The Death of Marcus Aurelius
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Saturday, August 9, 2025
Stockdale on Stoicism 50
Then I got back into trouble. At that time, the commissar of prisons had had me isolated and under almost constant surveillance for the year since I had staged a riot in Alcatraz to get us out of leg irons.
I was barred from all prisoner cell-blocks. I had special handlers, and they caught me with an outbound note that gave leads I knew the interrogators could develop through torture. The result would be to implicate my friends in "black activities," as the North Vietnamese called them.
I had been through those ropes more than a dozen times, and I knew I could contain material—so long as they didn't know I knew it. But this note would open doors that could lead to more people getting killed in there. We had lost a few in big purges—I think in torture overshoots—and I was getting tired of it.
It was the fall of 1969. I had been in this role for four years, and saw nothing left for me to do but check out.
It was the fall of 1969. I had been in this role for four years, and saw nothing left for me to do but check out.
I was solo in the main torture room in an isolated part of the prison the night before what they told me would be my day to spill my guts. There was an eerie mood in the prison. Ho Chi Minh had just died and special dirge music was in the air. I was to sit up all night in traveling irons.
My chair was near the only pane-glass window in the prison. I was able to waddle over and break the window stealthily. I went after my wrist arteries with the big shards. I had knocked the light out, but the patrol guard happened to find me passed out in a pool of blood but still breathing. The Vietnamese went to General Quarters, got their doctor, and saved me.
Why? It was not until after I was released years later that I learned that that very week, my wife, Sybil, was in Paris demanding humane treatment for prisoners. She was on world news, a public figure, and the last thing the North Vietnamese needed was me dead.
Why? It was not until after I was released years later that I learned that that very week, my wife, Sybil, was in Paris demanding humane treatment for prisoners. She was on world news, a public figure, and the last thing the North Vietnamese needed was me dead.
There was a very solemn crowd of senior North Vietnamese officers in that room as I was revived. Prison torture, as we had known it in Hanoi, ended for everybody that night.
Of course, it was months before we could be sure that was so. All I knew at the time was that, in the morning, after my arms had been dressed and bandaged, the commissar himself brought in a hot cup of sweet tea, told my surveillance guard to take off my leg irons, and asked me to sit at the table with him.
Of course, it was months before we could be sure that was so. All I knew at the time was that, in the morning, after my arms had been dressed and bandaged, the commissar himself brought in a hot cup of sweet tea, told my surveillance guard to take off my leg irons, and asked me to sit at the table with him.
"Why did you do this, Stockdale? You know I sit with the army's General Staff; they've asked for a full report this morning." It was not unusual for us to talk like that by that time.
But he never once mentioned the note, nor did anybody else thereafter. That was unprecedented. After a couple of months in a tiny isolated cell we called Calcutta to let my arms heal, they blindfolded me and walked me right into the "Las Vegas" cell block. The isolation and special surveillance were over. I was put, solo of course, in the Mint.
Dave Hatcher knew I was back because I walked under his window, and though he could not peek out, he could listen, and over the years he had attuned his ear to my walking "signature," my limping gait.
Dave Hatcher knew I was back because I walked under his window, and though he could not peek out, he could listen, and over the years he had attuned his ear to my walking "signature," my limping gait.
Soon enough, the rusty wire over the sink in the washroom was bent to the north—Dave Hatcher's signal for "note in the bottle under the sink for Stockdale."
Like an old fighter pilot, I checked my six o'clock, scooped the note up fast, and concealed it in my prison pajama pants, carefully. Back in my cell, after the guard locked the door, I sat on my toilet bucket—where I could stealthily jettison the note if the peephole cover moved—and unfolded Hatcher's sheet of low-grade paper toweling on which he had printed with rat dropping, without comment or signature, the last verse of Ernest Henley's poem lnvictus:
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul."
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul."
—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.12
M. Though Zeno the Citiaean, a stranger and an inconsiderable coiner of words, appears to have insinuated himself into the old philosophy; still, the prevalence of this opinion is due to the authority of Plato, who often makes use of this expression, “That nothing but virtue can be entitled to the name of good,” agreeably to what Socrates says in Plato’s Gorgias.
For it is there related that when someone asked him if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, “I do not know,” replied he, “for I never conversed with him.”
“What! is there no other way you can know it by?”
“None at all.”
“You cannot, then, pronounce of the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not?”
“How can I, when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is?”
“What! Do you imagine that a happy life depends on that?”
“My opinion entirely is, that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable.”
“Is Archelaus, then, miserable?”
“Certainly, if unjust.”
Now, does it not appear to you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone? But what does the same man say in his funeral oration?
“For,” said he, “whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon himself."
For it is there related that when someone asked him if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, “I do not know,” replied he, “for I never conversed with him.”
“What! is there no other way you can know it by?”
“None at all.”
“You cannot, then, pronounce of the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not?”
“How can I, when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is?”
“What! Do you imagine that a happy life depends on that?”
“My opinion entirely is, that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable.”
“Is Archelaus, then, miserable?”
