1.9.2006
Living a good life is a matter of degree: you can get it more or less
right. (Perhaps one could also say: you can get it right more or less often.)
Sometimes you may take the wrong decisions instead, or you act in an
unconsidered manner and later wish (even if you still think you did the
right thing) that you would have been less impulsive. On a Stoic view
getting it right, on the other hand, means to continuously examine your
way of living, of doing things, and your reasons for doing them (or, in
some cases, perhaps your lack of good reasons). This examination should
result in a habit to act in accord with your human nature. And this, in
turn, means for a Stoic that your actions are such that they can be seen as
appropriate for a rational being. To the degree that you can achieve this,
you are leading a good life. (The ideal life, with the highest possible
degree, would be that of a 'sage', but that sort of perfection is not
thought of as something that anyone actually reaches.)
Stoic writers such as Seneca or Cicero had a wider view on what it means
to be rational, to act in accord with reason, than what would be implied by
our contemporary use of these terms. For us, the formulation of the
requirement to act rationally sounds like a call for a strict, formalistic
computation of the weight of pros and cons. As we think of it today, the
prescription that we should be 'rational' all the time seems undesirable, and
unrealistic altogether. The term 'nature', as I already remarked, seems
equally unsuitable: at the very least it would have to be clarified in which
of the many senses that have been attached to it over the centuries it should
be understood. The idea of a 'human nature', conceived as some property that
is common to all humans and only to them, has long been discredited, for a
broad collection of reasons. Especially to identify it with rationality has
frequently been criticised, too. (A lot depends on the understanding of how
rationality is specifically understood, though.)
So it seems it would be a better idea to find an alternative formulation of
the underlying Stoic conception of a good life in terms that are appropriate
today.
(There is an alternative strategy: explain it in the form of an
interpretation of the texts by the original authors, thereby
demonstrating their use of the terms as different from ours. This
has the positive by-effect of widening our intellectual horizon and keeping
the capability to engage with the original texts alive; it would enable
us to re-formulate the original intention in its native terms and
nevertheless understand it correctly.
Still, the danger of misunderstandings caused by our current
understanding will remain, and there is another risk in taking this
approach: in order to understand historically remote texts, one has to rely
on a tradition of interpretation and reconstruction, and this means that a
chain of other minds has influenced what we take to have been come to us
from those great past minds, shaping our views and attitudes. The problem
here is not that the Stoic position is necessarily mediated; arguably,
every view that we learn to understand is mediated by interpretation - the
differences in culture and language may multiply the number of possibly
interpretations, but there is no such thing as directly understanding a
position, and in this respect any contemporary philosophy is no more
'directly' available than those ancient ones. The more important problem
with such a mediation is that the long chain of tradition and interpretation
in the case of old texts includes too great a deal of interpretation that
is directed primarily by a historical interest. But a philosophical view
must be acceptable as insightful about the most important features of reality,
ourselves and the world around us. Discussion a view 'under its historical
premises' deprives it of that crucial value and makes it a mere museum
piece. If our understanding of these views is shaped thus they will become
unsatisfactory as philosophy. They were not dead from the beginning - but
they die when they are treated so. See this earlier post for a related
discussion.)
To examine your life and actions is itself something that would result
from a decision. Why would one be inclined to observe one's actions and
ask oneself for the reasons of taking them? As a general stance towards
oneself, this needs a good deal of training (one doesn't do it
instinctively, at least not all the time). A conscious decision is required
to start doing so, and it will generally be the case that one finds oneself
diverting from the set path; a number of corrections will be necessary
until the self-examination has become the default behaviour.
Seneca's letters to Lucilius are a brilliant mixture of advice how
to train yourself to achieve this and of arguments designed to convince
you to take this path in the first place. Surely any re-formulation of
a Stoic position needs to fulfill both functions - a Stoic philosophy
cannot be plausible just for theoretical reasons, it must make sense as
a general view of how to live a good life. Such a view would have to be
plausible (that is, coherent, consistent and so on) for someone who
contemplates it, but it must also be possible to actually endorse that
view and live in accord with it.
