Ars Vitae The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living
ELISABETH LASCH-QUINN
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright Š 2020 by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Acknowledgments
Introduction: Therapeia
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ONE
The New Gnosticism
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TWO
The New Stoicism
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THREE
The New Epicureanism
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FOUR
The New Cynicism
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FIVE
The New Platonism
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Conclusion: Philosophia
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Epilogue: Once
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Notes
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Bibliography
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Index
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i n t ro d u c t i o n Therapeia
Philosophia est ars vitae. —Cicero
Philosophy is the art of living. So wrote the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero during one of the most momentous periods in human history. Centuries after Socrates, in a time of civil wars and Caesar’s rise and fall, Cicero thought the ancient Greek schools of philosophy essential knowledge for Romans. Centuries after Cicero, in our own tumultuous times, we might also benefit from heeding his call to engage more fully in the task of ars vitae.1 Many today seek help and insight for how to live in hard times and have trouble finding the deep answers that really help. Everywhere we see signs of great distress. Yet all around us we can also find signs, some hidden and some staring us in the face, of a return to ancient approaches to the art of living. Ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, an influence on learning worldwide in fields from 1
poetry to physics, is nothing if not deep. It presupposes inwardness—the cultivation of an inner life—and the centrality of the search for meaning as the paramount human endeavor. Inwardness is the way the self develops the resources necessary for everything from enduring hardship to soaring to the heights of a fulfilled human life. To provide the conditions for anything less not only betrays the goal of human flourishing but risks our very survival. It is no luxury, no matter how much it might masquerade as a mere matter of grace and style. The art of living is how we get along, how we get by, and why. This book begins to take the soundings of this new revival of interest. It explores modern versions of ancient Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism in hopes we can begin to recognize where these ideas appear in our current culture and where they might present alternatives. While observers have noted the surfacing of a particular approach, such as Stoicism, the return of a whole group of approaches from antiquity has largely escaped notice and characterization as a recent historical response, at once popular and intellectual, to our current and enduring predicaments. Tracing the contours of this cultural resurgence, this study sees the different schools as organically interrelated and asks whether, taken together, they could point us in important new directions. The rediscovery and reinterpretation of earlier thought are often, if not always, the source of movements of individual and cultural renewal. In this movement or in any of its individual schools, can we spot a countertradition to today’s culture, a sign of latent cultural vibrancy? Or are they merely solidifying a modern way of life that has little use for a form of inwardness stemming from those older traditions? We expect everything to move at the speed of the flickering image. In a time of technology, marketing, and change, a philosophical approach to living might seem inefficient and impractical. But it could turn out to be the very opposite. A leading statesman and philosopher of the fateful first century BC, Cicero witnessed the fall of his glorious Roman Republic, the dictatorship and assassination of Julius Caesar, and the civil wars that gave rise to the Roman Empire. Cicero served as Roman consul and defender of the republic. Despite its inaccuracy as a
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stand-in for modern democratic aspirations, its acronym SPQR still comes down to us as a mythical badge of honor and dignity, representing the senate and people of Rome and resonating with hopes for a government and way of life capable of fostering human flourishing. Beyond the politics and wars, violence and corruption, lay foundational ways of approaching being human, whether prescribed by poets or philosophers, slaves or emperors, women or men. Though some less than others, these different approaches still influence not only our actions but our possibilities as human beings. Ancient philosophers and those influenced by them certainly thought a lot was riding on their ideas about how to live. In one of the most vibrant public conversations in history, with reverberations to this day, Greek and Roman philosophers disagreed vehemently over their approaches to every aspect of living. Added to other such discussions in other cultural traditions, this is a conversation transcending time and place, perhaps the richest human conversation in which a person can take part. It is a conversation about how we should be living our lives, what the options are, and what is implied by the path we take. The conversation is open to us too, should we choose to partake. We have a standing invitation, just by virtue of having been born. Only by knowing the alternatives can we come to an understanding of how we live now— of what has led to this moment—and the choices we have for the future. According to Socrates, who said the unexamined life is not worth living, not to accept the invitation is not to be fully alive. It was an idea he was willing to die to defend. (See fig. I.1.) The societies of Greece and Rome were not neutral on the question of philosophy. Their leaders, often tutored by philosophers, at times took these thinkers into their closest confidence. Emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic, set up chairs in AD 176 in philosophy representing the major schools.2 At other times, the powers that be banished philosophers from the city or the realm. Of course not only Socrates but many others over the centuries between him and us died in wars of ideas and beliefs. While condemning all such violations of freedom of speech and conscience— the right to dissent without risking life and limb—one must con-
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cede that in the past and on into the present, ideas have mattered, both for better and for worse. Just as Roman ideas and ideals about life harkened back to the intellectual ferment of the Golden Age of Athens, so did those of later periods and peoples, adding layers of interpretations from other traditions throughout the world before reaching us. The Italian Renaissance, the later Early Modern period, the Enlightenment, the Age of Democratic Revolutions, and many other eras were infused by the ancient Greek philosophies and their Roman variants, as informed and interpreted by others across the globe from Asia and the Middle East to Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In the late eighteenth century, the new American republic would have been unheard of without them. Neither in times of trouble nor in times of rest and peace do the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers promise to have all of the answers we are looking for, but they are essential guides in pointing us in the direction of the questions we should be asking ourselves if we are to live the fullest lives possible. Standing on the brink of the future is terrifying. What comes next? What should we do? We often forget our good fortune to be able to consider the thoughts of those who came before us and also stood on the crest between their present and the unwritten future. As if designed for us today, given our own concerns, the ancient Greco-Roman schools of thought are “eudaimonistic” philosophies.3 There is no perfect translation into English of eudaimonia. Some translate it as happiness, but the meaning of our word happiness is also famously hard to pin down, like the state of mind that is its namesake. The closest we might come to capturing the meaning of eudaimonia today is probably something more like our well-being. The point is that these philosophies offer searching analyses of what it takes—and what it means—to live a good life.
