Stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life | Massimo Pigliucci | TEDxAthens

Massimo Pigliucci explains Stoicism and how to change your life for the better by practicing this ancient Greco-Roman philosophy as a way of life.

Massimo Pigliucci has PhDs in evolutionary biology and in philosophy. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of biology, the science-philosophy relationship, pseudoscience and the philosophy of Stoicism.
Pigliucci owns two blogs: Plato’s Footnote, on general philosophy, and How to Be a Stoic, on his personal exploration of Stoicism as a practical philosophy. He is the author of many books, including the bestseller "How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx.

Imagine, if you will,

that you're walking
down the streets of Athens

24 centuries ago, give or take.

You might meet this guy:

Zeno of Citium.

He was a merchant, a Phoenician merchant.

He was doing very well
until a shipwreck destroyed everything

and he lost everything he had.

So he made it to Athens,
and what did he do?

One of the first things he did
was to walk into a bookshop

and started reading books.

He read Xenophon's "Memorabilia,"
which is a book about Socrates.

And he was so intrigued
that he turned to the bookseller

and says, "Where can I find me
one of these people,

one of these philosopher folks?"

And the bookseller turned around.

He said, "Well, there's one
right over there, walking by."

Because that was Athens at the time:
philosophers were just walking by.

(Laughter)

The guy walking by was Crates,
a Cynic philosopher.

And Zeno became his student,

eventually went on to study

with a number of other
of the major philosophers in Athens.

And then he established his own school,

which became known as "Stoicism"

because they studied meaning
in the stoa, in the open market,

unlike the other schools
where you had to go to a specific place -

Plato's Academy or Aristotle's Lyceum -

the Stoics wanted to be
in the middle of people,

to talk to people about their life
and how to make it better.

Stoicism became one of the major
philosophies of antiquity.

It spread through
the Hellenistic world first

and then to the Roman Republic
and then Roman Empire.

It produced some of
the major thinkers of the time.

Seneca, who was a senator,

a playwright - he influenced Shakespeare -

and the unfortunate advisor
to the Emperor Nero.

That didn't end up well for Seneca.

Marcus Aurelius, one of the few
king-philosophers of all of history,

who wrote "The Meditations,"
his own personal diary,

which is now read by millions
of people around the world.

Now, unusual for ancient philosophy,

Stoicism attracted a number of women.

A lot of Roman matrons
used to organize convivia,

which were sort of get-togethers
with their friends,

to talk about Stoicism.

But many of them
also lived the philosophy.

One of them, the most famous one,
was Porcia Catonis,

who happened to be both the daughter
of Cato the Younger,

who was an archenemy of Julius Caesar,

as well as the wife of Brutus,
one of the co-conspirators against Caesar.

So she had a lot to deal with in her life,

and she approached it in a Stoic fashion.

Now, Stoicism, like all
ancient schools of philosophy,

eventually died down or was closed
with the rise of Christianity,

but it kept influencing people
throughout the following two millennia.

The reason many people today
are familiar with some of the Stoic ideas

is because they influenced Christianity,

beginning with Paul of Tarsus,
arguably the founder of Christianity,

and continuing with Thomas Aquinas,

the most influential theologian
of the Middle Ages,

and then into more modern times
with René Descartes,

arguably one of the most
important modern philosophers,

and Baruch Spinoza, whose ethics
was, in fact, based mostly on Stoicism.

But enough about its history.

What is Stoicism about?

Well, the first thing is
it's based on a crucial premise

that we should live our life
according to nature.

Now, before you go and run
into the forest naked to hug trees -

that's not what it is about.

The Stoics thought that we
should take seriously human nature.

And human nature fundamentally
consists of two things, two aspects.

One, we're highly social animals.

We can survive on our own if we have to,
but we only thrive in groups of people,

we only thrive when we have
healthy social networks.

And two, we're capable of reason.

As you know, that doesn't mean
we 're reasonable all the time.

In fact, on the contrary -
we struggle for that.