“Certainly, if unjust.”
Now, does it not appear to you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone? But what does the same man say in his funeral oration?
“For,” said he, “whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon himself."
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.12
It is passages such as these that remind me why I remain committed to philosophy, despite all of the posturing and bickering that often goes along with it. They move me in a way not unlike the power of poetry, stripping away all that is extraneous and revealing only the vital core, offering reasons, both profound and palpable, to leap out of bed each morning. Perhaps a painter knows something of this when he catches the light streaming through the window just so, or a mathematician feels a similar exhilaration at the sight of an elegant equation.
If you ask the mainstream historians, they will assure you that Archelaus of Macedon was a successful king, a champion of reform, a bringer of prosperity, and a patron of the arts. They will brush aside Plato’s concerns, simply because they are working from a different standard of excellence, and they are willing to overlook the claims that he had won the throne by means of intrigue and murder. Before calling a man good, consider what truly makes a man good.
I have no clue if Archelaus was a saint or a sinner, but I do know that a soul filled with wickedness is a soul bound for misery; the school of hard knocks has taught me this, and my encounters with philosophy have merely confirmed it. If this sounds too cynical and gloomy, consider the reverse: whenever I cling to the virtues, my happiness always remains within my grasp. It’s as simple, and as difficult, as that.
As I sometimes travel in highbrow circles, I will find myself in the midst of debates about who was the “greatest” president or the “best” novelist, and if I am pushed for an answer, I say that, while it is interesting to discuss their public policies or their published works, I have little to offer on their moral worth, the one thing that counts the most, since I never had the privilege of their company.
Beyond the skill to win a war, did Lincoln treat his neighbor with decency? Besides the beauty of his prose, was Dickens a man of personal integrity? What a fellow proclaims from a lectern or writes down on a page is not the measure of his character, and it is only his character that will make him or break him. I do not prefer it when strangers judge me by distant appearances, and so I try my best to avoid the same error.
I was recently told how Seneca was a failure because he couldn’t reform his student, and how Marcus Aurelius was flawed because he had a rotten son. It may be that Nero chose to be a scoundrel, and Commodus ended up as a cad, yet that was solely for them to decide, and it need not reflect poorly on the merit of their mentors, who acted as they thought best. The achievement is in how we act toward others, not in how others respond to us.
Money comes and goes. Fame comes and goes. Yes, even friends and family come and go. In the end, we have control over our own virtues and vices, by which we determine our own peace of mind.
It is passages such as these that remind me why I remain committed to philosophy, despite all of the posturing and bickering that often goes along with it. They move me in a way not unlike the power of poetry, stripping away all that is extraneous and revealing only the vital core, offering reasons, both profound and palpable, to leap out of bed each morning. Perhaps a painter knows something of this when he catches the light streaming through the window just so, or a mathematician feels a similar exhilaration at the sight of an elegant equation.
If you ask the mainstream historians, they will assure you that Archelaus of Macedon was a successful king, a champion of reform, a bringer of prosperity, and a patron of the arts. They will brush aside Plato’s concerns, simply because they are working from a different standard of excellence, and they are willing to overlook the claims that he had won the throne by means of intrigue and murder. Before calling a man good, consider what truly makes a man good.
I have no clue if Archelaus was a saint or a sinner, but I do know that a soul filled with wickedness is a soul bound for misery; the school of hard knocks has taught me this, and my encounters with philosophy have merely confirmed it. If this sounds too cynical and gloomy, consider the reverse: whenever I cling to the virtues, my happiness always remains within my grasp. It’s as simple, and as difficult, as that.
As I sometimes travel in highbrow circles, I will find myself in the midst of debates about who was the “greatest” president or the “best” novelist, and if I am pushed for an answer, I say that, while it is interesting to discuss their public policies or their published works, I have little to offer on their moral worth, the one thing that counts the most, since I never had the privilege of their company.
Beyond the skill to win a war, did Lincoln treat his neighbor with decency? Besides the beauty of his prose, was Dickens a man of personal integrity? What a fellow proclaims from a lectern or writes down on a page is not the measure of his character, and it is only his character that will make him or break him. I do not prefer it when strangers judge me by distant appearances, and so I try my best to avoid the same error.
I was recently told how Seneca was a failure because he couldn’t reform his student, and how Marcus Aurelius was flawed because he had a rotten son. It may be that Nero chose to be a scoundrel, and Commodus ended up as a cad, yet that was solely for them to decide, and it need not reflect poorly on the merit of their mentors, who acted as they thought best. The achievement is in how we act toward others, not in how others respond to us.
Money comes and goes. Fame comes and goes. Yes, even friends and family come and go. In the end, we have control over our own virtues and vices, by which we determine our own peace of mind.
