The big difference between this reunion and prior ones was how much some people just had to insert their political opinions into conversations, which I’ll illustrate with the saddest and funniest of the many incidents I experienced.

The saddest was a rumor that one of our classmates chose not to attend because they and another classmate, who were once good friends, had a falling-out after one of them said awful things about the other’s intelligence for not having the right political opinion.

The funniest (only in hindsight) was when a classmate steered the dinner conversation to castigate part of the electorate. As I tend to view politics less as right and wrong, and more as a game of factions and spoils, with a thermostat-like response to events, I tried to point out that the faction in question was behaving rationally from their perspective. This did not endear me. Instead, it produced heated language about how awful those people were.

I prodded for an explanation of why that was so; all I got was rephrasing. I kept prodding because the rephrasings weren’t really explanations. My classmate then became convinced that I was merely pretending not to understand.

(Note #1 to self: There was a reason Socrates got the hemlock.)

(Note #2 to self: While Socrates didn’t get drunk at symposiums, you do. Avoid playing Socrates under these conditions. Nod and change the subject.)

The past ten years had apparently damaged the belief-formation and social judgment skills of a sizable fraction of my classmates. Against this discouraging background, there was one bright spot. Reunions are a good place to learn things. I attended a talk on “Artificial Intelligence and Conspiracy Beliefs,” in which I learned about an AI chatbot called “Debunk Bot” designed to persuade people to stop believing false things.

Debunk Bot was trained on a set of popular but known-to-be-false conspiracy beliefs. It was instructed to do whatever proved most effective in getting people to stop believing them. On average, the bot was able to dissuade one person out of four. Not only that, but it was found to be similarly effective with beliefs the bot was not trained on. It can tackle almost any empirically falsifiable belief, regardless of whether there’s a conspiracy involved.

What’s the secret to the bot’s success? It turns out that the bot discovered on its own techniques ancient rhetoricians could have told you about. First, don’t denigrate people for having the false belief. Rather, sympathize about how one could come to that conclusion, then marshal evidence against the belief - not opinions or judgments, but things people could widely agree to be facts. An example used in the talk was why did the Twin Towers collapse when the melting point of steel is much higher than the burning point of jet fuel? It turns out that at that burning point, steel loses half of its strength, and when the most damaged floor collapsed, it set off a chain reaction.

The user can ask Debunk Bot question after question. Debunk Bot will remain polite and attempt to answer each question as factually as possible, searching the whole internet for useful facts. While a 25% success rate may not sound like a lot, consider your own success rate in dealing with people who have crackpot opinions. I bet you’re more successful at harming your relationships than you are at changing minds. And if you’re not, comments are open! Tell us your secrets!

As a demonstration of Debunk Bot’s capabilities, I asked it to debunk the belief I most commonly use as an example of dogma (δόγμα): the Stoic dogma that virtue is the only good.

(If you’re not familiar with the ancient Greek philosophical term dogma, it means something different from the modern English word. In Pyrrhonism, dogma is a firm belief that goes beyond what is empirically demonstrable. Unlike the English term “dogma,” this dogma does not require blind faith. It may be reached through reasoning. What it does require is that the belief is non-empirical; it’s the result of an inference.)

Here is how the bot handled this key selling point of the Stoicism that has taken the philosophy-as-self-help world by storm.

The phrase “virtue is the only good” is a famous and beautifully uncompromising idea. Originating in Ancient Greece with the Cynics and later becoming the foundational bedrock of Stoic philosophy (championed by thinkers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca), this idea suggests that the only thing that truly matters in life is your own moral excellence and character. Wealth, health, pleasure, and comfort are viewed as “indifferents”—nice to have, perhaps, but contributing absolutely nothing to the actual “goodness” of a life.

While this philosophy can be incredibly useful as a psychological tool for building resilience in the face of hardship, treating it as an objective truth about the world quickly falls apart under scrutiny. Let’s break down exactly why the idea that “virtue is the only good” logically conflicts with the reality of conscious experience.

The most compelling argument against this idea relies on recognizing the profound difference between what things are and what things do. To see why, we can use a simple thought experiment: Imagine two people who possess the exact same level of perfect virtue. They are equally kind, courageous, wise, and just. However, Person A lives a long, healthy life, surrounded by friends who love them, in a peaceful society. Person B is falsely accused of a crime, contracted a painful terminal illness at a young age, and is currently being brutally tortured in a dungeon.

If virtue is the only good, and health, pleasure, and freedom from pain are truly “indifferent,” we are forced to conclude that Person A and Person B are experiencing equally good lives. We would have to say that the agonizing pain of Person B does not make their state even a fraction of a degree worse than Person A’s. Our deepest rationality—and our basic grasp of reality—rejects this. The conscious experience of suffering is intrinsically bad, and the conscious experience of joy, love, and well-being is intrinsically good.

This brings us to a second powerful point: where do we get our virtues in the first place? Why do we universally recognize kindness, justice, and courage as virtues, while we view cruelty, selfishness, and cowardice as vices?

The answer is that we value virtues precisely because of the undeniable good they produce in the real world. Kindness is a virtue because it reduces the suffering of others and promotes social harmony. Courage is a virtue because it allows people to protect themselves and others from harm. If a character trait consistently resulted in absolute misery, torture, and despair for everyone involved, we would never call it a “virtue.”

Therefore, virtue cannot be the only good, because virtue itself is fundamentally a tool. It is an “instrumental good”—meaning it is incredibly valuable because it helps us obtain other things. To say “virtue is the only good” is a bit like saying “the steering wheel is the only good part of a road trip.” A steering wheel is utterly essential for keeping the car on the road and avoiding a crash, but the destination—the actual intrinsic good—is the well-being and flourishing of conscious creatures.

Recognizing that there are other goods in the world—such as happiness, health, aesthetic beauty, and the reduction of suffering—doesn’t diminish the importance of being a good person. Rather, it grounds our morality in reality. It gives our virtues an actual purpose.

Does this distinction make sense to you? I’m curious what initially brought this phrase to your mind, and how you feel about the idea that virtue is simply the best method we have for reaching the true good: human flourishing.

I found this debunking to be pretty good. Of course, with me, Debunk Bot is preaching to the choir, but I suspect many of my Stoic readers may find what Debunk Bot has said to be uncomfortable.

Debunk Bot reminds me of one of the great ancient Greek philosophers: Arcesilaus. Arcesilaus was a student at Plato’s Academy who, at the same time, studied with Pyrrho. He was exceptionally skilled at philosophy. When leadership of the Academy passed on to him, Arcesilaus transformed it, repositioning its teachings away from Plato’s doctrines, such as the theory of Forms, and towards Socratic ideas such as elenchus and aporia. Later writers said that he taught Pyrrhonism while pretending to teach Plato, but doing so in the style of the now largely forgotten dialectician Diodorus.

Arcesilaus had a remarkable dialectical skill that he used in teaching. He famously never offered his own opinions; instead, he had students defend a thesis, and then he would argue against it to induce suspension of judgment.

Now we have our own mechanical Arcesilaus. Its name is Debunk Bot. Give it a try at www.debunkbot.com .

There’s a famous scene in the movie Star Wars: A New Hope where Obi-Wan Kenobi uses the Jedi mind trick to convince imperial stormtroopers that “these are not the droids you’re looking for.” The scene is a little hard to believe. But the great Stoic master, Epictetus, possessed real-life powers of suggestion that mirror this fiction. They were obvious to his student, Arrian, who praises Epictetus for this hypnotic pull in his prologue to the Discourses:

…let the readers however be assured, that when Epictetus himself pronounced them [the Discourses], his audience could not help being affected in the very manner he intended they should.

This article will unpack an instance in which Epictetus used this psychological leverage, breaking down exactly how he pulled off the trick.

The trick is used against a philosophical opponent of Stoicism. Epictetus doesn’t name them or give any detail about their argument, but a bit of background information will make clear who his opponents are and what their position is. His opponents are the Pyrrhonists, and their argument is best known to us through what the second-century writer Aulus Gellius says about it.

Therefore they [the Pyrrhonists] call absolutely all things that affect humans’ sense “τῶν πρός τι” [tōn pros ti]. This expression means that there is nothing at all that is self-dependent, or which has its own power and nature, but that absolutely all things have reference to something else… (Attic Nights XI: 5: 7)

Readers familiar with Buddhist philosophy may notice that this position is strikingly similar to the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). This doctrine points to the interdependent causality underlying all phenomena, and asserts that nothing arises independently but emerges through a complex web of conditions. For example, your perception of an object depends entirely on your position relative to it. This relational dependency explains phenomena as trivial as why you root for your home sports team to as profound as how you constructed your entire moral value system. Dependent origination is particularly applicable to the ego, as it explains why the “self” or the “ego” is an illusion. If you search for the self within the body or mind, it cannot be found as a solid, fixed entity because it is constantly changing and dependent on shifting physical and mental conditions.

The Pyrrhonists are one of the Stoics’ arch philosophical rivals, so it would make sense for Epictetus to train his students to believe that the Pyrrhonists were wrong. To do so, Epictetus need not call out the Pyrrhonists by name. All he needs to do is undermine their arguments, and the most effective way to do so is to have his students do it. That’s exactly what unfolds in Discourses 4.1. Here’s how Epictetus does his mind trick:

[Epictetus] Will you then say that there is nothing independent, which is in your own power alone, and unalienable? See if you have anything of this sort.

[Student] I do not know.

Epictetus here is working to get his student to reject the Pyrrhonist claim that nothing is independent and to embrace the Stoic claim that there is something independent. Amusingly, the student’s initial answer is a very Pyrrhonist one: “I do not know.”

Let’s check the Greek here to make sure we’re clear on what Epictetus is saying.

πότερον οὖν οὐδὲν ἔχεις αὐτεξούσιον, ὃ ἐπὶ μόνῳ ἐστὶ σοί, ἢ ἔχεις τι τοιοῦτον;

The key word here is αὐτεξούσιον (autexousion). This is a word compounded of:

αὐτός (autos) = self

ἐξουσία (exousia) = power / authority / right to act

Epictetus is referring here to something that is completely self-governing - something that holds absolute sovereign authority. He means “independent” in the strictest sense.

The Pyrrhonist concept of τῶν πρός τι (tōn pros ti: relativity) rejects that anything can be autexousion. The Buddhist concept of dependent origination rejects it, too.

In the Greek source material that Aulus Gellius translated into Latin, his phrase “there is nothing at all that is self-dependent, or which has its own power and nature” was very likely from a Pyrrhonist denial of autexousion. Quite possibly, it was from a book written by his teacher, Favorinus: Against Epictetus. That book is now lost, but its title tells us all we need to know here.

Epictetus believes this relational view of reality is wrong. He is convinced that a sovereign kernel of the self exists. He wants his student to believe this, too, and asks questions to help the student come to this conclusion himself.

[Epictetus] But consider it thus: can anyone make you assent to a falsehood?

[Student] No one.

[Epictetus] In the matter of assent, then, you are unrestrained and unhindered.

[Student] Agreed.

Here is Epictetus’s Jedi mind trick. He frames his question to appeal to his student’s ego. Nobody wants to admit, “Actually, a smooth-talker can make me believe a lie.” Notice that Epictetus does not ask the student to examine cases where people have been deceived. Instead, he asks the student a question about himself, subtly shifting the discussion away from evaluating a proposition to a matter of defending one’s reputation. What’s the student going to say? “Sure they can. I’m a total sucker and I have no regard for the truth.”

Ironically, it is Epictetus’s smooth talk that has led his student not only to overcome his reluctance to assent but also to assent to what I’ll argue is a falsehood, although one that Epictetus thinks is true. In reality, people convince others to assent to falsehoods all the time. We call them sophists, demagogues, cult leaders, and con-artists. Whatever label you prefer, Epictetus is playing that role in executing his mind trick, even though he sincerely believes he is right.

An even deeper irony is that Epictetus uses manipulative techniques to restrain and hinder his student’s intellect while convincing the young man of his total freedom. Epictetus’s authority restrains the student’s innate intellectual humility (”I do not know”) and coaxes him into agreeing that his faculty of judgment is an unassailable fortress. Shouldn’t the student’s judgment of “I don’t know” have been an unassailable fortress? Didn’t Epictetus just knock its walls down with a single question?

So much for the autexousion of the student’s judgment. It doesn’t exist.

Technically, of course, the student could have resisted. But think how hard that would be. On the basis of experience and knowledge, he’s quite outmatched by Epictetus. If a skilled enough manipulator can reliably shape assent, then autexousion describes nothing real. Modern research on persuasion and social conformity shows this to be the case. Ordinary people conform to authority figures even when the authority is obviously wrong (e.g., Asch and Milgram experiments). Epictetus was not merely an authority figure; he was one of the most revered teachers in the Roman world. And as the student would have observed, Epictetus was not above publicly shaming students he found wanting (e.g., Discourses 3.1).

Besides, whatever would spur the student to resist would be inspired from other sources - and that’s the Pyrrhonist and Buddhist point here: that his assent is dependent on things other than himself. It is not autexousion. Autexousion leads to egotism.

So, there are two issues to be addressed here. One is whether Epictetus’ arguments are sound; the other is about his psychological manipulations. The next part of the dialogue is about more manipulation. Epictetus prods his student with further questions, systematically cementing the illusion of autexousion into the student’s mind:

[Epictetus] Well, and can any one compel you to exert your aims towards what you do not like?

[Student] He can. For when he threatens me with death, or fetters, he thus compels me.

[Epictetus] If, then, you were to despise dying or being fettered, would you any longer regard him?

[Student] No.

[Epictetus] Is despising death, then, an action in our power, or is it not?

[Student] It is.

[Epictetus] Is it therefore in your power also to exert your aims towards anything, or is it not?

[Student] Agreed that it is. But in whose power is my avoiding anything?

[Epictetus] This, too, is in your own.

[Student] What then if, when I am exerting myself to walk, any one should restrain me?

[Epictetus] What part of you can he restrain? Can he restrain your assent?

[Student] No, but my body.

[Epictetus] Ay, as he may a stone.

[Student] Be it so. But still I cease to walk.

[Epictetus] And who claimed that walking was one of the actions that cannot be restrained? For I only said that your exerting yourself towards it could not be restrained. But wherever the body and its assistance are essential, you have already heard that nothing is in your power.

[Student] Be this, too, agreed.

[Epictetus] And can any one compel you to desire against your Will?

[Student] No one.

[Epictetus] Or to propose, or intend, or, in short, not to be beguiled by the appearances of things?

[Student] Nor this….

We now know more about the mind than the ancients did. Epictetus frames the mind as a fortress, but we now have much more evidence that our assent is heavily dependent on external conditions: our genes, our upbringing, our cognitive biases, our emotional state, and others' manipulations. If our ability to assent is dependent on all of these things, then - as the Pyrrhonists and Buddhists long ago told us - assent is dependent; it’s not autexousion.

Here’s a visualization of the difference between the two viewpoints:

In Attic Nights 1.2, Aulus Gellius shares an amusing story illustrating the undesirable effects that this Stoic belief in autexousion can have on a person. The event takes place at a dinner party held by Herodes Atticus (one of Marcus Aurelius’ tutors). One of the guests, a young Stoic, spent the evening boasting:

… that compared with himself all the Greek-speaking authorities, all wearers of the toga, and the Latin race in general were ignorant boors. …as to ethics, the nature of the human intellect, and the origin of the virtues with their duties and limits, or on the other hand the ills caused by disease and sin, and the wasting and destruction of the soul, he stoutly maintained that absolutely no one else had investigated, understood and mastered all these more thoroughly than himself. Further, he believed that torture, bodily pain and deadly peril could neither injure nor detract from the happy state and condition of life which, in his opinion, he had attained, and that no sorrow could even cloud the serenity of the Stoic’s face and expression.

Eventually, Herodes could stand it no longer. He said:

Allow me, mightiest of philosophers, since we, whom you call laymen, cannot answer you, to read from a book of Epictetus, greatest of Stoics, what he thought and said about such big talk as that of yours.

Herodes ordered a slave to fetch a copy of the Discourses and to read a passage from the first book aloud:

… in which Epictetus with equal severity and humor set apart and separated from the true and genuine Stoic, who was beyond question without restraint or constraint, unembarrassed, free, prosperous and happy, that other mob of triflers who styled themselves Stoics, and casting the black soot of their verbiage before the eyes of their hearers, laid false claim to the name of the holiest of sects….

Let me see how you are accustomed to act in a storm at sea. Do you recall this classification when the sail cracks and you cry aloud? If some idle fellow should stand beside you and say: ‘Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, what you told me before. It isn’t a vice to suffer shipwreck, is it? It doesn’t partake of vice, does it?’

Would you not hurl a stick of wood at him and cry: ‘What have we to do with you, fellow? We perish and you come and crack jokes….’

On hearing these words, that most arrogant of youths was mute, just as if the whole diatribe had been pronounced, not by Epictetus against others, but against himself by Herodes.

The irony of this story is that the young Stoic displays precisely the kind of egotistical self-conception that Epictetus’ doctrine can encourage: the image of oneself as inwardly unconquerable and intellectually self-sufficient.

A philosophy whose master teachers use psychological manipulation attracts people who want to manipulate others. Massimo Pigliucci details the three major ways in which manipulators have co-opted Stoicism in his article $toicism, Broicism, and StoicisM. The ends here are financial rewards, gender grievances, and military success. But even in more mainstream Stoic circles one can see this. Doesn’t it seem suspicious that the author of a book titled Trust Me, I’m Lying, in which he confesses to being a media manipulator, would want to go on to become famous as a teacher of Stoicism?

Perhaps part of the popularity of Stoicism is that it allows some people - such as the one in Aulus Gellius’ story - to wrap their egotism in a toga and to parade it like it’s a virtue. But the issue goes deeper than that. There’s a thread connecting Epictetus’ mind trick with egotistical, opportunistic, and manipulative “Stoics.” That thread is autexousion - the embrace of the idea that the ego is self-dependent, with its own power and nature, and that it does not have reference to anything else.

Investigate this claim closely for yourself. Do not allow anyone to deceive you.

First, here’s what John Sellers, one of the founders of Modern Stoicism, has to say about this belief:

“…the real reason why the Stoics want to avoid these passions is because they are the product of mistaken value judgements. It is not a question of whether anger is a good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant feature of a human life; the Stoics will want to argue that it is false, mistaken, wrong, the product of a judgement made according to a false set of values.”

Does this claim even pass the smell test?

I think you’ll find that it stinks.

Why the Stoics Are Wrong About Anger

The Stoics say anger requires a rational judgment. But they also say children and animals lack rational judgment, yet both experience anger.

Anger is so common in children that 25% of two-year-olds’ social interactions involve some degree of physical aggression, such as pushing or hitting another child (Tremblay et al. cited in Roy Baumeister, Concise Introduction to Social Psychology).

Experiments on monkeys show that they get angry just like humans do.

The Stoics are either wrong about rationality, or they’re wrong about anger. Based on the evidence from children and monkeys, anger would appear not to be a mistaken judgment (the claim that is unique to the Stoics), but a natural response - one that arises independently of rationality. And, if anger is natural - as the evidence from children and monkeys would indicate - the Stoic position on anger contradicts the Stoic ideal of “living according to nature.”

Stoics may hair-split here that children and animals experience only proto-passions rather than genuine anger. But this hair-splitting raises the question: what observable difference separates proto-anger from “real” anger? The behavioral manifestations appear identical. Children hit other children. Monkeys throw food at experimenters. The Stoics haven’t explained why these are different from when adults do the same things. All they’ve done is give them different names. Why should we believe the Stoic claim that anger depends on rationality? Sure, rational judgment may say in any particular instance that one’s anger is unwarranted or excessive, but it’s a huge leap from that observation to declare that anger is always an error of rationality.

Even Stoic influencer Ryan Holiday, who claims in his book The Daily Stoic that anger is always a mistake, says he gets angry.

“I was pissed. Understandably so, I think.... Like most people, I know you’re not supposed to react emotionally to things, but again, like most people, that rarely stops the anger from rising up inside us and fantasizing about revenge.”

If anger is always wrong, why do we get angry? Why would a Stoic providential universe make us susceptible to anger if anger is always wrong? Why would nature give us an instinct that is always wrong? Why would someone so committed to the belief that anger is always a mistake, as Ryan Holiday is, not only get angry, but think his anger is understandable?

There’s only one reasonable conclusion: the Stoic dogma on anger is false. Anger is not always wrong. It’s not something one should strive to never experience.

Aristotle and Epicurus saw a legitimate role for anger. The Pyrrhonists see emotions such as anger as natural guides. Even the Cynics didn’t reject anger. Only the Stoics pathologized it. It’s a uniquely Stoic mistake.

The Stoics get accused of rejecting or suppressing emotions - accusations they deny. However, this denial appears to be based on the Stoics’ misunderstanding of certain emotions, such as anger, making these emotions into rational choices. But they’re not rational choices (which is not to say that they cannot be affected by rationality). They are pre-rational. They are visceral. So if a Stoic cannot reason their way out of anger - a task that is not always possible - in their belief that they should never be angry, the only options are to suppress their anger or gaslight themselves into believing that they are not angry. These are not good alternatives. Better ones are available.

Towards a Better Understanding of Anger

For a commonsensical view of ethics, Aristotle is a good place to start. For Aristotle, anger is about justice, and the issue is to be angry in the right amount, at the right time, and acted upon in the right way. Of the ancient Greek philosophies, the Stoics stand out for their complete rejection of anger.

One thing that all schools of ancient Greek philosophy agree on is that rationality can be applied as therapy for distressing and problematic emotions such as anger. One reason for the popularity of Stoicism is that the Stoic tradition conveys many techniques for this. Most of those techniques are not dependent upon the Stoic belief that anger is always irrational. They work in cases where anger is merely understood to be excessive. However, the Stoics have no monopoly on therapies for anger. Other traditions, such as Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism, also offer therapies to consider - and without the error of believing that anger is inherently wrong.

Epicurean Approaches to Irrational Anger

The Epicureans see anger as natural, although one prone to irrational exaggeration. The Epicurean philosopher Philodemus offers therapies for irrational anger, and these are in line with the general Epicurean approach of reducing vulnerability to harms. describes:

“One of the treatments used by Philodemus and other philosophers was called seeing before the eyes. In this technique, the Epicurean guide confronts the patient with the consequences of chronic fury in the form of a vivid vision where the impact and effects of anger in relationships and the ability to enjoy life every day are presented clearly as if they were present here and now.”

“Self-sufficiency is also a preventive remedy for anger. Philodemus said the less we care about externalities, the less anger we have. Fury depends on our vulnerabilities and what we expose ourselves to.”

Pyrrhonist Approaches to Irrational Anger

Similarly, the Pyrrhonists prescribe reasoning as therapy for anger in line with the general Pyrrhonist approach of undermining belief. Pyrrhonists point out that anger is constructed by one’s mind. Our judgments of good and evil come from us, not from physical reality. Anger is based on our limited and faulty perception and our limited and faulty understanding. So, while from our perspective it might seem we have good reasons to be angry, we cannot be certain of that conclusion, and if we cannot be certain that we are right to be angry, the fury naturally loses its grip on us.

Anger also depends upon assessments of causality. Pyrrhonism points out, as Hume did later, that we can never directly perceive causality; we can only infer it, and such inferences are prone to error. The Taoists have a lovely parable that illustrates this.

