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Stoicism

#philosophy #western #stoicism

Stoicism

Hellenistic philosophy teaching virtue through living in accordance with nature and reason (Logos), accepting what is beyond our control.

Stoicism views God not as a personal deity separate from the universe, but as the rational, organizing principle of the cosmos, often identified with nature, reason, or the universal order known as Logos.

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Compare Stoic Logos with Vedantic Brahman This divine principle is immanent, meaning it permeates all of existence, and is seen as the vital force that animates the universe. Stoics believed that God is the rational structure of the universe, and living in harmony with this divine reason is central to achieving virtue and true happiness.

The Stoic concept of God is closely tied to the idea of providence. They held that the universe is governed by a rational, purposeful design, and that God exercises providential care for the cosmos and humanity. This belief is reflected in the writings of key Stoic figures: Epictetus described God as a "caring father of human beings" and emphasized that individuals are "children of Zeus," carrying a fragment of the divine within them. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, affirmed the existence of gods and their care for humankind, stating that if gods exist, one should not fear death because they would not cause harm, and if they do not exist, life in a world without providence is still bearable.

Stoics saw the universe as a living, unified whole, where all things are interconnected and arranged in a sacred order. This view leads to the idea that God is not external to nature but is identical with it—pantheism in essence. Seneca articulated this by stating that nature, fate, fortune, and God are all different names for the same divine reality, with nature being God's manifestation. He argued that to speak of nature is to speak of God, and to deny God is to deny nature.

Here's A.A. Long on Epictetus' conception of the divine:

He characterizes God as the 'caring father of human beings' (1.3.1; cf. 3.24.3), and he even treats adoption by the Roman emperor as conferring less status than his students enjoy as 'sons of Zeus' (1.3.2). He asks rhetorically, expecting an affirmative answer, whether God cares for individual persons (1.12.6). He tells his students to call on God to help them over difficulties (2.18.29) and to regard slaves as their siblings because they too are children of God (1.13.4). He is insistent that God and the nature of goodness or helpfulness coincide (2.8.1). In all things he and his students are to look to God as their benevolent creator and friend, to do God's will, to be thankful to God, and to please him (1.9.4; 4.1.98; 4.4.21; 4.12.11). God has given a portion of himself to each person, whose status is correspondingly exalted (1.3; 2.8.11). When Epictetus utters advice to a young man, he says that the voice really belongs to 'a kindly god talking through me' (3.1.36).

Xenophon (4.3.2-18) also attributes to Socrates a concept of cosmic teleology and divine concern for human beings that fits Epictetus exactly. In Xenophon's second passage, Socrates comments on the value to humans of the diurnal rotation, seasonal change, the earth's produce, the utility of domesticable animals, and, above all, the gift of rationality and language, taking all of this to be evidence of divine handiwork and providence. We can be certain that this was a favourite Stoic text and a mainstay of the Stoic appropriation of Socrates. In view of this book's earlier chapters, readers will hardly be surprised to learn that on issues as large as theology and the appropriate study of nature Epictetus found himself in complete agreement with Socrates. In numerous passages he explicitly attaches Socrates to his own treatment of theology (1.4.24; 1.9.1; 3.1.19; 3.7.36; 4.4.21).

There's also the Marcus quote about "If the gods exist... but if they don't..." followed by an affirmative "But the gods do in fact exist..." which sums it up really well. The Stoics believed in gods and saw them as an integral part of their philosophy, but if there were no gods their actions wouldn't be any different.

Marcus Aurelius:

You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere without gods on that side either.

To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero . . .). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <. . .> behind closed doors

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was —what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.

Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

If the gods have made decisions about me and the things that happen to me, then they were good decisions. (It’s hard to picture a god who makes bad ones.) And why would they expend their energies on causing me harm? What good would it do them—or the world, which is their primary concern?

If I and my two children cannot move the gods The gods must have their reasons

The gods live forever and yet they don’t seem annoyed at having to put up with human beings and their behavior throughout eternity. And not only put up with but actively care for them

But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty. So this is the only question: Is it the action of a responsible being, part of society, and subject to the same decrees as God?

Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What’s surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, “I have a purpose,” and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning.

But you do have to wish him well. He’s your closest relative. The gods assist him just as they do you—by signs and dreams and every other way—to get the things he wants.

That things happen for the worst and always will, that the gods have no power to regulate them, and the world is condemned to never-ending evil—how can you say that?

Either the gods have power or they don’t. If they don’t, why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they can surely do that for us.

—But those are things the gods left up to me.

Then isn’t it better to do what’s up to you—like a free man —than to be passively controlled by what isn’t, like a slave or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don’t care about what’s up to us?

And as you try to keep these epithets in mind, it will help you a great deal to keep the gods in mind as well. What they want is not flattery, but for rational things to be like them. For figs to do what figs were meant to do—and dogs, and bees . . . and people

That’s how I know the gods exist and why I revere them— from having felt their power, over and over.

Small anecdote about this. Marcus was considered to have some connection to God because of his prayers. He was thought to bring water to a thirsty army by praying (it started raining after he was finished). I doubt that this is what he means by that though. He wasn't superstitious.