But we are capable of reason.

For the Stoics,

it followed that the best kind
of human life you can actually have

is one in which you apply
your reason, your intelligence,

to improve social living,

to improve everybody else's life.

There are two fundamental pillars
of Stoic philosophy,

which we will see, in a minute,
applied very practically to our life.

One is the four cardinal virtues:

practical wisdom, courage,
justice and temperance.

Practical wisdom is the knowledge
of what is good for you

and what is not good for you.

Courage is not just physical
but especially moral:

the courage to stand up
and do the right thing.

Justice is what tells you
what the right thing is,

how to interact with other people,
how to treat other people.

And temperance is the idea

that you should always do things
in right measure -

not overdo them nor underdo them.

The second pillar is called
"dichotomy of control."

This is the very basic idea

that some things are up to us
and other things are not up to us.

Now, you can divide everything you do
into these two categories

and only worry about the first one
and not the second one.

For instance, I came here
thinking that I could control the slides.

As you've seen,
that's outside of my control.

Do I worry about it? No.

Let me introduce you to Epictetus.

He was one of the most important
Stoic philosophers of antiquity.

He was a slave.

He was born in Hierapolis,
in modern-day Pamukkale, in Turkey.

He was acquired - in fact,
his name means "acquired."

We don't know his real name;
Epictetus just means acquired.

And [he was] brought to Rome
to the court of the Emperor Nero,

where he did pretty well.

Eventually, he was freed.

He was, you know, a bright guy,

so he started going
through the streets of Rome

preaching Stoicism.

And for his troubles,
he got punched on the nose.

So he figured that wasn't a good approach.

It was in his power
to change the approach,

so he started over,
and he established his own school,

which was very successful

until the Emperor Domitian
kicked out all the Stoics out of Rome

because he did not appreciate
their "speaking truth to power,"

as we would say today.

So Epictetus moved and went to Nicopolis,
in northwestern Greece,

reestablished his school

and became one of the most famous
teachers of antiquity.

The reason I like Epictetus
is because he's blunt

and he has a sarcastic sense of humor.

And I'll give you
a taste of this in a second.

Here's what he says in "The Discourses":

"I'll have to die.

If it is now, well, then I die now.

If later, then now I will take my lunch,

since the hour for lunch has arrived,

and dying, I will tend to later."

Don't worry about death;
worry about lunch.

(Laughter)

You know you're going to die;
that isn't under your control.

Lunch, on the other hand,
is under your control.

Now, I told you
about the dichotomy of control

being one of the two
fundamental pillars of Stoicism.

Here's how Epictetus himself explains it.

He says,

"Some things are within our power,
while others are not.

Within our power
are opinion, motivation, desire,

and in a word,
whatever is of our own doing.

Not within our power are our body,
our property, reputation,

and in a word, whatever
is not of our own doing."

And note, if you stop for a second
and think about it,

it's like that is weird.

He's saying that my body, my property,
my reputation are not in [my] power?

What do you mean?

I can decide to go to the gym
and eat healthy;

of course my body's under my power.

Unless a virus strikes you down.

Unless you have an accident
and you break your leg.

The idea is that you can do things,

you can make decisions about your health,
your reputation, etcetera, etcetera,

but ultimately,
you don't control the outcome.

So what does that mean in practice?

It means that we should try
to walk through life

by internalizing our goals,

not worry about the outcomes,
because those are outside of our control,

but worry about our intentions
and our efforts

because those are very much
under our control.

One of the beautiful metaphors
that the Stoics introduced

was that of an archer.

Imagine that you
are trying to hit a target.

What is under your control?

Well, the practice of archery -
you can practice for hours and hours.

You can choose the best bows and arrows
that are available to you.

You can take care
of those bows and arrows.

You can focus up until the second
in which you let the arrow go.

But after that, things
are completely outside of your control.

A gust of wind can ruin your best shot.

The target may move,
especially if he's an enemy soldier,

and you missed.

So what do you do?