—Reflection written in 2/1999
Friday, August 8, 2025
Stoic Snippets 268
In the application of your principles you must be like the pancratiast, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.9
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.11
A. You compel me to be of your opinion; but have a care that you are not inconsistent yourself.
M. In what respect?
A. Because I have lately read your fourth book on Good and Evil: and in that you appeared to me, while disputing against Cato, to be endeavoring to show, which in my opinion means to prove, that Zeno and the Peripatetics differ only about some new words; but if we allow that, what reason can there be, if it follows from the arguments of Zeno that virtue contains all that is necessary to a happy life, that the Peripatetics should not be at liberty to say the same? For, in my opinion, regard should be had to the thing, not to words.
M. What! you would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.
But, since I just now spoke of consistency, I do not think the inquiry in this place is, if the opinion of Zeno and his pupil Aristo be true that nothing is good but what is honorable; but, admitting that, then, whether the whole of a happy life can be rested on virtue alone. Wherefore, if we certainly grant Brutus this, that a wise man is always happy, how consistent he is, is his own business; for who, indeed, is more worthy than himself of the glory of that opinion? Still, we may maintain that such a man is more happy than anyone else.
M. In what respect?
A. Because I have lately read your fourth book on Good and Evil: and in that you appeared to me, while disputing against Cato, to be endeavoring to show, which in my opinion means to prove, that Zeno and the Peripatetics differ only about some new words; but if we allow that, what reason can there be, if it follows from the arguments of Zeno that virtue contains all that is necessary to a happy life, that the Peripatetics should not be at liberty to say the same? For, in my opinion, regard should be had to the thing, not to words.
M. What! you would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.
But, since I just now spoke of consistency, I do not think the inquiry in this place is, if the opinion of Zeno and his pupil Aristo be true that nothing is good but what is honorable; but, admitting that, then, whether the whole of a happy life can be rested on virtue alone. Wherefore, if we certainly grant Brutus this, that a wise man is always happy, how consistent he is, is his own business; for who, indeed, is more worthy than himself of the glory of that opinion? Still, we may maintain that such a man is more happy than anyone else.
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.11
Indeed, we must be consistent in our consistency, while at the same time not succumbing to a small-minded conformity, always remaining open to the potential for new knowledge, and sensitive to the subtleties of different perspectives. I would rather be sluggish in my judgments than exclude the possibility of a common understanding.
The Auditor continues to be on his toes, not allowing Cicero to get away with any sloppy reasoning. If we expect Aristotle, Epicurus, or Brutus to present a coherent account, should we not also strive to do the same?
I admire how Cicero considered many points of view, and was willing to take the best from any tradition, always assessing the argument by the demands of daily living. Nevertheless, it may sometimes appear as if he had conflicting loyalties, embracing this school in one text, and then praising that school in another. At what point does being open-minded devolve into waffling?
I imagine some of this had to do with the discipline of rhetoric, of which Cicero was a master, where a writer would hone his skills by defending diverse positions. At the same time, however, there was Cicero’s philosophical training in the moderate skepticism of the Academics, which avoided a dogmatic certainty in favor of a practical likelihood. In other words, if the shoe happens to fit, feel free to wear it.
While the Tusculan Disputations are quite friendly to the Stoics, On the Ends of Good and Evil is a bit more critical. Yes, there is a freedom to roam here, though the man who likes the assurance of his principles may feel uneasy. Once again, I suspect that the Stoics of the time could be quite rigid in their doctrines, and Cicero’s pragmatic approach was more interested in the reality of things over a speculation about words.
I have myself contemplated ways to bring Zeno and Aristotle closer together, not because I am being wishy-washy, but because I aim for a shared truth to all sincere and authentic inquiry. However broadly or narrowly they defined their terms, the Stoics and the Peripatetics would surely have agreed that a good life must be virtuous, yet there remains some doubt if a good life will be a happy life, or to what extent fortune will play a role.
Let Brutus attend to his own opinions, and let us attend to ours. Whether happiness is pure or can be mixed might become clearer by examining its essence—only then can we discuss its accidents.
In his usual sweeping fashion, Cicero will next turn to Plato for some further guidance on the matter. . . .
Indeed, we must be consistent in our consistency, while at the same time not succumbing to a small-minded conformity, always remaining open to the potential for new knowledge, and sensitive to the subtleties of different perspectives. I would rather be sluggish in my judgments than exclude the possibility of a common understanding.
The Auditor continues to be on his toes, not allowing Cicero to get away with any sloppy reasoning. If we expect Aristotle, Epicurus, or Brutus to present a coherent account, should we not also strive to do the same?
I admire how Cicero considered many points of view, and was willing to take the best from any tradition, always assessing the argument by the demands of daily living. Nevertheless, it may sometimes appear as if he had conflicting loyalties, embracing this school in one text, and then praising that school in another. At what point does being open-minded devolve into waffling?
I imagine some of this had to do with the discipline of rhetoric, of which Cicero was a master, where a writer would hone his skills by defending diverse positions. At the same time, however, there was Cicero’s philosophical training in the moderate skepticism of the Academics, which avoided a dogmatic certainty in favor of a practical likelihood. In other words, if the shoe happens to fit, feel free to wear it.
