In another way it's a bit like saying if you asked a gathering of people, atheists, spiritualists, military people to define love and everyone gave a different answer it shows love doesn't exist.
Most external teaching structures need to be systematized at some stage even the teaching of no self.
I think the best (for me) is Wittgenstein's rope metaphor for how the meaning of word "hangs together".
“A rope is made of a huge number of fibres, but not a single fibre goes through the ropes entire length, it's the way they overlap that creates the strength.”
Well, in his time Zeno did do a smash-and-grab of the most successful parts of a variety of other practical philosophies to make up Stoicism, did he not?
So perhaps ‘making up your own version’ is the only way to truly emulate a Stoic “Sage”… To be a master! Not a follower 🙂
Your point is right, but your point is right about everything. Religions have a lot in common, and sects of Christianity have even more in common, which is why they have Ecclesiastical structures to manage difference. The combination of virtue being the only good and the fundamental rule are enough to distinguish Stoicism from anything else. The Dichotomy of Control IS common sense, but it's partly for that reason that the "Dichotomy of Control" is the wrong way to express the fundamental rule (which is wildly stranger than common sense, when you read Epictetus word by word).
You're right that Epictetus (and Stoicism) have a unique understanding of the fundamental rule.
I was surprised at how few votes various things got. I thought there would be unanimity or close to it on several items. I personally think modern Stoicism should be considered to require virtue as the only good, the three disciplines, the fundamental rule, and katalepsis. But in practice, it seems most people take a looser view than I do.
Nice article as always, and I think correct: Stoicism tends to be whatever people want it to be, and I had not thought of that before.... :)
However, I'd suggest that there are a lot of thing. events which have no essence, and yet can be "composed of parts and coming into being based on multiple causes and conditions."
So if we take the list of the things which a Stoicism might possess and use Wittgenstein's principle of 'family resemblance' then yes different forms of stoicism, might be real, even if they have different components of that list as part of their configuration.
In other words I'd be skeptical about Plato's insistence that you can only know something if you can say what all examples of that something have as the same features, and at the same time agree that stoicism is a bit diffuse...
If you looked at Massimo Pigliucci's article about that survey, you'd see that he also references Wittgenstein's principle. I'm not sure that there's enough here for there to even be a family resemblance. I was surprised to see that several people didn't think the idea of virtue being the only good was central to Stoicism. I personally treat it as the defining characteristic.
for me, it is a matter of ‘is there a perceivable relationship’. I expect philosophies to be incoherent, between different people, because of the complexities of the world and of interpretation.
The point of Wittgenstein’s approach, in my opinion, is to point out that single characteristic definitions are rarer than we do think, and that connections between members of a category, can be exceedingly varied. The point was made at a similar time by the Russian psychologist Vygotsky. This is how we learn what things are. It now seems to be pretty conventional in category theory nowadays, overturning Plato and Aristotle.
Add to this that Stoicism is a human activity and slippery, hard to point to (the best we can do is point to people who claim to be doing stoicism), political (in the sense that right interpretations may not always be obvious and are subject to struggle and re-interpretation), then it is not a surprise that people can vary enormously…
So I’m skeptical that it can be defined in its multiplicity :)
Was it the mind holding the spoon or was it the child monk holding it?
Is it the mental construct of stoicism (stoic in itself) that holds the varied personal interpretations barely framed by the concept/name -stoicism- (as the survey demonstrates) or is it the human unable to truly associate such concept(s) with anything that remotely looks or feels like a stoic spoon that may be held?
The achievements of the spirit through mental categorisation and intellectual exertion, if not directly related to matter, are inadequate at best -most probably useless in fact- when attempting to bend the spoon of human nature.
Bending the human nature spoon -regardless of purpose, of good or evil- means restraining and learning to control the muscle that would naturally do otherwise (even in meditation) in all its physical materiality. Anything else is but a comfortable dream.
In my opinion, it is not just a problem with Stoicism. We have this "bending" issue in every theories&doctrines. PS: I thought askesis is more a cynical thing.
In another way it's a bit like saying if you asked a gathering of people, atheists, spiritualists, military people to define love and everyone gave a different answer it shows love doesn't exist.
