Hello and welcome to the third session of The Man Who Knew Nothing from Neurodiversity to Practical Schizophrenia. I'll just note that we have two presentations today. One is by Carl on Seneca and the other is by Federico on Epictetus. And I'll now pass the microphone to Reza. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you everyone for participating in this class. I think the best course would be because we have changed the face from cynicism to a stoicism. It would be good before me talking something about the stoic tradition.
We can hear about the presenters and then I follow up and build up of their presentations. Is that good? Sounds good. Who would like to go first, Carl or Federico? It's either or for me. Would you like to go first, Federico? Sure. Sure, I can go first with Epictetus. So may I actually, before you move forward, may I actually ask you a fundamental question. What is your reason Epictetus versus Seneca? Well, I think that between Epictetus and Seneca,
I think there's this aspect of, I think, that Alexander mentions on Facebook some days ago of agentiality. I think that's a fundamental aspect in both philosophers, but I think that Seneca, I think, goes to the limit maybe of this agentiality, like being responsible to oneself, but going to the limits of being responsible to oneself even in death, like choosing the way you want to die. Instead, I think that in Epictetus you find this striving for a virtue within living, like you have to live accordingly to virtue and law but uh i think that that yes as i mentioned
in the previous sessions um seneca is uh valorizing the idea of agency and this comes across in every single work of his that he almost gives some sort of godly or heroic characteristics to the idea of agency. Agency at all costs. Yes, please go on. Okay, well I don't have like a formal presentation, I have more like
some loose thoughts that came along with my reading of Epictetus. This is actually the first time I'm reading him, so well, I'm going to go ahead. So what I encountered while reading Epictetus is maybe this main thought that is exiting oneself in order to gain self-restraint or build a commitment to oneself. So I'm going to start with a quote from the very first fragment of the piece called Fragments. So this is a quote from him, and it's the following. Isn't it enough to know the true nature of good and bad, and the proper bounds of our desires and diversions, and also of our
motives to act or not to act, and to make use of these rules to order the conduct of our life, and renounce those things that are beyond us. I highlight here what Epictetus mentions about keeping bounds, let's say keeping to the shore the primals of desires and aversions, as a bounding to a rational responsibility. This responsibility is enabled by a nature as positive freedom. So what I think about nature as positive freedom is the conception of nature as law and not pure contingency. This means that nature is not something that dissolves us, but something that actually gives us laws so that we can actually go back into ourselves and find the law.
Thus, we do not give form to nature. I think that's one of the most important things that Epictetus says in the beginning of the fragments, that we should not focus on this issue of giving form to nature or birth psychological objects in our minds, starting from the idea of nature, from taking nature as that and turning it into an idea, but actually being shaped and subjected by nature as law. We give in to nature as a force of reason that is first interiorized and then practiced, materialized by act. The universe wills us through God also as a rational force. I mean, we give in to God, and he says that we should give ourselves to God, but nevertheless, it's not like this contingent aspect as well.
It's actually God as a force of reason. And he therefore, God in his rational form, gives us human agency. So we must give ourselves to it, to this rational force. And I quote here, fragment four, a quote from fragment four, and if it should have the need that our children, our country, or our body, or anything, whatever, be glad to yield it up. Thus. I think that Federico was caught up. Yes. Yes, I think we've lost Federico here.
I'm sorry. Did we lose the signal? Yeah, no. Yes, yes. I'm really sorry. The thing is that I have horrible Wi-Fi. So where did we left off? I'm really sorry. Well, actually, we heard you clearly. It was like one second. There was a glitch. That was it. Okay. I'm sorry. So I was talking about this question that I was making. Could we see Epictetus as a proto-deontological philosopher, in that we harmonize our own acts in order to reach a more harmonic order of responsibility. And I quote here, and I was relating this to Brandom, I am currently reading Brandom, so we're thinking about this, and I quote Brandom here from the book Reason and Philosophy,
commitment, entitlement, responsibility, these are all normative notions. And he goes to Kant, Kant replaces the ontological distinction between the physical and the mental with the deontological distinction between the realm of nature and the realm of freedom, the distinction between things that merely act regularly and things that are subject to distinctly normative sorts of assessment. So we find here like a sort of local constraint where reasonable or objective will is materialized as an end rather than the means of incommensurable and and immediate pleasures, or ephemeral sensible facts, as our own human vessel. This means our whole human body, which he mentions that we should not, let's say, give that much attention to
the permanence of our own body when we can actually strive towards virtue. And this is in fragments 20, 23, and 27, which I highlight here. And this also reminds me, well, talking about Brandom's interpretation of Kant, Kant's own practical philosophy of means and ends. This means not getting into this sensible facts, the contingent, let's say the view of nature as contingency, and rather go towards an end. This end could be virtue, and this virtue is finally happiness, which also reminds me of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The thing that we strive for, the absolute good is happiness. So happiness is actually having full control of one's subjectivity by nature as law.
