An Interview with Eric Scott
The Stoic Fellowship is very pleased to offer this interview with Eric Scott. He is the founder of Stoics in Action and an active member of the Stoic Fellowship of Washington, D.C. Eric shared with us many interesting concepts that help teach Stoicism to others, plus many Stoic-related topics that help start discussions in groups.
DL = Dan Lampert (Organizer of The Orlando Stoics and Editor of Indifferents Quarterly)
ES = Eric Scott
DL: Thanks for sharing your time with us, Eric. What are the three basic goals of your group “Stoics in Action”?
ES: Hi Dan — Stoics in Action is a group we set up to emphasize and develop the active and pro-social side of a Stoic life. Stoicism is famous today as a strategy for emotional coping and resilience, but its core moral message is less well-known: moderns often mistake Stoicism for a “do-nothing” philosophy, or even for a sort of narcissistic focus on avoiding discomfort at all costs. I think this stereotype is actually a modern invention: in the ancient world, Stoicism had much the opposite reputation, and many of us today find a rich and urgent call to moral action and to compassion in the tradition.
The operative metaphor in the ancient texts is the Choice of Hercules: given a choice between a selfish road with no pain and a difficult road that benefits humanity (so the story goes), Hercules chose the painful path. We should strive to be like Hercules.
Stoics in Action approaches this mission from three angles:
* To show the world by example that — contrary to popular belief — Stoicism is an active, affectionate, philanthropic, and politically engaged way of life.
* To provide a forum for contemporary Stoics to develop and refine their approach to social life in six key domains: family, career, service, politics, the environment, and intersectional identities.
* To provide a nexus for Stoics to organize joint philanthropic projects, and/or to share tips and resources on how to get involved with service.
DL: Stoic group organizers are always looking for interesting topics that can start discussions. A couple years back, you wrote an article discussing the similarities between Stoicism and Hinduism. How would you summarize that today?
ES: We often like to talk about how Stoicism is a “perennial philosophy,” don’t we? I enjoy finding common themes between Stoicism and other traditions, and a litany of passages from the Upanishads couldn’t help but jump out at me when I read them — especially the notion of “detached action,” and of maintaining inner peace and purpose without becoming uncaring. Both traditions teach us that what is inside really matters, but also hasten to add that external things still have a kind of value that demands our attention and action.
But the really cool thing about looking for connections to other traditions is the conversations that it enables me to have. I love sitting down with a relative from India, a friend with a Buddhist background, or with my protestant Christian family here in the United States and talking about what tradition means in our lives. My background in Stoicism gives me a new way of communicating with people: when my father relates some trial he’s going through to a story from the Bible, I can tell the story of Zeno being shipwrecked and losing everything he owned, or invoke a Stoic idea like the dichotomy of control or the importance of being self-forgiving. People find it interesting to hear rich tidbits like that from a little-known tradition like Stoicism, and I learn by hearing about how people apply other traditions to situations in their life.
It’s easy to get carried away looking for similarities, of course. Traditions have hundreds or thousands of moving parts, so to speak — and much like spoken languages, just because they have dozens of similarities doesn’t mean that they are mutually intelligible (consider English and German!). So it’s important to acknowledge differences too. But especially on the level of face-to-face conversations, I’ve found it powerful to highlight specific points of common ground.
DL: In your web site’s blog, did some of the articles get more attention than others? I’m looking for good material that Stoic groups can discuss in their meetings?
ES: Our most-visited page tends to be the Stoics in Action Reading List, which collects links to over a hundred posts and papers by modern Stoics on everything from parenting to political activism.
This year our authors have contributed Stoic perspectives on hot-button issues like Brexit, Feminism, and the Yellow Vest movement. My sense, though, is that it’s actually easier to get people to talk about big political issues than about the nitty-gritty of applying virtue to our family lives and careers: we view Stoic action as filling all levels of the Circles of Hierocles. In that sense, Charmika Stewart’s essay “Ode to Friendship” is just as important to Stoic action as more political posts!
DL: Last year, you published a Stoic reading list, which included the names of Massimo Pigliucci and Donald Robertson. They are two of the most visible writers on Stoicism today. How do you feel their writings are contributing to the Modern Stoicism movement?
