My two main problems with Stoicism
In this essay, I will expose my criticisms on two common ideas on the Stoic Phylosophy. More specifically, I will criticize on the book “Meditations” of the roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. On this book, I could see two ideas that I strongly disagree with. These are they
1- We should not see things as good or bad
One of the most recurring ideas of the book of Marcus Aurelius is the discipline of perception. As Gregory Hays described it
For example, my impression that my house has just burned down is simply that — an impression or report conveyed to me by my senses about an event in the outside world. By contrast, my perception that my house has burned down and I have thereby suffered a terrible tragedy includes not only an impression, but also an interpretation imposed upon that initial impression by my powers of hypolepsis. It is by no means the only possible interpretation, and I am not obliged to accept it. I may be a good deal better off if I decline to do so. It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.
We can see this idea being depicted in several situations
Acts of nature such as fire, illness, or death can harm us only if we choose to see them as harmful. When we do so, we question the benevolence and providence of the logos, and thereby degrade our own logos.
If it doesn’t harm your character, how can it harm your life?
But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful — and hence neither good nor bad.
Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you.
— Then where is harm to be found?
In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer. Or to put it another way: It needs to realize that what happens to everyone — bad and good alike — is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life — lived naturally or not — is neither natural nor unnatural.
Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal — if he’s living a normal human life.
And if it’s normal, how can it be bad?
You take things you don’t control and define them as “good” or “bad.” And so of course when the “bad” things happen, or the “good” ones don’t, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible — or those you decide to make responsible. Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited “good” and “bad” to our own actions, we’d have no call to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies.
Of course, there are more quotes that basically disaprove the perception of the things, but I think these are good enough.
The first problem with that idea is that, it’s unnatural to reach such a state where you are indifferent to the things around you. That condition, is anormal, it is not in accord to Nature (and that is the exact aim of Stoicism: to be in accord to Nature).
That state of indifference is usually named as “Emotional Blunting” or “Emotional Numbing” and it can be a symptom from antidepressants, PTSD, Depression, and other things that hardly could be called convenient or healthy.
2- The comtempt with emotion, motivation and desire
But that is a common “virtue” on Stoicism, the valorization of Reason and the intense contempt against things like emotion, motivation or desire.
Some people might say: “But that state can be very useful on despairing situations”. No, it can’t. If someone has no desires or emotions, and they are indifferent to muddly life they are living, if they are indifferent to being on rock bottom, how can you expect them to leave there? If it is just the emotions that motivate us to leave this situations?
Have you ever heard of the dopamine? Dopamine is basically the central reward neurotransmitter in the body. Dopamine is the reason why eating food, doing sex, using drugs and other things give us pleasure.
Looking on the biology of the human beings from a evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to have a system like the dopamine one. It is because of the dopamine that our ancestrors hunted food, reproduced, and did all this hard things: because that gave them pleasure.
Imagine if you were to eliminate the desire completely of yourself, would that be desirable? How would reach your goals? How would you study or work? That wouldn’t be possible, according to the neuroscientists, because dopamine is essential for concentration and focus.
Conclusion
My objective with these criticism is not to induce people to hate Stoicism, but just show some flaws on that Phylosophy. I highly recommend the reading of the Marcus Aurelius book, there you’ll find some very useful and deep insights of course. But my intention is to just show some things that I consider flaws on this way of life.
