From the Archive

Figs in Winter now has several hundred articles on a wide range of topics, including various approaches to living a meaningful life (ethics), examinations of pseudoscientific claims (science), and essays on practical reasoning (logic). This occasional series is meant to remind my readers of some of this material for their enjoyment and use.

Why Epicureans and Utilitarians are wrong: on the axiology of pain and pleasure. Hedonism, philosophically speaking, is “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.” (Apple Dictionary) Two major clusters of hedonistic theories appeared in the history of western philosophy: the Cyrenaics and Epicureans of Hellenistic times, and the Utilitarians of the 19th to the 21st centuries.

Cyrenaicism was a short-lived school established by Aristippus of Cyrene (modern Libya, north Africa) who was born around 435 BCE and was, interestingly, a student of Socrates—himself certainly not an hedonist. The Cyrenaics believed that the good life consists in experiencing physical pleasures in the present, largely rejecting both intellectual pleasures (because they are less intense) and pleasures that were from the past (enjoyed merely by remembering them) or the future (not here yet, and may never come). Not surprisingly, they also believed that pain is the only evil. … (17 May 2024)

Stoicism as a subversive activity. Is Stoicism a conservative or progressive philosophy of life? To a first approximation, the very question makes no sense. “Conservative” and “progressive” are modern, culturally and temporally specific labels for certain ways of seeing and acting in the world. Nevertheless, it does make sense to ask whether practicing Stoicism leads one to simply embrace the status quo or to consciously attempt to subvert it. Or, perhaps, neither.

Some Greco-Roman philosophies do, I think, inherently favor the status quo. Epicureanism teaches us to disengage from social and political life on the eminently sensible assumption that it is more likely to cause us pain rather than pleasure, and since a life of tranquillity characterized by lack of pain is the goal of the Epicureans, this makes sense. … (24 May 2024)

The problem of the perverse. One of the most powerful ideas of Stoic philosophy is that we are naturally “virtuous,” by which the Stoics meant that Nature endows us with the ability to reason and an innate tendency to act prosocially. And virtue—according to Seneca—is nothing but “right” reason, meaning reason applied to the betterment of social living (Letter 66.32).

If this is so, then we are faced with what is sometimes referred to as the problem of the perverse: on the one hand, Nature gave us virtue; on the other hand, most of us behave unvirtuously (i.e., either irrationally or antisocially) at least some of the times, if not most of them. What gives?

Before we seek an answer to the problem, let’s make sure the premise is right: are we really naturally virtuous in the way the Stoics assumed? I think so, though not because of the reasons they adduced. … (31 May 2024)

On the worth of comedy and tragedy. We tend to think of Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher-king, and in a sense he was, though the ancient Romans were allergic to the word “king” and preferred Imperator, which technically just meant supreme commander of the troops, the equivalent of a modern American President being hailed as “commander-in-chief.”

Emperors ever since the first one, Octavian Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, also liked to present themselves as “princeps,” which literally meant, somewhat oxymoronically, “first among equals.” As an added bonus, both “imperator” and “princeps” were terms that arched back to the time of the Roman Republic, which many still considered to have embodied the ideal form for a State. … (7 June 2024)

On the Stoic God (or absence thereof). I consider myself a Stoic practitioner, with more than a pinch of Skepticism added to my philosophy of life. Yet, I just finished reading a book that basically tells me that unless I believe in the ancient Stoic God I’m not really a Stoic, but rather someone who just uses Stoic-inspired life hackery to muddle through existence.

So let’s settle this matter once and for all, shall we? Just kidding. Of course we will never settle this sort of things, because people will believe whatever they will believe, and they will provide what they think are good reasons to back up such beliefs. And I am, needless to say, no exception to the rule. … (21 June 2024)