EPICTETUS’S CUP
The ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus is one example of an ancient Roman philosopher who had distinct ideas about how to live
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and whose ideas are having renewed popularity today. Some of his notions might come as a surprise to us. If he were here today, he would have plenty to say to us for when we are faced with personal difficulty. He would advise us to begin with small things. If we break a mug, we should not get upset: “If you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed.” From there, we should work up to bigger things: “If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.”4 Yet it turns out that people are attached, even if that struck Epictetus as irrational. Handling loss and other difficulties is not such an easy task as willing oneself, or others, not to be disturbed. Is this sound advice? Or is there other advice that is better? Around anyone who seeks real wisdom in a time of crisis swirls a plenitude of advice. We live in the era of the aphorism and the several-step program promising to fix everything imaginable. Even before we set up a counseling appointment, wander into a bookstore or library, attend a support group, text an online doctor, google a question, or just ask Alexa, advice jumps off the aisles of the local grocery store in the form of a greeting card or coffee mug offering wisdom from all authors great and small. Pithy sayings purport to encapsulate worldviews. Your mug insists it will help you make sense of anything and everything. From bumper stickers and T-shirts to greeting cards, tattoos, and billboards, every formerly blank space blurts out a statement signaling a whole stance toward the world. Whatever one thinks of the content of Epictetus’s suggestion about remaining unemotional even when losing loved ones, we clearly find his guidelines quotable two millennia after he wrote them. So of course there are even mugs blazoned with the words of Epictetus. One of them encapsulates his philosophy: “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”5 It is a nice mug, with a helpful reminder. As he would be the first to say, we still should not get too attached to it. If we do take it seriously—the
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advice, if not the mug itself—what do we do next? And what do we do when encountering a message at odds with it? If the Socratic philosophies are about dialogue and inquiry, is there anything wrong with the way they are being adopted as a pared-down kind of self-help? Why is it so much more difficult to find deeper insights than such fragmented thoughts? A single quote taken out of context makes a poor life companion. This is not to discount the power and meaning of many a mantra. Sayings can be invaluable, as can programs of all kinds. The problem is that our current approach to finding help and pathways to self-help does not seem to be working. The suffering we face resists pat solutions offered by steps and slogans. Further, whether we can or cannot overcome our current distress, we seek meaning in our lives even beyond our suffering. Examples of this renewed interest abound. For just a taste, long-forgotten names reappear on a daily basis in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, and many other places. A recent New York Times review of Edith Hall’s book Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life praises Hall for introducing a “rare middle way . . . to pursue happiness,” not with a drastic change of life but with a simple program of selfreflectively pursuing one’s natural talents and interests.6 A review in the Nation of Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life ultimately finds the Stoicism he offers unconvincing, judging an emphasis on happiness through philosophical virtue alone difficult to reconcile in a world of pain and deprivation.7 To agree in all particulars would not honor the spirit of the conversation, or take seriously the most thoughtful contributions, the depth and value of which bode well for true engagement over words and ideas that matter. Works for readers beyond a single scholarly specialization both build on and push the boundaries of today’s disciplines, revivifying intellectual practices of inquiry into enduring personal and public questions. Other such works include Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us by Simon Critchley and How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well by Catherine Wilson. Princeton University Press offers new translations of classic ancient works in a series called Ancient Wis-
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dom for Modern Readers, appealing to nonspecialists with “how to” titles, such as How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management, a modern title for the ancient Roman Stoic Seneca’s work “On Anger.” These offerings individually and collectively signal a new level of interest in ancient wisdom traditions and their relevance in recent and contemporary culture and life.8 T H I S B O O K B E G I N S W I T H A L O O K AT T H E G L I M M E R S O F
