not because I’m some fundamentalist warrior of orthodoxy (I find those sort of people obnoxious).

The Pillars of Stoicism

Continuing with our religious analogy: If we were to say Christianity had three pillars, they would certainly be these:

1. Belief in Jesus as the Son of God

2. The Holy Trinity

3. The authority of the Bible

Stoicism also has three pillars (called topoi). They are:

1. Physics (associated with natural science and the virtue of Courage)

2. Ethics (associated with morality and the virtue of Justice)

3. Logic (associated with disciplined thinking and the virtue of Wisdom)

In order to be a Stoic, one cannot ignore the implications of the tenets, concepts, or ideas represented and accounted for by these pillars. To do so would be to “break” Stoicism — that is, to no longer be practicing Stoicism (the Ancient Greek philosophy and virtue ethics framework).

We could disagree with the details in these topoi, and we could work to change them, but if those changes caused a breakdown of the closed, and deeply interconnected logical system manifested by these pillars, we would have to call our resulting philosophy something other than Stoicism.

To date, as far as I’m aware, no contemporary Stoic (or Stoic community) has been able to accomplish a formal reformation of Stoicism — a complete updating of the philosophy that doesn't break it or create a new synthesis that isn’t Stoicism (such as the failure that was Neostoicism).

I suspect the reason for this is that most contemporary thinkers, who also consider themselves non-Orthodox Stoics, have no way to update the Physics of Stoicism to remove the Stoic concept of God without, as a necessary effect of removing God, removing the logical justification for the ethics that every Stoic is so fond of (Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike).

What does all this mean?

First, that a logically coherent form of non-Orthodox Stoicism (meaning one that doesn't break the philosophy by nullifying any of its foundational pillars) is yet to make an appearance — but it’s absolutely possible this will happen one day (maybe even soon!).

Second, that if we’re not practicing a logically coherent form of Stoicism, we’re practicing something incoherent, and no philosophy worth its salt is incoherent in the reasoning that underpins it (not even, technically, Absurdism!).

This begs the following questions:

1. Why would we knowingly choose to practice an incoherent form of a philosophy? and…

2. Why wouldn’t we, instead, embrace the coherent form of the philosophy or abandon it entirely and pursue another which we could practice coherently — or work to make the incoherent coherent?

Third, that picking and choosing certain bits of philosophy, and incorporating them into a hodgepodge we call our personal life philosophy, isn’t the same as “practicing” that philosophy.

And if we’re not practicing Stoicism, are we Stoics at all?

But does any of that matter?

Mostly, yes.

I think it matters if we want to call ourselves Stoics and not be experiencing significant cognitive dissonance in doing so.

I think it matters if we want to incorporate Stoicism as a holistically complete life philosophy into our lives.

I think it matters if we want to get everything the philosophy’s founders intended for us to get out of practicing it.

I think it doesn’t matter only if we’re using the label “Stoic” simply to indicate a general fondness of the philosophy and to signal that to others as a way of fitting into various Stoicism communities. If we’re doing this, there’s no crime being committed, but we are clinging to the label for a reason that doesn’t seem, to me anyway, entirely Stoic.

Do we have to be a Stoic to utilize certain aspects of Stoicism to better ourselves?

We do not.

All those Stoic catch phrases we see people tossing around, “Memento Mori,” “Premeditatio Malorum,” “Amor Fati,” et cetera — and all the Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus quotes about “being a man” or living with honor and knowing what’s in our control and what isn’t — all of those things are, on their own, capable of providing anyone with great benefit.

No adoption of Stoicism, the Ancient Greek philosophy and virtue ethics framework, is required to put “Stoicism inspired advice” or Stoic concepts to casual and/or practical use.

All I want us to keep in mind is that we might want to be careful about what we identify ourselves as being, because being a Stoic brings with it a set of requirements that can’t be overlooked or ignored just so we can add another popular label to our social media profiles.

Thanks for reading.