And I think this is most, I think that the most clear example that Epictetus gives of this is the distinction that he makes between the wise and the fool, that is in fragment nine. The fool is caught in the immediateness, which produces the terrors of false appearances, which he calls the ascent. And then the wise reinterprets this initial false appearance and he actually conceives insight from this first appearance, which actually turns out to be insufficient. And we actually avoid being sucked into the void of this false appearance, of this terrorific immediateness, when we withhold an assent.
And I was thinking I was, since, well, my Hegel is not that good, but I, this thing of the ascent, this immediateness and the withhold of the ascent reminds me a bit of the Hegelian Aufheben or the sublation, this suspension of the immediate in order to gain a more clear insight of what is going on. So this is a distinction I would like to highlight from the text of Epictetus from fragment nine. And I also got reminded of something that you said in a very early course of yours that's called The Shape of Systems to Come, which is your interpretation of Hegel, where you say that adequate self-conception leads to perfective or adequate self-transformation.
well-wrung self-conception leads to flawed self-transformation. And this also, this linking to the Hegelian also reminds me of another quote that is found in the immediate fragment, that is fragment 10, where Epictetus says that, declared that the writings and teachings of philosophy when poured into a false and degenerate person, as though into a dirty and polluted vessel, are spoiled and, as he himself, in somewhat cynical tone, turn into urine or perhaps something even fowler than that. This means if, let's say, a philosopher or someone that plans to use his insight and he stays with this first ascent
when he has not gained the full insight of his own self, he will lead to a flawed self-conception of himself. So I would like to highlight that. And, well, maybe the last thought about Epictetus is maybe more of a criticism to him, is that, well, all this philosophy of the self, of self-restraint through law and reason, is that, well, it's still very in the, it's still in the field of the self. I see that it's not fully integrated yet to the community or the koinonia. And I think that might be, I don't know if I would like to ask if that's the main flaw of Stoic philosophy.
This, let's say, normative conception of the self that cannot be applied fully within the community. and I think the end of my rambling. No, it was, to be honest with you, it was truly excellent. And I absolutely loved and cherished the fact that you didn't write a paper. That's bravery. Thank you, Ressa. That means a lot to me. Thank you so much. Did you have any comments Reza or did we want to go on to Carlson?
No, I actually want to hear both sides of the story before I actually say something. I see. That is what we were waiting for. So then we shall move on. I too haven't necessarily got a very fleshed out presentation. And rather than that, I will perhaps try to talk a little about my own impressions of reading Seneca's Letters to Lasilius. The reason, the original reason I wanted to do Seneca and sort of focus on that a little bit was because I previously read some of his tragedies, which I found to be very, very interesting and powerful,
more sort of full of gravity than Greek drama typically. And I've heard that the letters are quite different. Previously, scholars used to think that perhaps there were actually two people uh named Seneca writing in the same period. Um, I, um, I did not expect, um, that it would be so very different. Um, and, um, for me personally, I found these letters to be repetitive and quite, um, unbearable. And I feel a little bit sorry for Lucilius who had to read all of these, um, endless repetitions of... I'm sorry. I said that I'm going to defriend you on Facebook for saying something like that.