The TLDR is that Stoic God is simply the universe, it isn’t like the Abrahamic God who exists outside the universe judging and smiting everybody at will. It’s pretty close to Einstein’s idea of God. There are dogmatic atheist variants of modern Stoicism, but I think it loses something important if you cut too much in pursuit of that goal. Stoic God admits he isn’t all-powerful in the first Discourse of Epictetus. Stoics were famous in antiquity for calling temples worthless.

For the rest here’s Seneca:

"Nature," says my Epicurean opponent, "gives me all this." Do you not perceive when you say this that you merely speak of God under another name? for what is nature but God and divine reason, which pervades the universe and all its parts? You may address the author of our world by as many different titles as you please; you may rightly call him Jupiter, Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, or the Stayer, so called, not because, as the historians tell us, he stayed the flight of the Roman army in answer to the prayer of Romulus, but because all things continue in their stay through his goodness. If you were to call this same personage Fate, you would not lie; for since fate is nothing more than a connected chain of causes and effects, he is the first cause of all upon which all the rest depend. You will also be right in applying to him any names that you please which express supernatural strength and power: he may have as many titles as he has attributes. Our school regards him as Father Liber, and Hercules, and Mercurius: he is Father Liber because he is the parent of all, who first discovered the power of seed, and our being led by pleasure to plant it; he is Hercules, because his might is unconquered, and when it is wearied after completing its labours, will retire into fire; he is Mercurius, because in him is reasoning, and numbers, and system, and knowledge. Whither-soever you turn yourself you will see him meeting you: nothing is void of him, he himself fills his own work. Therefore, most ungrateful of mortals, it is in vain that you declare yourself indebted, not to God, but to nature, because there can be no God without nature, nor any nature without God; they are both the same thing, differing only in their functions. If you were to say that you owe to Annaeus (Seneca’s middle name) or to Lucius (Seneca’s first name) what you received from Seneca, you would not change your creditor, but only his name, because he remains the same man whether you use his first, second, or third name. So whether you speak of nature, fate, or fortune, these are all names of the same God, using his power in different ways.
— Seneca, On Benefits 4.7-8

The first two sentences (The TLDR is that) are a bit misleading because it's not just the universe. It's actually also not that close to Einstein's God, which was the God of Spinoza, which does not include providence nor is it simply the universe.

The stoic idea is to expect nothing. That way if something does come then it would much more enjoyable. If there is a God or not shouldn't affect how you live because what if I give you evidence that there certainly is a God out there? Are you going to change the way you live your life? And what about the opposite? If there is no God at all with evidence that there isn't one, are you going to do things differently? My conclusion is that the only thing that matters is to live as if there is one and be a good person regardless.

When the Stoics said "god" they simply meant "the sum total of the rationally knowable features of the universe".

One of the most important things a modern person needs to comprehend when interpreting words such as these is that the stoics completely pre-date science. They didn't have the language of science, and the Stoics are perhaps unique amongst the ancient philosophies in that they effectively rendered "science", or at the very least "empiricism" out of the mythology of their time. I am reticent to say "out of religious language" because again, they couldn't perceive this language to be "religious" because this category only emerges in opposition to scientific or empirical notions of the world.

This converging on something akin to science is most evident in how they use the word "god" - even though they had no concept of a scientific theory, they employed the word "god" with a meaning that we would identify as "the laws of physics (both known and not yet known)". Of course, they didn't get there perfectly - their god sometimes appears purely as "the laws of physics", but sometimes there's a little "Zeus" in there, sometimes a little "Aeolus" and even a little "Hercules" at points. That said, we must remember that Zeus was not supreme in Greek mythology, so there's reason to believe that they understood this to be a rhetorical device much like the hypothetical stoic "sage".

Most triumphantly, this way of talking about god as "all that is knowable with reason in the universe" comes dangerously close to being the concept of falsifiability, one of the most important concepts in scientific thinking and one that the rest of the world wouldn't begin to happen upon for almost two millennia after the Roman stoics existed.

It doesn't make much sense to say "the stoics were atheists" - again, what we now define as an "atheist" is linked heavily to our societally accepted empirical and scientific sensibilities. The Stoics were ahead of their time in being a sort of "proto-empirical" philosophy, which I think it's why a modern person can look back, even with all the references to "Zeus", and see what appears to be secular, atheistic thinking, but I think that's an illusion created by looking at them through a modern lens.

I think the best we can do to honor their work is to correctly continue it - we go on with the "laws of physics" and "falsifiability" instead of "Zeus" and "providence", as these are the true successors to those concepts. I think it is vital that we don't take their talk of "god", tear it up and replace it with the completely unrelated Judeo-Christian notion of a "god", which maps to absolutely nothing the Stoics spoke of and was undoubtedly invented after for a completely different purpose.

Stoicism favors the free will of an individual. Our philosophy basis our own superposition in the universe as an event that is only occurring in the present. This is antithetical to the belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful being that knows our past, present, and future. If a god knows our future, our fates are predestined, and there is no free will. A god that knows our past passes judgment on our previous actions. A stoic should not dwell on their past actions, as those actions are no longer in our control.

Another way to look at it is like this; the belief in a god, say, a god who will save or punish us, is a selfish belief. A belief that encourages a singular mindset of only one reality existing in the universe. That reality is our own. The way I see it, there are billions of realities interconnected within the universe. Each person has their own reality, but it’s a part of a bigger picture.

The ancient stoics were religious, and had their own faiths and beliefs, so it is possible to justify the presence of a god and still be stoic, but I personally see it as a paradox of sorts.