According to Cicero,

the actual hitting of the mark

would be to be chosen
but not to be desired.

So you do not attach
your own self-esteem to the outcome;

you only attach it to what
is under your control, to your attempt.

In practice, in today's life,

these can change the way
you look at pretty much everything.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Let's say you're up for
a promotion for your job.

Now, the normal thing to do

would be to worry about whether
you're going to get the promotion or not.

According to the Stoics,
that's the wrong way to look at it:

the promotion itself
is outside of your control.

Your boss may have gotten up
on the wrong side of the bed,

he's upset,

he's got something else on his mind,

and the interview is not going to go well.

Or maybe somebody else deserves
the promotion better than you do

even though you did well,

and again, that's not up to you.

What is up to you, of course,

is to prepare the best you can
for your interview,

to put together the best resume possible,

to work really hard to actually,
in fact, deserve that promotion.

That's the locus of your control;

that's where you
should focus your efforts.

Or think in terms of relationships.

You know, everybody wants to be loved.

But that's not up to us.

It's up to the person
who may or may not love us.

What's up to us

is to be the most lovable person,

to be affectionate,

to be there for them.

Whether they decide
to stick with us or not -

not under our control.

So if you take this seriously,
Epictetus says,

you will, in fact, have a happy life

because a great part of happiness
lies in the serenity,

into the idea that you
always walk through life

by knowing that you've done your best

and that nothing else
could be done on top of that.

He says, "If you have the right idea
about what really belongs to you

and what does not" -

in other words, what you do control
and what you don't control -

"you will never be subject
to force or hindrance,

you will never blame or criticize anyone,

and everything you do
will be done willingly."

And this would be
a significantly better world

than the one in which everybody
goes around blaming other people

for what they don't have control over.

Now, my colleague Brian Johnson
at Fordham University

explained Epictetus' approach
as a type of role ethics.

The idea is that we all play
a variety of roles in life

and that a happy life
consists in balancing these roles

as best as we can.

There are, in fact,
fundamentally, three kinds of roles.

First, our basic role as a human being -

we're all members of the human polis.

The Stoics were the ones
that introduced the term "cosmopolitan,"

literally meaning
"a citizen of the universal polis."

We're all human beings,

we're all in the same place,

and we have to take care
of the same place.

Then there are roles
that are given to us by circumstances.

You could be, you know,
somebody's son or daughter.

That wasn't your choice; it just happened.

And then there are roles that we choose
depending on the circumstances:

our career, being a mother
or a father - things like that.

These three sets of roles
are related in the following way:

your basic role as a human being
trumps everything else.

Everything you do,
you should ask yourself first,

Is this good for humanity?

If it isn't, don't do it.

It's a simple test.

You will end up doing much less,
by the way, if you follow this,

as we saved you energy.

And then the rest,
you simply balance things out.

These roles come with trade-offs.

Yes, you want to be the best
mother or father and son or daughter

and colleague and friend
and so on and so forth,

but there are trade-offs,

and a lot of what Stoic philosophy
tells you about, or teaches you about,

is how to balance these things.

How do you play these roles?

Well, the most important thing
is you play them with integrity.

What does that mean?

Well, Epictetus again explains:

"You are the one that knows yourself,

of how much you're worth to yourself

and for how much you're selling yourself.

Consider at what price
you sell your integrity,

but please, for God's sake,
don't sell it cheap."

What that means is that the goal here
is not to reach perfection,

whatever that means;

it's just to be the best you can.

Don't compromise and sell yourself cheap,
because you only have yourself to sell.

That's it -

once you've sold yourself,
then there's nothing else left.

The idea is to be not perfect
but just better than you were yesterday,

one little step at a time.

Now, let me give you a couple of examples.

Epictetus talks about a father

who is very distraught
because his daughter is sick,

and he just can't take it.

He leaves the house,

and leaves his wife
to deal with the daughter.

And Epictetus says, "Wait a minute.

Do you think you were right
to have acted that way?"

The father thinks about it for a minute

and says, "Well, I was behaving naturally.