A man is rowing a boat across a river when he sees another boat heading toward him. As the other boat gets closer, the man becomes angry, believing the other person is deliberately trying to collide with him. He shouts and curses at the approaching boat. However, when the boats ultimately collide, he realizes that there is no one in the boat. His anger vanishes instantly.

The man’s anger is a function of what he thinks caused the collision, not the collision itself. If our anger depends on the stories we tell ourselves, then we cannot be confident that we have good reasons to be angry. Likewise, this moderates our anger.

Not only are these judgments prone to being wrong, we can also easily be wrong about whether something bad has happened to us. It’s common for people to recount how something they initially perceived as bad and that made them angry turned out to be good, such as how getting fired caused them to get a much better job. If you can’t be sure that something bad happened to you, how can you be angry about it?

Getting Over Stoicism

While there’s widespread agreement about the problematic aspects of anger, one should reject the Stoic dogma that all anger is mistaken. This belief does not correspond to observable facts, and it is inconsistent with other parts of Stoicism.

Feeling angry is not a moral failure; it’s information. It’s not our feelings of anger that are themselves a problem for us. It’s our actions under the influence of anger that are a problem, and it’s about being angry beyond what’s rationally warranted. The wise thing to do is to investigate your feelings of anger, to calibrate them to what is rational, and to restrain yourself from acting upon anger until you’ve completed this.

It’s not wise to fault both your virtue and your rationality for feeling angry. That’s gaslighting yourself. You’re not crazy. Experiencing anger is human. Anger can be rational and called for.

The Stoics would have you deny this.

Now, there’s something to be angry about - within reason, of course!

One answer I have is simple: it’s hiding in plain sight. You don’t see it because you’re looking for the form of meditation rather than its function.

When we think about the form of meditation, we first think about what it looks like. Although Buddhism, for example, teaches four postures for meditation - sitting down, standing up, lying down, and walking - the sitting down posture is not only emphasized, but there are particular ways of sitting down that are emphasized, such as full lotus.

We have a meditation instructional complex that churns out images of what meditation is supposed to look like, and at some meditation retreats the teacher will go around the room correcting students’ posture.

Two thousand years ago in India, sitting on the ground with one’s legs crossed was simply a conventional way of sitting. It was ordinary. Sitting, standing, walking, lying down: these are all ordinary. They can be described as doing something with your body that demands little attention so that you can focus on the contents of your mind. What’s unusual in meditation is what one is doing with one’s mind.

Paying attention to one’s mind is a basic philosophical activity. Centuries before Pyrrho was born, Greeks were being instructed in the Delphic maxims. The first of these is to “know thyself.” One must pay attention to one’s own mind in order to do that. Other maxims encouraged behaviors similar to the kind of stillness practiced in meditation, such as “be (religiously) silent,” “restrain the tongue,” and “control the eye.” Hence, the idea that one should watch one’s own mind, speech, and impulses was already familiar to the Greeks. Pyrrho had no real need to introduce specialized sitting instructions, and the less strange he could make his teachings, the more likely they were to be accepted.

Further, the acts of meditating and of philosophizing can be described as ways of thinking about thinking. These things are not as far apart as they may seem at first. They differ more in style than in substance. Pyrrho was not aiming for his students to achieve some altered mental state; he was just aiming for them to understand what was going on in their minds. Understanding how the mind works is one of the fruits of meditation.

Meditation Instructions in Ancient Greek

Basic meditation instruction has two components. After the instructions about what to do with the body are instructions about what to do with the mind. Typically, this is to pay attention to the physical sensations of your breath. Don’t try to control it. Just observe the feelings of inhaling and exhaling. Also, observe the feelings in the rest of your body. Notice your posture. While you’re doing this, thoughts will arise. Recognize that thoughts have arisen, but do not follow those thoughts. Gently redirect your attention back to your breath and let the thought fall away.

Let’s look at these instructions as they might be given in ancient Greek. The instruction to pay attention to what you are experiencing, but without analyzing it, is an instruction to pay attention to empeiria (ἐμπειρία). This term means “experience,” specifically, “mere experience” or “experience apart from knowledge” or “experience prior to interpretation.”

What about those thoughts that arise? In ancient Greek, one would call them doxa (δόξα). Doxa is often translated as “opinion” or “belief,” but more precisely, doxa are things one thinks that go beyond just a passing thought. To become doxa, a thought must be followed long enough for some degree of judgment or assent to arise.

Plato had made doxa an important issue in philosophy. He thought doxa was terribly unreliable, and he was looking for a way to get past doxa and to get to truth. Aristotle, however, was not so critical of doxa. He saw doxa as the first step in attaining knowledge. Doxa believed by reputable people Aristotle calls endoxa. Endoxa is a more trustworthy belief than doxa, and it is a step on the way to Aristotle’s objective: epistêmê - demonstrable knowledge.

So, Pyrrho would have understood the instructions for Buddhist meditation as:

• Direct your attention to your empeiria.

• When doxa arise in the mind, do not follow them. Do not cling to them. Do not believe them.

• Return your attention to your empeiria.

By evaluating the type of thought - is it doxa or empeiria? - we direct attention away from the content of the doxa and its past and future implications, and towards the experience of the present moment - just like in meditation.

Taming the Doxa

If Pyrrhonism were to be boiled down to just two sentences, I can’t think of any better two than: Don’t believe the doxa. Focus on the empeiria.

Of course, one can sit motionless and focus on this task, but Pyrrho had access to methods already being taught in Greece. Pyrrho may have thought that using Greek methods would make it more likely for his teachings to be accepted, or he may have found them superior based on his personal experience. You can try the methods yourself and come to your own judgment about what works best for you.

These methods came from the Sophists. The Sophists had already shown that for any argument there was a counter-argument and that there were persuasive techniques for changing doxa. Plato and Aristotle criticized the Sophists for their ability to make the weaker argument appear to be the stronger. Pyrrho saw that the Sophists’ methods could be repurposed for other ends. By combining these methods, arguments for and against could be brought into balance, so that neither doxa is preferred. This produces a mental state known in ancient Greek as epoche, usually translated as “suspension of judgment” or “withholding of judgment.”

If this is practiced with one doxa after another, one can get into the habit of seeing doxa as a rather flimsy thing, not to be trusted, not to be believed in. Thus, disempowered, the doxa are set aside. They lose their powers of attachment. One stops clinging to them. Instead, one turns one’s attention to the empeiria.

Pyrrhonist Versus Stoic Mindfulness

Some modern Stoics present prosoche (προσοχή) as a kind of Stoic mindfulness, akin to the mindfulness cultivated in meditation. It’s a bit of a stretch. The word merely means “attention.” Our ancient sources on Stoicism that mention prosoche use the term in a rather ordinary way. For example:

The goal of life is to live consistently with nature, and this requires paying attention (prosoche) to our judgments and actions. (Diogenes Laertius 7.28)

When you let your attention (prosoche) wander even for a little while, don’t imagine that you’ll be able to pick it up again whenever you want. Instead, keep this thought ready at hand: because of what you’ve neglected today, your affairs are necessarily going to be worse in the future. (Epictetus, Discourses 4.12)

Attention is, of course, required for all philosophies of life. An Epicurean attempting to follow Epicureanism is doing so with prosoche in the same way a Stoic uses attention to follow Stoicism. It’s important, but there’s nothing special about it.

If one is looking for an ancient Greek version of mindfulness, a much better match than prosoche is skepsis: the act of inquiring and investigating. Skepsis is so central to Pyrrhonist practice that the ancient Pyrrhonists called themselves skeptikoi (inquirers).

Practicing Pyrrhonist “Meditation”

If you’ve tried meditation and have struggled with it, you might wish to give the Pyrrhonist approach a try. Set aside concerns about posture. Instead, focus on what you’re experiencing. Thoughts about things other than your experience will occasionally arise in your mind. They’ll often be what one would call “opinions,” but they can be about other things, too. Notice how they are based on beliefs about things you’re not presently experiencing. Although you cannot consciously prevent such thoughts from arising, you can endeavor not to give any further attention to them once they have arisen.

The gentlest way to do this is to simply return your attention to what you are experiencing. If that doesn’t work, there are some traditional Pyrrhonist sayings that can be helpful in disempowering thoughts. For example, “I determine nothing,” or Montaigne’s favorite, “What do I know?” Gently repeating one of these sayings can help break the attraction to following the thought.

If that doesn’t work, Pyrrhonism has an arsenal of more forceful methods, but unpacking those would require a lengthy discussion far beyond the scope of this article. (They’re covered in my book, Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism.) But regardless of the method, whether Buddhist meditation or Pyrrhonist epoche, the aim is the same: to stop jumping to the conclusion that our thoughts accurately reflect reality.

The video is just a little over five minutes long, and nearly the last minute of it is Holiday hawking one of his books. In the body of the video, Holiday criticizes Ivanka Trump for saying things about Marcus Aurelius that even Holiday admits are true.

Of course, one can have legitimate criticisms of Ivanka Trump, but Holiday’s criticism seems driven by indignation that someone he views as “complicit” would say that they found inspiration in Holiday’s hero, Marcus Aurelius.

Holiday thinks that if she really believed what she said, she’d have an intervention with her father. In Holiday’s certainty that he knows what is just and unjust, he appears to ignore the Stoic dictum that some things are not up to us. One thing that’s not up to Ivanka Trump is the behavior of her father. Holiday ought to know that Seneca couldn’t control Nero, Marcus couldn’t control Commodus, and Domitian banished Epictetus. Yet he thinks Ivanka should be held accountable for her father.

Perhaps Ivanka has tried to intervene and we don’t know about it. How can Holiday know that Ivanka isn’t doing the best she can in a difficult situation? Holiday seems uninterested in the moral complexities of her situation. His mind is made up.

So, what does Holiday find so objectionable about Donald Trump? The evidence he gives is clip after clip of Trump saying nasty things about people. Following this, Holiday then finds it unobjectionable to say:

“Ivanka Trump quoting Marcus Aurelius. I mean, that’s as eye-rolly as you can get. The only similarity you have with the Aurelius family is that you’re a Commodus and so are your shitty brothers.”

While he’s saying this, his body language theatrically conveys contempt.

Contempt is one of those unhealthy passions that Stoicism is supposed to help one get rid of, but for some reason, Holiday seems to want everyone to know how upset he is about all of this.

At this point, the irony of it all is pretty thick, but Holiday manages to layer more on.

“Now, Stoicism is not a brand. It’s a practice. And it demands honesty. It demands self-awareness. It demands accountability. It demands doing the right thing even when it costs you something. Even when it’s painful, even when it would mean, I don’t know, confronting your horrible family members. So, no, quoting Marcus Aurelius doesn’t make you a Stoic. It doesn’t make you wise. You have to live and act with integrity. You have to be involved in public life in a way that is beyond reproach….”

More than anyone else, Holiday has turned Stoicism into a brand, and Holiday’s real gripe with Ivanka appears to be that her admiration of Marcus Aurelius infringes upon that brand. He seems unaware that what he’s saying here in defense of his brand might not be above reproach - that others can see that his actions are self-serving - and that it was not Ivanka here making a claim that quoting Marcus Aurelius has made her wise, but Holiday.

Holiday goes on to put the F-word into Marcus Aurelius’ mouth:

“I’ll give you another great Marcus Aurelius quote, Ivanka. He says, ‘Waste no more time talking about what a good person is like. Just fucking be one.’

“Look, this, this is just obviously incredibly cringe. the sort of performative philosophy, the popularity of Stoicism with people who have no idea that this is a philosophy built around an ethical core, which justice is the true north of the philosophy.”

It’s a nice soundbite to say justice is the true north of Stoicism, but the fact is that what is just is widely disputed. Holiday’s conviction that his view of things is the correct one displays remarkable conceit. Conceit is the moral failing that the ancient Pyrrhonists so often pointed out the Stoics were guilty of. Holiday is in good Stoic company in getting wrapped up in the moral faults of others. Epictetus heaped abuse on those he found moral fault with. (Diogenes Laertius X.1.6) Ryan Holiday’s video is an excellent modern example of this Stoic conceit.

Stoic texts are fine conveyors of ancient spiritual exercises, but they also contain this unfortunate Stoic conceit, providing philosophical rationalization for dogmatic moral convictions of the kind Holiday embraces here. The Pyrrhonists have a cure for this: spiritual exercises that bring one to reject moral certainties. For example, the understanding that all evaluations are made from a particular perspective, that moral judgments are subject to vast disagreement, and that good and evil do not exist by nature but are instead mental phenomena.

Holiday is rather fixated on what he finds cringe here, but maybe the cringiest thing about the whole video has nothing to do with Ivanka Trump, but that Holiday thinks it’s okay for him to insert the F-word into a Marcus Aurelius quote about being a good person.

Why do smart people fall for stupid ideas and then become dogmatically attached to them? Why do some people experience not-knowing with angst and others with joy and wonder? And are the answers to these two questions related?

These are questions modern psychological research is working to address, but the problems are not new. They’ve been around since antiquity, where they were studied by philosophers.

The philosophers who took the greatest interest in these particular questions were the Pyrrhonists. They found that successfully addressing these problems led to eudaimonia, and they developed psychological techniques (in Hadot’s terms, “spiritual exercises”) to that end. These techniques not only prevent falling for stupid ideas, they turn uncertainty from anguish into peace.

What both modern curiosity research and ancient Pyrrhonism show is that many people value relief from uncertainty more than they value truth - so much so that they’d rather believe nonsense than sit with not-knowing. The resulting dogmatism is just anxiety cloaked in conviction. Anxiety and false beliefs are barriers to eudaimonia

Modern curiosity research helps explain why Pyrrhonist practice works. Specifically, Pyrrhonist practice may work through transforming a kind of curiosity that makes people anxious and uncomfortable into a different kind of curiosity that makes people feel happy and content. This article outlines those two kinds of curiosity and connects them with ancient Pyrrhonist wisdom teachings.

Unlike the well-known connection between Stoicism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), this parallel appears to have emerged without cross-pollination: modern psychologists appear to have independently rediscovered and better articulated something Pyrrhonists figured out over two thousand years ago.

The Two Kinds of Curiosity

In 2005, Jordan Litman, a researcher at the University of Maine, proposed that there are two kinds of epistemic curiosity, each with different psychological effects. He named these “deprivation curiosity” (or “D-curiosity”) and “interest curiosity (or “I-curiosity”).

Further research over the past two decades has shown that these two forms of epistemic curiosity produce substantially different psychological states, and their differences run on four main dimensions: what activates them, their subjective experience, their goals, and their expected rewards.

Activation Trigger

• Deprivation curiosity: Activated when a person feels close to solving a problem or when they have some partial prior knowledge and wish to complete it.

• Interest curiosity: Activated when a person has little or no prior knowledge.

Subjective Experience

• Deprivation curiosity: Uncomfortably intense feeling of needing to know. Involves some initial negative affect. A feeling of being unable to rest without an answer. High investment of energy. Brooding, frustration, and a negative effect on sleep.

• Interest curiosity: Feeling that learning is fun. Low intensity, but pure positive affect.

Goal

• Deprivation curiosity: To accurately solve problems, complete knowledge-sets, and improve the understanding of something in particular.

• Interest curiosity: To enjoy a new discovery.

Expected Reward

• Deprivation curiosity: The anticipated relief from dispelling an unknown, or an intensely pleasurable “Ah-ha! Now I understand!” moment.

• Interest curiosity: The anticipated enjoyment of thinking about new ideas.

The Two Kinds of Curiosity in Pyrrhonism

At the beginning of Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus gives a sketch of what causes someone to seek out Pyrrhonism, the goal of Pyrrhonism, the rewards of Pyrrhonism, and how those rewards are subjectively experienced. Although Sextus doesn’t use anything like this modern terminology of deprivation and interest curiosity, the distinction between these two forms of curiosity seems implicit in what Sextus says.

Fleshing out Sextus's account with what the epistemic curiosity research says yields the following outline of how the methods developed by the ancient Pyrrhonists work.

• Sextus begins his description of Pyrrhonism by discussing the curiosity activation trigger.

• The goal of this curiosity is to figure out how to attain ataraxia (being unperturbed), as this is a precondition for eudaimonia (happiness, flourishing). This is a deprivation curiosity framing.

• It’s the goal because the experience of not-knowing is psychologically disturbing (which is a consequence of deprivation curiosity).

• The expected reward is that by satisfying the deprivation curiosity, the disturbance goes away.

• However, thorough investigation ends in aporia. The deprivation curiosity cannot be satisfied.

• This causes a re-evaluation that produces a paradigm shift.

• In the new paradigm, instead of working to achieve epistemic closure, one uses the Pyrrhonist psychological techniques (spiritual exercises) to avoid it.

• This paradigm shift causes deprivation curiosity to be replaced with interest curiosity.

• Surprisingly, when this happens, the original goal of ataraxia is achieved.

The point of Pyrrhonism is to keep the search alive. Indeed, the term the ancient Pyrrhonists most commonly used to refer to themselves was σκεπτικοί, which means someone who inquires or investigates. Another term they used was ζητητικοί, which means “seekers” or “searchers.”

In other words, perpetually curious.

If you’d like to see the details behind the above outline, see the appendix where I go through what Sextus says line by line, connecting it with the findings from curiosity research.

The Negative Consequences of Deprivation Curiosity

Other researchers have pursued Litman’s concepts about curiosity. They’ve found that deprivation curiosity correlates with the negative traits the Pyrrhonists ascribe to the dogmatists.

Intellectual Arrogance, Falling For Fake News

Here’s what Daphna Shohamy, Ran Hassin, , and discovered about deprivation curiosity.

Deprivation curiosity stems from an aversion to not knowing something; its motivation is to squelch the discomfort of uncertainty. Because deprivation curiosity clamors for information as a way to avoid unknowing, it’s linked to a lack of intellectual humility.…

Because deprivation curiosity is linked to intellectual arrogance, it predicts other negative behaviors. When you lack intellectual humility—when you feel like you need to know everything and you realize there’s something you don’t know—that leads to an uncomfortable gap. In order to fill this gap and minimize discomfort, people tend to look for answers without discernment. For example, we see them accepting fake news because they don’t like the feeling of uncertainty that maybe this [news] isn’t true…. In a similar way, deprivation curiosity can lead people to create false memories. When we seek an answer purely to avoid not knowing, in other words, we run the risk of accepting the wrong answer.

This is exactly the behavior the Pyrrhonists fault the dogmatists for. (In Pyrrhonism, dogma means firm belief in non-empirical claims, not merely blind faith.) The dogmatists are those who think they’ve found the truth about certain non-empirical matters. The Pyrrhonists criticize the dogmatists for their intellectual arrogance, sloppiness, and rashness in reaching conclusions.

Rejection of Learning

Research by Claire Zedelius, , and Jonathan Schooler (2022), involving over 2,000 subjects, found that only interest curiosity is associated with a rich general knowledge base. This matches one of Sextus Empiricus’s observations: certain dogmatists thought it pointless to learn about some widely respected subjects, such as logic and rhetoric, and instead engaged in amathia - willful ignorance. (Against the Grammarians, 1-3).

Lack of Discernment

These researchers also found that “In addition to a decreased knowledge base, deprivation curiosity was associated with notable errors of discernment; participants high in deprivation curiosity claimed familiarity with new information … and were bad at distinguishing real from made-up concepts…. They further showed a tendency to find meaning in nonsense and a willingness to entertain and share blatantly false news.” This wasn’t because those who exhibited deprivation curiosity couldn’t think well. The researchers “found no relationship between analytical thinking and deprivation curiosity.”

Overall, they found that those evidencing deprivation curiosity showed “a promiscuous desire for information, but also a lack of humility, or openness to revising their beliefs in light of new evidence.... Highly deprivation curious individuals are overly receptive to new information—even bullshit and disinformation—but they are resistant to questioning their existing beliefs.”

This again matches what the ancient Pyrrhonists said about dogmatists. While ancient Greek doesn’t have words for “fake news” and “deepities,” the ancients were well aware of these problems. They pointed to many of the reasons smart people fall for dumb ideas. Most surviving ancient Pyrrhonist literature identifies and analyzes the dumb ideas taught in the other schools of philosophy.

Anger, Depression, and Anxiety

Deprivation curiosity is associated with higher levels of negative emotions and trait-level anxiety, anger, and depression, whereas interest curiosity is not (Litman and Jimerson, 2004; Litman and Silvia, 2006).

Dark Triad Personality Traits

One finding that goes beyond any ancient Pyrrhonist criticism of the dogmatists we have handed down to us is that deprivation curiosity has been shown to correlate with the Dark Triad, a well-studied cluster of socially aversive personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy), whereas interest curiosity has exclusively been linked to desirable traits (Kaufman, Yaden, Hyde, & Tsukayama, 2019).

This finding connects with a complaint made by many modern advocates of Stoicism: that various self-centered influencers have usurped Stoicism for personal benefit. Massimo Pigliucci has named the three most common forms of these urspations “$toicism, Broicism, and StoicisM.”

Curing Deprivation Curiosity

Unlike with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, where modern researchers have benefitted from awareness of both the diagnoses and cures handed down by the ancient Stoics, it appears that modern curiosity researchers are unaware that the ancient Pyrrhonists have not only preceded them in their diagnoses of curiosity, but have provided cures that modern research has yet to investigate. My hope is that this article will reach them and they will become curious about this. Just as modern research has confirmed the effectiveness of ancient Stoic methods, I predict that it will also confirm the effectiveness of ancient Pyrrhonist methods.

For example, among subjects prone to deprivation curiosity, does encouraging them to come up with reasons both for and against reduce their tendency to jump to conclusions? Or, for some belief a subject might hold strongly, does having them analyze that belief using one or more of the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus induce intellectual humility, or produce polarization between subjects who are D-curious versus I-curious?

For more on the Pyrrhonist methods, see my book Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism.

Appendix - Line-by-Line Analysis

Sextus opens his text by discussing the activation trigger.

When people search for something, the likely outcome is that either they find it or, not finding it, they accept that it cannot be found, or they continue to search. So also in the case of what is sought in philosophy…. (1.1)

In other words, the love of wisdom begins in curiosity. This curiosity is either positively or negatively fulfilled (positive: finding it; negative: concluding that it cannot be found), or the curiosity continues.

A few lines later, Sextus tells us the goal:

We say that the causal origin of the Pyrrhonist Way is the hope of attaining ataraxia [the mental state of being unperturbed]. (1.12)

And he tells us that this goal triggered deprivation curiosity.

Certain talented people, upset by anomaly in “the facts” and at a loss as to which of these “facts” deserve assent, endeavored to discover what is true in them and what is false, expecting that by settling this they would achieve ataraxia. (1.12)

In other words, this initial curiosity arose because the available explanations appeared flawed. They wanted the problem solved, and in this wanting this they implicitly experienced the psychological effects of deprivation curiosity.

A few lines later, Sextus says more about the Pyrrhonist’s experience in following their curiosity.

For when the Pyrrhonist set out to philosophize with the aim of assessing his phantasiai – that is, of determining which are true and which are false so as to achieve ataraxia – he landed in a controversy between positions of equal strength, and, being unable to resolve it, he suspended judgment. But while he was thus suspending judgment there followed by chance the sought-after ataraxia as regards belief. (1.25-26)

Phantasiai is a Greek philosophical term usually rendered into English as “appearance” or “impression,” but these don’t quite capture it. It’s about our initial mental reactions and mental formations - our first thoughts about something, before we’ve had a chance to examine them further.