ES: You know, I’ve just started learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a newbie to martial arts, and I’m going through that phase where friends and family are asking “what’s it like?,” “how is it different from wrestling?,” “what if someone came at you with a knife?,” “does Jiu-Jitsu teach you how to handle someone much bigger than you?,” and worst of all — “what would you do if I did THIS!” Alasdair MacIntyre (who helped revive virtue ethics in the 20th century) had this idea that being able to answer questions like this is what it means to learn a tradition. The problem is that it can take a really long time to learn the answers to these questions (I’m really bad at Jiu-Jitsu questions — and boy did I get owned at my last open mat!).
We all go through the same phase with Stoicism: “what is Stoicism about?,” “how is it different from pessimism?,” “is it self-centered?,” “how does a Stoic make love?,” “does Epictetus really mean it when he tells us not to laugh heartily?,” “do I have to believe in Marcus Aurelius’s gods to follow Stoicism?,” “is it Stoic to enjoy music?,” “would a Stoic be an activist?” If we don’t get answers to these questions quickly, it’s easy to get turned off and give up (that bit about Epictetus and laughing kept me far away from Stoicism for years). As celebrated as the Roman Stoics are for their literary quality, I think they bury the lede on a lot of really important topics that balance out their way of life: like what healthy emotions look like, how action intersects with the dichotomy of control, or how moral aspiration is at the heart of why Stoics do what they do. And to be honest, most questions about Stoic tradition are best answered by Cicero. Newcomers rarely read Cicero.
What I love about authors like Pigliucci and Robertson is that they collect most of these little jewels that make Stoicism a cohesive and well-motivated way of life. Then they lay them out for us in a quick-paced and page-turning presentation. They’ve read Cicero and much, much more — and they can sit us down and explain in short order not just the dichotomy of control and the Inner Citadel, but other powerful metaphors like the shipwreck of Zeno, the Stoic Archer, the Choice of Hercules, and the Circles of Hierocles. We can learn up front about how the discipline of our emotions is just one part of a wider Stoic world view that emphasizes excellence, and how when Stoics advise against “emotion,” they’re actually only talking about a small (unhealthy) fraction of our natural emotional life.
Pigliucci, Robertson, et al.’s interpretations aren’t without their dissidents, of course (I find Chris Fisher’s countering school of “Traditional Stoicism” endlessly intriguing), but I think they fill a very important niche in teaching us common folk “How to Be a Stoic” — one that isn’t easy to find in more scholarly books, nor in more lightweight books like Ryan Holidays’. They’ve also done a great deal of work to develop Stoicism as a community and a living tradition — one that goes on to answer new questions that the ancients never would have considered (like “what do Stoic principles have to say about taking an Uber? Or going vegan?”).
DL: How can we overturn the myth that Stoics are quiet/detached/anti-social? Further, how can Stoics take action in society, justice, and even politics?
ES: By example. We can argue all we want that prominent critics of Stoicism (like Edith Hall or Martha Nussbaum) have misunderstood the ancient texts or emphasized the wrong things. But theoretical rebuttals aren’t the half of it: I think it’s a more powerful to be able to say “hey, look at all these ways that real-life modern Stoics are drawing on their philosophy to motivate positive action in the world!” Kai Whiting’s recent essay “Stoics are Already Standing Up” is a good example of a piece that hits both approaches at once.
In practice, though, I think Stoic action has to start with a habit of creative reflection: there are a thousand and one possible answers to the question “what would it mean for me to practice virtue and benevolence today?,” and the possibilities can be overwhelming. I find that that Circles of Hierocles helps: we can think of our duties as stretching from ourselves outward in successive layers that we can treat one at a time — “what would it mean for me to be a good husband/brother/son, friend, citizen, and employee today?”
Some of the answers personal and private: one of the first ways I put Stoicism into practice, for example, was by keeping a birthday calendar and mailing cards to close friends and family. That struck me as a natural way to live out Stoic death meditation — if we are all going to die, then I’d better invest in what matters! The ancients suggest several little practices like this: Seneca portrays physical exercise as having moral value (if nothing else, my wife has one less reason to worry about my health!), and Epictetus once had to remind his students that good personal hygiene is part of the practice of virtue!
After that, we have friendships and community service. Again, lots of options here — for me, the first challenge is simply getting involved: you can’t be a good friend if you never call your friends, and you can’t engage positively in the community if you aren’t part of any local clubs, churches, or civic groups. The idea that “civil society” is what connects healthy communities together is all the rage among pundits these days: even something like a Jiu Jitsu class or an astronomy club is exactly the sort of thing that builds bonds with people in your area, and ultimately allows us to help one another.
I think Stoic Fellowship chapters can fill a really important role here. A group of local Stoics that meet together is an excellent basis from which to start looking for positive service projects or philanthropic causes — or, yes, engagement in local politics.
