Interview With Donald Robertson on Marcus Aurelius & Stoicism
Resilience, Socratic Thinking in Modern Stoicism, and All Things Marcus Aurelius
I recently reviewed his new psychological biography, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor. His next book, How to Think Like Socrates, is due out in November.
In today’s interview I talk to him about increasing societal resilience, all things Marcus Aurelius, how Socratic ideas fit into a modern Stoic philosophical practice, and the possible failure of modern pen and ink philosophy to produce moral individuals.
AP: *Waves Magic Wand* I just made you America’s mental health tsar. You have the remit of shaking things up and a reasonable amount of resources to do it. What three actions do you take to make America more psychologically resilient? Does philosophy broadly or Stoicism specifically have a role to play in your plan?
DR: I believe that Stoicism and philosophy may play various roles but that’s not something we should take for granted – we should carry out research to establish the facts. So:
I’d carry out reviews of existing research on emotional resilience in order to establish areas for improvement to existing protocols, such as the Penn Resilience Program (PRP) and others. As those are multi-component protocols, we should conduct “dismantling” studies to establish what the active ingredients are in their success.
I’d also initiate a program of research into ways the existing curriculum in elementary schools could be adapted to improve long-term emotional resilience, as that’s an area where the state has extensive control over the environment of children, and therefore their development. I’d start by paying researchers to carry out reviews of existing research studies in order to identify correlates of resilience that are also outcomes of classroom education.
I’d also carry out research on “predictor variables” that determine whether individuals are more likely to respond to interventions such as resilience training. That would allow us to screen individuals in order to allocate them to types of training or other interventions that are most likely to benefit them.
AP: Imagine a Marcus less focused on Stoicism and virtue — a Machiavellian Marcus, perhaps. Does he achieve anything historical Marcus failed at?
DR: The Historia Augusta actually says “Some maintain – and held it a fault – that he was insincere and not as guileless as he seemed…” Perhaps that’s similar to what you mean. I think it’s possible that Marcus may have orchestrated a co-ordinated military coup against the Emperor Avidius Cassius, with whom he was engaged in a (brief) civil war. The official story seems to be that two of Cassius’ junior officers assassinated him of their own accord but it seems implausible to me that they could have acted alone.
There are various indications of this but let’s highlight just two. First, it’s difficult to see how these officers would just walk out of Syria with the usurper emperor’s head in a bag and deliver it to Marcus unless the countless soldiers surrounding them were immediately ordered not to harm them, by whoever assumed command following Cassius’ death. Second, we’re also told that the prefect of Egypt, appointed by Cassius, was assassinated by the army around the same time, which suggests some pretty efficient coordination by the assassins.
It’s possible that others organized this and then surrendered to Marcus but it’s also possible that Marcus was “not as guileless as he seemed” and was involved with the planning at some level.
If Marcus was more ruthless, he might have assassinated Cassius earlier, which would have prevented the First Marcomannic War from being interrupted. He might then have succeeded in his alleged plan to annex parts of Germania and Sarmatia and make them into new Roman provinces. I’m not sure how well that would have worked out for the Romans in the long-run, though.
AP: Many people criticize Marcus Aurelius for failing to live up to what they imagine a philosopher king should be. For instance, Emily Wilson, known for her feminist translations of the Illiad and the Odyssey, called him a “misanthropic, warmongering emperor.” Modern biographers of Marcus, like Frank McLynn, have considered Marcu’s Stoicism a bad influence. Was part of your reason for writing this new biography an attempt to set the record straight?
DR: Yes. I think it’s frankly absurd to call Marcus “misanthropic” – he was known for being very affectionate toward his friends and family. He was a very caring individual, and quite the opposite of a misanthrope. Was he warmongering? Well, it seems to me that by Roman standards he was, again, quite the opposite. He faced a civil war in which a whole faction of senators, apparently, and other senior figures, opposed his rule. What was their objection? Well, the evidence is scant but it seems to suggest that they viewed him as too much of a military dove and wanted to replace him with a more hawkish, or “warmongering”, emperor, in the form of Avidius Cassius. So, no, in that situation, I think it’s extremely misleading to label Marcus as the “warmongering” one.
He seems to have put more emphasis on diplomacy and, of course, none of the wars during his rule were instigated by Rome. He was responding to two major invasions – by the Parthians and, later, by a huge coalition of Germanic tribes – which threatened the eastern provinces in the first case and the safety of Rome, and survival of the whole empire, in the second case.
I enjoyed McLynn’s biography but, I think, like other readers, I was surprised by his rather dismissive attitude toward Stoicism, and found it, in fact, quite jarring to read. As I said in Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, I felt there was something missing in this regard from previous biographies. Writing a biography of Marcus Aurelius without really exploring the influence of Stoicism on his character and actions, and giving it due credit, would be like writing a biography of a famous Christian, such as St. Augustine, and ignoring or dismissing the relevance of his religious faith.
I think readers expect a biography of Marcus to help them understand how Stoicism may have guided his actions. Often it’s hard to know why someone did what they did, even if we have access to their philosophical reflections, but there are hopefully some instances where we can make reasonable links between the Meditations and what we find out about Marcus in the Roman histories.
AP: This is your third book on Marcus Aurelius and you’ve obviously thought about him a great deal. Are there any great mysteries about him that you’re still dying to have answers to or want to explore? Will we see another Marcus project from you down the line?