While the Tusculan Disputations are quite friendly to the Stoics, On the Ends of Good and Evil is a bit more critical. Yes, there is a freedom to roam here, though the man who likes the assurance of his principles may feel uneasy. Once again, I suspect that the Stoics of the time could be quite rigid in their doctrines, and Cicero’s pragmatic approach was more interested in the reality of things over a speculation about words.
I have myself contemplated ways to bring Zeno and Aristotle closer together, not because I am being wishy-washy, but because I aim for a shared truth to all sincere and authentic inquiry. However broadly or narrowly they defined their terms, the Stoics and the Peripatetics would surely have agreed that a good life must be virtuous, yet there remains some doubt if a good life will be a happy life, or to what extent fortune will play a role.
Let Brutus attend to his own opinions, and let us attend to ours. Whether happiness is pure or can be mixed might become clearer by examining its essence—only then can we discuss its accidents.
In his usual sweeping fashion, Cicero will next turn to Plato for some further guidance on the matter. . . .
—Reflection written in 2/1999
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Henry David Thoreau 9
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. This may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.
—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (6 July, 1840)
IMAGE: Edvard Munch, Summer Night by the Beach (1903)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 14
Money often costs too much.
—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
IMAGE: Simon Vouet, Allegory of Contempt for Wealth (c. 1640)
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.10
M. But it is the duty of one who would argue accurately to consider not what is said, but what is said consistently. As in that very opinion which we have adopted in this discussion, namely, that every good man is always happy, it is clear what I mean by good men: I call those both wise and good men who are provided and adorned with every virtue.
Let us see, then, who are to be called happy. I imagine, indeed, that those men are to be called so who are possessed of good without any alloy of evil; nor is there any other notion connected with the word that expresses happiness but an absolute enjoyment of good without any evil.
Virtue cannot attain this, if there is anything good besides itself. For a crowd of evils would present themselves, if we were to allow poverty, obscurity, humility, solitude, the loss of friends, acute pains of the body, the loss of health, weakness, blindness, the ruin of one’s country, banishment, slavery, to be evils; for a wise man may be afflicted by all these evils, numerous and important as they are, and many others also may be added, for they are brought on by chance, which may attack a wise man; but if these things are evils, who can maintain that a wise man is always happy when all these evils may light on him at the same time?
I therefore do not easily agree with my friend Brutus, nor with our common masters, nor those ancient ones, Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, who reckon all that I have mentioned above as evils, and yet they say that a wise man is always happy; nor can I allow them, because they are charmed with this beautiful and illustrious title, which would very well become Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, to persuade my mind that strength, health, beauty, riches, honors, power, with the beauty of which they are ravished, are contemptible, and that all those things which are the opposites of these are not to be regarded.
Then might they declare openly, with a loud voice, that neither the attacks of fortune, nor the opinion of the multitude, nor pain, nor poverty, occasions them any apprehensions; and that they have everything within themselves, and that there is nothing whatever which they consider as good but what is within their own power.
Nor can I by any means allow the same person who falls into the vulgar opinion of good and evil to make use of these expressions, which can only become a great and exalted man.
Struck with which glory, up starts Epicurus, who, with submission to the Gods, thinks a wise man always happy. He is much charmed with the dignity of this opinion, but he never would have owned that, had he attended to himself; for what is there more inconsistent than for one who could say that pain was the greatest or the only evil to think also that a wise man can possibly say in the midst of his torture, “How sweet is this!”
We are not, therefore, to form our judgment of philosophers from detached sentences, but from their consistency with themselves, and their ordinary manner of talking.
Let us see, then, who are to be called happy. I imagine, indeed, that those men are to be called so who are possessed of good without any alloy of evil; nor is there any other notion connected with the word that expresses happiness but an absolute enjoyment of good without any evil.
Virtue cannot attain this, if there is anything good besides itself. For a crowd of evils would present themselves, if we were to allow poverty, obscurity, humility, solitude, the loss of friends, acute pains of the body, the loss of health, weakness, blindness, the ruin of one’s country, banishment, slavery, to be evils; for a wise man may be afflicted by all these evils, numerous and important as they are, and many others also may be added, for they are brought on by chance, which may attack a wise man; but if these things are evils, who can maintain that a wise man is always happy when all these evils may light on him at the same time?
I therefore do not easily agree with my friend Brutus, nor with our common masters, nor those ancient ones, Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, who reckon all that I have mentioned above as evils, and yet they say that a wise man is always happy; nor can I allow them, because they are charmed with this beautiful and illustrious title, which would very well become Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, to persuade my mind that strength, health, beauty, riches, honors, power, with the beauty of which they are ravished, are contemptible, and that all those things which are the opposites of these are not to be regarded.
Then might they declare openly, with a loud voice, that neither the attacks of fortune, nor the opinion of the multitude, nor pain, nor poverty, occasions them any apprehensions; and that they have everything within themselves, and that there is nothing whatever which they consider as good but what is within their own power.
Nor can I by any means allow the same person who falls into the vulgar opinion of good and evil to make use of these expressions, which can only become a great and exalted man.