That is perfectly fine. I don't think we're friends on Facebook, so that's very strong. No, so what Seneca does is he says that virtue is in all its different forms is one. whether or not, and the virtue that one can show in, let me see, I have a quote here somewhere. Yes. The good is one. So I'm reading from one of the first letters that we were meant
to read. I don't exactly remember which one, but the two kinds of goods which are of higher order are different. The primary are according to nature, such as deriving joy from the beautiful behavior of one's children and from the well-being of one's country. The secondary are contrary to nature, such as fortitude and resisting torture or an enduring thirst when illness makes the vitals feverish. What then, you say, can anything that is contrary to nature be a good? Of course not. But that in which this good takes its rise is sometimes contrary to nature." So I find this very interesting because Seneca never stops talking about capital F Fortune,
which strikes me to be very much more similar to the notion of nature as physis, as we find in the Senex, or in Diogenes perhaps, or in the tales of Diogenes, rather than nature. Because what Seneca says is that one should desire not to suffer, of course, but should a situation occur where one must suffer, such as under torture, virtuous behavior, which is by which means honorable and sort of, not in the same way as a curie would say where one should straight up enjoy torture, but one should endure it willingly. One should will the situation that
one is in and endure it bravely. That is not less good than the good one would enjoy in one's ordinary, dutiful behavior according to one's own nature. And I think I would like to just draw attention to this comment in the chat here too, sort of that the conception of fortune seems to be very much closer to nature than what sort of the nature that we we have been talking about, perhaps, rather, sort of the word nature that is used in Seneca
is further from fortune. So what I'm saying is that fortune perhaps corresponds more closely to the sort of contingency of life, or the sort of necessity of uncertainty that one faces in life. Strikes me, perhaps I'm wrong, but we shall see. Anyway, I also find this idea that Seneca has regarding that one should choose one's death, that one ends up in a situation that one finds unbearable. One must decide for oneself whether or not to go on living. And it is a rather extreme valorisation of agency indeed. And I wonder, is this perhaps sort of how we come into these tragedies? So this is one of the things that I've been thinking about.
Can you repeat that, Karl? So do you, please do correct me if I'm mistaken, do you equate or somehow correlate the valorization, the extreme valorization of agency with having tragedies? Well, I mean, yes, what I'm wondering about, I think, is the tragedies, examples of where one has been unable to properly sort of undergo the stoic immunization program against fortune,
where one can bear fortune without, in an honourable way, while it's still accepting it as that which might sort of, without becoming a slave to it or something like that. I am a little bit confused about it, and I know there are some sort of, there are different readings of sort of trying to reconcile the tragedies with the moral texts. And I have not been able to sort of wrap my mind around that properly. Yes. And I mean, which is very interesting, especially considering sort of the instoicism, the idea that it is, as we find in John Seller's book, that it is a way of living, and what role the sort of the writing tragedies that suppose, I mean, I would assume have been either read or
or actually staged. And so, but of course, you are aware of this fact that John hates Seneca. Yes, yes, yes, I am. And I can see that there is sort of a tension about living the stoic life and sort of engaging in this, which, I mean, for several reasons. I mean, how stoic is this kind of writing really? really. And the other question I would sort of like to raise is, and looking backwards in our own story that I think that we may be telling, or beginning to tell, looking backwards to the cynics and to the biogenists, because with Seneca we are quite far into stoicism,
writing it around sort of the first century AD. And this is, of course, Stoicism and perhaps practical philosophy or philosophy as advice regarding how one should live has been institutionalized to a certain extent by this time. And whereas I think someone like Diogenes and Anacharsis, we have been talking about, certainly do have some license from the state to act subversively. The Stoic is different, because I mean, we are already seeing someone who has been incorporated in this sort of, in, you know, it has become an official sort of position almost to be
a philosopher, it has become a profession in a way. And that is quite, something that is quite different, I feel. So I would be happy if we could talk a little bit about that, what happens to the role of the figure of the philosopher in this, assuming that we do have a... I think there are historical factors involved. Undoubtedly. Historical factors in the sense that the way that the Stoics define their philosophy, both in conjunction as and also as in contrast to the cynics, in a certain sense was a progression, but also was a recipe for institutionalization.
Yes, I think these are perhaps the two questions that I would sort of like to raise. And yeah, perhaps not much of a presentation, but nevertheless sort of, I hope we can sort of build off of it and do something interesting. Really fantastic. Again, yet another utterly excellent presentation. So happy with this. If you allow me, I'm going to get a little bit more Coke, zero Coke. and i will join you in less than a minute
Does anyone want to say something about these two presentations? I was just happy that Carl, because one of my main side question, which actually maybe is a main question is how to to understand this question of fortune that as a i just generally know it as like the personification of chance but i feel i'm it is actually not exactly it is not
i will talk about this later but uh carl would you be able to say something about that i think what carl said in relation to nature was one of my main after the reading one of my main issue. Yeah, so please. I mean, we should understand one thing before actually venturing out about Stoics. Is that when they think about nature, they actually think about ratio ascendee. About what? Ratio ascendee. Rationality par excellence that permeates everything and every stuff in the world. So their account
of nature is neither a brute matter, vitality, or something like new materialism, idea of agency being everywhere. No. They think that everything is somehow conducted or determined by a certain kind of common laws. And these common laws are not really the laws of nature, but the laws of Logos. So, we should understand when a Stoic talks about nature, what he means by nature.