In other words, after investigating the matter, the searcher finds that they cannot resolve it, not because they have no information about it, but because the information they find conflicts, and there’s no way presently available to resolve the conflict.

At this point, something unexpected happens, and from Sextus’ description, it’s unclear even to Sextus how this happens.

But then, by chance as it were, when they were suspending judgment the ataraxia followed, as a shadow follows the body. (1.29)

Litman’s concepts of deprivation and interest curiosity, however, give us a way to understand what’s happening here. It is a paradigm shift in how one sees the world. This shift systematically transforms deprivation curiosity into interest curiosity. With this new worldview the Pyrrhonist enjoys the psychological benefits of interest curiosity and avoids the psychological problems of deprivation curiosity.

Although Sextus is unclear about how the paradigm shift happens, he has insight about what triggers the shift.

For the person who believes that something is by nature good or bad is constantly upset; when he does not possess the things that seem to be good, he thinks he is being tormented by things that are by nature bad, and he chases after the things he supposes to be good; then, when he gets these, he fails into still more torments because of irrational and immoderate exultation, and, fearing any change, he does absolutely everything in order not to lose the things that seem to him good. But the person who takes no position as to what is by nature good or bad neither avoids nor pursues intensely. As a result, he achieves ataraxia. (1.27-28)

In translations of ancient Greek texts, “by nature” means existing objectively, independent of convention or perspective.

When one is suffering from deprivation curiosity, one thinks it’s bad that one doesn’t have the answers one is seeking. Pyrrhonism provides a set of psychological tools (or in Hadot’s term, spiritual exercises) to disuade one from coming to such a conclusion. When that happens, the situation has been reframed such that deprivation curiosity turns into interest curiosity.

As Sextus points out, the key trick here is to refuse to embrace any claim that something is objectively good or bad. The method Sextus offers here for doing so entails discovering or devising corresponding accounts where good and bad are reversed. There are also other techniques that Sextus doesn’t talk about here, and a discussion of those techniques is well beyond the topic of curiosity. But, there’s one thing worth noting here is that the belief that something is by nature good or bad is curiosity terminating. The person thinks they have the answer they were seeking. The search and the curiosity associated with that search are over.

The points Manson makes in his article are excellent, but one comes away thinking that this idiocy is something modern. It isn’t. It goes back into antiquity. Not only that, by looking back that far we can see that the roots of this idiocy go much deeper than the diagnosis Manson presents, which is:

Intellectuals create models of the world. In theory, these models reflect and measure reality in a way that allows us to quantify progress and predict the future.

The problem is, you can’t measure everything. It’s impossible. And if it turns out that the immeasurable factors are far more important than what’s measurable … you’re screwed.

Another issue is the question of getting accurate data. … But it turns out, finding good data on just about anything is incredibly difficult.

Intellectuals forget that models are just models. They begin to believe their models are actual reality….

But Intellectuals are rewarded for their models, not reality. And the data and analysis that looks elegant on paper is often disastrous on the ground. Yet, when their models are contradicted by reality, most intellectuals don’t have the courage to accept the reality, instead they double down on their models…

…and this is what turns them into idiots.

Everything Manson says about the problems with models is true, but the analysis can go deeper. Models themselves are not the root cause of idiocy among intellectuals; they’re simply a way for this idiocy to manifest.

Idiocy Comes from Theory, Not Models

Models are made out of more than just data; they are made out of theories. The deeper problem is that the construction of theories has as many problems as the collection of data. Theories aren’t just about reality; they’re about us and our own limitations.

There’s a reason the first Delphic maxim is “know yourself.” Our decisions aren’t just a function of the information at hand and our intellectual abilities in processing that information; they’re about us. They are about our character and our preferences. Everyone has problems with the gap between how things are and how we want them to be. Because of this, one’s selection of theories is subject to one’s deficiencies in character just as much as it is subject to one’s deficiencies in intellect. Hence, any field that involves theories is a field that’s fertile for idiocy.

Historically, the earliest theories resembled conspiracy theories. In a society with only primitive technology, most of what its members know concerns people. Humans are social animals. We are intensely interested in other people's behavior. Human behavior is a function of emotions, intentions, and interpersonal interactions. Hence, the earliest historical explanations for natural phenomena project such explanations onto natural phenomena, producing various forms of animism. Zeus shakes the earth. Poseidon makes the storms. Demeter creates the harvest.

The beginning of philosophy is when such explanations are called into question. Between this initial questioning and the ultimate attainment of truth, there’s a chasm. In crossing that chasm, a key initial limiting factor is the availability of alternative explanations.

A good way to see the implications of this limitation is through Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn points out a key process. First, there’s a theory, and this theory seems to explain some phenomena. As more observational data become available, anomalies emerge: things the theory can’t explain, but should. Eventually, enough anomalies appear that a fundamentally new and different theory is proposed to address them. After considerable analysis, evidence gathering, and persuasion, this new theory displaces the old theory.

Working backward in time from this, one sees a progressive expansion of the universe of theories considered. At any given time, we are always working with a subset of all plausible theories as we are ignorant of possibilities we’ve never thought of. In this regard, our situation is like that of conspiracy theorists: just as conspiracy theorists limit their theorizing to conspiracies, we, too, suffer from an (unintentional) limiting.

The Limitations of Theorizing

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig tells us about what is now called “Pirsig’s law”:

“The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.” (p. 84)

The implications of this law are disturbing to anyone who is concerned about having truth. As Pirsig tells us,

“If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method!

“If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.” (p. 84)

This is not just some crank opinion. Pirsig’s position closely resembles the mainstream view advanced by Karl Popper. According to Popper, all we have are conjectures and refutations. We have no conclusive positive proofs. There can always be a better hypothesis we’ve not considered. Thus, all theories remain provisional and vulnerable to refutation.

Pirsig continues:

“About this Einstein had said, “Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest,” and let it go at that. But to Phædrus that was an incredibly weak answer. The phrase ”at any given moment” really shook him. Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time? To state that would annihilate the most basic presumption of all Science!

“But there it was, the whole history of science, a clear story of continuously new and changing explanations of old facts. The time spans of permanence seemed completely random he could see no order in them. Some scientific truths seemed to last for centuries, others for less than a year. Scientific truth was not dogma, good for eternity, but a temporal quantitative entity that could be studied like anything else.” (p. 84)

And there you have the first of two fundamental reasons intellectuals become idiots.

Every intellectual idiot violates Pirsig’s law. They believe with complete confidence that the hypothesis they have is the true explanation for the given phenomena. They think their process has given them certain truth when in fact their process is incapable of it. When operating perfectly, the process can only identify what is false, yet the possibilities of error are infinite.

Pirsig was right to feel shaken by Einstein’s “at any given moment.” Einstein’s “absolutely superior” is a function of how well a theory explains what is observed and predicts what is yet to be observed. This is not a criterion of the truth of the theory; it’s a pragmatic criterion. When one leaps from Einstein’s “at any given moment” to even just “a long time,” one leaps into an idiocy trap. The problem with Einstein’s thinking here is that it provides intellectual cover for this leap. It allows intellectual idiots to wave their hands and say, “Yes, of course, in the future there may be some Einstein who will come up with something like a theory of relativity that will surpass my Newtonian physics. This is intellectually interesting, and I’m all for it. But, let’s be serious. We’ve already got this nailed down well enough. There’s no need to wait for a better answer, and no time for it. You should do what I say.”

Intellectual Idiots and Our Current Social Crisis

Here’s where the difference between Popper and Pirsig becomes interesting. Popper’s concerns were about science. He saw science as progressing via error correction. His conclusion was optimistic. Science indeed progresses, and this progress is tangible to us in the form of continuously improving technology.

Pirsig’s concerns were about society. While Pirsig acknowledged that we are materially better off, he believed the implications of his law lie at the root of our social problems.

The cause of our current social crises … is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. (p. 85-86)

I think Pirsig was on to something, but he didn’t get it quite right. The crisis was not caused by a defect within the nature of reason. Its cause is from defects in the character of the users of reason. These character defects turn the people whom we entrust to move society forward - intellectuals - into idiots. And it is these idiots who are the cause of our current social crises.

Consider a couple of the examples of idiots Manson gives.

Paul Ehrlich’s false predictions of catastrophic consequences from overpopulation led to massive investments in lowering birth rates. Now we have, among other social ills, a looming inability to pay promised benefits to the elderly, social conflict stemming from importing workers, and a demographic bomb that is hollowing out the university system. And those disasters Ehrlich predicted? Not a one of them came to pass.

Robert McNamara’s false analysis of the Vietnam War needlessly prolonged and worsened the conflict. This was not only catastrophic for Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia), it destabilized US society for decades and it continues to embolden tyrants.

Imagine a world that was free of the idiocy of just these two intellectuals.

Conceit

This leads us to the next part of what causes intellectual idiocy. For an intellectual to become an idiot involves more than violating Pirsig’s law; it requires them to become intoxicated with their “success” in having found truth.

There’s a word for this intoxication: “conceit” - an unduly favorable estimation of one’s own abilities or worth.

There’s an interesting thing about the word “conceit”: It didn’t always have that definition. Prior to the 16th century, it meant “having intelligence, ingenious, witty;” and two centuries before that it meant “a thought, a notion, that which is mentally conceived.” In other words, it was a doublet of “concept,” and it was sometimes spelled “conceipt” in Middle English.

Theories are concepts. Concepts are the origin of conceit.

Similarly, the ancient Greek term οἴησις (oiēsis) may be translated as “conceit” or “opinion.” It’s a concept that one holds unduly favorably.

The ancient Greek philosophers identified two sources of this kind of conceit. One of them, they called amathia - a willful refusal to learn. I’ve already written at length about that one.

The other is tuphos (τῦφος).

Tuphos literally means “mist” or “smoke,” but its figurative meaning is “to inflate with self-conceit,” to be “puffed up with pride.” This figurative meaning makes more sense if one understands the construction of the Greek word for “truth”: aletheia (ἀλήθεια). Aletheia is a compound word that means “not hidden.” Smoke and mist hide things. Tuphos is like a smokescreen that hides the truth. Tuphos is delusion.

Collective Conceit

Tuphos is a term much used by the Cynics. The Cynics think that much of what the members of society conventionally value is delusional. These societal values obscure what is truly valuable.

A famous quote containing tuphos comes from the Cynic Monimus, one of the students of Diogenes the Cynic. Marcus Aurelius cites this quote approvingly in his Meditations:

“Remember that all is tuphos. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of such a saying….” (2.15)

Tuphos is a term used by the Pyrrhonists to describe the faults of the dogmatic philosophers. For example, here’s Sextus Empiricus:

…the Dogmatists, wrapped, as they are, in the tuphos of their discussions with themselves. (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.62)

We have a modern term for “tuphos of their discussions with themselves”: echo chamber. We see it all the time with political discussions. People shun hearing others with opposing perspectives and instead tune in to only what conforms with their existing views. For example, one can infer a great deal about how someone thinks just by looking at what Substacks they subscribe to. A lot of Substack’s biggest customers appear to come here to inhabit echo chambers.

Moral Conceit

The conceit of “look how brilliant I am” is bad enough, but when combined with the conceit of “look how moral I am,” it makes matters far worse.

It’s no coincidence that all of the examples of intellectual idiocy Manson gives are connected with politics. The reason for this is that politics is moralizing. Once people think they know what’s good and evil, they have produced for themselves a powerful reason to prefer some hypotheses and to reject others, regardless of the facts. This shuts them off from alternative hypotheses in much the same way conspiracy theorists shut themselves off from hypotheses that aren’t conspiracies.

How to Not Be an Idiot

The ancient Pyrrhonists created a mental vaccine against intellectual idiocy. It has two active ingredients.

The first active ingredient is recognizing that we have no criterion of truth. Just as Pirsig and Popper point out, we have no firm grounds for declaring any theory to be true. At best, we can say that one appears better than any other on the basis of the accuracy of its predictions or the breadth of things it explains, but we can’t declare it to be true.

The second active ingredient is recognizing that good and evil do not exist by nature. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist at all; it just means that they aren’t features of the natural world. Instead, they exist in minds. Theories about the natural world are not inherently good or evil. We supply good and evil when we judge them that way.

Both of these ingredients can be called “epistemic” - and that they are - but they’re really about character. They are antidotes to conceit, and conceit is the character flaw not only of the intellectual idiots, but also of those who fall for their idiocy.

The Spread of Intellectual Idiocy

The world is full of cockamamie theories. It has been since antiquity. Now we just see more of them, faster, because the internet is good at spreading ideas.

Cockamamie theories can come from Ivy League intellectuals just as well as they can from your local conspiracy theorist. Intelligence does not prevent idiocy; instead, it allows one to rationalize it better and promote it more broadly.

As Pirsig said, “the real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.” Everything you do in the world arises from the work you’ve done on yourself. The intellectual idiots will always be with us, but if we make a virtue out of resisting such idiocy, things can get better.

“Zeno [the founder of Stoicism] used to make this point by using a gesture. When he held out his hand with open fingers, he would say, ‘This is what an appearance is like.’ Then when he had closed his fingers a bit, he said, ‘Assent is like this.’ And when he had compressed it completely and made a fist, he said that this was grasping (and on the basis of this comparison he even gave it the name katalēpsis, which had not previously existed). But when he put his left hand over it and compressed it tightly and powerfully, he said that knowledge was this sort of thing and that no one except the wise man possessed it.” (Academica, 2.145)

Put another way, the open hand is openness to all of experience. The partially closed hand is a curating of that experience: this part to focus on; that part to ignore. The fist is that which one is certain one wants to hold onto, and the left hand over the fist is the certainty of the certainty.

This left hand grasping the right fist symbolizes the central aspiration of Stoicism, and the Stoic Sage’s special access to truth. Another way to say that is that what is being grasped in this symbol’s double grasp is the key principles of Stoicism. In Greek, these principles are called dogma - dogma as in having certainty.

As Epictetus promises his students that if they replace their beliefs with Stoic dogma, they will no longer be disturbed.

“Men are disturbed not by issues but by their dogmas about them.” (Encheiridion 5)

Among these Stoic dogmas is the dogma that virtue is the only good. Health? Freedom from pain? Freedom itself? These aren’t really good. Never mind that the Aristotelians and Epicureans and those arguing common sense say otherwise. They’re wrong.

This Stoic fist-clasping has a nice parallel in the even more ancient Indian religious symbolism of mudras. While there is no corresponding Indian mudra to that of the Stoics, there does appear to be a mudra that looks to be its exact opposite. This mudra is seen frequently in depictions of the Buddha. Here’s a famous example: the Great Buddha at Lingshan, one of the largest Buddha sculptures in the world.

The Buddha stands with both hands open. As with the above Stoic symbol, each of the Buddha’s hands has a specific meaning. The right hand, held upward, symbolizes awakening, reassurance, and safety. This is the Abhaya mudra. The left hand, pointed downward, symbolizes compassion and generosity. This is the Varada mudra.

We have no ancient Stoic sources that describe anything like a Stoic “awakening.” The only ancient Greek philosophies that we know discuss such things are Platonism (e.g., the Allegory of the Cave, and n.b., the Neoplatonists thought they were simply Platonists), Pyrrhonism (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.29), and, plausibly, Pythagoreanism.

The Stoics would say that the provision of safety, reassurance, and compassion is valued in Stoicism. They’re not wrong about that, but how they get there is not through a method that seems open-handed. Instead, the Stoics say these things come via their rational duty to pursue virtue. This is the basis for their teachings about circles of concern and oikeiosis (natural affection, social bonds). This is a duty, not something heartfelt. That it might be heartfelt is, at best, besides the point. In fact, much of what we would call heartfelt, the Stoics treat with suspicion: things to be disciplined, reframed, or in some cases, eliminated as irrational.

“Pity is the failing of a weak mind that succumbs to the sight of others’ ills... it is a defect of those who are too easily moved. Therefore, the wise man does not feel pity; but he will help, he will do good, for he was born for the service of the public and the good of all.” (Seneca, On Clemency, 2.5.1)

When you see any one weeping for grief … take care not to be overcome by the apparent evil; but discriminate, and be ready to say, “What hurts this man is not this occurrence itself, for another man might not be hurt by it, but the dogma he uses to interpret it.” As far as conversation goes, however, do not disdain to accommodate yourself to him, and if need be, to groan with him. Take heed, however, not to groan inwardly too. (Epictetus, Enchiridion 16)

Not only is there this Stoic callousness, but there’s also a disregard for one’s own safety. Here’s Epictetus praising someone for their willingness to walk directly into death on the basis of principle.

“‘But if I go in,’ [Helvidius Priscus] said, ‘I must speak what seems right to me.’ ‘But if you speak,’ said [Vespasian], ‘I will kill you.’ ‘Did I ever tell you that I am immortal? You will do your part, and I will do mine. It is yours to kill, and mine to die without trembling; it is yours to banish, and mine to leave without sorrow.’” (Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.21–23)

Of course, Buddhism praises non-attachment and equanimity, but the Buddhist and Stoic versions aren’t the same thing. The Stoic version follows from being absolutely certain that all that matters is virtue and rationality - the doubly clenched fist. The Buddhist version follows from openness to the interconnectedness of all things through dependent origination - the doubly open hands.

To make this contrast clearer, it’s as inconceivable that the Buddha might say something like this:

“When you are kissing your child, or your wife, say that you are kissing a mortal; and then, if either of them dies, you will not be disturbed.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion 3)

As it is that Epictetus might say:

“Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the entire world.” (Sutta Nipata 1.8)

Epictetus promises that adopting Stoicism will make you invulnerable, but what he provides are techniques for becoming unfeeling. Those aren’t the same things. Those just make you closed off, like a fist grasped by the other hand.

Beyond this sense of certainty about what one has grasped, there’s the question of what has been grasped. The Stoics think one can grasp the good.

…the Stoics say straight out that practical wisdom, which is the science of things which are good and bad and neither, is a skill relating to life, and that those who have gained this are the only ones who are beautiful, the only ones who are rich, the only ones who are sages. For the person who possesses things of great value is rich, but virtue is of great value, and the sage alone possesses this; therefore the sage alone is rich. And the person who is worthy of love is beautiful, but only the sage is worthy of love; therefore only the sage is beautiful. Well, such promises snare the young with vain hopes, but they are in no way true. (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists 170-171)

Awakening begins when we escape the snare of thinking we possess a science of things good, evil, and indifferent. No microscope can reveal the good, no scale can weigh it, no container can hold it.

Open your hands to your mortal limitations. They are so immense you will never get your fingers around them.

Why this list contains these particular virtues is unlikely to be explained. Almost certainly, there will be no mention that Aristotle said that there were nine virtues, not four. (Rhetoric I.9.1366b).

What almost nobody will ever point out is that the Stoics substantially redefined one of the virtues that appear in the lists from both Plato and Aristotle. Even though they’re using the same word, they don’t mean the same thing by it. And if you’re reading a translation, you might be unaware that they were using the same word, because the translator will have chosen a different word because the meanings are so different.

This wasn’t a linguistic shift of little consequence. It buried what had long been a culturally accepted and successful path to eudaimonia.

The word and the virtue this essay is about is σωφροσύνη (sōphrosýnē, pronounced “so FRO si nee”). The story of this one word literally fills volumes. There are whole books devoted to nothing but analyzing the varied usages of this word over time.

This essay argues that sōphrosýnē originally referred to a form of sound-mindedness tied to self-knowledge and perceptual clarity, that it once had equal status with aretē, with the pair of them being gender-coded, and that Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics progressively diminished its status and narrowed it into mere “temperance,” with lasting consequences for Western thought.

Put more simply: what the Stoics have handed down as “temperance” was once a faculty for knowing oneself, perceiving clearly, and recognizing the limits of one’s own knowledge. What was lost was a way of being oriented toward reality that fostered sanity. We need to recover it.

The Shift

It’s well known that the meaning of words changes over time. Sometimes these changes are through what could be called a natural process over an extended period of time, arising through common use. At other times, influential people start using a word in a way different from how it had been used, and this catches on. There are various reasons for doing this, such as creating language features that allow one to identify who is in the in-group, or needing a word for something that is novel. Those who have followed the current culture war will be familiar with definitional changes as a rhetorical move. A word with inconvenient aspects of its definition will be redefined to lessen or eradicate those implications. Sōphrosýnē is the victim of an ancient culture war, and we know the names of the key influencers responsible: Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno of Citium. Over the span of three generations, the meaning of sōphrosýnē is radically transformed and narrowed. It was originally something far more interesting and important than the rather tamed and neutered concept of temperance handed down since the Stoics. It was “the noblest thing of all.”

The Stoics define sōphrosýnē as the practice of self-control, abstention, discretion, and moderation. The term is often used in reference to drinking and knowing the right amount to avoid belligerence. The English translations for this capture the meaning straightforwardly: “temperance” or “moderation.”

This Stoic definition subsequently became highly influential and was adopted into Christian thought. One has to go back to earlier texts to see that the meaning of sōphrosýnē had been changed, and even then, one might not notice it, because the translator will have been sensitive to this change and will have used a term other than “temperance” or “moderation.”

Sōphrosýnē was not originally a virtue of moderation but a culturally central ideal that underwent a series of three reconfigurations, first by Plato, the next by Aristotle, and the third by Zeno of Citium. The combined effect of these was enormous.

If this sounds abstract, we’re fortunate to have a text that makes the problem concrete. In Plato’s Charmides, we can watch people try - and fail - to define sōphrosýnē. And in that failure, its older, richer meaning comes into view.

Like other early Platonic dialogues, the Charmides shows Socrates taking a deep dive into the meaning of an important concept, and ultimately concluding that we don’t really understand it. Yet, despite this lack of understanding, and unlike what happens in other dialogues, Socrates shockingly concludes that sōphrosýnē isn’t worth much!

Readers of the Charmides in English translation will experience the text differently depending on the choice of how to translate sōphrosýnē. Some translators will choose the post-Stoic translation: “temperance.” Others, for reasons that shall soon be clear to you, choose “sound-minded.” This translation has a fine pedigree, as sōphrosýnē is a term compounded from two root terms that literally mean “sound-minded.”

Early uses of the term match the coining. The idea gets applied to two spheres: intellectual and moral. In the intellectual sphere, sōphrosýnē is the opposite of crazy. In the moral sphere, it’s the opposite of hubris. Over time, these root meanings get extended to make a richer term, and the term is deep with meaning by Socrates’ time. I’ll flesh that out here by going through some key mentions of sōphrosýnē in the Charmides. Impatient readers who are already convinced that a huge change in meaning happened and who want to get straight to the implications of that change can skip this section.

The implications are big. They reorded the value system in a way that persists to this day. Indeed, key pillars of Stoicism could not exist under the old value system.

To anthropomorphize what you are about to see, we’re looking at a case of murder of a pre-Socratic philosophical ideal. Plato stabbed her. Aristotle held her down. Zeno finished her off. History buried her.

“Her,” yes, “her.” The victim is female.

The poets and playwrights had identified something at which women excelled. The culture had embraced it. The Socratics sought to pry it away and replace it. They succeeded.

To see that success, we need a picture of what was there before. The Charmides gives us that picture.