a new Gnosticism that make visible what is at stake in allowing our modern therapeutic culture, with its elevation of personal desires into a “secular religion of the self,” to set the terms for how we make sense of life. Critics deem the advent of an all-pervasive psychologization of life, in which the “inner [is] the new outer” and the self reigns supreme, as “nothing short of a disaster for the human prospect.”9 In shorthand, the current frame of mind can include a posture of knowingness—the idea that some people are better than others because they possess special knowledge—and can support self-obsession and self-seeking with notions of selfdivinity. After setting the stage, this book then goes further back in time to pick up the threads of the earlier Greco-Roman schools and movements and forward to our times to see if they currently offer an alternative to late-twentieth century therapeutic culture. If Gnosticism-inflected therapeutic culture dictates how modern Americans currently answer the question of how to live, what alternatives might offer themselves? At first glance, a good share of the new interest in ways of thinking from antiquity has to do with Stoicism. Scholars and selfhelp gurus alike declare its relevance for our own times. We can identify it in one of the most well-known mantras: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”10 Originated by Reinhold Niebuhr, the phrase has saved the lives of countless people in its incarnation as incantation of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a form of tough love directed inward, it provides armor against excessive self-indulgence as well as suffering. Directed outward, resurgent Stoicism carries an implied critique of the softer side of the aftermath of the sixties and seventies. In the
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late twentieth-century culture wars, this meant the sensitive man à la Alan Alda, the welfare state or “nanny state” as it is called in the UK, and an ethos of victimization and entitlement. The “Lword,” liberalism’s epithet, suggested the exhaustion of a way of life that had failed to solve intractable problems such as poverty through government spending, social engineering, and the helping professions. The evaluation that Stoicism has the most relevance to our own times comes in a vacuum, rather than in the context of a conversation weighing the other possibilities. Instead of just a vacillation between therapeutic softness or Stoicism, right now there are multiple overlapping paradigms. Ancient Greek and later Roman Stoicism emerged in the form of a fuller conversation about how to live. Its earliest proponents were influenced by the other schools and saw themselves as starting a new school or movement as a rival to those already in existence. Systematized schools of thought had certain elements that were essential—as in an attitude or logic of Stoicism. We can now take a modern source and see if it has the essential elements. Lawrence Becker looks at Stoicism this way, to find a usable version of Stoicism for our times.11 We can also grasp a school as a disposition or sensibility still with us, albeit in changed form.12 Our reading of the modern sources makes visible these ghosts of edifices and shows them to be so many worlds coexisting in our mental universes. If we pursue this resurgence of ancient philosophies further, we quickly see that there has also been a resurgence of interest in Epicureanism. In the age of the foodie, we do not need to go far to find the evidence. Stephen Greenblatt’s best seller The Swerve and Daniel Klein’s Travels with an Epicurean are two selfconscious attempts to apply Epicurean insights to modern life. Even when unaware of the ancient school, many have participated in its continuing relevance, as we can see in the titles of magazines and names of restaurants, as well as the popularity of cookbooks, cooking shows, and nearly anything else having to do with eating, drinking, and consuming. From Julia Child to Anthony Bourdain, leading tastemakers have helped shape our attitude toward the art of living.
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Cynicism is also having a resurgence, as we see in works by selfprofessed Cynics such as Peter Sloterdijk. Together with many other contemporary observers, Jeffrey Goldfarb identifies an ingrained cynicism as a major aspect of our culture and problem of our times. Among others, philosopher Michael Foucault embraced the persona of the cynic, leaving works that allow us to consider recent versions of Cynicism and what is at stake. Finally, we can also discover hints of a new Platonism. This study takes as its starting point that the problems with contemporary culture stem in part from its inability, even in the event that basic needs are met, to provide adequate resources for the living of everyday life. It is rooted in concern about the ways our society is torn apart into conflicting groups, isolated fiefdoms, or islands of one. It is concerned with a contemporary culture that exacerbates conflicts, which it then lacks the means to smooth over. As long as there are no viable alternatives to our current culture, these differences are potentially tragic. This book holds up these approaches against what is wrong with contemporary culture. Yet these warring factions can be in part understood as the conflict among different ways to approach the art of living. Identifying underlying dispositions might offer potential sources of agreement and even unity, or at least a way to stay in the same conversation.
INWARDNESS Who are we, but wanderers of the heavens, amid an abundance of other worlds? What role is there for us in the vast emptiness of space? . . . How are we to find purpose in a seemingly purposeless universe? —Marcelo Gleiser, “Meaning in a Silent Universe�
In times of despair and loss, torment and injury, anger and absence, everything seems meaningless and the universe feels empty.13 But there are other times. In times of happiness and presence, our lives
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