Nature is just simply what you might call to be the most exhaustive idea of logos. And Reza, because the word logos does change epically, in this moment, logos is more akin to rationality, logic, the world of... It is actually about dialectics. Yes. Their idea of dialectics fundamentally differs from that of Plato. Right? You should understand that, historically speaking, Stoics, not coming from the Platonic or Aristotelian
idea of logic or nature, are actually Heraclitians by heart. And I will shed some light on why they are Heraclitians. Any more? By people who are silent always, and I know who you are, probably also I have your addresses. Okay, let us gang up on one person and force that person to say something. I shouldn't do always the dirty job. It's your task.
Okay, maybe I should do the other job. This is the last time I'm doing this. Either Juliet, Joseph or Max or Andrew. Well, I'll just say something because I had something to say. So it's just a very minor question, but it relates to this idea that, with Seneca, the idea that virtue is, let's say, an absolute in the sense that there's a claim that something
is either like there's no degrees of virtue, either it's virtuous or it's not virtuous. Yes. I mean, that seems different to the conception of good and somewhere he's talking about there being degrees of good, but also like, so there's a supreme good, which is seemingly absolute. is virtue which is seemingly absolute and then there are kind of degrees of good and so since good and virtue correspond i didn't understand that relationship yeah the reason for that is because of their uh what you might call to be their cosmology
their cosmology or cosmography or their physics. Essentially, unbeknown to many students of philosophy, a stoicism is a physicalistic philosophy, but it's a twisted one, right? For them, everything is nature. So, if reason cannot function in accordance with nature, it's not reason. But then, of course, they have a lot of subtleties about defining nature and defining a ratio
or reason. I would say that there is this, some historians have already talked about this, there is this poem which is called an ode, I'm not really forgetting the name of it, the appropriate name of it. something like an ode to Zeus, the god. And it is usually considered to be one of the most influential texts from which Stoicism emerged.
So within this poem, virtue is being understood as either being true or false. The true is not understood canonically, like as the truth, neither the false. The true is what you might call to be a practical understanding of truth, such that we can posit an idea of truth.
And if it is not revisable, if it is not beholden to the laws of the harmonics of nature, then it is false. So the true and false is not a Platonic distinction in their canon, in their works. Virtue is the ultimate enterprise precisely because it sees the idea of truth merely within the prospects of practical reasoning or practical will, and hence it is an arte or virtue.
And everything else comes in different gradations after we have elaborated the idea of the virtue. So it is really important to understand the idea of virtue among the Stoics has something to do with both the idea of law for them being interpreted as a universal reason or universal logos, and second, the idea that it is everything that can ever be said about truth or being
true is a matter of practical reason, practical loomis. And hence you soon find out that this is actually the core of a Stoicism. So The Stoics, unlike Cynics, are not so much into the idea of rhetorics as a science of what can be said. They are more into the idea of dialectics as a science of certain kinds of methods by
way of which we can be better. Self-betterment, improvement, autonomy, self-mastery, self-determination, so on and so forth. So the way that they define this is like this, that, okay, so I think about myself as an Yet, this very individual is always, even though it has roots in divine soul, godness,
even though it has those kinds of roots, by virtue of his deeds, he can become less than a god, less than a sage, so on and so forth. It's really important to understand that the Stoics were among the first philosophers who saw thinking as a certain kind of practice. And essentially, they saw every virtue as a practice. And of course, for them, the idea of practice or doing wasn't vague. They could actually contextualize what kind of practice or what kind of thoughts or desire
are we talking about. When you love someone, you should understand that this is not merely a symptom of your experience, but is a consequence of certain kinds of deeds or practices that you do. So, the ingenious idea of the Stoic was that, you see, contrary to the Platonic or the Aristotelian school, we cannot simply change the nature of the human agency by way of
Rectifying its theories, its talks, its sayings, its beliefs. No, no, no. That is the worst. They were extremely skeptical of academia for this reason. the only solution for them was to reformat human thoughts, beliefs, opinions, dogmas, by virtue of reformatting human social practices. and only then we can truly say that our thoughts are habituated to the virtuous practices
so virtue in the stoic sense is almost synonymous with the good practice a good critical practice and not theory. I think largely this perhaps also explains why it's so difficult for me at least to read Seneca because without this understanding of virtue and when I read it I can understand that
there's something very important going on it's something that is a very grave matter of virtue is very very important here but it's difficult to sort of get the the underlying yeah exactly what is actually at stake in this discussion of virtue you are you are truly even though I absolutely adore Seneca like I remember that I was in my 20s and I was extremely depressed not knowing what who I am what I should with my life. For three years, I read Seneca's epistles, Seneca's letters, every night to myself.