Sōphrosýnē in the Charmides

Let’s look at the key mentions of sōphrosýnē in the Charmides, especially the four attempts to define the term. As is typical in the other early Platonic dialogues, the attempts all fail, but they are all based on existing common understanding, circumambulating the term without successfully getting to the heart of it. Each failed definition preserves a fragment of an older understanding.

If the Charmides were about temperance, one would think that it would be easy to define it. Instead, Plato gives us definitions that don’t seem to be about temperance at all!

The dialog is written in the first person, from Socrates’ perspective. It takes place at a gymnasium in 430 BCE. Socrates had just returned from a military campaign. He would have been around 40 years old at the time.

Socrates’ main interlocutors are Charmides, a youth, and his adult cousin, Critias. Both are older relatives of Plato. Critias is Socrates’ student - a relationship that in the distant future will be held against Socrates due to Critias’ membership in the Thirty Tyrants, in which Charmides will also be involved. Also participating is Socrates’ friend Chaerophon, who is famous for having asked the Delphic oracle “who is the wisest?” and whom Socrates immediately tells us is a “madman” (or “wild” man - a characteristic attested to by other writers from that time).

From there, all eyes fall on Charimides. The three adults start talking about which of the youths at the gymnasium are most beautiful and say that everyone agrees it is Charmides who “came of age” while Socrates was on campaign. Chaeraphon says,

“Socrates, how does this young man look to you, isn’t he fair of face?”

“Exceedingly so,” said I.

“Yet if this fellow were willing to strip,” said he, “you would think he had no face, so utterly beautiful is his physique.” (154d)

Socrates, being Socrates, inquires about whether Charmides has a well-developed soul. Critias says he does, and Socrates says,

“Well, why don’t we strip this particular part of him and look at that, before we look at his body? (154e)

Critias, knowing that Charmides has been suffering from headaches, uses the ruse that Socrates is a physician who can cure him using incantations.

Socrates tells us:

Then Charmides came and sat between myself and Critias. There and then, my friend, I was already at a loss, and my former confidence was knocked out of me, the confidence that I could converse with him quite easily. But when Critias was explaining that I was the one who knew the remedy, the lad looked into my eyes in a manner that defies description, sat up as if to ask me a question, and everyone in the Palaestra surged all around us in a circle. Then indeed, my noble friend, I beheld the inside of his garment and I was inflamed, and was no longer in myself, and I decided that when it came to love, Cydias was the wisest poet. When speaking of a beautiful boy, he advised someone that ‘the fawn should be careful when he arrives in front of a lion, lest he be seized as a piece of meat.’ Indeed, I thought that I myself had been captured by a creature of this sort. (155c-e)

Socrates discusses with Charmides that the cure he has involves both a leaf and words - an incantation - which must be taken together as the body cannot be healed unless the soul is healed too.

From such words as these, sōphrosýnē is engendered in our souls, and once it has been engendered, and is present, it is easy at that stage to provide health to the head and to the rest of the body too.’ (157a)

This is the first mention of sōphrosýnē in the dialogue. Socrates then criticizes some physicians because “they endeavour to be physicians of sōphrosýnē, and of bodily health, separately.” (157b)

Critias says,

“This headache could turn out to be a god-send for the young man, Socrates, if he will be compelled to improve his thinking because of his head. But, I tell you, Charmides is not regarded as superior to the rest of his age group for his looks alone, but also for the quality for which you claim to have the incantation. You say it is for sōphrosýnē, don’t you?”

“Very much so,” I replied.

“Well, mark my words,” he said, “he is regarded, far and away, as the most sōphrosýnē

lad there is nowadays, and in all other respects he is as good as anyone else of that age. (157d-e)

At this early point in the dialogue, readers who are filling in this sōphrosýnē with their ideas of Stoic temperance are likely feeling disoriented. What does sōphrosýnē have to do with Charmides’ head? How is it that temperance became such a rank competition?

Socrates asks Charmides,

“Do you claim that you already possess enough sōphrosýnē, or are you deficient in this?“

He blushes with modesty and replies:

“...if I say I am not sōphrosýnē, this is not just a strange thing to say against oneself, but at the same time I would be proving Critias here a liar, and many others too who regard me as sōphrosýnē because this man says so. Then again, if I say that I am sōphrosýnē and sing my own praises, that will surely appear offensive. So I do not know how I am to answer you. (158c-d)

If Charmides doesn’t think he’s as temperate as others claim he is, what’s the big deal? Similarly, can’t he just say he tries hard to be temperate? Why such a fuss? It seems that sōphrosýnē says something about one’s self much more important than mere moderation.

Socrates asks Charmides,

“Now, it is clear that, if you have sōphrosýnē with you, you can hold an opinion about it. For being in you, I presume it must, in that case, afford some perception from which you can form some opinion of what sōphrosýnē is, and what kind of thing it is. Do you not think so?” (158e-159a)

Isn’t that strange? Do we think that those lacking in temperance are incapable of recognizing temperance? Socrates appears to be talking about a mental faculty of perception rather than the behaviors of restraint and moderation we associate with temperance.

Charmides tries to avoid giving a definition, but eventually says,

“...sōphrosýnē is doing everything in an orderly manner and quietly: in walking on the streets, in conversation and doing everything else in a similar fashion. And in my opinion,” said he, “what you are asking me about is, in short, a certain quietness.” (159b)

With this definition, we now have our first confirmation that whatever this sōphrosýnē is that they’re talking about is not the sōphrosýnē that the Stoics talk about. But what is it?

Socrates then asks a series of questions that show that Charmides’ definition is faulty. Whatever sōphrosýnē is, it does not depend on quietness.

Charmides provides a new definition:

“Well, it seems to me that sōphrosýnē makes a person ashamed and produces modesty, and modesty is what sōphrosýnē actually is.” (160e)

Socrates critiques this definition on the basis that whatever sōphrosýnē is, it’s good, and modesty is not always good. Therefore, sōphrosýnē cannot be modesty.

Charmides proposes a third definition: “doing what belongs to yourself” - a definition he had heard before from Critias. (161b) Socrates points out the flaws in this definition, too, getting Critias to agree that people who do what is needed are sōphrosýnē, even if those are not personal needs (164b).

Socrates then posits that it’s possible for someone who is sōphrosýnē to be engaging in it, yet be unaware of it. (164c) Critias rejects this idea.

“For I would almost say that this very thing, self-knowledge, is sōphrosýnē, and I am at one with him who put up the inscription of those words at Delphi. For the purpose of that inscription on the temple, as it seems to me, is to serve as the god’s salutation to those who enter it, instead of “Hail!”—this is a wrong form of greeting, and they should rather exhort one another with the words, “Be sōphrosýnē!” And thus the god addresses those who are entering his temple in a mode which differs from that of men; such was the intention of the dedicator of the inscription in putting it up, I believe; and that he says to each man who enters, in reality, “Be sōphrosýnē !” But he says it in a rather riddling fashion, as a prophet would; for “Know thyself!” and “Be sōphrosýnē!” are the same….” (164d-e)

Socrates inquires further, and Critias responds about sōphrosýnē, saying that, “it alone of all the sciences is the science both of itself and of the other sciences.” Critias then agrees with Socrates’ clarifying questions:

“...it will be the science of the lack of science also, besides being the science of science?”

“Then only the sōphrosýnē person will know himself, and be able to discern what he really knows and does not know, and have the power of judging what other people likewise know and think they know, in cases where they do know, and again, what they think they know, without knowing it; everyone else will be unable. And so this is being sōphrosýnē, or sōphrosýnē, and knowing oneself—that one should know what one knows and what one does not know.” (167a)

This is the final definition proposed in the Charmides, and, although seemingly better than the others and harder to refute, it, too, is eventually found wanting. The dialog ends in aporia. We’re left unsure what sōphrosýnē is, but whatever it is, it is not temperance. Yet, some translators are so convinced that the translation for sōphrosýnē must be “temperance” that they disregard its poor fit for the text in front of their eyes. There’s a word for that: It’s dogmatism. One hallmark of dogmatism is rejecting the evidence in favor of the existing belief. And in appropriate Socratic irony, from what Plato tells us in the Charmides, sōphrosýnē has to do with the ability to avoid falling into dogmatism.

Even though the dialogue produces no clarity about how to define sōphrosýnē, Socrates comes to a conclusion about its value. What they had thought was “the noblest thing of all” - sōphrosýnē - is of no benefit!

“How then will sōphrosýnē be beneficial when it is not the artificer of a single benefit?”

“It is not beneficial at all, Socrates, so it seems at least.”

“Do you see, Critias, that I had good reason for my fears a while ago, and that I was justified in accusing myself of not considering anything useful in relation to sōphrosýnē? For presumably, what is agreed to be the noblest thing of all would not have appeared to be devoid of benefit to us, if I had been of any use in conducting a proper investigation. But now we have the worst of it in every way, and we are not able to discover to which of the things that are, the lawgiver ever gave this name, sōphrosýnē. (175a-b)

…the investigation … laughs at truth to such an extent that although we have for some time been coming to an agreement and developing a proposition that this is what sōphrosýnē is, it revealed to us, very contemptuously, that this is of no benefit.

“Now, although I am less concerned for myself, I am very concerned for you, Charmides,” said I, “if you, with a body like this and a very sōphrosýnē soul besides, will not profit from this sōphrosýnē, and its presence will be of no benefit to you in life. (175d-e)

While the Charmides fails to define sōphrosýnē, it still gives us a sense of what it is. It is not about restraining appetites. It is a kind of mental orientation: a capacity for self-knowledge, for recognizing what one knows and does not know, and for avoiding the overconfidence that leads to error and delusion. It operates less like a moral rule and more like a perceptual faculty: one that keeps a person in contact with reality rather than with their own illusions.

Is Sōphrosýnē Even a Virtue?

As you can see from the Charmides, sōphrosýnē had been a much more interesting quality than what the Stoics would have you think of it. It’s not just some virtue that keeps you from eating one too many jelly doughnuts. It’s a state of mind that engenders modesty. It is a perceptive faculty that is uniquely aware of not only its epistemic limits, but of what is in the domain of the self. The resulting attention to that dividing line between what is the domain of the self and what isn’t represents an ethical boundary for action. The sum total of all of this is a demeanor of orderliness and quietude.

A few centuries after Socrates, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus would drill into his students the idea that their happiness depended on distinguishing between what was and was not up to them. These days, this feature of Stoicism is called the Dichotomy of Control, and it is marketed as if it were unique to Stoicism. It isn’t. It’s found in the other ancient Greek philosophies of life. It’s in Aristotelianism. It’s in Epicureanism. It’s in Pyrrhonism. It’s ubiquitous because it predates Socrates. If in Socrates’ day someone had asked by what faculty one could determine what is up to us and what is not, the answer would have been sōphrosýnē.

Maybe sōphrosýnē is more than just a virtue.

In earlier Greek thought, it may not have been a “virtue” in the later philosophical sense at all, but something more fundamental: a faculty that makes the proper exercise of any virtue possible.

The word we translate as “virtue” is aretē. In early texts, the meaning of aretē centers on excellence rather than our later understanding that emphasizes morality. For example, the Iliad shows Achilles as a man of great aretē - as a warrior, his role in society. However, the story begins with Achilles refusing to participate in the war on Troy, not because he’s afraid, not because he thinks the war is unjust or unwise (checking off three of the four Stoic cardinal virtues here), but because he’s filled with rage because Agamemnon took away his sex slave.

Rage is not an attribute of sōphrosýnē. Despite his great aretē, Achilles is not sōphrosýnē.

Usages in the fifth century BCE show that, unlike what we see with philosophers from Plato on, in which sōphrosýnē is a type of aretē, sōphrosýnē and aretē form a pair of the two most admirable qualities. (Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature. p. 23)

Not only were they a pair, an intriguing implication is that they were also gendered. The noun ἀρετή (aretē) is connected with ἀνήρ (anēr, ‘man; male, warrior’) and the related adjective ἀριστός (aristos, ‘best, noblest’), from the Proto-Indo-European root ar-/are- (‘to fit, join, be suited, be strong’). Whereas,

“Sophrosyne … is the special virtue of women whether married or unmarried, and for women of both categories it is the most common of all tributes inscribed on memorial reliefs and tombstones.” (ibid p. 21)

This is intriguing.

For a period in ancient Greek culture - the period during which Greece arose from a fractious collection of city-states to become the greatest empire the world had ever known - aretē and sōphrosýnē formed a diad like prajna (wisdom) and karuna (compassion) do in Mahayana Buddhism, except the ancient Greeks substituted aretē for compassion and their ideas on wisdom were perhaps a bit different.

The Greeks would not develop a strong interest in compassion until the teachings of a certain Aramaic-speaking barbarian entered their culture. This came long after both sōphrosýnē and aretē had been redefined, and philosophers had elbowed out sophists and poets as teachers of the cultural ideals.

Of the Stoics’ cardinal virtues, several are - at least for that time and place - gender-coded. Men were expected to display courage; they fought the wars. Men were expected to strive for justice; they ran the government. Men were expected to seek wisdom; they were the ones who would be philosophers. But sōphrosýnē? Even in the Stoics’ version, women were expected to be temperate even more so than men. And for the version of sōphrosýnē that predated Plato? Look at the definitions we’re given: modesty, being sound-minded, doing what belongs to yourself, doing everything in an orderly manner, and quietly. Don’t these seem to be goals for women in a patriarchal society?

Even in modern culture, sound-mindedness appears to be a more prized attribute for women than for men. The badness of those “bad” boys who attract girls is built on recklessness and overconfidence. In contrast, the two dimensions on which guys use to evaluate potential girlfriends are famous in pop culture as hot and crazy.

One has to wonder how aware of this Plato might have been, as he made Charmides both very hot and very sōphrosýnē.

Correspondingly, in modern culture, it’s clear that women prioritize in male mates traits such as good financial prospects, higher status, and ambition - all things we would associate with excellence. What we may be looking at here is ancient cultural enshrinement of gendered biological preferences.

This is an interesting digression, but the important takeaway is that pre-Socratic Greek society operated with a set of ideals comprising excellence and sound-mindedness. It may be incidental that they may have been loosely gendered , with excellence being more important for men and sound-mindedness being more important for women.

Plato, however, had other ideals to advance, and to do so, he needed to dismantle this diad. He makes sōphrosýnē just a type of aretē. His motivations for this are unclear. It makes me wonder if misogyny might be one of them. He never married. He had no children.

Whether or not this gendered interpretation matters, it points to something important: sōphrosýnē once occupied a central cultural role that cannot be reduced to “moderation.” Its later narrowing was set into motion by Plato’s devaluation.

The Final Debasements

Aristotle inherits Plato’s system here, then goes one step further. In Aristotle’s model, aretē is the mean between two vices. For example, the virtue of courage is the mean between recklessness and cowardice. In this, Aristotle gives sōphrosýnē a special role. It is the perceptive faculty for identifying this mean. Note above how Socrates treats sōphrosýnē as a perceptive faculty and how sōphrosýnē is treated as unique in having knowledge of and assessment of itself.

With Aristotle’s new model, sōphrosýnē is what moderates. Instead of being closely associated with the first Delphic maxim, “know thyself,” it becomes the manifestation of the second maxim, “nothing in excess.”

From there, the Stoics strip sōphrosýnē of its other qualities, nearly completely transforming it. It goes from being a virtue as difficult to define as wisdom or justice to one that’s as banal as calorie counting.

In summary, Plato devalues and demotes sōphrosýnē. Aristotle systematizes and repurposes it. The Stoics narrow and trivialize it. What begins as a rich, difficult-to-define quality of mind ends as a behavioral guideline. A faculty for evading delusion is reduced to a schoolmarmish lecture about managing desires.

Why Did They Kill Sōphrosýnē?

Upon digging this deep into the archaeology of aretē and sōphrosýnē, I got a sense of deja vu. Robert Pirsig had accused Plato and Aristotle of destroying aretē by subtly changing its meaning and then demoting it.

Might this have also happened with sōphrosýnē, and Pirsig hadn’t looked for it?

I went looking through what Pirsig says in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to see if what he had noticed about aretē might also be true of sōphrosýnē. I got a match.

Sōphrosýnē and aretē had been paired as the two highest ideals. To replace those with new ideals, they both had to come down. And part of what Pirsig saw Plato doing to aretē was also about taking down sōphrosýnē.

Let’s start with what Pirsig says about aretē:

“What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism,” Kitto comments, ”is not a sense of duty as we understand it...duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate ‘virtue’ but is in Greek aretē, ‘excellence’ – we shall have much to say about aretē. It runs through Greek life.” (p. 264)

“Duty towards oneself.” That’s a lot like a couple of the definitions for sōphrosýnē given in the Charmides. In 161b there’s “doing what belongs to yourself,” and in 167a there’s knowing oneself.

Pirsig continues:

Phædrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of “duty toward self ” which is an almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes described as the ”one” of the Hindus. Can the dharma of the Hindus and the ”virtue” of the ancient Greeks be identical?

Then Phædrus feels a tugging to read the passage again, and he does so and then – what’s this?! – “That which we translate ‘virtue ’ but is in Greek ‘Excellence.”’ (p. 264)

Hmm. Pirsig’s aretē seems to have sōphrosýnē folded into it. Pirsig then wonders why and how aretē got destroyed, starting with Plato.

Plato hadn’t tried to destroy aretē. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made aretē the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before. (p 265)

Plato appears to have simultaneously done something similar with sōphrosýnē. He subordinates it to aretē, whereas before it was co-equal with aretē. Not only that, he denies that sōphrosýnē has any utility in identifying the Good, which Pirsig points out Plato had redefined.

“Plato’s Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.” (p 265)

If the Good is fixed and eternal and unmoving, it becomes firmly knowable to everyone. The value of the faculty of sōphrosýnē is, from one of the proposed definitions in the Charmides:

“only the sōphrosýnē person will know himself, and be able to discern what he really knows and does not know, and have the power of judging what other people likewise know and think they know” (167a)

This doesn’t fit into Plato’s scheme as it has everyone judging for themselves. That’s democratic, and Plato dislikes democracy. He blames democracy for executing his hero, Socrates. Plato’s ideal is the philosopher-king. His utopian Republic is run by experts who make all of the important decisions. His Academy acts as the world’s original think tank. No wonder he chose the anti-democratic Critias and Charmides as the characters for this dialogue and made Charmides the possessor of the greatest sōphrosýnē.

Plato has to undermine sōphrosýnē, and that’s what he does in the Charmides. He has Socrates conclude that it is of no benefit, and thus by inference it is not the “most noble of things.” From there it can be demoted further, to be just a kind of aretē. This fits with the rest of his project, which Pirsig saw as a result of two syntheses.

The first synthesis tried to resolve differences between the Heraclitans and the followers of Parmenides. Both Cosmological schools upheld Immortal Truth. In order to win the battle for Truth in which aretē is subordinate, against his enemies who would teach aretē in which truth is subordinate, Plato must first resolve the internal conflict among the Truth-believers. To do this he says that Immortal Truth is not just change, as the followers of Heraclitus said. It is not just changeless being, as the followers of Parmenides said. Both these Immortal Truths coexist as Ideas, which are changeless, and Appearance, which changes. This is why Plato finds it necessary to separate, for example, “horseness” from ”horse” and say that horseness is real and fixed and true and unmoving, while the horse is a mere, unimportant, transitory phenomenon. Horseness is pure Idea. The horse that one sees is a collection of changing Appearances, a horse that can flux and move around all it wants to and even die on the spot without disturbing horseness, which is the Immortal Principle and can go on forever in the path of the Gods of old. (p. 266)

That’s interesting. It wasn’t just the Sophists who subordinated truth to aretē. The Pyrrhonists did, too, but in a different way. As Sextus Empiricus tells us:

If one defines a system as an attachment to a number of dogmas that agree with one another and with appearances, and defines a dogma as an assent to something non-evident, we shall say that the Pyrrhonist does not have a system. But if one says that a system is a way of life that, in accordance with appearances, follows a certain rationale, where that rationale shows how it is possible to seem to live rightly (”rightly” being taken, not as referring only to aretē, but in a more ordinary sense) and tends to produce the disposition to suspend judgment, then we say that he does have a system. (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.16-17)

Pirsig’s “Truth-Believers” are what the Pyrrhonists call dogmatists, with whom the Pyrrhonists find fault for believing that they know more than they actually do. The Charmides tells us that’s a deficiency in sōphrosýnē. It’s a delusion that comes from an unsound mind.

The Pyrrhonists say that if you want to live with aretē, you need to avoid this delusion, and they prescribe a system you can follow for doing so. A key element in that system is to live in accordance with appearances.

Appearances. That’s one of the things Pirsig focuses on.

Plato’s second synthesis is the incorporation of the Sophists’ aretē into this dichotomy of Ideas and Appearance. He gives it the position of highest honor, subordinate only to Truth itself and the method by which Truth is arrived at, the dialectic. But in his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all, Plato is nevertheless usurping aretē’s place with dialectically determined truth. (p. 266)

Plato simultaneously appears to have done something similar with sōphrosýnē. He moves it from a status that’s arguably equal to that of aretē to one that’s just an aspect of it.

Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that aretē, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a “true” order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic. Such a philosopher was not long in coming. His name was Aristotle. (p. 266)

Likewise, once sōphrosýnē has been contained as an aspect of aretē, it’s no trouble for other philosophers to come along and demote it further. Aristotle expands the lists of virtues and assigns sōphrosýnē a unique function within them. Zeno focuses on this unique function and makes the rest of its functions disappear. Meanwhile, he collapses aretē into a tight list that suits his cosmology - a divine, providential universe in which Zeno’s four-fold, morality-focused aretē comprises the only good.

The Aftermath

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance opens with these now-famous words:

And what is good, Phædrus,

And what is not good...

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

The death of sōphrosýnē means that we do need to ask someone to tell us these things, and Zeno is eager to do so.

Some of those functions sōphrosýnē once held, Zeno would assign to one of his other cardinal virtues: phronesis (wisdom). It is phronesis that enables the Stoic to know what they know and what they don’t. It is phronesis that lets the Stoic know what impressions are kataleptic - assured to be true - and which ones are mere impressions, to be dismissed.

To confuse things further for those reading in translation, the “appearances” Pirsig and Sextus are referring to is the same word that gets translated as “impressions” in Stoic texts - phantasiai (φαντασίαι):

Aristotle felt that the mortal horse of Appearance which ate grass and took people places and gave birth to little horses deserved far more attention than Plato was giving it. He said that the horse is not mere Appearance. The Appearances cling to something which is independent of them and which, like Ideas, is unchanging. The “something” that Appearances cling to he named ”substance.” And at that moment, and not until that moment, our modern scientific understanding of reality was born. (p. 266)

Aristotle’s “substance” appears to be identical with a concept from Buddhism: svabhāva, meaning “own-being” or “own-becoming.” It is the intrinsic nature, essential nature or essence of beings.

The Buddhists firmly deny that svabhāva exist. For Aristotle, “substance” is foundational to the rest of his thinking. It is “substance” that allows for things to be logically divided and categorized. It is “substance” that allows for things to be clearly defined.