Political causes are trickier, of course. Stoicism is compatible with both left-leaning and right-leaning political viewpoints, and modern Stoics will (and should!) disagree among themselves on politics. The Stoic world view does sketch out a few general principles (like the equality of all human beings, and a non-retributive approach to criminal justice), but each individual or small group will have to exercise their best judgement and decide how best to get politically involved.
For me, that’s meant participating in local Better Angels groups, which aim to reduce political polarization in the United States. But other Stoic friends of mine have applied virtue ethics to motivate their participation in climate change research, Black Lives Matter protests, LGBT rights events, pro-Brexit activities, and the Tea Party here in the U.S. These are turbulent waters! But a Stoic aims to draw on their reservoir of inner resilience, so that they can maintain their compassion and their resolve as they work on daunting and hot-button problems that face society.
DL: Sometimes, the world is negatively toxic, and Stoicism is good for dealing with this. However, once you described something called “positively toxic” in an article about social justice. Can you explain how a Stoic can be positively toxic?
ES: Well, I didn’t mean “positively toxic” as a complement! My argument was that Stoicism can be (and has been) abused to justify pointing fingers at groups of people who are suffering, and blaming them for their own unhappiness — while ignoring the responsibility that we all have to work toward a just and equitable society. Logically, “externals don’t matter to Happiness” can be the first step of an argument that ends with “so you shouldn’t complain if I abuse you and take things from you!”
All the leading figures of the modern Stoic movement (including Bill Irvine, who I was debating with in that piece) agree that that kind of logic is a perversion of Stoicism. Experts know (even if the world does not) that Stoicism also emphasizes Justice and working toward improving people’s external situation alongside the internal one. But I think that we need to put emphasis on this fact, and present Stoicism is a philosophy of both internal resilience and external benevolent action. If we make the same mistake as Epictetus, and bury the lede on Stoicism’s original moral message, we weaken Stoicism’s ability to be a positive force in the world. Invulnerability by itself is an amoral goal.
DL: Some people are applying Stoicism to relationships and family issues. What concepts are important for solving family-related conflict and stress?
ES: This is a popular topic of discussion at our Stoic Fellowship group here in Washington — family is a big testing ground for Stoic coping techniques! I’m far from qualified to offer real advice on family systems (there are a number of modern Stoic bloggers who can speak about applying Stoicism to parenting, for example!), but I do think that Stoicism has a number of powerful ideas to offer.
The one that our Fellowship members often come back to is non-anger: getting control of your anger toward family can be a daunting task even under normal circumstances, and it’s even harder if your loved ones have a genuine tendency toward pathological or manipulative behavior. At least two of our members felt like getting control of their own anger a couple years ago, and it made a tremendous difference in their home and professional lives. One of my favorite notions here is Epictetus’s “two-handle metaphor,” which reminds us that we always have a choice between a healthy and an unhealthy response when others aggravate us (Massimo Pigliucci wrote a nice post on this on last year.
Two other Stoic ideas that I find powerful for conflict resolution are 1) its insistence that people do wrong out of ignorance, and 2) its gentle interpretation of Socratic dialogue as a highly no-coercive form of debate. These are things I tried to practice when navigating religious and political differences with friends and family — I’ve written about them and some other Stoic principles in a political context here.
I will also add that one of the most beautiful and daunting challenges (that I know of) in all of the Stoic literature is Seneca’s notion (in On Benefits) that we should aspire to pay such close attention to the people in our lives that we can benefit them before they even ask for our help, or before they even realize that they are in need. This is an extremely high bar to meet for benevolence, but even getting 10% of the way there can make a huge impact.
DL: Returning to your group, “Stoics in Action”, leave us with some ideas on how new Stoics can improve their practice.
ES: Behavioral change is hard. My main advice is to keep coming back to that image of the Circles of Hierocles and your various roles, and thinking about ways to improve your practice of the four virtues. You are the one who’s in the best position to see opportunities to cultivate Justice, Benevolence, Good Calculation, Orderliness, Fair-Dealing, Reliableness, and other virtues in your life.
But, operationally, the best tool I know of for self improvement is to follow Epictetus’s advice to shoot for success 30 days in a row. You can track them with check marks on paper, but today we have fancy smart phone apps that make habit tracking easy: choose one to three new virtuous habits you want to form, define them in terms of a S.M.A.R.T. goal (simple, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-bound), then download Habit Bull (for Android) or Streaks (on iOS), and hold yourself accountable!