Struck with which glory, up starts Epicurus, who, with submission to the Gods, thinks a wise man always happy. He is much charmed with the dignity of this opinion, but he never would have owned that, had he attended to himself; for what is there more inconsistent than for one who could say that pain was the greatest or the only evil to think also that a wise man can possibly say in the midst of his torture, “How sweet is this!”
We are not, therefore, to form our judgment of philosophers from detached sentences, but from their consistency with themselves, and their ordinary manner of talking.
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.10
We are familiar with the way the lawyers, the politicians, and the journalists are skilled at manipulating the context, and yet we are all prone to being woefully inconsistent. If I were to be held accountable for every word I have ever said, I would surely deserve the fires of hell, so it is fortunate that the best can be so forgiving of the rest.
A man should be judged gradually, by how he lives over time, rather than hastily, by what he exclaims in the heat of the moment. Even the philosopher may be swept along by idle speculation or a wayward mood, so it is wisest to consider the whole instead of picking away at the parts. Given also how we can grow in wisdom, what was proudly declared yesterday might be quite embarrassing today.
Beyond the foibles, and after a deep breath, how am I to define being good and being happy? The grand theories aside, how does this play itself out in my daily living? Cicero clearly and concisely identifies goodness with virtue, as the perfection of our nature, and happiness with a satisfaction in that good, without being subject to any evil.
Now if virtue is indeed our only good, then the man of character requires nothing beyond it, but if there are other human goods besides virtue, then he is subject to miseries outside the power of his own judgments. When I consider wealth as a further good, then I will be troubled by poverty. When I seek after fame, I will be laid low by obscurity. When I expect pleasures for the flesh, I will be devastated by the coming of disease and the prospect of death.
Though I can strive to be the most prudent, brave, temperate, and just fellow, these noble traits will not be enough for my contentment, because money, popularity, or health are at the whims of fortune. I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry when I come across a particular sort of privileged attitude, that of the bigwig who believes he has somehow earned his prosperity; for all of his efforts, none of it would have come to pass without the accidents of circumstance.
Both kingpins and philosophers will often be working from a contradiction, by first insisting that we must rise above our lusts and our fears, and then later turning around to bemoan the horrors of deprivation and hardship. If the human good derives from what is on the inside, there is no place for faulting evils on the outside—they are hardly evils at all if we rightly understood the true source of our blessings.
In some cases, it is pure hypocrisy, but in many others, it is a fundamental perplexity, an unstable model that changes depending upon whatever is most convenient at the time. We see exactly why it is best to observe the constancy of deeds, instead of the volatility of words.
While I am desperately trying not to denounce Epicurus, I can grant Cicero’s point: it is nonsense to abide by wisdom and virtue while simultaneously fleeing from pain and adversity. Even if this is reading the Epicureans out of context, the world is lamentably full of those who would like to have their cake and eat it too.
Beware of the pampered tycoons and the highbrows in their ivory towers: they don’t always practice what they preach.
We are familiar with the way the lawyers, the politicians, and the journalists are skilled at manipulating the context, and yet we are all prone to being woefully inconsistent. If I were to be held accountable for every word I have ever said, I would surely deserve the fires of hell, so it is fortunate that the best can be so forgiving of the rest.
A man should be judged gradually, by how he lives over time, rather than hastily, by what he exclaims in the heat of the moment. Even the philosopher may be swept along by idle speculation or a wayward mood, so it is wisest to consider the whole instead of picking away at the parts. Given also how we can grow in wisdom, what was proudly declared yesterday might be quite embarrassing today.
Beyond the foibles, and after a deep breath, how am I to define being good and being happy? The grand theories aside, how does this play itself out in my daily living? Cicero clearly and concisely identifies goodness with virtue, as the perfection of our nature, and happiness with a satisfaction in that good, without being subject to any evil.
Now if virtue is indeed our only good, then the man of character requires nothing beyond it, but if there are other human goods besides virtue, then he is subject to miseries outside the power of his own judgments. When I consider wealth as a further good, then I will be troubled by poverty. When I seek after fame, I will be laid low by obscurity. When I expect pleasures for the flesh, I will be devastated by the coming of disease and the prospect of death.
Though I can strive to be the most prudent, brave, temperate, and just fellow, these noble traits will not be enough for my contentment, because money, popularity, or health are at the whims of fortune. I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry when I come across a particular sort of privileged attitude, that of the bigwig who believes he has somehow earned his prosperity; for all of his efforts, none of it would have come to pass without the accidents of circumstance.
Both kingpins and philosophers will often be working from a contradiction, by first insisting that we must rise above our lusts and our fears, and then later turning around to bemoan the horrors of deprivation and hardship. If the human good derives from what is on the inside, there is no place for faulting evils on the outside—they are hardly evils at all if we rightly understood the true source of our blessings.
In some cases, it is pure hypocrisy, but in many others, it is a fundamental perplexity, an unstable model that changes depending upon whatever is most convenient at the time. We see exactly why it is best to observe the constancy of deeds, instead of the volatility of words.