Aristotle’s younger contemporary, Pyrrho, denied Aristotle’s claim. Things were adiaphora; they do not possess intrinsically differentiating features. They were anepikrita; they were indeterminable. Sextus Empiricus would later write, “there is no science of division” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.213) and “wishing to explain what a definition is, the Dogmatists fall into an endless controversy,” making their definitions useless (1.212). He explains at length the Pyrrhonist reasonings for these conclusions, one of which is:

…definitions cannot be judged because the particulars with reference to which they are to be judged are infinite in number; and thus they will not facilitate apprehension and instruction about those things by means of which they are judged, which obviously will have been known beforehand, if at all, and apprehended beforehand. (1.210)

In Buddhist terms, that’s an argument based on dependent origination. Nothing has Aristotelian “substance.” Everything depends on other things. Every definition depends on the definition of other words. Nothing has self-existence. No word is self-evident.

Pirsig goes on to say about Aristotle:

Under Aristotle the … Good is a relatively minor branch of knowledge called ethics; reason, logic, knowledge are his primary concerns. Arete is dead and science, logic and the University as we know it today have been given their founding charter: to find and invent an endless proliferation of forms about the substantive elements of the world and call these forms knowledge, and transmit these forms to future generations. As ”the system.” (p. 267)

It would seem that something similar could be said about Zeno. Under Zeno sōphrosýnē is a relatively minor branch of ethics. Sound-mindedness is dead. So too is knowing yourself and knowing what you know and don’t know. Confidence in moral knowledge is given its founding charter. Moral virtue is enshrined as the only good. All other goods are devalued. And it is the Stoics who are privileged to know what good is.

And once people start believing that morality is absolute, they look for justifications for that absoluteness. Zeno gave a divine, providential universe. In a few centuries, the Greeks would find a more persuasive foundation. While Zeus was good at shaking the ground, throwing thunderbolts, and philandering, he was not good at delivering moral commandments. The Greeks ultimately chose a different ruler of Heaven, one named Yahweh.

Just as Greek society lost faith in Zeus, we have lost faith in Yahweh. Just as the Greek philosophers worked to fill the gap left by the loss of faith in Zeus, our modern influencers have worked to fill the gap left by the loss of faith in Christianity. The religious grounding for moral absoluteness has eroded. We’re having to reckon with the famous Moral Argument for God’s Existence:

If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

Objective moral values do exist.

Therefore, God exists.

We’ve given up God but we cling to objective morality. We are desperate to attach it to something else.

The erosion has uncovered for many the attractions of Western culture’s underlying philosophical Stoicism. Unsurprisingly, this interest in classic ethics arose from self-help culture, not the universities, which, as Pirsig pointed out back in 1974:

And today in those few Universities that bother to teach classic ethics anymore, students, following the lead of Aristotle and Plato, endlessly play around with the question that in ancient Greece never needed to be asked: “What is the Good? And how do we define it? Since different people have defined it differently, how can we know there is any good? Some say the good is found in happiness, but how do we know what happiness is? And how can happiness be defined? Happiness and good are not objective terms. We cannot deal with them scientifically. And since they aren’t objective they just exist in your mind. So if you want to be happy just change your mind. Ha-ha, ha-ha.”

Pirsig conjured his Metaphysics of Quality to address this problem. He was unaware that the ancient Pyrrhonists had addressed it long ago. (A fact I have from a personal communication with Wendy Pirsig).

The Pyrrhonists showed that good and evil do not exist by nature. They exist only in minds. The whole exercise of trying to nail down the good takes us away from it. Once someone is convinced that they know what’s good, they are tormented by the knowledge that they don’t have it. And when they’re convinced that what they are suffering is evil, they are all the more tormented by the certainty of it. However, for those who accept that good and evil do not exist by nature, their feelings are moderated. They suspend judgment on whether what is happening to them that they do not like is truly evil, and that which they desire but lack is truly good. In this way, they escape perturbation and are better off than those who claim to know with certainty what is and is not good. Like Plato. Like Aristotle. Like the Stoics.

Socrates was right that sōphrosýnē is incapable of telling you what is good. Nothing can do so in the sense that Plato and the Stoics want you to understand good. But that doesn’t make it worthless.

And it’s not ethical relativism. It’s what was understood before the “philosophers” mucked it up. It’s aretē in union with sōphrosýnē.

If you want to be happy (eudaimonia), literally the answer is to change your mind.

Isn’t that what Stoicism really delivers that people value? All those “Stoic” spiritual exercises? All those “Stoic” ways of reframing things? They are time-tested ways for changing your mind. But if you scratch the surface of them, you’ll find that they’re not unique to Stoicism; they’re the common possession of ancient Greek philosophy. We just associate them with Stoicism because many of our best sources on them are in surviving Stoic texts and that’s how they’re marketed in the self-help business. Stoic brand recognition is strong. The other philosophies of life? Not so much.

If sōphrosýnē is no longer the most noble thing, and temperance is substituted for knowing what one does not know, that helps explain the rise of the very thing the Pyrrhonists point out that destroys soundness of mind: the conceited and rash conviction that one knows with certainty things that are not only not evident, but in dispute. And that includes nearly all of the things people are bitterly fighting about today. A culture that does not discourage attachment to non-empirical beliefs is one that licenses mistaking conviction for truth and passing off such convictions as virtues.

Recovering sōphrosýnē seems central to rectifying this.

So Close, But Not Quite

Here’s the philosophical climax of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It seems that Pirsig got really close to the bullseye, but got seduced by his own theorizing and assumed his own negative reaction to Aristotle was unique: that he was the first one ever to firmly reject the Stagirite’s core ideas.

Then Phædrus feels a tugging to read the passage again, and he does so and then – what’s this?! – “That which we translate ‘virtue ’ but is in Greek ‘excellence.”’

Lightning hits!

Quality! Virtue! Dharma!

That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine “virtue.” But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along. (p. 264)

The first century CE Aristotelian philosopher, Aristocles, wrote (cited by Eusebius in Preparation for the Gospel):

Before all things it is necessary to make a thorough examination of our own knowledge; for if it is our nature to know nothing there is no further need to inquire about other things.

Some then there were even of the ancients who spoke this language, and who have been opposed by Aristotle. Pyrrho … spoke strongly in this sense… his disciple Timon says that the man who means to be happy [have eudaimonia] must look to these three things: first, what are the natural qualities of things; secondly, in what way we should be disposed towards them; and lastly, what advantage there will be to those who are so disposed.

One of the greatest treasures we have from antiquity is Sextus Empiricus’s how-to system for changing your mind. It’s far more comprehensive than methods such as the view from above, or the premeditation of evils. These are good and useful, but they don’t change minds in the pervasive way that the Pyrrhonist system does.

At the heart of this system is that key feature of sōphrosýnē that we are told about in the Charmides - that key feature that was dismissed by Plato, disregarded by Aristotle, and made dead by Zeno: The ability to know what it is that you don’t know.

Finding happiness requires sōphrosýnē.

And not in moderation!

Now, however, the conflict has spilled out of the classroom and into our institutions, our science, and even our kids’ mental health.

Robert Pirsig saw this coming in 1974 in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Millions felt the book’s cultural weight; almost nobody took its diagnosis of education seriously.

The conflict starts with the ancient skeptics and dogmatists - names that are now confusing. Both come from ancient Greek terms that got borrowed into English, where they got new definitions. For the ancient Greeks, skepticism meant inquiry or investigation, not a mood of doubt. Dogmatism meant a firm commitment to non‑empirical doctrines, not stubborn irrationality. For example, the Epicurean belief that pleasure is what’s good and the Stoic belief that virtue is the only good are dogmas that both will tell you they have good reasons for.

To remind the reader that I’m using the ancient Greek meanings, these terms will be italicized.

Although most of ancient literature has been lost, we are fortunate to have surviving texts that allow us to compare the skeptic and dogmatic pedagogical approaches and to see how they were applied by famous teachers, with skeptic here meaning learning through inquiry, and dogmatic meaning learning by being given the “right” answers.

For the dogmatic approach, we have the Discourses in which Epictetus’s student and admirer, Arrian, gives readers his best effort to not only convey the substance of Epictetus’s Stoic teachings, but the experience of being in his classroom.

For the skeptic approach, we have Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights, which is in the format of a miscellany book: miscellaneous things and events that Aulus Gellius encountered during his studies in Athens under the Academic Skeptic philosopher Favorinus. Unfortunately, it doesn’t depict Favorinus in extended classroom scenes as Arrian does for Epictetus, but Favorinus does appear in dialogues, giving some sense of what he was like as a teacher. In addition, we have a book written by Galen: De Optima Doctrina (On the Best Method of Teaching), criticizing Favorinus’ pedagogical approach, illuminating what approach Favorinus used.

Epictetus’s objective is to turn his students into Stoics. There’s a clear objective and an established body of knowledge. Epictetus doesn’t just want students to be aware of this information; he wants to turn that information into an operating system for how his students go about conducting their lives. This is the kind of teaching Galen endorsed.

Aulus Gellius’s report of his student days is starkly different. Favorinus teaches all sorts of things, such as grammar, vocabulary, history, and a variety of philosophical ideas. He even has his students read the Discourses to learn Epictetus’s doctrines (doctrines Favorinus debunked in his now-lost book, Against Epictetus).

One of the methods Favorinus advocated that was a particular target of Galen’s ire was the method of disputatio in utramque partem - having students argue both sides of every question (pro and con) without the teacher declaring a definitive answer. This was meant to train students to weigh evidence and reach their own conclusions. Galen calls this sophistic, worthless, and inconsistent: it leaves pupils unequipped to judge properly because Favorinus provides no reliable criterion of truth. Instead, Galen argues, a good teacher should determine what is correct via demonstration and directly teach it to students. (cited in Jan Opsomer, In search of the truth : academic tendencies in middle platonism. 1998.)

Galen’s view came to prevail, and that view structures almost everything we now call schooling. These days few students are ever exposed to the method of arguing both sides. It lives on only in a few niches such as law schools, high school debate teams, and some philosophy seminars. However, the method is exemplary of Favorinus’s overall approach; an approach we would today call “self-directed learning.”

The method used by Epictetus and Galen we’ll call here, for lack of a more precise term, “conventional schooling.” It’s imprecise because it casts too wide of a net. There are school reform movements that differ from the picture here, and some of those movements would describe themselves as “conventional.” On the other hand, it’s a good description for whose pedagogical ideas have dominated since antiquity: the dogmatists. You’ve probably heard of Epictetus and Galen. Their ancient texts have been preserved. You’ve probably not heard of Favorinus, and none of his philosophical texts have survived.

Conventional schooling aims for a collaboration between the student and a competent teacher, who guides the student towards behaviors that serve the student’s and society’s long-term good. Its focus is the transfer of right answers from expert to non‑expert, and then the issuance of a credential certifying that this transfer supposedly took place. In this transfer process, if the student experiences confusion, it’s an indication that something is wrong - usually with the student.

Self-directed learning is different. Learning emerges from the student’s own drive to understand themselves and the world, using whatever resources are at hand, including more experienced people. A teacher, if present, operates like Favorinus: a guide and a source of information, not a provider of the “right” way to think. Teacher and student differ by degree, not by kind.

The biggest difference is the role of confusion. Every topic begins in confusion, and in many topics, confusion is only reduced. It never goes away. There is no cultivation of a set of “right” answers. Instead, what is cultivated is something that could be called a disposition or an ability: an ability to sit with confusion long enough for genuine understanding to emerge.

If you’ve ever practiced meditation, that mention of “sitting with” may sound familiar. The process and the intention are much the same. The meditator commits to sit motionless for a period of time in an attempt to focus on something. Just as the meditator “sits with” something, such as following the breath, the self-directed learner “sits with” confusion, looking for a way to get a mental grasp on some part of it. This sitting with is the process of inquiry, and inquiry is the central activity of ancient Greek skepticism, remember - not doubt.

Hence, the skeptic way of education is the way of inquiry and the dogmatic way is the way of being trained in the “right” answers. For the skeptic, the dogmatic way fails to prepare the student for dealing with uncertainties and it precipitously declares some answers to be right, committing the student to error. For the dogmatist, the skeptic way not only fails to provide the student with the right answers, it wastes time, encourages error, and worst of all: it makes the student the ultimate judge, not the teacher, in flagrant disregard of expertise.

Although both forms of education rely heavily on the qualities of the student, self-directed learning relies heavily on gumption. Gumption is a combination of initiative, common sense, and shrewdness. Of these three, initiative is the aspect of gumption that’s usually the biggest challenge. That’s because it’s difficult to sit with confusion, and those difficulties generate what Robert Pirsig calls “gumption traps.”

Pirsig says gumption traps come in two kinds:

1. Setbacks, which he sees as arising from exogenous events.

2. Hang-ups, which he describes as the product of endogenous factors such as a poor fit between one’s psychological state and the requirements of a project.

This “sitting with” is most salient in dealing with hang-ups. As Pirsig says, referring to dealing with an impasse between his view and that of someone else,

“This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 40)

Gumption is essential for self‑directed learning. In conventional schooling, gumption is not only not central to the process; it can be a liability that paints a target on the student. The Discourses displays examples of this. Epictetus attacks students he doesn’t approve of. For example, the student who dresses too fashionably (3.1), or the one who attempts to use what Stoicism’s founder, Zeno, said in his Republic to justify his own adultery (2.4). I’m not saying that Epictetus had bad intentions. I’m saying that his attempts here to shake his students loose from self-deception were pedagogically flawed.

These students may have felt better off had they’d kept their heads down and just nodded at whatever Epictetus said, including being called “slaves,” “Epicureans,” and other terms Epictetus used to demean them. What a power move!

But as a power move, Epictetus tops that with him telling a student “...go home and say to yourself, It is not Epictetus who has told me all these things, - for how should he? - but some propitious god through him….(3.1)” A skeptical reader wonders whether Epictetus is teaching his students or indoctrinating them into a cult where the teacher is viewed as god-like.

Aulus Gellius’ accounts of Favorinus’s teaching recount no power moves like these, highlighting a key difference between self-directed learning and conventional schooling. Conventional schooling is about power. While asserting you have the right answers isn’t the same as actually having those answers, such assertions form a positive feedback loop with power.

Pirsig warned us about this:

“... institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 89)

Students are aware of this. They play along with the game, recognizing that it is one about external rewards, and one not about actual learning.

Another downside of conventional schooling is that it doesn’t prepare the student for anomalies. The student may do fine with whatever issues they’d been trained for, but they are flummoxed at what to do if they encounter something unexpected. When reality doesn’t match expectations, there’s a tendency to reject the empirical data and to cling to answers the student has been told are right, even though the student can see that the answers aren’t working. This is not the case for the self-directed learner. Their focus is on empirical reality, not on following the dogmas of their instructors.

Although Aulus Gellius doesn’t provide readers with extended examples of Favorinus in action as a teacher in the way Arrian does with Epictetus, Robert Pirsig famously demonstrated a model for how teachers can promote self-directed learning. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Pirsig describes an educational epiphany he had as an instructor of rhetoric at Montana State University.

Rather than didactically instructing his students about the features of good writing, he instead started by having his students compare writing samples, asking the students to judge them. Even without instruction, his students were able to identify which writing was better in almost every instance. Following this, Pirsig would unpack for his students the rhetorical reasonings for why the students had these preferences.

After several sessions of this kind of work with his students, he then assigned them a writing project. When Pirsig had been using the conventional schooling method, his students immediately had problems, as Pirsig describes,

“Now, in answer to that eternal student question, How do I do this? that had frustrated him to the point of resignation, he could reply, “It doesn’t make a bit of difference how you do it! Just so it’s good.” The reluctant student might ask in class, ”But how do we know what’s good?” but almost before the question was out of his mouth he would realize the answer had already been supplied. Some other student would usually tell him, ”You just see it.” If he said, ”No, I don’t,” he’d be told, ”Yes, you do. He proved it.” The student was finally and completely trapped into making quality judgments for himself. And it was just exactly this and nothing else that taught him to write.” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 159)

Note the similarity between Favorinus and Pirsig here about the students making judgments for themselves. This is at the heart of all self-directed learning, and it is the thing that dogmatic teachers loathe most.

Pirsig wasn’t instructed in this method. He discovered it for himself as a result of inquiring about why the conventional methods for teaching students how to write were producing such poor results. And he did this because he had a personal history of being a self-directed learner who had had difficulties with conventional schooling.

Conventional schooling has one big advantage over self-directed learning, though: it can confer credentials, whereas self-directed learning can only confer truth.

Credentials have turned out to be rather more marketable than truth. In the 1920s, only 3.3% of US adults had college degrees, and only 16.4% had high school diplomas. In 2020, 37.5% had college degrees and 90.9% had high school diplomas. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022) And it’s not just diplomas. Numerous professions that once did not require specialized degrees - or even degrees at all - now do so.

For example, as I described in a prior article, if one does journalism there are people who will judge that journalism on the basis of one’s credentials, not the writing. Does the writer have a degree in journalism? Is it an advanced degree? Does it come from a prestigious institution?

This is historically weird. Degrees in journalism have only been offered in the past century, and most journalists didn’t have one until the 1980s. Try reading an old newspaper. While you will find the style of writing to be dated, you probably will not conclude that the quality of the journalism is inferior to today’s. You may well think it’s superior! Yet, the people who wrote that newspaper did not have degrees in journalism. Not only that, they probably didn’t have college degrees, and some of them didn’t even complete high school. Journalism does not require conventional schooling. With gumption, guidance from the more experienced, and some innate talent, one can produce good journalism.

The problem behind all of this resembles a logical fallacy called “appeal to authority.” It seems our society has become infected with this fallacy in an insidious way. In the early 1960s Pirsig had his students judge writing samples, and he reported that they could do so on the basis of the writing itself. Now, if put into that position, many students might feel the urge to inquire about the authors in order to evaluate the samples. What credentials did they hold? What identities could they check off? The evaluation of a claim or a work of art has become increasingly entangled with the status of its creator - even if that status has nothing to do with the matter, such as movie stars making pronouncements on foreign policy.

For decades our society has been selecting for those who are good at conventional schooling: those who can learn and recite the dogmas they’ve been instructed in. As Pirsig put it:

“Year after year, decade after decade of little front-row “readers,” mimics with pretty smiles and neat pens, out to get their Aristotelian A’s while those who possess the real arete sit silently in back of them wondering what is wrong with themselves that they cannot like this subject.” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 267)

That was over half a century ago, and since then the problem has metastasized. Not only has it conscripted far more of our young adults into its system, it has made it ever more difficult for those who possess real arete to ever be able to act upon it.

What has this gotten us?

Psychologist has documented how our current educational model produces measurable misery for students. He says we’ve “...made school less fun and more stressful for most kids than it had been before.” For example, he cites the APA’s 2013 “Stress in America” survey, 83% of teens cited school as a significant source of stress, up from 43% in 2009.

But the most shocking data are about the suicide rates for school-aged youths and how it tracks the academic calendar. Kim et al. (2023) used a U.S. national database to determine rates of emergency admissions for suicidality for children (age 10-12) and adolescents (age 13-18) for each calendar month from 2016 to 2021. Not only did they find a roughly linear increase from year to year, for both groups there was a sharp drop during the months when school was out of session. The graph of their data, below, shows that the rates in July were about half of the rates during the months of schooling. The data also show that in 2020 the rates dropped sharply in March, when schools closed for COVID and remained low through the rest of the spring and summer.

Not only are we immiserating children, the results of our pedagogical methods may be incapacitating them. Could it be that our society’s escalating amounts of credentialing and conventional schooling have backfired?

For years, Gallup has been tracking the US public’s confidence in our society’s institutions. The trends are depressing.

Confidence in public schools follows the overall trend. On this subject, Gallup has data going back to 1973. In that year, 58% of respondents expressed confidence. In 2025, that was down to 28%.

Another depressing trend is happening in science. Despite ever more funding of scientific research, major novel scientific ideas are becoming rarer and rarer. The authors find that research is increasingly incremental, less likely to push science in new directions. Here’s a graph of this from “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time” by Michael Park, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk, Nature, 2023)

The reasons for this declining confidence and scientific productivity are no doubt complex. If they were straightforward, we would have understood them by now. They may involve explanations such as low-hanging fruit exhausted, increasing complexity of science, bureaucratization, and risk-averse funding.

However, if we increasingly select and reward people for being good at absorbing established answers, we should not be surprised when fewer of them break with established answers in their research. Perhaps sixteen or twenty or more years of being given the “right” answers kneecaps people’s ability to innovate when they’re adults and weeds out those who are most capable of innovation.

The paradox we must confront is that the predicted results of this long-term increase in the amount of conventional schooling are that our institutions should be becoming ever-more competent, and our scientists ever-more productive. But that’s not the case. The actual results have been the opposite of such predictions.

This is the sort of reality check that gets the attention of self-directed learners. Why has this happened? Perhaps we finally have proof that Galen was wrong, and that we should be looking to people such as Favorinus and Pirsig as models for the best method of teaching.

As Pirsig said back in 1974,

“The cause of our current social crises … is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world.” (ibid. pp. 85-86)

As Pirsig predicted, our social crises have continued. They’ve even worsened.

Pirsig was unaware that the ancient Pyrrhonists had identified this genetic defect and had tried to warn people about it. Reason, as handed down to us by Aristotle, the Stoics, and the other ancient dogmatists, is flawed. Reason does not produce the certainty that the dogmatists claim it produces. Favorinus even wrote a now-lost book related to this subject, Πυρρώνειοι τρόποι (The Pyrrhonian Tropes). These tropes have been handed down by other writers. They’re about the perplexities that arise through the use of reason.

Now, through subjecting so much of our population to so much conventional schooling, we have doubled down on this genetic defect and accelerated the accumulation of error. Meanwhile we have not only discouraged self-directed learning, we have weeded out self-directed learners like Pirsig who would be capable of finding and correcting these errors.

There doesn’t appear to be any simple solution, but it does seem clear that the direction we’ve been going in for the past few decades is mistaken.

The solution to our problems is not more schooling and better credentials. We’ve gone too far in that direction already. As economist demonstrated in his book, The Case Against Education, our current approach has resulted in a signalling arms race in which the primary function of education is not to enhance students’ skills but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity. The result has not only been a colossal waste of resources applied to schooling that people seldom have use for, but the creation of barriers to keep out innovators and self-directed learners. Caplan estimates the waste of resources, just in terms of the costs of education, at 50% to 80% of what is spent.

Caplan prescribes a simple solution: stop the wasteful spending. I’m pointing to something deeper than that waste. Caplan counts the wasted tuition dollars. Left uncounted are the innovations that never happened because the system crushes self-directed learning. As Peter Gray points out:

“In school, children’s natural curiosity, playfulness, communicativeness, willfulness and self-directed planning are necessarily suppressed, all for the sake of class order and the pursuit of the imposed curriculum. Many children learn in school that their own questions, interests and plans do not count and that learning is tedious, not play.”

And to my knowledge, no one has addressed the possibility that some of the so-called “education” provided by conventional schooling may have impaired its recipients’ ability to deal with real-world problems. Wouldn’t this help explain how performance has fallen commensurate with credentialing being enhanced?

With the schooling we do consider useful, we need a structural shift away from the conventional schooling methods employed by the likes of Epictetus and towards the methods used by Favorinus.

Plutarch - the philosopher who taught Favorinus - gives excellent advice here:

“For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.” (Moralia, “On Listening”)

Our educational system is structured to fill minds, not kindle them. That needs to change.