And it was literally the best, what you might call, to be antidepressant at that time. But then, also I found out that Seneca's philosophy is what you might call to be an aborted Stoicism, precisely because it does not talk about the principles. Rather, its ambition is centered on the task of talking about ephemeral things in life.
That is good and great, but it is not really totally philosophical. Yeah, so it's the deployment of principles that are themselves absent from the text. Yes, yes, yes. Shall we have a break for like four or five minutes and then come back and then I will give you a headache? How about that? Sure, that sounds good. good
I had a comment or question but my internet cut out before so I'm not sure if you maybe already covered it but it was my understanding that the Stoics sort of believed in this idea of agency to the extent that they yeah you're afforded or you have a certain amount of agency and then uh-huh you got cut off I think Juliet is gone.
Well, let's wait if she can come back. Alex, would you be able to tell her that she can put that question on the sidebar? Yes, I'll do that. Thank you so much. So, okay, she's back. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm actually also going to speak on behalf of Sebastian. Him and I are in the same house right now
I think they're waiting. Oh, they're waiting. Wait, are you waiting for me to say something? Oh, yes. No, I was just saying, just letting you know that Sebastian was also offline because Okay. No worries. Okay. I have a question for you. It's on the stoic approach to wilderness as opposed to nature. I had not necessarily considered the question of wilderness until, you know, not even really as a distinct philosophical concept, until quite recently.
And Lévi-R Bryant has been speaking about nature versus wilderness, but the function of nature as the element that binds versus wilderness that is the element that perturbs logos on the one hand and then something I don't know what's antithetical to logos something you know could you speak to this? Yeah sure to be honest with you Astonix never talked about wilderness They all talked about nature. Their conception of nature. Right.
So, essentially, we need to understand where they come from. They come from something that was called the cult of zeal. So, every Greek man and woman did actually believe in Zeus being the god. The cult of Zeus took it further. The cult of Zeus is about contradictions. Nature is the realm of contradictions. And the best ethics with regard to nature should also accommodate such contradictions.
So Zeus is famous. In one hand he wields a thunderbolt and in the other he gives you a cup of life. This became, in early Greek tradition, a kind of theme that later on, somehow fueled the ideas of Stoicism.
Stoicism, you should understand that nature, quasi-us, is a field of contradictions, of of polarities, polarities not however in the realm of logic but in the realm of fuses nature. But, to the extent that we are agents, we are human, we cannot live in accordance
with nature unless and until we understand, first and foremost, practically, the oppositions and bipolarities that exist in nature. Such oppositions might be what does it mean to reunite two opposing forces as a matter of natural law or what does it mean to change the course of two opposite laws?
There's a genius idea actually, to be honest with you. So the human now, even though is considered as a strict element of nature, and there is nothing outside of nature, gets this, what you might call to be pants or idea that ethics, and ethics for them is really the exploration of fuses, of nature.
Because nature permeates everything. Because nature is already suffused with reason, with logos. So if that is the case, then the Stoic tries to tone down the caprice or the arrogance of the human by way of nature, but not in today's kind of way, in a very strict rationalistic way, which is usually attributed to the Stoics, ascetic way. So if nature comes to you as something uniform, then you should know, as a human,
Asians that this is false. This is merely a bad dogma. So what do you do? The Stoics recipe for this is something like that. That nature always comes to us. in terms of opposing figures, opposing forces, opposing drive, opposing concepts. And there is nothing to human agency other than creating a harmonic between these opposing forces.
