And we find a comparable statement in one of the most noted passages of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where he too defines the good life, ‘the contemplative life’, the only life which can lead us to perfect happiness, as a life by which we escape, at least in part, the condition of mere mortality. Some will perhaps claim that
such a life is too rarefied for man’s condition; for it is not in so far as he is man that he can live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him … If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to reason is divine in comparison with human life. So we must not follow those who advise us, being human, to think only of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things; but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with what is best in us.’ (
X
, 7)
Of course, this objective is by no means easy, and if philosophy is to be more than mere aspiration to wisdom – a genuine conquering of our fears – then it must be embodied in practical exercises.
Even though I am not myself a Stoic by inclination and am not convinced by this way of philosophical thinking, I must acknowledge the grandeur of its project and the formidable set of answers which it tries to bring. I would like to look at these now, by evoking a few of the exercises in wisdom to which Stoicism opens the way. For philosophy, as the word itself indicates, is not quite wisdom but only the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia). And, according to the Stoics, it is through practical exercise that one passes from one to the other. These exercises are intended to eradicate the anxiety associated with mortality – and in this respect they still retain, in my view, an inestim able value.
A Few Exercises in Wisdom
These almost exclusively concern our relation to time, for it is in the folds of time that these anxieties establish themselves, generating remorse and nostalgia for the past, and false hopes for the future. The exercises are all the more interesting and significant in that we encounter them time and again throughout the history of philosophy, in the thought of philosophers who are in other respects quite distant from the Stoics – in Epicurus and Lucretius, but also, curiously, in Spinoza and Nietzsche, and even in traditions remote from Western philosophy, such as Tibetan Buddhism. I will restrict myself to four examples.
The Burden of the Past and the Mirages of the Future
Let us begin with the essentials: in the eyes of the Stoics, the two great ills which prevent us from achieving fulfilment are nostalgia and hope, specifically attachment to the past and anxiety about the future. These block our access to the present moment, and prevent us from living life to the full. It has been said that Stoicism here anticipated one of the most profound insights of psychoanalysis: that he who remains the prisoner of his past will always be incapable of ‘acting and enjoying’, as Freud said; that the nostalgia for lost paradises, for the joys and sorrows of childhood, lays upon our lives a weight as heavy as it is unknown to us.
Marcus Aurelius expresses this conviction, perhaps better than anyone else, at the beginning of Book XII of his Meditations:
It is in your power to secure at once all the objects which you dream of reaching by a roundabout route, if you will be fair to yourself: if you will leave all the past behind, commit the future to Providence, and direct the present alone, towards piety and justice. To piety, so that you may be content with what has been assigned to you – for Nature designed it for you and you for it; to justice, that you may freely and without circumlocution speak the truth and do those things that are in accord with law and in accord with the worth of each. (
XII
.1)
To be saved, to attain the wisdom that surpasses all philosophy, we must school ourselves to live without vain fears or pointless nostalgias. Once and for all we must stop living in the dimensions of time past and time future, which do not exist in reality, and adhere as much as possible to the present:
Do not let your picture of the whole of your life confuse you, do not dwell upon all the manifold troubles which have come to pass and will come to pass; but ask yourself in regard to every passing moment: what is there here that cannot be borne and cannot be endured? Then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less. (
Meditations,
VIII
, 36)
Marcus Aurelius is quite insistent on this point: ‘Remember that each of us lives only in the present moment, in the instant. All the rest is the past, or an uncertain future. The extent of life is therefore brief.’ This is what we must confront. Or as Seneca expresses it, in the Letters to Lucilius: ‘You must dispense with these two things: fear of the future, and the recollection of ancient ills. The latter no longer concerns me, the former has yet to concern me.’ To which one might add, for good measure, that it is not only ‘ancient ills’ that spoil the present life of the unwise, but perversely and perhaps to a greater degree, the recollection of happy days irrevocably lost and which will return ‘never more’.
If should now be clear why, paradoxically (and contrary to popular opinion), Stoicism would teach its disciples to part ways with those ideologies that promote the virtue of hope.
‘Hope a Little Less, Love a Little More’
As one contemporary philosopher, André Comte-Sponville, has emphasised, Stoicism here is very close to one of the most subtle tenets of Oriental wisdom, and of Tibetan Buddhism in particular: contrary to the commonplace idea that one ‘cannot live without hope’, hope is the greatest of misfortunes. For it is by nature an absence, a lack, a source of tension in our lives. For we live in terms of plans, chasing after objectives located in a more or less distant future, and believing that our happiness depends upon their accomplishment.
What we forget is that there is no other reality than the one in which we are living here and now, and that this strange headlong flight from the present can only end in failure. The objective accomplished, we almost invariably experience a puzzling sense of indifference, if not disappointment. Like children who become bored with their toys the day after Christmas, the possession of things so ardently coveted makes us neither better nor happier than before. The difficulties of life and the tragedy of the human condition are not modified by ownership or success and, in the famous phrase of Seneca, ‘while we wait for life, life passes’.
Perhaps you like imagining what you would do if you were to win the lottery: you would buy this and that; you would give some of it to this friend or that cousin; you would definitely give some of it to charity; and then you would take off on a trip around the world. And then what? In the end, it is always the gravestone that is silhouetted against the horizon, and you come to realise soon enough that the accumulation of all imaginable worldly goods solves nothing (although let us not be hypocrites: as the saying goes, money certainly does make poverty bearable).
Which is also why, according to a celebrated Buddhist proverb, you must learn to live as if this present moment were the most vital of your whole life, and as if those people in whose company you find yourself were the most important in your life. For nothing else exists, in truth: the past is no longer and the future is not yet. These temporal dimensions are real only to the imagination, which we ‘shoulder’ – like the ‘beasts of burden’ mocked by Nietzsche – merely to justify our incapacity to embrace what Nietzsche called (in entirely Stoic mode) amor fati: the love of reality for itself. Happiness lost, bliss deferred, and, by the same token, the present receding, consigned to nothingness whereas it is the only true dimension of existence.