DR: I’ve just finished a book about Socrates, called How to Think Like Socrates, which is due out in November. So for now, I think I’m more likely to be focusing on writing more about him but perhaps one day I’ll return to Marcus. If I do so, it’s likely to be more focused on what he can teach us about specific problems, such as how to cope with anger, for instance.
Are there any things that still puzzle me? Of course. There’s a long list. For instance, I just gave a talk at the ruins of ancient Eleusis, where Marcus was initiated into the Eleusinian mystery religion, based on the cult of Demeter. There is a huge bust of an emperor, whom we believe to be Marcus, which survives today, and once adorned the propylaea or monumental gate, leading into the temple complex. It’s encircled by what appear to be images of wheat sheafs and poppy flowers – symbols of the Eleusinian mysteries.
So it would be interesting to know more about what Marcus learned from the mysteries and how it related to his Stoicism. As his initiation took place, we think, after he wrote the Meditations, and it would have been a very powerful experience, perhaps involving taking the hallucinogenic drug ergot, we may wonder whether it changed his views from those expressed in the Meditations.
I’d like to know more about who introduced Marcus to Stoicism – whether, for instance, it was his mother who chose his Stoic tutors. It would also be interesting to know what books on Stoicism Marcus had read, apart from the Discourses of Epictetus.
AP: The ancient Stoics saw themselves as heirs to Socrates and a branch of his philosophical system. Do you think modern Stoics would benefit by embracing any Socratic ideas that we don’t hear the Stoic “big three” talking about, like skepticism of what we can really know? Should Socratic ideas be a bigger part of Stoicism, or are they already sufficiently baked in?
DR: I think it may be impossible to fully understand the Stoics without understanding Socrates. Perhaps that’s an impossible task but I certainly believe anyone interested in Stoicism should read Plato and Xenophon, and also the anecdotes about Socrates in works such as Diogenes Laertius.
Epictetus repeatedly, and quite emphatically, tells his students they should emulate Socrates. How can we do that if we don’t know anything about Socrates? So we have to study him to understand what Epictetus means in that regard, but also in many other ways.
The surviving Stoic texts mainly explore the practical application of ideas found in earlier works of philosophy. They often don’t provide philosophical arguments because they assume those are already familiar from sources such as the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. We get the arguments from Socrates and in the Stoics, in a sense, we mainly get a bullet point list of conclusions derived from them. (At least in the works that survive.)
We can see that Epictetus used the Socratic method and, likewise, we need to learn how to use that method ourselves if we want to do philosophy in the way that he was doing it with his students. (There’s a well-known book about the influence of Socrates on Epictetus, e.g., by A.A. Long.)
There are many individual ideas that we can derive from Socrates, and many ways in which the Socratic dialogues shed important light on Stoic writings. In my book on Socrates, I even mention that in Xenophon’s Memorabilia we’re told Socrates used a diagram to teach the basic cognitive skills required for his method – and we find a reference to a Roman Stoic teacher apparently using a similar teaching aid, centuries later, in the satires of Persius.
The most widely quoted passage in the surviving Stoic literature is Encheiridion 5 where Epictetus says that it’s not things that upset us but rather our opinions about them. However, people seldom go on to quote the next couple of sentences, in which Epictetus refers to the example of Socrates being unafraid of death. In fact this doctrine, which is often seen as characteristically Stoic, can be found in the Socratic dialogues of both Plato and Xenophon, centuries before Epictetus. So it may be more Socratic than Stoic. I think that’s partly why Epictetus mentions Socrates here.
AP: This study has made the rounds in Stoicism circles. It claims there’s “no statistically detectable difference between the behavior of ethicists and non-ethicists (among professional philosophers)” Varied people have used it to poo-poo the idea that philosophy will make us better people. Others equate these ethicists with the theoretically-minded philosophers who never work on themselves that Epictetus talks about. What’s your read on this? Can philosophy help us be better humans on a societal scale, or do we need externally-imposed systems to reign in our vices?
DR: Those people you mention need to take a basic class in research methods because they’re guilty of committing a notorious schoolboy error, if that’s how they interpret this study. This is a correlational study and therefore it is methodologically incapable of establishing causation. If they say it tells them that philosophy cannot “make us” better people then they’re definitely committing the fallacy of confusing correlation and causation. For instance, for all we know ethicists might be more likely, before training, to have been individuals who lack the traits associated with ethical behaviour.
This would be like saying there’s no statistical difference in terms of frequency of headaches between the people who take painkillers and people who don’t – that could be because people who take painkillers had more frequent headaches to begin with and are, as a result of medication, now no worse off than average. That’s just one reason why researchers do not usually attempt to draw causal conclusions from correlational findings.
I believe that training in philosophy can potentially help us to become more ethical individuals. However, as you say, that’s likely to require the application of philosophy to daily life rather than just its study in a university library or seminar room. Doing philosophy on a blackboard won’t necessarily make you a better person any more than reading a therapy book will cure your panic attacks, if you don’t actually put the advice into practice in a rigorous way, in daily life, and, in particular, in the situations where you most need to improve your responses. That’s pretty clear from what the Stoics say.
In fact, Epictetus makes quite a song and dance about this with his students. He says that if they just read books on philosophy and argue about what they say, without putting it into practice, they’re no better than, say, literary theorists, or perhaps theologians. (As I recall the analogy he uses is people who interpret the meaning of Homer’s epic poems.) Stoicism emphasizes this practical application of philosophy to daily life more than most other schools of philosophy but, again, they inherit this from Socrates, the quintessential Athenian philosopher who preceded them.
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