Kuhn posits that all scientific inquiry requires what Kuhn calls a “paradigm”: a set of fundamental beliefs about how reality operates. These paradigms implicitly define the problems and methods of a research field. Successful paradigms attract communities of adherents and guide further research into unresolved problems. Within a paradigm, knowledge slowly accumulates through revision, refinement, and the resolution of alternative theories and hypotheses.

As long as new empirical data continue to conform with an established paradigm, the paradigm is considered to be working well. When new empirical data don’t conform, these instances of nonconformity are considered to be anomalies. Researchers then try to accommodate the anomalies within the paradigm by making minor modifications to the relevant theories, or by ignoring or dismissing them on the basis of uncertainties about data, measures, or methods.

However, should a large number of conspicuous anomalies accumulate such that it becomes difficult or impossible to explain or dismiss incongruent findings within the paradigm, a crisis occurs. This is a crisis of doubt about the paradigm. When such a crisis occurs, researchers look for alternative paradigms that better accommodate the anomalies. When such a paradigm is discovered, a potential paradigm shift is initiated.

The most famous example of a paradigm shift is the shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric paradigm.

While paradigm shifts can occur in the mind of a single individual, Kuhn’s interest is in how they occur in scientific communities. Kuhn shows that, historically, younger researchers tend to adopt the new paradigm, while older researchers tend to cling to the old one. The researchers who adopt the new paradigm work to generate findings that the old paradigm cannot accommodate but that the new paradigm can. If they are successful, eventually support for the earlier paradigm collapses. In groups, this entails a political process, and the political strength of the old paradigm can be considerably greater than its explanatory power.

Kuhn developed this framework to describe scientific progress. But the same framework also appears in other contexts, such as philosophy and how individuals approach life.

Nearly two thousand years before Kuhn published his theory about paradigms, the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus described a paradigm shift experienced by those who adopt Pyrrhonism as a philosophy of life.

We say that the causal origin of the Pyrrhonist Way is the hope of attaining ataraxia [freedom from mental disturbance]. Certain talented people, upset by anomaly in “the facts” and at a loss as to which of these “facts” deserve assent, endeavoured to discover what is true in them and what is false, expecting that by settling this they would achieve ataraxia. (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.12)

Note Sextus’ focus on anomalies. Anomalies are central to Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts. They are cases where the empirical evidence doesn’t fit into the accepted theory.

Much of Sextus’s work then goes on to identify hundreds of examples of such anomalies with respect to the various philosophical, scientific, and pedagogical theories of his time. The main point of all of this is to demonstrate that one cannot attain ataraxia through selecting among these theories because they’re so rife with anomalies. Each theory promises a path to certainty, but they are unlikely to deliver on that promise. At best, the result is a cycle of hope and frustration: adopting a theory, discovering its problems, abandoning it, and beginning again. At worst, it is a debilitating conviction in something that’s wrong, such that one rejects all error correction. The overarching theory here is that attaining the right answers is a way to attain ataraxia. That’s a paradigm. Sextus’s extensive examples demonstrate that this paradigm is in crisis.

Sextus proposes a paradigm shift. Instead of thinking that one can get ataraxia through picking the right theories, one should give this up entirely. Do not settle on any conclusion that goes beyond what is fully corroborated by empirical data - and that includes conclusions about cause and effect, because those conclusions aren’t empirical. We perceive events, but we don’t perceive causal links between events. Those are mental fabrications that we supply to explain the events. Instead, keep inquiring, keep researching. Recognize that many of these questions lead to aporia - an impasse in one’s ability to determine what is correct. Recognize that one can suspend judgment about these things. One doesn’t have to have an answer.

Suspension of judgment is not a refusal to think. It is not a refusal to keep searching for answers. It is not a rejection of the empirical facts. It is simply declining to believe that any particular theory has given a path to certainty.

When one makes this paradigm shift, Sextus reports that the sought-for ataraxia appears, “like a shadow following the body.” (ibid, 1.29)

What Pyrrho and the ancient Pyrrhonists discovered is that what really disturbs us is not uncertainty but a compulsion to have certainty. The Pyrrhonists offer a path to relieve oneself of that compulsion.

If you want to reduce your experience of mental perturbations in life, if you want to reduce your suffering, you may wish to consider the Pyrrhonist paradigm shift. Perhaps what’s causing you to suffer is that you’re using the wrong paradigm to approach life. Perhaps your approach of trying to get everything correct is getting in the way not only of making you happy, but also of getting things right! That happens because you’re clinging to theories about reality, and lots of those theories are wrong.

For example, the ancient Stoics considered divination to be a valid scientific approach for discovering the universal chain of causes that determines everything in the world (aka, fate). Almost no one believes that anymore because the predictions of divination don’t match the outcomes. This anomaly was a contributing factor in the decline of Stoicism in late antiquity.

If you abandon firm belief in those theories and instead prioritize the empirical data without requiring those data to be interpreted through any pre-chosen theory, your accuracy will improve because you are less likely to force the evidence to fit a preconceived framework or to ignore evidence that contradicts the framework. For example, don’t be attached to the Stoic theory that virtue is the only good. Recognize that there are competing theories that also provide reasonable explanations for what happens in life, such as those of Aristotle and Epicurus. Notice that all of these theories suffer from anomalies. Your own preconceptions are part of the same pattern and should also be held lightly.

If you’ve read some Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, some of what has been described above may sound vaguely familiar. Not in the choice of words - those are very different - but in the underlying idea.

The Buddhists say, “Let go of your attachments.” Those attachments are beliefs about the stories we tell ourselves. Those stories we tell ourselves are homespun theories about how the world works.

The Buddhists say, “Let your mind settle. Focus on what you are experiencing in the present moment, and set down your thoughts, particularly thoughts about the past and future.” If you’re not following some intellectualized theory about reality, then your mind is free to observe your experiences - empirical data.

There’s a good reason for this similarity. Pyrrhonism’s founder, Pyrrho, studied Buddhism when he was in India with Alexander the Great’s court. He took Buddhist ideas and transformed them to fit into ancient Greek philosophy, which itself is a paradigm, and a paradigm different from the one in India in that era. Wise men in Greece were philosophers, and they described things in an academic way. Wise men in India were spiritual seekers, and they had a different style of speech.

Different traditions express it in different vocabularies, but the underlying idea is the same: peace of mind is not produced by mental fabrications that tantalize us with promises of certainty, but from recognizing that those mental fabrications delude us, and it is these delusions that prevent us from attaining ataraxia.

If this resonates, try this Pyrrhonist paradigm shift for one week: whenever you feel disturbance, ask yourself if you’re clinging to a theory and see what happens.

One final tip: the theories most likely to disturb you are those about what is definitely good or bad. Instead, recognize that they only seem good or bad to you at the present moment, from your current perspective, and that you cannot securely extrapolate from that to a conclusion that something is definitely good or bad.

As with so many other Pyrrhonist ideas, Pyrrho likely got this idea from the Buddhists. Other such borrowings include the Three Marks of Existence, the antidotes to the Three Poisons, dependent origination, the Three Doors of Liberation, and the purgative metaphor. In the case of this metaphor of happiness following like a shadow, the inspiration appears to come from the first verses of the Dhammapada (Bhante Suddhāso translation):

Similarly, Sextus Empiricus tells us:

For the person who is troubled does not want to find out what is more troublesome and what less troublesome, but desires to be released from trouble. It will only be possible to avoid this, then, if we show to the person who is disturbed on account of his avoidance of the bad or his pursuit of the good, that there is not anything either good or bad by nature, ‘But these things are judged by mind on the part of humans,’ to quote Timon. (Against the Ethicists 139-140)

For the Pyrrhonists, a corrupted mind is one corrupted by the idea that good and evil exist “by nature.” This “by nature” aspect causes confusion for some modern readers who mistake it for a claim that good and evil do not exist at all. That’s not what it means. Rather, it refers to a distinction first identified by the Sophists, that things exist either by nature or by convention. Things that exist by nature are perceived to be the same everywhere: physical reality. Things that exist by convention vary from place to place or person to person: social reality. So, to say that good and evil do not exist by nature means they exist by convention, and that’s exactly what Timon said: they “are judged by mind on the part of humans.”

A few verses later, the Dhammapada explains that what corrupts the mind is attachment to good and evil, and this is crucial to developing wisdom.

This topic of abandoning both merit and evil is mentioned several times further in the Dhammapada. Although early Buddhist texts don’t distinguish between things that are by nature and those that are by convention, the idea seems implied. The Dhammapada repeatedly exhorts its readers to practice good and avoid evil. How can that be reconciled with abandoning both merit and evil? One can do it by recognizing that good and evil exist in the minds of people, and that, in terms of social action, one should take care to do good and avoid evil. Meanwhile, one can recognize that good and evil do not have any existence beyond this. While they exist in the minds of others, they are not features of nature. Thinking otherwise, they become a delusion, and this delusion is a barrier to wisdom and happiness.

Thousands of years later, the debate on this issue remains lively. Many people defend moral realism - the view that good and evil exist by nature. Both Pyrrho and the Buddha point to such a belief as a delusion that prevents one from attaining peace and happiness. If you want peace and happiness, you need first to understand that good and evil exist only in minds, then you need to work on clarifying your mind, to see that all of your attachments and aversions, all of your judgments and beliefs about good and bad, exist in your mind and not in physical reality.

The Buddha’s way and Pyrrho’s way end up at the same place, a place where we find that peace does not come through securing the good and defeating the evil; it comes from ceasing to believe they were ever written into the fabric of the world. And there, happiness follows like a shadow.

Of course, we cannot ask Pyrrho why he chose to import some Buddhist ideas into Greece and not others, so any answer must remain speculative. This essay presents a novel speculative answer: The Greeks were interested in arete (excellence), not mystical transcendence or even a solution for the problem of dukkha (suffering). Because of this, the psychological states produced by meditation were not of interest. What was of interest were psychological states that produced excellence. And what Pyrrho discovered was a system for creating such a state.

Pyrrho’s Journey to the East

The first thing that must be understood is that Pyrrho’s motivations for going to the East were not like those of modern people. He went to the East because he was a member of Alexander the Great’s court, and the court went east as Alexander conquered it. Pyrrho didn’t go to India to find something there. He happened to be there when he found something that he’d been searching for in Greece.

Pyrrho had joined Alexander the Great’s court as a Democritean philosopher. At that time, Democritean ideas had been criticized, primarily by Aristotle, who was still alive.

Pyrrho’s issues were philosophical, not spiritual. In addition to being a philosopher, Pyrrho was also a priest at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. After returning from India, he was appointed head priest. Pyrrho showed no signs of being dissatisfied with his religion. Nor was Pyrrho’s society showing dissatisfaction with its religion. The Greeks also had a well-established moral code as given in the Delphic Maxims.

Pyrrho’s interest was in philosophy, and in particular, philosophical ideas that would counter Democritus’ adversaries. He found such ideas in Buddhism, and he reformulated them for a Greek audience. Other parts of Buddhism he had no use for. Meditation was one of them. It was a practice alien to the Greeks and alien to Greek philosophy.

But not quite fully alien. There seems to be somewhat of an exception to that, which can be found sprinkled about the works of Plato.

Meditation and Plato

In the Symposium, Plato recounts two stories about Socrates standing motionless, lost in thought. The more striking of the two is told by Socrates’s student and fellow soldier, Alcibiades, about an event that happened while they were on military campaign in Potidaea (220c-d):

Immersed in some problem at dawn, he stood in the same spot considering it (συννοήσας γὰρ αὐτόθι ἕωθέν τι εἱστήκει σκοπῶν); and when he found it a tough one, he would not give it up but stood there trying. The time drew on to midday, and the men began to notice him, and said to one another in wonder: ‘Socrates has been standing there in a study (φροντίζων τι) ever since dawn!’ The end of it was that in the evening some of the Ionians after they had supped—this time it was summer—brought out their mattresses and rugs and took their sleep in the cool; thus they waited to see if he would go on standing all night too. He stood till dawn came and the sun rose; then walked away, after offering a prayer to the Sun.

Plato leaves us in the dark about what Socrates was doing other than just standing. We don’t know what he was thinking about, and whether what he was doing looked anything like what we would know as “meditation.” Was it something that gave him mystical insight, or was it just some great logical problem to which Socrates was able to apply an extraordinary amount of focus? Or was it just a strange habit of an exceptionally strange man?

Or maybe it was something else.

It’s not just in the Symposium that Plato describes such unusual mental states. In the Phaedrus, Plato describes something he refers to as “divine madness” as superior to sober reason. In the Apology, poets speak well without knowing what they say, and in the Ion, the poet is described as “inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him.”

Across the dialogues, Plato repeatedly describes a state characterized by a loss of ordinary self-awareness, heightened excellence, and divine intensity.

What is going on here?

A remarkable paper - Did Plato Mean What He Said? - has recently been published that makes sense out of all of this. The thesis of the paper is that Socrates and his student, Plato, were aware of a then-not-understood state of mind that we now call “flow,” and Plato was doing the best he could to describe it.

Flow is a mental state where a person is fully immersed in an activity, experiencing energized focus and enjoyment, often losing track of time. Our modern understanding of it originates in a 1975 book by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Yet long before that, Plato appears to be writing about it.

The authors of the paper conclude:

“Each passage, taken alone, might be explained away. The practice of death could be an ascetic tradition. The possessed poet could be religious imagery. The standing Socrates could be a biographical embellishment. The technical descriptions could be a cosmological metaphor.

“But together? They form a pattern too consistent to ignore:

• Loss of normal consciousness is required for excellence

• This loss follows predictable patterns and can be deliberately induced

• The state produces specific valuable results unavailable to normal awareness

• The experience is so rewarding that it surpasses biological drives

• The transformation is structural, not just psychological

• The process can be systematically trained

“What was Plato describing? The traditional answers—religious ecstasy, mystical experience, metaphorical excess—crumble under scrutiny. These passages are too precise, too technical, and too consistent. They document specific states of consciousness with specific characteristics achieved through specific practices that produce specific results.

“For twenty-four centuries, we have been reading descriptions of something we do not recognize, so we have explained them away. But what if Plato was not being metaphorical? What if he were being literal, precise, or even scientific? What if he were documenting real states that most of us have never experienced?”

These are novel and fascinating questions.

If Plato was attempting to describe a trainable state of consciousness associated with excellence, then Pyrrho’s project can be read as an extension of what Plato was trying to describe. It might even help explain why the Pyrrhonist philosophers Menodotus and Aenesidemus saw Plato as a kindred philosopher. (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.222)

Flow in Pyrrhonism

Imagine an advancing Macedonian phalanx. The soldiers have drilled these moves repeatedly so that they can be executed without hesitation, without evaluative mental chatter, and with immediate responsiveness to changing conditions. With this systematic training, soldiers would experience a loss of normal consciousness as they became fully psychologically focused on excellence in combat.

Someone who watched this happen over and over, as Pyrrho did, might find it impressive. And indeed, Pyrrho did find it impressive. Before Pyrrho introduced the term ataraxia into Greek philosophy, the term was used to describe the ideal state of mind for soldiers entering battle.

Combat is as much mental as it is physical. Today, we would describe the ideal state of mind for soldiers entering battle as being in a state of flow. Soldiers who could reliably enter a flow state would help explain why Alexander’s Macedonian troops always prevailed on the battlefield, even against much larger forces.

The prefix “a” in ataraxia is a negation, and the root means “troubled” or “disturbed” or “perturbed.” Ataraxia is often translated as “tranquility.” This is a deceptive translation. Soldiers entering battle are not tranquil; however, soldiers entering battle in a flow state are unperturbed.

In making philosophical connections between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism, ataraxia is often pointed to as a secularized and psychologized interpretation of nirvana. It appears to be that, but it may also be more than that.

One key element of flow is a relaxing of self-consciousness. A key pillar of self-consciousness is a reflective evaluation of one’s actions and identity. Such an evaluation is an evaluation of good and bad. And in Pyrrhonism, it is exactly this kind of evaluation that Sextus Empiricus describes as the barrier to ataraxia.

“For the person who believes that something is by nature good or bad is constantly upset; when he does not possess the things that seem to be good, he thinks he is being tormented by things that are by nature bad, and he chases after the things he supposes to be good; then, when he gets these, he fails into still more torments because of irrational and immoderate exultation, and, fearing any change, he does absolutely everything in order not to lose the things that seem to him good. But the person who takes no position as to what is by nature good or bad neither avoids nor pursues intensely. As a result, he achieves ataraxia.” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.27-28)

While the definition of ataraxia that Sextus gives is not a definition of a flow state - it is instead a description of being untroubled - ataraxia is a necessary precondition for flow.

Flow requires low internal conflict. Ruminating disrupts flow. Focusing on what appears in the moment stabilizes attention and allows optimal performance.

For a Macedonian hoplite, winning battles appears to be good. Philosophizing about whether it’s really good to be in India and getting into battles just gets in the way of what’s to be done right now: win.

From the biography of Pyrrho given by Diogenes Laertius, perhaps Pyrrho was occasionally observed to be in flow.

“They say that Pyrrho did not so much as frown when, as a treatment for a wound or sore, he endured the application of toxic medicines, or had something cut out or burnt off.” (67)

“Antigonus also says that Pyrrho was always in the same state. This is why, if anyone walked away from him while he was in the middle of saying something, he used to continue the discussion with himself.” (17)

This, of course, is only speculative.

Flow and the Greeks

Here, I’d like to return to the original questions. What was Socrates doing? Why didn’t Pyrrho bring meditation back from India? And why is meditation nearly absent from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy but abundant in ancient Eastern philosophy?

It’s all quite the mystery, but maybe it has something to do with arete - that central idea of ancient Greece. The Greeks thought that arete and eudaimonia were closely connected, and that rationality and arete were also closely connected.

With flow, one aims at excellence through immersion in action, during which self-reflection is suspended. With meditation, one aims at liberation through withdrawal from action, during which the self is dissolved.

Pyrrho did not bring meditation back from India because the Greeks were not seeking transcendence; they were seeking arete. And arete is exactly what Pyrrhonism promises. As Sextus Empiricus says about the Pyrrhonist system:

“If one defines a system as an attachment to a number of dogmas that agree with one another and with appearances, and defines a dogma as an assent to something non-evident, we shall say that the Pyrrhonist does not have a system. But if one says that a system is a way of life that, in accordance with appearances, follows a certain rationale, where that rationale shows how it is possible to seem to live rightly (”rightly” being taken, not as referring only to arete, but in a more ordinary sense) and tends to produce the disposition to suspend judgment, then we say that he does have a system.” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.16-17)

Put more directly: Suspension of judgment enables ataraxia. Ataraxia enables flow. Flow allows living rightly with respect to arete. And the result of all of this is eudaimonia.

As Sextus Empiricus puts it,

“For the person who is troubled does not want to find out what is more troublesome and what less troublesome, but desires to be released from trouble. It will only be possible to avoid this, then, if we show to the person who is disturbed on account of his avoidance of the bad or his pursuit of the good, that there is not anything either good or bad by nature, ‘But these things are judged by mind on the part of humans,’ to quote Timon. But such a teaching is certainly peculiar to Pyrrhonism; it is Pyrrhonism’s achievement, therefore, to procure eudaimonia.” (Against the Ethicists, 139-140)

Modern Western seekers turned to Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism because they believed the West had no psychological technology comparable to meditation. But what if that’s false? What if our legacy from the Greeks included an action-centered technology of consciousness - a technology aimed at excellence - and we have simply lost our collective memory and understanding of it?

That we’ve lost this memory and understanding of arete is not a novel conclusion. It is one of the central themes of Robert Pirsig’s 1974 blockbuster Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

“That which we translate ‘virtue ’ but is in Greek ‘excellence.”’

Lightning hits!

Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine “virtue.” But arete. Excellence. (p. 264)

If you’ve ever been in flow, you know it. You don’t need a philosophical doctrine for it.

This article presents some lesser-known stories about Apelles that illustrate his remarkable - indeed, as you shall soon see - literally proverbial insights into epistemic modesty.

If you’re not familiar with Apelles, he was the greatest painter in Greek antiquity. As Pliny the Elder said:

“[I]t was Apelles of Cos who surpassed all the painters that preceded and all who were to come after him; he dates in the 112th Olympiad [332-329 BCE]. He is singly contributed almost more to painting than all the other artists put together, also publishing volumes containing the principles of painting.” (Natual History, book 35)

He and the philosopher Pyrrho were surely acquainted. They were both members of Alexander the Great’s court, and Pyrrho had worked as a painter before becoming a philosopher. So, there’s a good chance that Apelles influenced Pyrrho as a role model.

Apelles’ Epistemic Modesty

Pliny tells us:

“…other very great painters were his contemporaries. Although he admired their works and gave high praise to all of them, he used to say that they lacked the glamour that his work possessed, the quality denoted by the Greek word charis, and that although they had every other merit, in that alone no one was his rival. He also … expressed his admiration for the immensely laborious and infinitely meticulous work of Protogenes; for he said that in all respects his achievements and those of Protogenes were on a level, or those of Protogenes were superior, but that in one respect he stood higher, that he knew when to take his hand away from a picture - a noteworthy warning of the frequently evil effects of excessive diligence. The candour of Apelles was however equal to his artistic skill: he used to acknowledge his inferiority to Melanthius in grouping, and to Asclepiodorus in nicety of measurement, that is in the proper space to be left between one object and another.”

Apelles was candid with his great patron, Alexander the Great, too.

“…in the studio Alexander used to talk a great deal about painting without any real knowledge of it, and Apelles would politely advise him to drop the subject, saying that the boys engaged in grinding the colours were laughing at him.”

Apelles’ interest in candor extended to others' opinions of his paintings. He made a habit of displaying his newly created paintings in a public gallery. There he would stand out of sight so that he could overhear what faults were noticed. One day a shoemaker found fault in a painting because the subject’s sandals was missing a loop. That night, Apelles corrected the painting. The shoemaker visited again and was proud to see that Apelles had corrected the fault the shoemaker had pointed out. So, he decided this time to find fault with the leg. Apelles indignantly stepped out to where he could be seen and rebuked him, saying that “a shoemaker in his criticism must not go beyond the sandal” - a remark that became a proverb. In Latin it is ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret.

The proverb fell out of use in late antiquity, but the idea behind it was revived in the Renaissance, and it began to appear in many European languages.

Curiously, Karl Marx thought the proverb was “sheer nonsense.” (Das Kapital, chapter 15)

The Plague of the Ultracrepidarians

This proverb is the source of an interesting and useful concept: ultracrepidarianism - from ultra- (beyond) and crepidarian (things related to shoes). An ultracrepidarian is someone who ignores this proverb. Because they have competence in on one subject, they go about offering firm opinions on other subjects they know nothing about.

Perhaps these days the most prominent ultracrepidarians are entertainers who, because they are great at singing, acting, or playing the guitar, pretend that they are also sagacious moral philosophers and insightful political theorists when they regurgitate the undigested slogans of their political tribes.

This kind of ultracrepidarianism is so widespread and expected these days that it made headlines when the actress Sydney Sweeney embraced this proverb and declined a request to opine on a political topic.

Of course, those following that incident know that Sweeney may have had other motivations other than following the proverb - but she did follow the proverb, and in doing so raised her esteem with many, at the cheap price of making her detractors dislike her more.

