On First Principles and Stoicism

Radcliffe Camera, a part of Oxford University's Bodleian Library, and All Souls College to the right, in Radcliffe Square, looking north from the tower of St Mary's Church, the University Church, in central Oxford, England.
Photo by Tejvan Pettinger via Wikimedia CC BY 2.0

The Stoic Philosophy; Conway Memorial Lecture Delivered at South Place Institute on March 16, 1915 by Gilbert Murray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I discovered this lecture in George Strodach's notes to Epicurus' The Art of Happiness. I have been thinking about the format of Ancient Greek philosophies, specifically the outlining of the ethos, pathos, and logos of each philosophy. Put simply, these are modes of persuasion, where ethos refers to "character" and the guiding beliefs; pathos refers to emotional appeal, and logos refers to the appeal to logic. From what I can gather, a good deal of the logos of Stoicism is lost to antiquity, whereas Epicurus' logos is contained in his letters to Herodotus and Pythocles. Murray outlines the two major questions Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism) grappled with:

How to live and what to believe.

While the first question was the focus, Murray points out that one cannot address the former without first addressing the latter. First principles, if you will. The Sceptics (and Platonists) had developed ideas about ontology (the nature of being, reality, or existence) and epistemology (theories of knowledge and how we can know something), but Zeno was "a fighter" and "wanted to get to business". This explains in large part the practical nature of Stoicism. But here, like Heraclitus and Epicurus, the idea of God or the gods is an important first principle. Murray uses examples of the Duke of Wellington in asserting the positivist nature of Stoicism - this is a table, here it is, one can see it and touch it - an "uncompromising materialism". But how do we know?

By the evidence of our senses; for the sense-impression (here Stoics and Epicureans both followed the fifth-century physicists) is simply the imprint of the real thing upon our mindstuff. As such it must be true.

The idea of managing one's "impressions" is a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy, and here Murray points out that our "sense-impression [is] all right; it is we who have interpreted it wrongly, or received it in some incomplete way". So our impressions are true - we can believe what we see - but how we react to these external events is the focus; the world is "real" and "knowable". So when we ask, What is it to live the good life? - Zeno meant it in "an ultimate Day-of-Judgment sense". Goodness is "performing your function well". This reminds me of Bentham's idea of utility - not being drunk all the time as a source of happiness, but utility as in a hammer to a carpenter. And acting well in accordance with one's "nature" is the point - Phusis here is translated as "Nature", but in the context of evolution, growth, or the process of growth - continuous improvement comes to mind - moving ever closer to perfection:

It means living according to the spirit which makes the world grow and progress, [where] Phusis is not a sort of arbitrary personal goddess, upsetting the natural order; Phusis is the natural order, and nothing happens without a cause.

Such ideas about "natural law" were not unusual to the Ancient Greek philosophers, "indistinguishable from a purpose, the purpose of the great world-process". Phusis is regarded by the Stoics as a form of intellectual fire, which forms:

a principle of providence or forethought [that] comes to be regarded as God, the nearest approach to a definite personal God which is admitted by the austere logic of Stoicism... Thus Goodness is acting, according to Phusis, in harmony with the will of God.

It is worth quoting Murray at length here to explain the idea of "good" and "nature":

The answer is clear and uncompromising. A good bootmaker is one who makes good boots; a good shepherd is one who keeps his sheep well; and even though good boots are, in the Day-of-Judgment sense, entirely worthless, and fat sheep no whit better than starved sheep, yet the good bootmaker or good shepherd must do his work well or he will cease to be good. To be good he must perform his function; and in performing that function there are certain things that he must prefer; to others, even though they are not really "good"; He must prefer a healthy sheep or a well-made boot to their opposites. It is thus that Nature, or Phusis, herself works when she shapes the seed into the tree, or the blind puppy into the good hound. The perfection of the tree or hound is in itself indifferent, a thing of no ultimate value. Yet the goodness of Nature lies in working for that perfection.

Murray ties his discussion together by looking at two problems of government - a government that is good during the bad times is not necessarily good during the good times, and vice versa. Stoicisms' dual character, however, provides armour when the world is evil, and encouragement when the world is good. In summing up, Murray states that we all, like herd animals, look for a friend, and we ineradicably and instinctively look for a Friend-God so we are not alone in the universe. This is not about reason but a "craving of the whole nature". Two other interesting features of this work are worth recalling. First, the chairman's introduction. He indicates what a good chair should do by outlining what a poor chair had done to Murray on a previous occasion. Second, the purpose of the lecture series was in honour of Dr Moncure Conway, whose:

untiring zeal for the emancipation of the human mind from the thraldom of obsolete or waning beliefs, his pleadings for sympathy with the oppressed and for a wider and profounder conception of human fraternity than the world has yet reached.