This is of course fundamentally, as I mentioned, is derived from the Zeus cult, precisely because Zeus is considered to be willing and not willing at the same time, being different to task and indifferent to them. and this fundamentally shapes the idea of Stoicism that Stoicism at the end of the day is about creating
a cosmological harmonics where disturbances and perturbations rest side by side with uniformities, orthodoxies, norms, and that which is stable. Can I ask, so for Stoics, somehow, this oppositions or antagonism or antagonisms in nature can be somehow alleviated or ameliorated, but they can never be, let's say, somehow there can never be some ultimate solution to them
because if this happens, we would fall back into this dogmatic narrative. That's a really good question. You see, so the associates are what you might call be the heroes of eudaimonial virtue, practical virtue. So obviously by that definition, the idea of nature that they have should correspond to how they should move forward. Like, let us begin the question with what is a human? So human
is an animal of the species being, of the idea. or idus, and also of the divine nature. So, essentially, we should understand that the stoic idea of nature is a projection, and a good projection, I would say, a good projection of their idea of the human upon nature. It is not that there are naturalists
or vitalists or materialists. There are through and through what you might call to be complex humanists. Complex not in the sense of complex that we use today but rather the manifold of the animal, the cogitating human and the God, the divine forces. And to that extent, they project this idea upon nature and they see nature,
as I said, they are physicalists. they see the laws of nature as in fact being on the same spectrum of the idea of the human. So the human and the nature become one. There is a reason that the earliest Stoics were part, were coming from the Eliotic doctrine, universe is one, thinking and being is one, so on and so forth. It is not that they allied the distinction between being and thinking,
they rather try to reinvent the oneness of all worlds on a practical level. on the level of exercise, on the level of assessors. And then when does, in this somehow, some kind of like proto-monism, when does God then, when does the identity of God come into this, in this non-devasive? This is kind of a tricky question. You see, surely all Stoics at the end of the day are
monists, because they only believe in nature in the sense that I talked about. But then, so with regard to the question of the divine or the gods, that becomes a very strange question that is answered differently by different Stoics. So Seneca simply thinks that the human is a god under construction, whereas someone
like Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, they think that there is in fact a god, and it is not human. So I would say that it really depends on the kind of Stoics we are talking about with regard to the question of divinity and godness. But I would say that the majority of Stoics, and this is really, I would say, is perhaps
The ultimate idea of Stoicism, not by virtue of differences among philosophers of Stoicism, a virtue of the undergirding principles that human is already a god even in death and I love that I truly appreciate this heroic fear of the human sure it can be
rained down but i think that is a platform upon which we should re-understand how we should approach ourselves hey reza i don't know if you still have the same feelings about your essay the labor on the inhuman as you did when you wrote it but could you perhaps relate this notion of this what you call the heroic notion of the human to the inhuman as you described it in that essay? You see, I can talk about this in terms of the stoicism. So the stoics are all about dialectics.
Yet their notion of dialectics is not Platon. It's not even Aristotelian. Dialectics for them is a practical affair. So just like cynics, as I mentioned earlier on. Just as cynics think about truth in terms of human practices, the Stoics see the ideas beauty, good, so on and so forth, in terms of human performances, of doings,
that every saying ultimately is a doing. So that's really, but of course they are not really looking at it in a pragmatist sense that we understand today by way of random and the American pragmatism. It is rather the case that for them, doings that signify sayings, performances which signify theoretical injunctions are ultimately what you might call to be
instances of human virtue. To the extent that for them, the human virtue is all about the practical will and not the theoretical will. So, So, with regard to this and in the context of what you asked me, the Stoics are the first inhumanists that we could ever have. Why? Because they see the human as part of nature.
For them, everything is nature. Yet, there are not the kinds of people who simply take for granted the idea of nature and respectively the human. The more you can elaborate your practices, your ethics, by way of which you suspend the immediacy of who you are and what the world is, becomes fuses, becomes nature.
So yes, in a sense, I would say that I am truly a Stoic. Perhaps not by practice, because I have a weak will to be like a Stoic sage, but by theory. Can you be a Stoic by theory? Yes. The thing is that, so when a Stoic tells you that every claim about the world is a matter of practice, it's a theoretical claim.
yet a theoretical claim that can be tested against practices, historical practices. And that's what Stoics want to do, to show us that, okay, if you even don't believe in this, I can make my life so fucked up in the historic sense. to show you that all theories do in fact emanate from practical virtues, from acclimatizations toward universal practices.
And what is that if not some sort of proto-communist idea It's a way of making sense of the tragedies and also the idea of fortune that we see in Seneca. Yes, yes. So you see, obviously Epictetus and Seneca have different ideas about this. The reason that I do actually take side with
Seneca rather than Epictetus is because of one single fact. So let us begin with the undergirding theme of this course. We think that we ourselves. But are we? Really, are we? Empirical sciences shows that Phenomenal self-consciousness is utterly an illusion.
are among the first philosophers who know this fact. Rather than succumbing to fear, because some science can tell us that you don't have a phenomenal self, They actually say that big deal, big deal. And this is a great idea of humanity. Because we do, in fact, say in the face of calamities and death and extinctions, big deal. What does that even mean?
because we are capable of constructing an idea a historical idea of the self which is in previous to the idea of extinction and in fact it surpasses it it. Philosophy is the organome of life rather than death. Death is not important. Who gives a shit about it? Only an ordinary unphilosophical person.