While I am desperately trying not to denounce Epicurus, I can grant Cicero’s point: it is nonsense to abide by wisdom and virtue while simultaneously fleeing from pain and adversity. Even if this is reading the Epicureans out of context, the world is lamentably full of those who would like to have their cake and eat it too.
Beware of the pampered tycoons and the highbrows in their ivory towers: they don’t always practice what they preach.
—Reflection written in 2/1999
Monday, August 4, 2025
The Basel Dance of Death 11
Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Count (1616)
Bitter Death pulls you away.
Do not mourn over wife and child,
You must dance with this rabble."
"In this world I was well known,
and also called a noble Count.
Now I am felled by Death,
and placed here in this dance."
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 56
LVI.
When you resolve to do what's right and fit,
Why should you shun being seen in doing it?
Why should you sneak, or why avoid the light,
Like conscious bats, that only fly by night?
What though the vulgar, who all sense disclaim,
That many-headed monster without brain,
Your actions through gross ignorance condemn;
You're likely in the right, when blam'd by them.
But if the action's bad, you ought to shun
Th' attempting it, for 'tis not to be done.
If good, what cause have you to dread or sly
Their false reproaches, and rude calumny?
James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 22
22.
Ἆρόν με καὶ βάλε, ὅπου θέλεις. κἀκεῖ γὰρ ἕξω τὸν ἐμὸν δαίμονα ἵλεων, τουτέστιν, ἀρκούμενον, εἰ ἔχοι καὶ ἐνεργοίη κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς τῇ ἰδίᾳ κατασκευῇ.
Ἆρα τοῦτο ἄξιον, ἵνα δἰ αὐτὸ κακῶς μοι ἔχῃ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ χείρων ἑαυτῆς ᾖ, ταπεινουμένη, ὀρεγομένη, συνδυομένη, πτυρομένη; καὶ τί εὑρήσεις τούτου ἄξιον;
22.
Pack me whither ye may, it is good scope—
Be it a wild, it shall have all my voice;
Or thick with haunts of men, there visions ope.
And there, be it wild, or thick with haunts of men,
What matter, since my ruling part divine
Shall be content, and have it in my ken
To live my nature as Nature doth design!
For what! Some misadventure shall be able
To ruffle up my mind or trip me down?
That I were weak, servile, frightened, unstable,
Who could defend these flutters of a clown?
When, where or whither I, this much I see:
I am my master, what to do or be.
IMAGE: Hans Holbein the Younger, Wild Man (c. 1528)
Saturday, August 2, 2025
Dhammapada 403
Him I call indeed a Brahmana whose knowledge is deep, who possesses wisdom, who knows the right way and the wrong, and has attained the highest end.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.9
M. This is the point which Theophrastus was unable to maintain; for after he had once laid down the position that stripes, torments, tortures, the ruin of one’s country, banishment, the loss of children, had great influence on men’s living miserably and unhappily, he dared not any longer use any high and lofty expressions when he was so low and abject in his opinion.
How right he was is not the question; he certainly was consistent. Therefore, I am not for objecting to consequences where the premises are admitted. But this most elegant and learned of all the philosophers is not taken to task very severely when he asserts his three kinds of good; but he is attacked by everyone for that book which he wrote on a happy life, in which book he has many arguments why one who is tortured and racked cannot be happy.
For in that book, he is supposed to say that a man who is placed on the wheel (that is a kind of torture in use among the Greeks) cannot attain to a completely happy life. He nowhere, indeed, says so absolutely; but what he says amounts to the same thing.
Can I, then, find fault with him, after having allowed that pains of the body are evils, that the ruin of a man’s fortunes is an evil, if he should say that every good man is not happy, when all those things which he reckons as evils may befall a good man? The same Theophrastus is found fault with by all the books and schools of the philosophers for commending that sentence in his Callisthenes,
“Fortune, not wisdom, rules the life of man.”
They say never did philosopher assert anything so languid. They are right, indeed, in that; but I do not apprehend anything could be more consistent, for if there are so many good things that depend on the body, and so many foreign to it that depend on chance and fortune, is it inconsistent to say that fortune, which governs everything, both what is foreign and what belongs to the body, has greater power than counsel.
Or would we rather imitate Epicurus? Who is often excellent in many things which he speaks, but quite indifferent how consistent he may be, or how much to the purpose he is speaking.
He commends spare diet, and in that he speaks as a philosopher; but it is for Socrates or Antisthenes to say so, and not for one who confines all good to pleasure.
He denies that anyone can live pleasantly unless he lives honestly, wisely, and justly. Nothing is more dignified than this assertion, nothing more becoming a philosopher, had he not measured this very expression of living honestly, justly, and wisely by pleasure.
What could be better than to assert that fortune interferes but little with a wise man? But does he talk thus, who, after he has said that pain is the greatest evil, or the only evil, might himself be afflicted with the sharpest pains all over his body, even at the time he is vaunting himself the most against fortune?
And this very thing, too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: “I have anticipated you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so that you cannot possibly reach me.”