What I find most interesting about this work (and the purpose of the lecture series) is its congruence with my reading of Epicurus. Epicurus warned against believing in the popular gods and insisted instead upon an empirical understanding of the world. Maybe not as practical as Zeno's positivism, but certainly not a case of blind faith. Yet Epicurus was not an atheist, and his conception of God may well have been a precursor to monotheism, as much of Stoicism was a precursor to large elements of Christianity and Islam. Indeed, Murray provides a glimpse of this comparison - Ryan Holiday in "A Star is Born" on the Christmas edition of the Daily Stoic newsletter draws out comparisons between the words of Seneca and Jesus - and Strodach reads something similar. Add to this my present reading of Teddy Roosevelt's Autobiography, where he is discussing the power of the herd instinct when rounding-up cattle, and the coincidences are strongly correlating around a common theme! I began by discussing the lack of logos in Stoic philosophy, but Murray's work goes a long way to bringing this to light. It may not be obvious in the practical "enchiridion" sense of the three main books of the Roman Stoics, but when combined with a reading of Epicurus, this lecture says much in very few words.

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On Nationalism: The Vague Incisiveness of Poets Waxing Political

Portrait of  Rabindranath Tagore. Photo by Cherishsantosh via Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0

Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I knew nothing of this Nobel Laureate and "discovered" his work while playing Sid Meier's Civilization VI . I first played this game to kill some time on my Artillery ROBC in Manly in 1994, and have played it occasionally ever since. The game is so well researched and I have learnt so much from it about art, music, literature, geography, history, theology, philosophy, science, technology that I am keen to find a way to incorporate it into my teaching. Now I have smaller classes, it may be possible to do so. I should probably be too proud to state I have learnt so much from a computer game but if that is how it happened, and I am an educator, then being a pedagogical snob is rather lacking in integrity. But I digress. Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 for his poetry which, ironically, "made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West". This collection of essays on nationalism was written in 1917 at the height of the Great War. The essays cover nationalism in Japan, the West, and in India. It is perplexing to read, one hundred years later, a great thinker's prophecies on the likes of Japan (which went on to do what Tagore was most concerned about, at least morally), the rise of China and India, and the explosion of anti-globalisation and racism, when humanity is in the midst of the latter two issues once again. Tagore called for greater tolerance, greater freedom from restrictive class systems, and a less mechanical view of the world. He saw the "Nation" as a machine. Interestingly, Matthew Arnold (1869) in Culture and Anarchy (see my earlier review) referred to the problems of "machinery" in a similar sense. This makes me think of systems thinking, and Descartes, and how viewing the world as a machine or a clockwork is a first-principle mistake! The inter-connectedness of the Grand Ecosystem thwarts attempts at mechanical explanations for phenomena, yet it also has a moral dimension that Tagore explores in these essays. He made some interesting observations. First, he stated that Europe was one country divided into several, whereas India was many countries jammed into one. Second, he predicted Japan's moral decline through imitation of the West. Third, he noted how Europeans in America and Australia solved the problem of race:

...by almost exterminating the original population. Even in the present age this spirit of extermination is making itself manifest, by inhospitably shutting out aliens, through those who themselves were aliens in the lands they now occupy.

Yet we should not be too hasty to attribute all-seeing wisdom to Tagore. History defied his thesis in relation to India (as it was then) and what it would become after independence:

But India tolerated difference of races from the first, and that spirit of toleration has acted all through her history.

Writing at this point in history must have been depressing, and Tagore sees the worship of the "wonderful efficiency" of the West as a cause of the war:

The veil has been raised, and in this frightful war the West has stood face to face with her own creation, to which she had offered her soul. She must know what it truly is.

It is not difficult to feel the workings of a poet in these essays. Matthew Arnold was a Professor of Poetry, too, so the style is not unfamiliar to me. Indeed, it would seem that the vague incisiveness of poets waxing political has a style of its own. Tagore might not be pleased about being lumped together with Matthew Arnold! But as I read Nationalism immediately after Culture and Anarchy, I must beg forgiveness for sticking these two poets in the one inappropriate box! But there it is: The vague incisiveness of the political poet.