So what's the task here? The task is simple yet ambitious. We should think about this quite carefully, that we are forms of life. That's the most important thing. We are not registers
of a bare life. Life as such. Because life as such is an empty idea. It's truly a lie. It's a metaphysical capris that we have invented for ourselves. So if we are forms of life, then what might put an end to the idea of life should not concern us, should not make us anxious, It should not make us to make capricious actions in the historical moments in which we are living.
But rather, it should lead us to this critical fact that we are forms of life because our life and our perception of our life as living beings is dictated and determined logically by the form in which we inhabit. And this form does not come from life itself. It comes from Logos. Now let us do the great task of looking at what Logos can be.
And that is the task of humanity. And of course, Aesthetism. Questions, heckling, swearing, cursing, whatever is all allowed. I have a question. Who is that? Do you hear my sound? You have a little bit of a glitch connection.
We should be able to repeat it. So, can you hear me now? Yes, yes, perfectly, perfectly. you are clearly subordinating practice to theory but but you were also saying that sociality is essential to practice so it seems that you are subordinating theory to sociality too okay okay please go on uh okay my apologies i i got a little bit over excited i wanted to say something you please go on please go on so i'm kind of having hard time to understand how
you can have such a privileged status um in relation to theory um you see See, what is really important here in the wake of the history of ethics, the history of philosophy, the history of science, and the history of politics, is that practice, when we are talking about practices, we are obviously talking about sociality, right?
practices. But we should also think about this, that not every act is determined by general social practices. Essentially, this brings us to a very fundamental question that theorization is the most significant part of human cogitation not because it originates from general social practices but because
Because it originates from certain kinds of practices and our tasks is about to identify what kind of practices, under what kind of strictures and constraints lead us to theorize about ourselves and the world. So my answer to your question would be that no, I think that generalization of practice and the generalization of theory is wrongheaded through and through.
Yes, every sort of theorization carries with itself a certain kinds of practization. But then you should be specific about what kind of practice leads to a certain kinds of theorization. That is the most important thing. And what is this if not what Hayab had called self-consciousness as a matter of practical achievement? But when you buy yourself gifts, this is becoming the other.
yes but then what else do you have other than gifts yeah to me there's a sneaky dialectic between artifacts and gifts in what sense one is for self-consciousness and the absolute this is a three tripart category in hegel but no we don't even need to go to hegel and we can look at the stoics and their use of the use of nature uh for self-consciousness versus a epicurean
pleasure-seeking gifts as non-utilitarian but inward-driven but it's you know one also contain contains the other a vestige of want so that's it's a you know a sneaky dialectic of source there's a sublation that you know why do you think that the hegelian idea of the gift or what you might call to be the exchange between the self and the other is utilitarian or instrumental. Why do I think it? Well, I mean, I think that self-consciousness, whether it be a linguistic development or the indirect effect of technical objects, is a scaffolding for historical consciousness.
And I think artificial and semantic complexity is how we would traditionally describe this. But I do think that the gift contains something of art of faction and tool building and such. Because say I buy a gift for myself. I buy myself a book. I buy myself a film. I buy myself a naughty video. all of these in some way require me to engage with semantic processes and encodings and thus become socialized and therefore in some sense I do think it requires recognitive and recollective retrospective milieus. But that wasn't
the question the question is why it's utilitarian. That's what makes it utilitarian it's that's utility right there that is utility I mean that's to me that's not because I mean it's socialization it's something that prompts social progress our progress in the Hegelian time in a world's in the sense that you just don't see the actual mediations. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Mediatory processes goes to this formula. If you don't see the mediatory processes, then of course it's utilitarian.
You see, this is really one of the greatest ideas of Hegel and actually comes to Marx as well. You see, you can say the same thing about capitalism, but you know that capitalism is actually communism in closet. It's a closet of communism. That's what capitalism is. Capitalism, communism is not different from capitalism, ontologically speaking. Capitalism is when, I mean communism is when capitalism becomes conscious of its own processes
and doings and deeds. This is what communism is. Right, I'd say similarly, I think that utility is closeted progress in the sense that a fully self-reflective utility would be progressive, but that utility in itself can be metastable. It can be degenerate. You can have a system in which certain nodes have some sort of utility, but the overall system doesn't work well at all. Superb, superb. Give me one minute. I need to check on soup. Stew, that's right. No, soup. I'm eating soup today. Coke, cigarettes, soup.