This would be excellent in the mouth of Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but what was base; but for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow—for you to say so, who define the chief good by a strong constitution of body, and well-assured hope of its continuance—for you to cut off every access of fortune! Why, you may instantly be deprived of that good.
Yet the simple are taken with these propositions, and a vast crowd is led away by such sentences to become their followers.
How right he was is not the question; he certainly was consistent. Therefore, I am not for objecting to consequences where the premises are admitted. But this most elegant and learned of all the philosophers is not taken to task very severely when he asserts his three kinds of good; but he is attacked by everyone for that book which he wrote on a happy life, in which book he has many arguments why one who is tortured and racked cannot be happy.
For in that book, he is supposed to say that a man who is placed on the wheel (that is a kind of torture in use among the Greeks) cannot attain to a completely happy life. He nowhere, indeed, says so absolutely; but what he says amounts to the same thing.
Can I, then, find fault with him, after having allowed that pains of the body are evils, that the ruin of a man’s fortunes is an evil, if he should say that every good man is not happy, when all those things which he reckons as evils may befall a good man? The same Theophrastus is found fault with by all the books and schools of the philosophers for commending that sentence in his Callisthenes,
“Fortune, not wisdom, rules the life of man.”
They say never did philosopher assert anything so languid. They are right, indeed, in that; but I do not apprehend anything could be more consistent, for if there are so many good things that depend on the body, and so many foreign to it that depend on chance and fortune, is it inconsistent to say that fortune, which governs everything, both what is foreign and what belongs to the body, has greater power than counsel.
Or would we rather imitate Epicurus? Who is often excellent in many things which he speaks, but quite indifferent how consistent he may be, or how much to the purpose he is speaking.
He commends spare diet, and in that he speaks as a philosopher; but it is for Socrates or Antisthenes to say so, and not for one who confines all good to pleasure.
He denies that anyone can live pleasantly unless he lives honestly, wisely, and justly. Nothing is more dignified than this assertion, nothing more becoming a philosopher, had he not measured this very expression of living honestly, justly, and wisely by pleasure.
What could be better than to assert that fortune interferes but little with a wise man? But does he talk thus, who, after he has said that pain is the greatest evil, or the only evil, might himself be afflicted with the sharpest pains all over his body, even at the time he is vaunting himself the most against fortune?
And this very thing, too, Metrodorus has said, but in better language: “I have anticipated you, Fortune; I have caught you, and cut off every access, so that you cannot possibly reach me.”
This would be excellent in the mouth of Aristo the Chian, or Zeno the Stoic, who held nothing to be an evil but what was base; but for you, Metrodorus, to anticipate the approaches of fortune, who confine all that is good to your bowels and marrow—for you to say so, who define the chief good by a strong constitution of body, and well-assured hope of its continuance—for you to cut off every access of fortune! Why, you may instantly be deprived of that good.
Yet the simple are taken with these propositions, and a vast crowd is led away by such sentences to become their followers.
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.9
I was immensely relieved to read this chapter, because I had a nagging question about a troublesome detail in the Aristotelian view of happiness.
Years ago, when I asked my professors, they would assure me I was making a mountain out of a molehill, and yet I still found myself stumbling over a tension in the claim that we are indeed perfected by the content of our character, with the provision that we nevertheless require certain favorable circumstances.
If the presence or absence of fortune can make our break our lives, then the virtues become just one component among many, and so we aren’t quite the masters of our blessings as much as we would like to think.
In everyday, non-egghead terms, it reminds me of when people say how “being a good person is really important,” only to quickly add that a comfortable amount of money, good health, a circle of loyal friends, and a rewarding career “are sort of important too.”
Pray tell, which one of these is the most important? If one gets in the way of the other, how do I pick between them? If I can’t be happy with my conscience after being thrown in the gutter, I’m afraid my real priorities are showing.
I in no way wish to oppose Aristote, since I find his argument sound, and I suspect that I was initially drawn to Stoicism by the way this school actually took such premises to their natural conclusions. If we are to define man as a rational animal, then it follows that we fulfill our proper end when we act through the excellence of our judgements. The Stoic is simply making certain that we do not stray from this measure of our highest good.
We do not live in a vacuum, of course, so our choices are always made under certain conditions, providing the material causes upon which we work as efficient causes. Now what sort of conditions must those be? The Stoic proposes that any sort of situation, however pleasant or unpleasant, can be an occasion or virtue, while those on the fence believe we can only thrive when the situation is convenient.
I will be so bold as to contend that this is far more than a technical distinction. It is the difference between a man who finds peace by always acting with conviction, regardless of the weather, and the man who will only be happy on a warm, sunny day. One makes his fate, the other submits to a roll of the dice.
I was immensely relieved to read this chapter, because I had a nagging question about a troublesome detail in the Aristotelian view of happiness.
Years ago, when I asked my professors, they would assure me I was making a mountain out of a molehill, and yet I still found myself stumbling over a tension in the claim that we are indeed perfected by the content of our character, with the provision that we nevertheless require certain favorable circumstances.
If the presence or absence of fortune can make our break our lives, then the virtues become just one component among many, and so we aren’t quite the masters of our blessings as much as we would like to think.