Most external teaching structures need to be systematized at some stage even the teaching of no self.
Liked the spoon story.
Nice deconstruction of essentialism.
I think the best (for me) is Wittgenstein's rope metaphor for how the meaning of word "hangs together".
“A rope is made of a huge number of fibres, but not a single fibre goes through the ropes entire length, it's the way they overlap that creates the strength.”
Well, in his time Zeno did do a smash-and-grab of the most successful parts of a variety of other practical philosophies to make up Stoicism, did he not?
So perhaps ‘making up your own version’ is the only way to truly emulate a Stoic “Sage”… To be a master! Not a follower 🙂
Yes. It does seem like most people, regardless of what they say they are, are eclectics these days.
Your point is right, but your point is right about everything. Religions have a lot in common, and sects of Christianity have even more in common, which is why they have Ecclesiastical structures to manage difference. The combination of virtue being the only good and the fundamental rule are enough to distinguish Stoicism from anything else. The Dichotomy of Control IS common sense, but it's partly for that reason that the "Dichotomy of Control" is the wrong way to express the fundamental rule (which is wildly stranger than common sense, when you read Epictetus word by word).
You're right that Epictetus (and Stoicism) have a unique understanding of the fundamental rule.
I was surprised at how few votes various things got. I thought there would be unanimity or close to it on several items. I personally think modern Stoicism should be considered to require virtue as the only good, the three disciplines, the fundamental rule, and katalepsis. But in practice, it seems most people take a looser view than I do.
Nice article as always, and I think correct: Stoicism tends to be whatever people want it to be, and I had not thought of that before.... :)
However, I'd suggest that there are a lot of thing. events which have no essence, and yet can be "composed of parts and coming into being based on multiple causes and conditions."
So if we take the list of the things which a Stoicism might possess and use Wittgenstein's principle of 'family resemblance' then yes different forms of stoicism, might be real, even if they have different components of that list as part of their configuration.
In other words I'd be skeptical about Plato's insistence that you can only know something if you can say what all examples of that something have as the same features, and at the same time agree that stoicism is a bit diffuse...
If you looked at Massimo Pigliucci's article about that survey, you'd see that he also references Wittgenstein's principle. I'm not sure that there's enough here for there to even be a family resemblance. I was surprised to see that several people didn't think the idea of virtue being the only good was central to Stoicism. I personally treat it as the defining characteristic.
for me, it is a matter of ‘is there a perceivable relationship’. I expect philosophies to be incoherent, between different people, because of the complexities of the world and of interpretation.
The point of Wittgenstein’s approach, in my opinion, is to point out that single characteristic definitions are rarer than we do think, and that connections between members of a category, can be exceedingly varied. The point was made at a similar time by the Russian psychologist Vygotsky. This is how we learn what things are. It now seems to be pretty conventional in category theory nowadays, overturning Plato and Aristotle.
Add to this that Stoicism is a human activity and slippery, hard to point to (the best we can do is point to people who claim to be doing stoicism), political (in the sense that right interpretations may not always be obvious and are subject to struggle and re-interpretation), then it is not a surprise that people can vary enormously…
So I’m skeptical that it can be defined in its multiplicity :)
Was it the mind holding the spoon or was it the child monk holding it?
Is it the mental construct of stoicism (stoic in itself) that holds the varied personal interpretations barely framed by the concept/name -stoicism- (as the survey demonstrates) or is it the human unable to truly associate such concept(s) with anything that remotely looks or feels like a stoic spoon that may be held?
The achievements of the spirit through mental categorisation and intellectual exertion, if not directly related to matter, are inadequate at best -most probably useless in fact- when attempting to bend the spoon of human nature.
Bending the human nature spoon -regardless of purpose, of good or evil- means restraining and learning to control the muscle that would naturally do otherwise (even in meditation) in all its physical materiality. Anything else is but a comfortable dream.
In my opinion, it is not just a problem with Stoicism. We have this "bending" issue in every theories&doctrines. PS: I thought askesis is more a cynical thing.
The spiritual exercises were a big thing in ancient Greek philosophy. I highly recommend Pierre Hadot's book: https://amzn.to/3GGVkwZ