Anecdotally I've met many more conservative stoics than I've met liberal stoics. Even weirder, I find the liberals tend to have more antibodies to stoic philosophy specifically around agency and self-control than conservatives. Moreso, and I'm not able to recall the exact saying, but I believe there's a lot of conversation in stoicism about not losing yourself to everything but focusing on what matters which maps to the conservative mentality more closely.
I've noticed the same thing, but I suspect the modern conservative/liberal divide doesn't map well to even 50 years ago, let alone other countries and eras.
We are in a unique time when liberals aren't wed to any objective sense-making value system, and tend to lean into nihilism even when arguing for outcomes which could be bettered argued for if they believed in an objective truth. This mirrors some of what's happened in science, and I suspect that's how we arrived here.
We see MLK as a liberal, for instance, but I'm almost certain he would be baffled by the reasoning behind much of modern US liberalism. I think modern civil rights and social justice promoters would end up hating MLK if he was around today.
While I strongly endorse your conclusion, Andrew, that Stoicism can unite people with differing political viewpoints, I'd push back against the 'political science' which states confidently what 'liberals' and 'conservatives' 'believe.' For a start, a conservative in my country, Australia, is likely to be considered a liberal in the USA or Europe on many issues, so even the definitions are contested. Across time, too, these things vary - a US 'liberal' from the 1950s might be today's 'conservative,' yet the terms are being deployed as if they were eternally stable - and that's before one gets to what concepts such as 'identification with all humanity' might actually mean.
All good points. Most of the liberal-conservative moral divide literature is from US research, and I'm really only addressing that context. The political spectrum looks much different in other countries.
Anecdotally I've met many more conservative stoics than I've met liberal stoics. Even weirder, I find the liberals tend to have more antibodies to stoic philosophy specifically around agency and self-control than conservatives. Moreso, and I'm not able to recall the exact saying, but I believe there's a lot of conversation in stoicism about not losing yourself to everything but focusing on what matters which maps to the conservative mentality more closely.
I've noticed the same thing, but I suspect the modern conservative/liberal divide doesn't map well to even 50 years ago, let alone other countries and eras.
We are in a unique time when liberals aren't wed to any objective sense-making value system, and tend to lean into nihilism even when arguing for outcomes which could be bettered argued for if they believed in an objective truth. This mirrors some of what's happened in science, and I suspect that's how we arrived here.
We see MLK as a liberal, for instance, but I'm almost certain he would be baffled by the reasoning behind much of modern US liberalism. I think modern civil rights and social justice promoters would end up hating MLK if he was around today.
Nice article. References are solid. Thanks for sharing!
While I strongly endorse your conclusion, Andrew, that Stoicism can unite people with differing political viewpoints, I'd push back against the 'political science' which states confidently what 'liberals' and 'conservatives' 'believe.' For a start, a conservative in my country, Australia, is likely to be considered a liberal in the USA or Europe on many issues, so even the definitions are contested. Across time, too, these things vary - a US 'liberal' from the 1950s might be today's 'conservative,' yet the terms are being deployed as if they were eternally stable - and that's before one gets to what concepts such as 'identification with all humanity' might actually mean.
All good points. Most of the liberal-conservative moral divide literature is from US research, and I'm really only addressing that context. The political spectrum looks much different in other countries.