In everyday, non-egghead terms, it reminds me of when people say how “being a good person is really important,” only to quickly add that a comfortable amount of money, good health, a circle of loyal friends, and a rewarding career “are sort of important too.”
Pray tell, which one of these is the most important? If one gets in the way of the other, how do I pick between them? If I can’t be happy with my conscience after being thrown in the gutter, I’m afraid my real priorities are showing.
I in no way wish to oppose Aristote, since I find his argument sound, and I suspect that I was initially drawn to Stoicism by the way this school actually took such premises to their natural conclusions. If we are to define man as a rational animal, then it follows that we fulfill our proper end when we act through the excellence of our judgements. The Stoic is simply making certain that we do not stray from this measure of our highest good.
We do not live in a vacuum, of course, so our choices are always made under certain conditions, providing the material causes upon which we work as efficient causes. Now what sort of conditions must those be? The Stoic proposes that any sort of situation, however pleasant or unpleasant, can be an occasion or virtue, while those on the fence believe we can only thrive when the situation is convenient.
I will be so bold as to contend that this is far more than a technical distinction. It is the difference between a man who finds peace by always acting with conviction, regardless of the weather, and the man who will only be happy on a warm, sunny day. One makes his fate, the other submits to a roll of the dice.
Aristotle said that happiness “needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment.” I maintain that it may be difficult, but hardly impossible, to act with virtue in the face of misfortune, and that the proper equipment is whatever Providence has decided to offer us. You may, if you will, call it a radically Stoic reading of the Nicomachean Ethics.
I do not know, of course, precisely what Aristotle intended, but I have a sneaking suspicion that his student, Theophrastus, got himself tangled up in this very problem. We must be careful when we employ a term too loosely, or we add so many qualifications and footnotes that the original principle has become lost in the confusion.
Though Theophrastus began with the seemingly sensible contrast between external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, a failure to clarify the causal order between them must inevitably result in a mash-up. When circumstances are not completely subject to the virtues, we surrender ourselves as slaves to fortune.
Yet to his credit, at least Theophrastus was consistent in his thinking, a quality which Cicero finds sorely lacking in the Epicureans. At one moment, they praised a strictly virtuous life, and at the next moment they explained how the good life can only be determined by the greatest possible pleasure and the least possible pain. A philosophy cannot rest on equivocation, even as it makes for engaging soundbites.
To be fair, I do not imagine that Epicurus and Metrodorus intended to deceive; perhaps they observed how the contented man was able to balance his desires, and so they unwittingly treated a consequence of happiness as if it were the cause. In any case, Cicero here agrees with the Stoics, that a man who tries to serve both virtue and pleasure will sadly find himself in possession of neither.
To be fair, I do not imagine that Epicurus and Metrodorus intended to deceive; perhaps they observed how the contented man was able to balance his desires, and so they unwittingly treated a consequence of happiness as if it were the cause. In any case, Cicero here agrees with the Stoics, that a man who tries to serve both virtue and pleasure will sadly find himself in possession of neither.
—Reflection written in 2/1999
Friday, August 1, 2025
William Hogarth, Characters and Caricaturas
I do not have the refined eye of an art critic, and I can't keep track of whatever aesthetic happens to be fashionable at the moment, but I do know what I like, and I remain curious enough to ask myself why a certain image may speak to me with more vigor than another.
Over time, I have begun to identify certain styles and methods that succeed at making me both think and feel in wonderfully unexpected ways. My love of the three Williams—Hogarth, Blake, and Turner—is my own peculiar way of approaching art as if it were the reflection of a most elegant philosophy.
I know that my preferences are viewed as odd, and so I do not take offense when they are scorned by the in-crowd. I notice how Hogarth is quite often criticized by my peers, on the grounds that he was little more than a vulgar popularizer, and so it doesn't surprise me to see that he was also condemned in his own time.
This print, I am told, was a deliberate response by Hogarth to the claims that he depicted people in grossly exaggerated ways, merely as heavy-handed caricatures, with little sense of their human depths and subtleties, thereby failing to present them as genuine characters.
On the bottom left, Hogarth copied three character studies by Raphael, and on the bottom right he copied four caricatures by Carracci, Ghezzi, and da Vinci. He also added a quick line drawing, a sort of comical doodle, to show their pedigree. Above, he then offered a hundred faces representative of his own work.
The viewer is thus invited to decide for himself whether Hogarth was selling cheap parodies or celebrating nuanced realities.
I will only comment that I find great pleasure in carefully studying these hundred faces, puzzling about the temperaments and attitudes that stand behind them. I swear that I recognize many of them as folks I have known, with all their quirks and complexities.
At first, I worried that Hogarth was indeed distorting people's noses too much, until I bothered to carefully observe those around me in crowded places, like trains and restaurants. I was startled to see how truly diverse and peculiar noses can be, bizarre objects that would appear downright ridiculous if they weren't placed right in the middle of our faces.
Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.
William Hogarth, Characters and Caricaturas (1743)
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