I was, you know, distraught.
I couldn't help it."

Well, that brings up the distinction

between what is natural
to us, our feelings -

You don't control your feelings.

If you're distraught
because your daughter is sick,

there's nothing you can do
or should do, probably, about it.

But that's different from the ethical duty
that you have toward your daughter:

you are her father.

You 're supposed to stay there

even though it does cost you
in terms of emotional energy.

So the two virtues
that come into play here

are courage,

to actually do the right thing,
to stay with the daughter,

and justice,

that is, do the just thing,
the correct thing, for your daughter.

We also have to, as I said before,
balance different social roles.

And this has to do with two other virtues:

the practical wisdom,

the idea of knowing the difference

between what's good for you
and what's not good for you,

and temperance,

the idea that you can balance things

by putting the right amount of energy
into everything you do.

Epictetus explains it this way:

"Reflect on the other
social roles you play.

If you're young,
what does it mean to be young?

If you're old, what does age imply?

If you're a father,
what does father entail?

Each of our titles
suggest the acts appropriate to it.

Imagine you are an actor, you play a role.

Now, the role is not
completely determined.

You can play the role of a mother,
for instance, in many ways.

You don't have to play in the way

in which society
largely tells you to play.

You just have to play in the way
you think it's the right way to play it.

But still you're a mother or a father,
so you have certain duties.

The way you cash out these duties,

the way you actually
exercise those duties,

is up to you.

But you do have them.

Now, how do we learn to play well
our roles in life?

There's many ways -

the Stoics were famous

for a number of exercises,
practical exercises, about these things -

but fundamentally,
one of the best ways to go

is to simply imagine people
that actually do well,

people that are your role models,

people that you can see
and use as a pattern

after which you change your own life.

The ancients used people that they knew,
people that they heard about

or even imaginary people.

One of their favorite role models
was Cato the Younger.

I mentioned him earlier;
he was the father of Porcia Catonis.

He had such a level of integrity

that when people in Rome
did something wrong -

they made a mistake,
they didn't hold up to expectations -

they would say, "Well,
not everybody can be a Cato."

He was used as an excuse.

It was like, "Not everybody
can be that good."

Well, right, but you can try.

One of the favorite
ancient role models was Odysseus,

who gave up immortality twice

and endured 10 years of traveling
just to get back home,

to get back to his wife and to his child.

But there's also modern role models,
and there's a lot of them to pick from.

Some of my favorites are Nelson Mandela,

who, as we know,

spent more than 20 years in prison
fighting the apartheid regime.

He was very angry,
understandably, during that period.

But one of the changing points in his life

was when one of his fellow inmates

smuggled in a copy
of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations."

Mandela read it and understood
that the way forward

was not through anger or hatred,

but on the contrary, by extending a hand

also to the people, even to the people
who were his captors and his tormentors.

And that changed his life

and changed the life
of the people in South Africa.

Another one of my favorite role models

is Susan Fowler,

who a couple of years ago came out
and stood up to the Uber motor company

to denounce their sexual
harassment culture

that was quite widespread at the time.

She risked a lot personally,

in terms of career,
in terms of friendships,

and she did it from a Stoic perspective.

I happen to know Susan,
and she is, in fact, a practicing Stoic.

My favorite role model
at a fictional level is Spider-man,

who famously said that with great powers
come great responsibility.

Well, we don't have great powers -
we're not superheroes -

but we do have power.

We have the power of exercising choices,

and that power comes
with the responsibility

of exercising the best choice
we can possibly make.

So the general idea,
according to Epictetus,

is that just like actors
in the ancient world,

in ancient Greece,

we wear a number of masks,
and we change them continuously.

The same actor would come out on stage
and wear a different mask,

and the mask will tell the audience

which character
he was playing in the moment,

and it would remind the actor himself

that he was now playing
a different character.

And the idea is that a happy life
is, in fact, a life well-balanced,

where you play all these roles
as the best actor you can possibly be.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)