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On Sweetness and Light, Discipline and Creativity: Culture and Anarchy

The Derby Day (1856-8) by William Powell Frith. Photo CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 via Tate Britain

Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had heard others speak of this book as if it were a cult classic. Any wonder. There are so many things going on in this work. I am still trying to see where Matthew Arnold fits in with the likes of Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Herbert Spencer. He was a professor of poetry by profession, and his niece, Mrs Humphrey Ward, became a metonym for a conservative wowser. So he was hardly a John Stuart Mill, yet he was also rather short of being a Herbert Spencer. He seemed to be the reverse of a modern Australian Liberal (not liberal) - he did not support free trade but looked to the cultural elite, while remaining socially conservative. The brief introduction eludes to the lack of definitions in the work, and this is supported by a critique of the work by Henry Sidgwick entitled The Prophet of Culture (provided as an appendix). Indubitably, the two were friends, but with some rather major philosophical differences. There are extensive notes and these are important due to the number of then-contemporary social, political, cultural, and religious debates (as indicated by the list of important thinkers above) that would be lost on most modern readers (or me, at least). These are rather important to understanding the context but I suspect the different disciplinary groups did not necessarily cross paths in their intellectual outputs. For my own memory, it is useful to outline some of Arnold's key ideas. First, culture is the seeking (as opposed to achieving) perfection in the pursuit of reason and the will of God. The phrase "sweetness and light" is used by Arnold to refer to the pursuit of beauty (in the Hellenistic sense) and light as intellect. Sidgwick counters with "fire and strength" as being more important to improving society (referring, in particular, to religion). Arnold navigates two approaches to understanding culture (albeit somewhat difficult to articulate a precise definition of either) as Hebraising (referring to the Hebrew penchant for religious discipline) versus Hellenism (referring to the Ancient Greek aesthetic and penchant for reason). Arnold brings in the idea of class here (something completely overlooked by many modern works that assume the myth of egalitarianism in contemporary society is not a myth at all), and names the classes the Barbarians (the aristocracy), the Philistines (the middle class) and the Populace (the working class). Given the book was published in 1869, the "Populace" was still a few decades away from any formal political power, and class-based rioting was emerging as a problem for the likes of Burke (who had issues with the Lockean and Rousseauian conceptions of the social contract. Indeed, Arnold was a form of anti-Jacobin). Arnold was closer to Hobbesian support for a strong State, but tempered by the idea that representatives of each class should strive to represent their ideal best selves (as a class rather than individuals), and the idea of the State was to enable such striving for social and political perfection. There were a few snippets that drew lines where the State should and should not intervene, relating to Nonconformism and antidisestablishmentarianism (I always wanted to use that word - but I must qualify, it relates to then-contemporary debates over the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland [refer to the Irish Church Act 1869], rather than the Church of England - but I had to use the word!) rather than intervening to protect the poor (some Malthusian debate was definitely going on at this time in history). Nevertheless, Arnold was opposed to government "control for control's sake" (p. 170) over education policy, and preferred the Continental approaches to education that had clear strategic objectives rather than simply government control. Sidgwick puts some of this confusion to rest - he is by no means a fan of this particular piece of Arnold's work but empathises with his cause to strengthen society by increasing its culture. Here, Sidgwick's essay does a great service to Arnold's theme, and the two works together are important. Sidgwick (p. 172) surmises that Arnold "wishes for reconciliation of antagonisms" - be these Hebraism versus Hellenism, class differences, or culture and religion (or sweetness and light versus fire and strength) - in an effort to improve society. Without Sidgwick's contribution, it would be easy to miss Arnold's point. But that does not make the work of any less value. Some of these statements have been made by others (including the introduction), and Arnold's belief in the "law of perfection" reminds me of a scene from The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise narrates: "From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue". This was a difficult read. Not like Sir Walter Scott's work where one can readily get bogged down in Gaelic dialogue, but because numerous reference to the notes (there are as many notes as pages) are necessary to understand the context, and there is so much jam-packed in this otherwise short essay, that it takes a while to sink in. While that should not diminish the importance of the work, if the attitude to difficult works today is anything to go by - where we are routinely told by lazy egoists (as opposed to egotists) if we cannot explain something to a three year-old child we don't understand it ourselves - then Arnold is amiss. But he was so close to being a futurist that this work ought to be more widely read, not as a cult classic (which arguably it deserves to be), but because we are reaching the culmination-point Arnold seemed to warn about,- should we ever relegate "sweetness and light" to "fire and strength".

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