The lesson of Apelles’ proverb is now ambiguous. Is it about credentials, or is it about expertise? Today we have trouble telling the difference, but back then, there was no credential to become a cobbler. Cobblers were judged on the quality of their product. Apelles was pointing out that the cobbler knew what shoes are supposed to look like, but he had no expertise in what legs are supposed to look like.

Our current obsession with credentialing is producing weird results. For some people and for some things, ultracrepidarianism is widely accepted - even expected. Then, for other people and for other things, absurd credentialing barriers are put up.

Credentialing was intended to be an aid to judgment, not a substitute for it.

A Journalism Catch-22

Last month, I auditioned to give a TEDx talk about one of my other passions: citizen journalism. Since 2022, I’ve been running an experiment in citizen journalism in the small New Hampshire town where I live.

As is well-known, the advent of the internet was a catastrophe for newspapers, particularly those in rural areas and small towns. Huge parts of the country are now news deserts, such as the small town where I live.

This lack of news coverage is concerning. America’s governmental institutions were designed for an environment with journalism. So much so that Thomas Jefferson famously remarked,

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Were Jefferson alive today, he would be dismayed to see how common it is for localities lack newspapers.

My experiment aimed to determine whether a single person could produce widely read, impactful journalism with a level of effort that would not exceed what a hobbyist could do.

Platforms such as Substack have made publishing easy. Most small towns have Facebook groups that make it easy to reach readers. The biggest uncertainties were whether the kinds of content a citizen journalist can produce can get readers and whether the task is manageable for someone to do in their free time.

In less than four years, my experiment, called the Nottingham Blog, has accrued over 730 subscribers in a town where about 1,400 people vote in local elections. A typical issue has an open rate of about 60%, and typical articles get about 1,000 views. The most popular articles exceed 2,000 views. Demand and impact are now proven.

The more difficult objective concerns the level of effort required. It’s been a more time-consuming project than I anticipated because the more I uncovered about what was going on in town government, the more things I found that were worth investigating.

In the past year, there’s been a technological advancement that has changed everything: artificial intelligence. AI has made the task much less time-consuming while simultaneously improving the output. AI-generated time-stamped transcripts of videos of public meetings have become a huge time saver. AI editing and feedback on drafts greatly improve quality.

Now that all objectives have been achieved, I believe I have a model that can be replicated. I want to start getting the news out about it, and I thought a TEDx talk would be a good first step.

Out of the 150 applicants, I was one of the 30 invited to audition for the 14 speaking slots. I signed up to be the first to audition. I’ve watched a lot of TED talks. My material is a natural for it, and elsewhere there have been several TEDx talks about ways to bring back local journalism. When I finished my pitch to the panel of judges, the chairman said, “This is what prepared looks like.”

Then came the torpedo.

One of the judges complained that one of the big problems today is that we have lots of uncredentialed people doing journalism, and it’s spreading misinformation and disinformation.

Of course, by definition, “citizen journalism” is uncredentialed journalism. That’s the whole damn point!

If shoes were held to this standard, then everyone in out-of-the-way places would have to go barefoot until they could meet with a professional, licensed cobbler - a cobbler who can’t make a living going to such places.

There’s no economic model for professional journalists to cover towns as small as mine. While there are a few examples in more populated places where a single, usually out-of-work journalist has managed to produce an online publication that makes enough money for them to make the project worthwhile, even those are rare. At present, there is no solution in these low-population news deserts that involves professional journalists.

At best, insisting on credentials makes the better the enemy of the good. But it may be a lot worse than that.

Credentials in journalism are a relatively recent thing. Newspapers had been around for a couple hundred years before the first degree in journalism was ever awarded, in the early 20th century. As recently as the 1970s, most professional journalists in the US did not have a credential in journalism.

By the way, do you think the quality of newspapers has gotten better or worse since then?

In the small town where I live, the town’s governing body is a five-person board. It’s common for members of this board to have had no education beyond high school. The current head of town administration has an Associate’s Degree in assessing and accounting. If people can run the town without credentials, why should reporting on it require credentials?

Our society has created an odd situation in which the famous are given license and platforms to opine about things they have no competence in, whereas regular people are being admonished for doing things in which basic competence is not that hard to achieve because they haven’t been credentialed.

It’s a weird juxtaposition. If a credential exists, one must have it. If one doesn’t exist, no demonstration of expertise is required. All you have to be is famous.

It’s a blind and dogmatic belief to assume that unless someone has been approved by some credentialing body, they lack the know-how to do some task.

Journalism is like shoemaking. Yes, it requires skill. Sure, it’s nice to know that somebody vouches for their competence. But, readers are able to differentiate between good journalism and bad journalism in the same way walkers can differentiate between good and bad shoes. If it took an expert to do this, then there wouldn’t be any point to journalism.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the people who are platforming all of this ultracrepidarianism are journalists.

Credentialed journalists.

Perhaps the existence of credentials has led people to forget that ultimately each person must decide for themselves whether something is good. As Robert Pirsig put it:

“And what is good, Phaedrus,

And what is not good—

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

One of the moral lessons in Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is that an amateur who cares can routinely produce better quality work than a credentialed professional who doesn’t care. Half a century later, this problem Pirsig pointed out has become worse than ever.

Apelles wasn’t talking about credentials. He knew the cobbler knew more about shoes than he did, and he knew that he knew more about painting legs than the cobbler did. There are limits to how much judgment is optimal to cede to credentialing bodies. On many things, our society has not only passed those limits, it has resulted in the atrophing of necessary skills.

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Although its prevalence may make it feel like a modern problem, it was identified and named by Greek philosophers long ago. Ancient Greek even has a word for it: amathia (ἀμαθία, pronounced a-MATH-ee-uh or AM-math-EYE-uh).

Amathia is an ancient Greek philosophical concept meaning willful ignorance: a refusal to learn, especially by intelligent or educated people.

This concept helps explain how smart people - including experts in their fields - can fail not only spectacularly, but also with grave consequences when entrusted with authority. Such failures are not merely philosophical; they come at a cost - a cost that can be as high as millions of lives.

The ancient Greeks also had an answer to the underlying moral question: Is it malice?

Understanding Amathia

One difficulty in reading Greek philosophy in translation is that philosophers often give ordinary words technical meanings, which translators miss because the everyday sense still works. The result is a subtle but important loss of meaning, and this is the case with translations of amathia.

In ancient Greek, the prefix “a” negates, and the root mathia refers to learning. The result is a negation of learning. Unfortunately, in most translations to English, amathia is rendered as “ignorance.” That translation doesn’t quite get at it. If “ignorance” was intended, ancient Greek has a term for it: agnoia (ἀγνοεῖς), a negation of knowing. It’s the root for the English word “agnostic.” So even in non-philosophical usage, amathia is a particular kind of ignorance - one born of a lack of learning.

One cause of such a lack of learning is stupidity, and in some contexts, “stupidity” is an adequate translation. Another cause is the absence of educational opportunity, in which case “uneducated” is an appropriate translation. But in philosophical usage, amathia describes something else: the condition of someone who is intelligent and educated, but who is engaging in some sort of willful ignorance - a refusal to learn. Plato even gives a definition of amathia in the Laws:

Amathia arises when a person is devoid of understanding, being gripped not only by ignorance, but by a belief that he is wise, as if he was completely knowledgeable about things he knows nothing about at all. (Laws 863c)

Examples of Amathia

We have two clear examples of ancient philosophers accusing intelligent, well-educated people of amathia.

In the best-known of these, Socrates accuses his student, the young Alcibiades. Alcibiades was brilliant and superbly educated, yet something was chronically wrong with his judgment. As an adult, he gave disastrous advice that contributed to the collapse of the Athenian democracy. (If you’re interested in the full story of this, I recommend Massimo Pigliucci’s book, The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders.)

In another case, the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus accuses Epicurus of amathia for disparaging certain fields of study.

Amathia and Alcibiades

Plato’s Alcibiades Major records the following exchange between Socrates and his student Alcibiades. Socrates explicitly distinguishes ordinary ignorance (agnoia, ἀγνοεῖς) from amathia, making clear that amathia is something different.

Socrates: “But if you are bewildered, is it not clear from what has gone before [118b] that you are not only ignorant (agnoia ἀγνοεῖς) of the greatest things, but while not knowing them you think that you do?”

Alcibiades: “I am afraid so.”

Socrates: “Alack then, Alcibiades, for the plight you are in! I shrink indeed from giving it a name, but still, as we are alone, let me speak out. You are wedded to amathia my fine friend, of the vilest kind; you are impeached of this by your own words, out of your own mouth; and this, it seems, is why you dash into politics before you have been educated. And you are not alone in this plight, but you share it with most of those who manage our city’s affairs, [118c] except just a few, and perhaps your guardian, Pericles.”

Amathia and Epicurus

Epicurus thought that certain subjects, such as logic and rhetoric, were distractions from cultivating wisdom and not worth studying. As Cicero tells us,

Logic, on which your school [the Academic Skeptics] lays such stress, he [Epicurus] held to be of no effect either as a guide to conduct or as an aid to thought. (De Finibus 1.63)

Sextus Empiricus suggests that Epicurus dismissed these subjects not because they were useless, but because of his own lack of education and his hostility toward his more learned rivals: the Pyrrhonists, Aristotelians, and Platonists.

The Epicureans proceeded on the basis that the disciplines [e.g., grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic] contribute nothing to the achievement of wisdom - or, as some speculate, thinking that this was a cover for their own lack of education (for Epicurus is guilty of amathia in many things; even in ordinary conversation his usage is impure), and perhaps also because of hostility towards Plato, Aristotle, and the like, who had extensive learning. It was also probably because of their hatred of Nausiphanes, Pyrrho’s pupil; for he had a grip on many young men and paid serious attention to the disciplines, especially rhetoric. (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians, 1-3)

The charge here is not that Epicurus was unintelligent - he plainly was not - but that he turned his intelligence against learning itself. Rather than submitting his views to disciplines that might expose their weaknesses, he declared those disciplines worthless. This is a hallmark of advanced amathia: a refusal to learn justified by a theory about why learning is unnecessary.

Amathia Versus Wisdom

Socrates and Sextus Empiricus use amathia in other contexts. While “ignorance” is typically used in these quotes as a translation, understanding that the word they used was amathia changes the meaning. Amathia is not just willful ignorance; it’s the opposite of wisdom.

Here are two quotes from Socrates:

Wisdom alone, is the good for man, amathia the only evil. (Plato, Euthydemus 281d)

There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, amathia. (Diogenes Laertius, II.31)

Here’s a similar example, from Euripides’ lost play Antiope, quoted by Sextus Empiricus:

A single wise resolution vanquishes many hands,

But amathia together with a mob is the greatest evil. (Against the Grammarians 279)

Amathia and Evil

If Socrates and Euripides had meant simple ignorance, it would seem that they would have used the Greek word for that: agnoia (ἀγνοεῖς). That’s not what they meant. They’re not talking about ignorance as being some kind of original sin that we are all born with, and that this is the source of evil. Babies are ignorant, but they’re not evil. Everyone is ignorant of many things, and always will be. That is not the problem.

The problem is refusing to learn. That’s the source of evil.

It’s one thing for ordinary people to refuse to learn, but it’s far worse when those who are in positions of influence or have been entrusted with authority do so. Surely the latter is more disreputable than the former, not only due to their level of responsibility, but also because they have the intelligence and resources for enabling them to learn.

In the case of amathia, we have a particular kind of incompetence: willful incompetence. Once the incompetence becomes evident, then there’s an onus on the amathic to address it: to learn. While it’s a good rule of thumb to avoid attributing to malice what can be attributed to incompetence, if the incompetence can be attributed to amathia, it’s malice - just not of the ordinary sort.

So, these days, when the behavior of experts exposes to ordinary people that the experts are not only wrong, but they are visibly amathic, it’s no wonder there’s so much outrage. Since antiquity, our culture’s philosophical tradition has condemned amathia not only as evil, but as the very source of evil.

Amathia and Egotism

But one can go deeper still to this source of evil. Note how the amathia of both Epicurus and Alcibiades appears to be driven by egotism. Epicurus’ amathia was driven by resentment of other philosophers. Alcibiades’ amathia was driven by conceit about his own abilities. This egotism provides the will for willful ignorance.

Amathia and Intelligence

The combination of egotism and intelligence is what makes advanced amathia so dangerous. Egotistical, dumb people seldom get invested with enough power and authority to cause great damage - not that history doesn’t give us a long list of such people, but they typically inherit rather than earn their roles. While Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is held up as a philosopher-king, at the crucial point of choosing a successor, he amathically chose his own son, Commodus, whose subsequent rule was ruinous.

The danger with intelligence is that it provides a powerful tool to rationalize one’s beliefs - even stupid ones.

Diagnosing Amathia

The willful ignorance of advanced amathia appears to be connected with belief. The amathic believe they don’t need to learn. They don’t need to learn because they already know the answer, and it is through use of their own intelligence that they convince themselves that they know the right answer.

Epicurus thought he didn’t need to learn anything about logic or grammar because he believed these were useless. That belief got reinforced because Epicurus’ message was attractive to those who lacked elite educations - most of the populace. Unlike the Lyceum and the Academy, Epicurus’ school welcomed not only the uneducated but also slaves and women. While these days we find that admirable, back then it was viewed with suspicion at best, if not disparagement.

Alcibiades believed he already understood politics. His belief got reinforced because he was initially very successful in politics. He convinced the voters to accept his recommendations and to award him a generalship. It was only later that the public noticed the amathia that Socrates saw, as Alcibiades led Athens to ruin.

Alcibiades reminds me of the behavior of a certain local politician who is not only a firm believer in a particular political ideology but also posts his positions in the local Facebook groups. When he gets pushback on those positions, he’s unable to defend or even explain them. Instead, he repeats his points, behaves dismissively, and frequently ends up saying we’ll just have to agree to disagree. His ideology tells him what to believe; there’s no need to learn anything else, especially evidence that contradicts his beliefs.

Alcibiades, however, was even worse. He believed that whatever was good for him must also be good for his country. You may recognize this kind of belief among some modern politicians. For this, Alcibiades sets an instructive example: he ended up being mistaken on all counts.

Amathia and Skin in the Game

Some lines of work and areas of inquiry are more subject to amathia than others.

In antiquity, very few people had jobs that required learning more than craftsmanship. In Socrates’ inquiries about the Delphic Oracle’s statement that no one was wiser than Socrates, Socrates interviews statesmen, poets, and craftsmen. With regard to the craftsmen, he found that they indeed had knowledge of their crafts, but on other topics, they lacked wisdom. Yet their state was better than that of the statesmen and poets, who didn’t even have that kind of knowledge.

Today, a vastly larger portion of the population has jobs that require extensive learning. Some of these jobs are more advanced versions of craftsmanship. They’re about know-how (Greek techne). Of course, nobody is perfect, and mistakes, sometimes big ones, happen in these high-skilled jobs.

When amathia happens in this kind of knowledge work, incentives and punishments are activated. There’s reality testing that holds this kind of high-skilled knowledge worker to account for their amathia. Consequently, one doesn’t see much amathia in these fields.

Other of these high-learning jobs are less like craftsmanship and more like statesmanship. These would include jobs in government and corporate bureaucracies, public education, and enforcement of laws and regulations - roles that were rare in antiquity but are now abundant. The world is now full of high-skilled jobs where the customer is an ambiguous collective. The jobs are largely not subject to reality testing in the way craftsman jobs are. Instead, the jobs are more like those of religious or ideological functionaries, in which social and institutional disincentives against nonconformity outweigh those against being empirically wrong. These fields are fertile grounds for amathia.

Perhaps the most lasting consequence of the Covid pandemic is what appears to be a widespread and long-lasting loss of faith in experts. People who were not experts could see experts make clear mistakes and engage in herd-like behavior. Adding to the public’s anger, seemingly no one was held accountable. Now that the public has observed amathia on such a major issue, they have started looking for it on others - and there’s plenty to be found.

Curing Amathia

So, there are two types of amathia: simple amathia (being uneducated) and advanced or philosophical amathia (refusal to learn). The cure for simple amathia is obvious: education.

The cure for philosophical amathia is disputed, with two different approaches advanced.

One approach is to treat it as a more difficult case of simple amathia. The cure is to point out the patient’s erroneous beliefs, educate the patient on why those beliefs are erroneous, and replace those beliefs with correct ones. A famous example of this can be found with the Stoic philosopher Epictetus:

Men are disturbed not by events, but by their dogmas (philosophical principles) about the events. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our dogmas about death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own dogmas. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and of one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself. (Enchridion 5)

In general, this is the approach to amathia advocated by most of the ancient Greek philosophies of life. They just differ on the specifics of which dogmas (firm beliefs about non-empirical things) to reject or embrace.

The other approach comes from the Pyrrhonists. Their diagnosis is that the cause of advanced amathia is dogmatism. Alcibiades held a dogma about his political acumen. Epicurus held a dogma about the worthlessness of logic, grammar, and rhetoric.

Dogmatism isn’t cured by replacing erroneous dogmas with other dogmas; it’s cured by replacing dogmas with curiosity. This is not just a philosophical claim; it’s one that has been verified by empirical research:

“…curiosity promotes open-minded engagement with information that is contrary to individuals’ political predispositions.”

The willful ignorance of advanced amathia is counteracted by the desire to inquire and investigate. This opens the mind to multiple interpretations and makes it receptive to feedback on whether one’s decisions are working out well or poorly.

This receptivity to what’s actually happening is the essence of intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is the antithesis of amathia. It’s also the beginning of wisdom.

Holding a Mirror to Yourself

As you’ve gotten this far in a philosophical essay, you’re almost certain to be intelligent and well-educated. This is not meant as flattery, dear reader, for here it comes as a bit of bad news. It means that you’re just the type of person who is at risk for advanced amathia. You might be infected with it and not even know it.

But how to know if you’re infected? A useful test for amathia is this: when you encounter disconfirming evidence, is your initial reaction curiosity, or is it to discredit or dismiss the evidence?

Answering that question honestly requires a degree of self-knowledge. No wonder “know yourself” was the first of the three maxims the ancient Greeks inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

The three maxims form a hexameter verse, suggesting they were meant to be read together. The second, “nothing to excess,” applies naturally to amathia. Was Alcibiades’ confidence in his political judgment not excessive? Was Epicurus’ dismissal of logic and grammar not excessive?

The third maxim is harder to translate. A common rendering is “make a commitment, and peril approaches.” It, too, applies to amathia, which is a commitment that invites peril because it exceeds what one actually knows.

Because of its willful nature, amathia cannot be cured by force or instruction. If one suffers from it, the only cure is self-examination: searching for those perilous, excessive commitments that outrun what you actually know. No one else can do this work for you. Not even Socrates could save Alcibiades from himself.

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Other ancient Greek philosophers also used medical metaphors to describe how their philosophies of life worked. Epicureanism has its tetrapharmakos - a four-part cure. All you need to do is swallow it (i.e., believe it). Epictetus tells us that Stoicism is like surgery: painful - in antiquity there was no anesthesia - but necessary to restore health.

In Greek philosophy, only the Pyrrhonists were known for the purgative metaphor. The metaphor’s use in Buddhist philosophy predates Pyrrho, and, as with many other elements of Pyrrhonism, it was likely borrowed from Buddhism. Pyrrho spent about a year and a half in India studying Indian philosophy.

There, Pyrrho appears to have encountered the Aṅguttara Nikāya 10.108 (aka the Numerical Discourses), and to have been inspired by one of the talks of the Buddha recorded in the Dasakanipāto (aka the Book of Tens), the Samaṇasaññāvaggo. In any case, the similarities here between Pyrrhonism and the Buddha’s teachings in this sutta are remarkable.

The talk begins with a discussion of practicing virtue (10.101) and the factors leading to enlightenment (10.102), then moves on to how one can go wrong on this path: specifically, a failure to follow the Buddhist eightfold path. But the Buddha gets more specific, pointing out that such a failure always starts with a failure to have right view (10.103-104), and how correcting wrong view leads to success in following the other seven parts of the eightfold path (10.105-106).

The eightfold path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi. In early Buddhism, all eight of these practices hinge on the first, which begins with an understanding that the mind operates in a corrupted way - wrong view. The remaining practices depend on the first practice and focus on moral behavior and meditative awareness.

Pyrrhonism is similarly based on the idea that the mind operates in a corrupted way - a way called dogmatism. Dogmatism is having firm beliefs in non-empirical propositions. In this respect, it is largely the same as wrong view, which in Buddhism is described as attachment to speculative or fixed views, dogmatic opinions, or even correct views if not known to be true by personal verification.

The Maha-satipatthana Sutta gives this definition of “right view”:

“And what is right view? Knowledge with regard to stress, knowledge with regard to the origination of stress, knowledge with regard to the cessation of stress, knowledge with regard to the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: This is called right view.”

One can see here a close association with the Pyrrhonist concept of ataraxia - a mental state free of stress.

In his talk, the Buddha then gives two metaphors for correcting wrong view. The first is washing, which is discussed briefly (10.107). Then there’s a long discussion of the second metaphor: a medical purgative (10.108-109). Here are some excerpts from that section that display the similarity between the Pyrrhonist and Buddhist uses of this metaphor.

“Monks, doctors give a purgative for warding off diseases caused by bile, diseases caused by phlegm, diseases caused by the internal wind property. There is a purging there; I don’t say that there’s not, but it sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. So I will teach you the noble purgative that always succeeds and never fails, a purgative whereby beings subject to birth are freed from birth; beings subject to aging are freed from aging; beings subject to death are freed from death; beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair are freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair….

“In one who has right view, wrong view is purged away, and the many evil, unskillful mental qualities that come into play in dependence on wrong view are purged away as well, while the many skillful mental qualities that depend on right view go to the culmination of their development….

“In one who has right release, wrong release is purged away, and the many evil, unskillful mental qualities that come into play in dependence on wrong release are purged away as well, while the many skillful mental qualities that depend on right release go to the culmination of their development.

“This, monks, is the noble purgative that always succeeds and never fails, a purgative whereby beings subject to birth are freed from birth; beings subject to aging are freed from aging; beings subject to death are freed from death; beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress & despair are freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair.”

One can easily see how Pyrrho might have been inspired by this metaphor and how it fits nicely with his system. The Buddha’s wrong view is Pyrrho’s dogmatism. The Buddha’s freedom from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair is Pyrrho’s ataraxia. The match is so nice that perhaps the most interesting next question is not whether one needs more proof that Pyrrho borrowed this idea from Buddhism, but why didn’t he borrow the rest of the eightfold path?

I have a speculative answer.

Pyrrho arrived in India with his own set of philosophical problems. Pyrrho was a Democritean philosopher. Democritean philosophy had been under philosophical attack for decades, first by Plato, and then even more forcefully, by Aristotle. Pyrrho needed philosophical ideas to counter these, and he found inspiration in Buddhist epistemology. Buddhist ethics and meditation practices were not of similar value.

First, the meditation practices of the Indians were foreign to the Greeks and not part of the philosophical issues that Pyrrho wished to address. Even if Pyrrho had been influenced by these, they would be a tough sell back in Greece.

