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The Missing Piece of Stoicism: Why Kindness is Strength | Donald Robertson · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine someone who's practicing stoicism to have a an outlook that is very violent and aggressive.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or is is is that accurate to say that?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or you know, because it's yeah.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he says in the meditations, you know, he'd have to be crazy, or he'd have to, you know, really kind of hypocritical in a way.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the true interpretation of this is a little bit more nuanced, but obviously in meditations, he says over and over and over again that um what matters to him is a feeling of brotherhood, brotherly love, really.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the Stoics call it Philistorgia, by the way.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the this is one of the central principles of Stoicism is this idea of brotherly love and the the brotherhood of mankind, cosmopolitanism, the idea that we all are citizens of the same cosmos.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Marcus mentions Roman citizens, I think, like twice in the meditations.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but on every page, virtually, he mentions not being alienated from others, cultivating natural affection towards them, overcoming anger, um exhibiting justice in his relationship with others, like all these interpersonal virtues, but they're all in reference to humanity as a whole, like not just to Roman citizens, which is remarkable if you think about it, because he's Roman Emperor, and he's writing this while he's meeting Germanic and Sarmatian envoys every day.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about the guys that he's at war with, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: When he says, you know, that he should cultivate um natural affection towards the rest of mankind uh and view them as his kin.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he he means that like but he's still at war with them because they invaded his country, like, but he's not by any means if if there's any shred of truth in the meditations, you know, he's the opposite of a warmonger.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, he really he doesn't see these guys as the enemy or as other, like he views them as his brothers and sisters.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's um like I think that um one of the most inspiring things for me, at least reading the meditations, is this perfect balance that I see between strength of character and compassion, you know, because that's a really difficult thing to kind of balance.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people are just too agreeable, too compassionate and pushovers, but you see this incredibly powerful, strong human being who's also like going out of his way to practice tolerance and forgiveness and you know, kind of seeing how he relates to people.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: He says something weird about that.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he says that true manliness consists in the strength of character to exhibit kindness rather than aggression, and uh quite long story short, people ridiculed Mark Aurelius.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the supposedly the the general that instigated the civil war against him called him a philosophical old woman, like and so they thought he was too soft, and but Marcus responds to that, and he says, No, you're the angry people are weak people, like it's people angry people think they're strong, but actually they're weak.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he says it's it's people that have mastered their anger and are able to exhibit compassion that are potentially the strongest characters, and that's what he aspires to be like.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But this kind of understanding of stoicism is rare in the modern world because the terms that we use in Greek for Greek philosophy generally became degraded over the past 2000 years, and so when people say cynical today, they don't mean that someone followed the philosophy of Diogenes, like they just mean that someone's sneering and negative about uh things.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: When someone says I'm an Epicurean, they just mean that they enjoy fine wine and food, like they they don't mean that they drink barley water and eat potted cheese, like the ancient Epicureans did.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Academic, uh sophist, skeptic, like all these terms mean something slightly different now, something much cruder and more simplistic than what they originally meant.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so stoic now means unemotional when we write it with a lowercase S.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in psychological research, it's commonly used as a term to denote um toxic, maladaptive ways of emotional coping.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Though there are large volumes of research showing that lowercase stoicism, which involves suppressing emotions, um, is like definitely not a good thing.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like it and again, like the weird thing is people who suppress their emotions believe that they're being strong, but they're more prone to mental illness.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they're actually very vulnerable, weak people as a result of this maladaptive coping strategy.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, of course, they believe that they're strong, they're actually shown to be weak.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a it's a a fragility, uh a weakness like that it causes in us when we can't handle our emotions and we disguise them and we conceal them and we try to suppress them.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not what ancient stoicism means, it's completely the opposite.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, ancient stoicism is the inspiration for cognitive therapy, which there are huge volumes of research showing is good for us.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so on the one hand, we've got this thing that's bad for mental health, on the other hand, we've got this thing that we know is good for mental health, and like they're both kind of associated with stoicism, like, but they're opposites.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of this quote from William Blake, the poet, who said, We both read the Bible day and night, but you read black, where I read white.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people misconstrue Stoicism and turn it into something that's almost it's the complete opposite, and part of that is that they completely ignore the reference to social virtue in ancient stoicism.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Stoicism was the inspiration to a large extent for early Christian ethics.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So no one says that early Christianity was self-centered and non-emotional, it's it's a little bit brotherly love and forgiveness, obviously, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like supposedly, and yeah, but that that's all inherent, that part of it is all in Stoicism, like it very much seems to be inherited.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Stoics use very similar language.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Stoics are in the New Testament, like by the way, it's a bit trivier for you.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like not a lot of people know that.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: In the Acts of the Apostles, they're actually mentioned that St.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul goes to Athens and he gives a speech at the a sermon at the Areopagus at the foot of the Acropolis, and it says that he was talking to Stoic and Epicurean philosophers there, and he actually quotes a Stoic author called Aretus to them, who's an ancient poet, who's a student of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the early Christianity is steeped in Stoicism.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: The early church fathers, many of them had studied Stoicism, they refer to it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even St.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, like we're told in the New Testament, was talking to the Stoics and reading Stoic literature.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but somehow people ended up thinking of Stoicism as this kind of unemotional, Mr.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Spock, cold-hearted, kind of atomistic, individualistic thing, and Christianity as being the complete opposite, weirdly.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but these are caricatures, like ancient Stoicism, as you know, particularly in Marcus Aurelius, in every single page of the meditations, he talks about his uh cultivating a sense of uh brotherhood and uh affection and kindness and compassion uh towards other people.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, like the I I feel like I'm I'm using uh stoicism a lot, raising my three-year-old, and I know firsthand experience that it it it makes me more compassionate, you know, like it's it's a it's a tool that really helps me connect and show more love and be a better dad, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like I'm cold and distant from it from my child, you know.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm seeing that every day.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even Epictetus, who's a pretty tough guy, says that you know it's human nature.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you see a small child, you want to get down on all fours and play and interact with them.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's natural to have affection for children and like you know, to have the Stoics really celebrated what they call uh the phrase in English is we use as natural affection, but actually in ancient Greek it kind of means paternal or uh familial affection, philistorgia.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is central to Stoic ethics.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Stoics think human nature is that we you know we're designed to care about children, and they think we you know we should cultivate that and extend it and you know uh learn to care about humanity in in general.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: They also thought they I mean the part of their theology is they think we should emulate Zeus, like you know, we don't worship Zeus, but they did, and they thought the the goal for them was to become more zoous-like, and they said, well, Zeus is the god of hospitality and friendship, uh, among other things in ancient Greece.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the Stoics took that aspect of them very seriously because they thought of Zeus as being the father of mankind, and uh they thought, well, Zeus has paternal affection for the whole of mankind, and so if you were to be godlike and Zeus like, you'd you'd also have to um you'd have this broad encompassing perspective, like omniscience, but you'd also have this unconditional affection for the the whole of creation and the whole of mankind, and so that that kind of helps to define in their eyes what they they they think the ideal is for humanity.