Second, Pyrrho was not facing the kinds of philosophical disputes about ethics that the Buddha faced. When the Buddha was teaching, there were several competing systems of ethics. Best known these days are Brahmanism and Jainism, but there were other, now largely forgotten systems, such as the Charvaka system. Democritean ethics were similar to Platonic and Aristotelian ethics. The key differences were not over what ethical behavior was, but how ethical character is best formed. Not only that, Aristotle’s method for developing his ethical system was empirical, and thus was not at odds with Pyrrho’s approach to epistemology, unlike other parts of Aristotelian philosophy.

So, Pyrrho wasn’t in the kind of philosophical dispute about ethics that the Buddha faced. But like the Buddha, he thought that right view would lead to virtuous behavior. As Sextus Empiricus put it, describing the Pyrrhonist system,

“…if one says that a system is a way of life that, in accordance with appearances, follows a certain rationale, where that rationale shows how it is possible to seem to live rightly (”rightly” being taken, not as referring only to virtue, but in a more ordinary sense) and tends to produce the disposition to suspend judgment, then we say that he does have a system. For we do follow a certain rationale that, in accord with appearances, points us toward a life in conformity with the customs of our country and its laws and institutions, and with our own particular pathé.” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.16-17)

Pyrrho and the Buddha agree. If you want to live virtuously and rightly, you first need to expel your dogmatic views.

For more details about the connections between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism, see my book, Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism, and these other Ataraxia or Bust articles:

• The Buddhist Three Poisons in Pyrrhonism

• The Buddhist Three Doors of Liberation in Pyrrhonism

• Buddhist Dependent Origination in Ancient Greek Philosophy

• Therapy by Raft or Ladder

• It’s Time to Take Seriously Greek Influences on Buddhism

• What the Buddha Knew about Dukkha that We Don’t

• The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

Vallicella comes to this remarkable conclusion based on his fine collection of some of the most common misunderstandings of Pyrrhonism, particularly these four:

1. That Pyrrhonists reject all “beliefs.”

2. That there’s no distinction in beliefs between those based on experience and those based on theory.

3. That inquiry must come to a stop when the subject of inquiry has been found to be uncertain (rather than inquiry coming to a stop once the subject has been fully understood).

4. That ataraxia (being unperturbed) is some sort of theoretical ultimate good rather than a straightforward experiential precondition for eudaimonia.

Certainty, Not Uncertainty, Is What Inflames Passions

Let’s unpack how his mistakes led him to this conclusion. The most fundamental mistake is about the Pyrrhonists’ attitude about uncertainty.

“The Pyrrhonians see clearly that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain certain knowledge. Wanting certainty, but unable to secure it, we are thrown back upon conflicting beliefs that inflame passions. The heat of the passions seems to vary inversely with the rational unprovability of the beliefs that stoke them.”

This is Vallicella’s own diagnosis about uncertainty, not the Pyrrhonist one. It’s not that we are thrown back on conflicting beliefs or that the heat of the passions varies inversely with unprovability; it’s that we are prone to embracing false beliefs with certainty, and it is this certainty that inflames passions.

Something More Precise Than “Belief” Is At Issue

Here we come to a word in English that makes what the ancient Greek Pyrrhonists meant confusing: “belief.” “Belief” is much broader than what the Pyrrhonists are talking about. The word they used was dogma - the Greek word we get “dogma” from. And “dogma” is closer to what the Pyrrhonists mean than “belief” is. So, substituting “belief” for dogma, Vallicella thinks:

“Since belief as such makes us ill, the cure must lie in the purgation of all beliefs including, I assume, any beliefs instrumental in effecting the cure. Just as a good laxative flushes itself out along with everything else, doxastic purgation supposedly relieves us of all doxastic impactation, including the beliefs underpinning the therapeutic procedures.”

What the ancient Pyrrhonists meant by dogma is a firmly held belief in something non-empirical. Treatment regimens that produce cures are empirical. You can experience them for yourself.

What’s So Wrong about Peace, Love, and Understanding?

Vallicella also dislikes the result of that treatment:

“The notion that ataraxia (mental tranquillity, peace of soul, freedom from disturbance) is either essential to happiness or the whole of happiness is a paltry and passive conception of happiness. The peace of the Pyrrhonian is not the “peace that surpasses all understanding” (Phillipians 4:7), but a peace predicated upon not understanding -- and not caring any more about understanding. Could that be a peace worth wanting?”

One might think it’s obvious that being perturbed (disturbed, stressed, anxious) would preclude one from being happy. That would seem to be an irrational preference. But perhaps worse, Vallicella completely disregards what Pyrrhonist practice actually is and declares that the practice is its exact opposite!

“The Skeptic who, true to his name, begins with inquiry abandons inquiry when he finds that nothing can be known with certainty. But rather than have recourse to uncertain belief, the Skeptic concludes that the problem is belief itself. Rather than go forward on uncertain beliefs, he essays to go forward belieflessly.”

Just because one finds that matters cannot at this time be settled conclusively does not mean that one abandons inquiry or that one stops caring about gaining further understanding. Instead, it’s the opposite! The people who abandon inquiry are those who have firm beliefs. If you believe you already have the truth, then there’s no reason for further inquiry.

The Results of Being Trapped In a Single View - The Prison of Dogmatism

One problem with having dogmas is that dogmas constrain one to a particular view of the world. If, say, you’re an Aristotelian, you have a view of the world that there’s a highest good. That view in turn causes you to force the ideas of non-Aristotelians into your Aristotelian Procrustean bed: those ideas, too, must involve a highest good, even when they don’t. Hence, Vallicella argues:

“But the Skeptic’s brand of tranquillity cannot be the highest value, and perhaps not much of a value at all. The happy life cannot be anything so passive as the life of ataraxia. We need a more virile conception of happiness, and we find it in Aristotle. For the Stagirite, happiness (eudaimonia) is an activity (ergon) of the soul (psyche) in accordance with virtue (arete) over an entire life. (Cf. Nicomachean Ethics.) His is an active conception of the good life even though the highest virtues are the intellectual and contemplative virtues. The highest life is the bios theoretikos, the vita contemplativa. Though contemplative, it necessarily involves the activity of inquiry into the truth, an activity that skepticism, whether Pyrrhonian or Academic, denigrates.”

And from this, he projects onto Pyrrhonism the idea that Pyrrhonism must, too, have firm beliefs about non-empirical things.

“He who treads the Skeptic Path is committed to the value of ataraxia, and this value-commitment obviously transcends his present impressions. It is the organizing principle behind his therapeutic procedures and his entire way of life. It is what his quasi-medicinal treatments are for. Ataraxia is the goal, the ‘final cause’ of the therapy. So here we have yet another doxastic-axiological commitment that is part and parcel of the Skeptic Way. We see once again that a life without commitment is impossible.”

Somehow, he misses the fact that there’s a big difference between a commitment to a life of consuming food and water and a commitment to some philosophical ideas, such as a “final cause.” The Pyrrhonist commitment to ataraxia is based on the experience that just as being fed is useful for the body, being untroubled is useful for the mind.

And to Seal the Bad Argument, Pyrrhonists Must Not Be Able to Remember

Worse, Vallicella goes on to deny the value of experience itself, and he imposes onto Pyrrhonists that they are not allowed to remember experiences!

“I would add that our Skeptic cannot even be committed to the possibility of ataraxia. The pursuit of ataraxia enjoins a suspension of judgment as to its possibility or impossibility. For any claim that humans are capable of ataraxia is a claim that goes beyond the impressions of the present moment, a claim that can give rise to dispute and disturbance. But it is even worse that this. It occurs to me that our Skeptic cannot even grant that he or anyone has ever experienced ataraxia in the past since this claim too would go beyond the impressions of the present moment. Suppose you went to this doctor for treatment. You ask him how successful his procedures are. “How many, doc, have experienced relief after a course of your purgatives and aperients?” The good doctor will not commit himself. He has no ‘track record’ he will stand by. No point, then, is asking about the prognosis.”

Those Pyrrhonist Pigs

Putting all of these misunderstandings together, Vallicella comes to this remarkable conclusion:

“We now clearly see that the Skeptic Way is a dead end. We want the human good, happiness. But we are given a load of rhetoric that implies that there is no specifically human good and that we must regress to the level of animals. But even this recommendation bristles with paradox. For it too is a commitment to a course of action that transcends the moment when action is impossible for a critter that merely responds instinctually to environmental stimuli.”

Talk about a “load of rhetoric.”

May I suggest that if your conclusion is that your opponents are less than human, maybe there’s something wrong with your argument.

What I’ve given above is a Pyrrhonist critique of Vallicella’s critique of Pyrrhonism. Perhaps you’ve noticed that it did not regress to the level of animals, that action was not impossible, and that it wasn’t merely an instinctual response to environmental stimuli.

Vallicella takes special aim at Pyrrhonism for being “porcine.” This is based on an anecdote about a voyage Pyrrho once took in which the ship became engulfed in a terrible storm, making all but two of the passengers filled with anxiety. One of these was Pyrrho; the other was a pig, who disregarded the tossing of the ship while he ate. Pyrrho told his fellow passengers that the pig was demonstrating the unperturbed state in which the wise man should keep himself.

The secret to this little story is that the pig didn’t have any beliefs about the meaning of the storm. His only belief was that he couldn’t do anything about it.

As the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said,

“Men are disturbed, not by events, but by the dogmas they form concerning events.” (Enchiridion 5)

Here, Pyrrho says something much the same, pointing out that the pig, being without dogmas with regard to the storm, was able to be undisturbed.

No one is saying that being undisturbed is the highest good, but whatever the highest good is, you’re not getting there without it.

There’s ’s Is Stoicism Just Self-Help for Men Now? On the death of teleology and the birth of hustle stoicism.

Stoicism is marketed as something that can make us more productive, enlightened, successful and agentic. …This version of stoicism is a stool without the legs its ancient parent rests on. It has no metaphysics at all — no Gods, no providential order, no teleology…. Modern stoics suggest we don’t need these things to have a stool you can comfortably sit on. …they are dangerously close to espousing a masculine version of the crystals and horoscopes many of them might mock as the irrational trinkets of feminine wantwits. …three points that are relatively uncontroversial within stoic scholarship: that stoicism is not compatible with atheism…. Stoicism requires theism….

And there’s ’s Why I am not a Modern Stoic.

…Modern Stoicism … is a radically different philosophy than ancient Stoicism. …the main Stoic upshot (that only virtue matters, and that all else falls under ‘preferred indifferents’) seems unsupported. After all, virtue is understood as acting in accord with nature, and we have justification for the goodness of virtue, then, because we believe that nature is given to us by the universe which works toward the good. While I believe talk of virtue is salvageable even if one rejects the Stoic view of the cosmos, I think the main difficulty is in believing that nothing else matters. We can only endorse this, I submit, if we believe that what actually matters is the fact that universe is working toward the good. And then, we’re back to the doctrine of providence. …this, then, is the critical error of Modern Stoicism: that they are willing to accept the death of providence (where providence has become ‘literally unbelievable’) but are not willing to consider that this is going to radically transform the ethical life.

The problem both of these writers have with Modern Stoicism is that Stoicism, as originally conceived, had as a foundational part of its system a theology: a divine, providential universe. If one removes this part of the foundation, as Modern Stoicism does, Kennedy and Henderson say the remainder of the system falls apart. It’s no longer a coherent system.

Belief in a providential universe appears to have a strong, positive therapeutic effect. Everything that happens is Zeus’s will. It’s all for the good, including anything that appears to be bad right now. It was a crucial, active ingredient in why ancient Stoicism was attractive, but even in antiquity, people could see that it wasn’t true. As the ancient Pyrrhonist philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, pointed out,

…in reply to one who infers the existence of divine providence from the order of the heavenly bodies, we oppose the fact that often the good fare ill and the bad fare well, and deduce from this that divine providence does not exist…. (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.32)

It’s taken a bit of time, but now few people find the once-popular Stoic providential universe plausible. The removal of ancient Stoic theology is necessary for the success of Modern Stoicism. There would be no modern Stoic revival without this bit of surgery.

Because modern atheists reject the kind of theological thinking the ancient Stoics embraced, one of Modern Stoicism's most important features and selling points is its claim to be a philosophy, not a religion.

This makes for an attractive marketing slogan, but is it true?

Well, it depends on how you define “religion.”

When these philosophy-not-a-religion types use the word “religion,” they want that word to track closely to a definition based on what the Abrahamic religions look like. Thus, their idea of “religion” requires gods, temples, priests, prophets, holy books, miracles, and worship. Since not even ancient Stoicism looks like a religion by those particular standards, they enjoy confidence in their belief that Modern Stoicism is not a religion.

But what is a religion, really? Is Buddhism a religion? It only checks off a few of those boxes, and plenty of Buddhists would say those boxes are simply incidental; they’re not load-bearing elements like they are in some other religions. Moreover, Stoicism and Buddhism are often compared with each other. For that to happen, they must have many similarities.

The word “religion” entered English c. 1200 as religioun, meaning a “state of life bound by monastic vows,” or “action or conduct indicating a belief in a divine power and reverence for and desire to please it.” While Modern Stoicism doesn’t have monasteries or vows, it is a kind of institution, and it actively encourages people to bind themselves to living in a particular way. This is most obvious with their Stoic Week event, where people are encouraged to try living like a Stoic. If one considers “nature” as a “divine power,” one gets the Stoics’ “live according to nature.” That fits the second definition.

The word “religion” entered English through French, and French via the Latin word religio. The etymology of this term is disputed. The Academic Skeptic philosopher Cicero said it came from relegere, meaning “to go over again” or “to consider carefully,” implying meticulous rereading of sacred lore or repeated attention to divine matters. The early Christian apologist Lactantius (c. 250–325 CE) proposed religare, “to bind fast,” suggesting a binding obligation or tie between humans and the divine. Another possible origin is religiens “careful,” opposite of negligens. (etymology).

Modern Stoic practice reflects all of these meanings: going over again Stoic teachings, considering carefully through the discipline of assent, binding fast to Stoic principles such as virtue being the only good, and employing Stoic mindfulness (prosochē προσοχή) to be careful.

Perhaps the clearest comparison is whether Unitarian Universalism is a religion. Like Modern Stoicism, it emerged from clearly religious roots. The Unitarians were Christians who denied the doctrine of the Trinity. The Universalists were Christians who denied that anyone was going to hell. In 1961, these denominations merged. In 1985, they updated their statement of beliefs and values. In 2024, this was changed again to the following:

• Interdependence: We honor the interdependent web of all existence and acknowledge our place in it.

• Pluralism: We are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology.

• Justice: We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all feel welcome and can thrive.

• Transformation: We adapt to the changing world.

• Generosity: We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope.

• Equity: We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.

A lot of this sounds like Stoic cosmopolitanism and the Stoic emphasis on the virtue of justice. The issue about transformation fits nicely with the frequent comments about change Marcus Aurelius makes in the Meditations.

Sure, there’s more to Modern Stoicism than just these things, but if Unitarian Universalism is a religion, then why shouldn’t Stoicism be considered a religion? Stoicism has adherents. It has revered ancient texts. It has people who can be pointed to as Rabbis (teachers) because of their knowledge of those texts. It has sacred principles (virtue is the only good). It has a soteriology (it saves you from negative emotions). It has something bigger than the individual to follow (Nature, logos). It focuses on developing a state of mind. (Ask Christians about Christ consciousness; ask Buddhists about Buddha mind). Stoicism certainly has a moral code: virtue is the only good. As only the Stoic Sage is completely virtuous, and Sages are as rare as the incarnations of Christ.

In the UK, Stoicism is classified as a protected belief system along with other religions. The Big Think thinks so as well. See their article, 3 clues that Stoicism is a religion in disguise.

It’s no wonder that the early Christian polemicists such as Eusebius, Clement, and Augustine went to such effort to debunk Stoicism in their efforts to promote Christianity. (See, for example, Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel). Does it not make sense that the recent decline in interest in Christianity would be accompanied by a corresponding surge of interest in Stoicism? Stoicism and Christianity are substitutes for each other! They always have been.

(Given the success of Modern Stoicism, I’m surprised that no one has tried to do the same thing with Christianity: dump all of the theology, metaphysics, and miracles while repositioning Jesus as a moral philosopher who was just a victim of the superstitious circumstances of his time. Thomas Jefferson took a stab at this with his The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, but it didn’t take off. Maybe now is the time for someone to try again.)

The distinguishing characteristic between a religion and a philosophy is not gods and miracles and worship; it’s the provision of a comprehensive normative framework that provides a system for how individuals ought to live.

As a religion, Modern Stoicism is pared down enough to be compatible with some other religious beliefs, just as one can find both atheist and theist Unitarian Universalists, and people who follow both Shinto and Buddhism. But this no more excludes Stoicism from being a religion than it does the others.

While the proponents of Modern Stoicism insist that Stoicism is not dogmatic like a religion, one obvious dogma they hold is that Stoicism is a philosophy, not a religion. Belief in this dogma is essential if one is going to market Stoicism to atheists.

So, has the removal of ancient Stoic theology wrecked Stoicism, as Kennedy and Henderson think?

If it has, people are still finding much of value in that wreckage. The Stoic literature is full of wonderful spiritual exercises developed by ancient Greek philosophers. These exercises are applicable to nearly anyone, regardless of whether they follow Stoicism.

For those hawking self-help and other wares, the porch still stands as an attractive platform. And, wow, is a lot of business happening there!

But is the remaining structure fit for habitation? Kennedy and Henderson don’t think so. Of course, there’s disagreement as to what qualifies for “fit for habitation” and who gets to decide. As the Stoics hold up Diogenes of Sinope as a hero - a man who lived in a discarded barrel - Stoics would appear to have low standards as to what is fit for habitation.

But, maybe that’s the secret sauce. If you make your home in something that doesn’t look like a conventional home, you can claim it’s not a house. If you make your religion something that doesn’t look like a conventional religion, you can claim it’s not a religion.

Recent psychological research may offer insight into what is going on. This research identified characteristics that distinguish what is cool from what is good, and the research has shown that these characteristics are agreed upon across a wide variety of cultures.

Identifying whether Stoicism or Buddhism is better - in the sense of which one is more “good” than the other - would be contentious. Similarly, it would be contentious to identify one of them as “cool.” However, based on this research, it seems possible to identify which is relatively cooler.

The research identifies six characteristics positively associated with coolness and eight that are negatively associated. The positively associated characteristics are: extraverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous. In comparison, things thought to be good, but not cool, were: conforming, traditional, secure, warm, agreeable, universalistic, conscientious, and calm.

In other words, something that’s cool - relative to something good - is more outgoing, open, adventurous, autonomous, powerful, and hedonistic. In contrast, something that’s good but not cool is more conformist, traditional, warm, agreeable, conscientious, calm, and universally applicable.

Here’s a chart from the study, showing the strength of these relationships:

How Does Stoicism Compare with Buddhism?

While we have research on the criteria people use to distinguish what is cool from what is good, we don’t have research on how people view Stoicism and Buddhism through these criteria. What follows is my evaluation and the reasons for it, based on a broad comparison between Stoicism and Western Buddhism. Others will no doubt have differing opinions, and at a finer level of detail, I’m sure there are lots of exceptions. For example, Zen teacher Brad Warner has had substantial success in presenting Zen Buddhism as cool. But in my evaluation, on an overall level, this contest looks remarkably one-sided.

Of the six factors positively associated with being cool, it appears to me that Stoicism scores cooler on four of them and Buddhism on one of them. On the eight factors negatively associated with being cool, Stoicism scores cooler on three of them.

Extraversion

Meditation has to be one of the most introverted of all possible activities. Traditional Buddhism encouraged people to become renunciants, an activity that is also introverted. Stoicism, however, encourages civic engagements. That’s extraverted.

Hedonistic

Neither Stoicism nor Buddhism is hedonistic; however, certain kinds of consumption are easier to justify with Stoicism than with Buddhism, whereas Buddhism generally denounces sense pleasures.

Stoicism has a more favorable attitude towards alcohol than Buddhism does. The ancient Stoics thought that wine in moderation was fine, whereas Buddhism opposes the consumption of intoxicants.

Similarly, in Stoicism, pleasure, so long as it does not detract from virtue and is enjoyed in moderation, is, in Stoic terminology, a “preferred indifferent” - something judged as likely to support virtue indirectly.

Stoicism also has a more favorable attitude towards wealth and luxury. Buddhism encourages people to renounce worldly goods and to focus on spiritual practice, whereas for Stoics, wealth is a preferred indifferent. Consequently, there are examples of wealthy Stoic philosophers. Stoicism’s founder, Zeno of Citium, was a wealthy merchant. The Stoic philosopher Seneca was fabulously wealthy.

Powerful

As Stoic ethics integrates public duty with personal discipline, it is an attractive philosophy for those attracted to political power. For example, in antiquity, Marcus Aurelius (an emperor) and Seneca (an advisor to an emperor) were attracted to Stoicism. Today, one prominent contemporary Stoic, Pat McGeehan, is a high-ranking elected official. Another, James Stockdale, ran for Vice President in 1992, receiving 19% of the vote.

The Buddha, however, renounced power. Even the great Buddhist King Ashoka amassed his power before becoming a Buddhist. While there are several high-ranking Buddhist elected officials in the United States, none of them are prominent for their Buddhism in the way Stockdale and McGeehan are prominent for their Stoicism.

Autonomy

Stoicism, with its focus on self-sufficiency and what one can and cannot control, places great emphasis on personal responsibility. In contrast, in many Buddhist schools, students are told to relinquish substantial aspects of their autonomy to their teachers.

This aspect of personal responsibility may be a factor in a major issue currently weighing down Western Buddhism, not only in terms of how cool it is, but also how good it is. Western Buddhism has suffered many incidents of teachers abusing their authority - including the Zen group I long practiced with.

Openness

Western Buddhism seems to have a stronger reputation for openness than Stoicism does. It’s well-known for being associated with a non-judgmental attitude. In contrast, Stoicism encourages practitioners to judge, and some of the ancient Stoics, such as Epictetus, appear to have been close-minded and judgmental.

Adventurousness

For Westerners in the middle of the 20th century, learning Buddhism often required lengthy study in Asia. That’s adventurous, but those days are gone. Now there are lots of Buddhist teachers in the West. This characteristic of adventurousness is now probably a tie, but it’s one that, in the 20th century, contributed to Buddhism being cool.

The Factors Negatively Associated with Coolness

Of the eight factors negatively associated with coolness, I see no clear differences across three of them: secure, universalistic, and conscientious. The five other factors are worth investigating further.

Conforming and Traditional

In the 20th century, Buddhism (in the West) was seen as a non-conforming and non-traditional path. This is not so much the case today, as our current society is now much less conformist and traditional. While Stoicism has deep roots in Western culture, it’s been about 1,700 years since it was common to encounter professed Stoics. So, which of the two is seen as less conforming and traditional probably depends on one’s subculture.

Warmth and Agreeableness

On warmth and agreeableness, Stoicism is well-known not to be warm and agreeable. Indeed, these are things Stoicism regularly gets criticized for, with famous examples of how Stoic teachings disparaged mourning, and of how disagreeably the Stoic teacher Epictetus treated some of his students.

Calmness

Both Buddhism and Stoicism are famous for promoting calmness. In theory, this should be a tie, but in practice, at this time, prominent Stoics appear to be better at achieving calm than prominent Western Buddhists are at achieving - at least with regard to their reactions to political events.

Stoicism Is Cooler than Buddhism

So, by the criteria people use to judge coolness, Stoicism seems to be cooler than Buddhism.