My apologies. Well, my true question wasn't so much about the gift. That was because of our Facebook banter. My question is about Stoicism, and it does relate to Hegel, But in Arian's recounting of spirit, there is something that I think is an interesting parallel or some prescient marker of Hegel's history. because for Hegel's history, history is sequencing forms and division, whether it's subjective spirit and that's relationship to psychology, objective spirit and the relation to institutions. The thing is that with regard to Hegel,
and I think that even though Hegel makes a critique of his choices. Well, no, that's not. Okay, go ahead. But I was going to say something about spirit because there's something called noble spirit, high spirit, and then noble use of spirit that Arian mentions. And I was interested in the way that, you know, Hegel's three-part use of history, subjective spirit, objective spirit, absolute spirit, seems to be in sort of discourse with noble spirit, high spirit, and then noble use of spirit that Arian, the pupil, speaks of, and just the way spirit, you know. You want to get cancelled using the word Arian.
That's his name. You see, I think Hegel doesn't actually divert too much from the corner store of Stoicism. So for Corners, so for Stoicism, it's that lived experience means shit or doesn't mean shit. Everyone can have an experience of this or that tree, this or that kind of relationship.
What does it actually mean? So Stoics are precursors or forerunners of the Hyalian idea. That experience should be defined not in terms of simple, immediate encounters with the world, in terms of something more. What is that? Can someone say something about this before I move forward? Well, I mean, it's philosophy as logos, so they're giving a rational account of the
world, the denial of philosophy as lived biography, right? Yes, but, okay, let me put it this way. So I have the experience of me, myself, living in this wretched world, right? And I am entrenched in such experience. It is what makes me myself. But then the Stoics say that we are going to give you a set of tools, tactics and strategies
such that you no longer feel the world you experience or the self that you experience are true. This is what makes Stoicism an extremely important phase in the history of philosophy and science,
Because it's a precursor to what today empirical neuroscience gives us. Do you know what that claim is? The ultimate claim of neuroscience. So we spend a lot of time thinking that we are agents. Nevertheless, the agency comes from the fact that we are merely wandering in the world.
And that wandering in the world is not actually a good idea, precisely because it's a phenomenalistic wandering in the world. We see buildings, we see birds, we see human beings to the extent that we are wired to To see things, some things, x things, and not y things. Essentially we are a slave of our own attentional system.
completely understand this, that we are a slave to certain kinds of drives, certain kinds of attentional systems. But nevertheless, even though according to empirical science, less than 5% all humans spend time to reflect upon their encounters with the worlds and themselves, the Stoics come up with this ingenious idea that let us reinvent the world, even if we are wired in such and such manner.
Let us habituate ourselves to certain kinds of practices, certain kind of virtues, such that in the old world, in the evolutionary world, you could say that all thoughts emanate blindly by virtue of our automatic, mechanistic encounters with the world. The Stoics try to do something really different by saying that, okay, how about this? Let us perceive practice as a virtue, as an art, okay?
Such that if we perform this art, we can create a reality in which we most probably are not going to talk about nature, ourselves, in an automatic sense. and it's not going to be beneath 3 or 5 percent no it is going to be the very idea of what it means to be human so we can
in fact manipulate our practices and this is the very idea of ethics such that we can create a world to which we become habituated and entrenched. And through this world that we ourselves have created, our thoughts, even though might be originating from natural constraints once and forth, or still behold them to the fact that we are living in this practical world,
emanating from the practical will, emanating from ethics, and not any other world. This is what distinguishes human from an animal, even though we are also animals. So I just wanted to note that Alex had a question about oikiosis. I don't know if she wants to speak here or Alexandra Alexandra that's right yeah sure yes can you hear me yes yes yes yes can you
I'll hear you um I didn't really have a question I just had a commentary I think that you basically just covered it on the sense of belonging being the opposite of alienation um and that may be providing some notion of like an ethical basis for community, which is something that might be missing from some conceptions of the stoic doctrines. So that might be something that we could talk about is maybe there's this idea of the neoliberal application of the self-made man that we can see inside of the Stoic doctrine, but actually that might not be what the Stoics were saying if we follow their ethical notions into a communitarian direction.
Yes. Okay, let me say something and then I will ask you to clarify some of your points. You see, See, for the fact, the idea of neoliberalism is a truly vague idea at this point. It's just like people shoot neoliberalism at each other, just like Jacobin called, used to use this word for all enemies of the revolutions, like bourgeoisie and so on and so forth.
I think that we can't answer this question coherently until and unless we first understand the idea of neoliberalism. So neoliberalism is not just capitalism. It's absolutely not capitalism. Capitalism actually transcends neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a doctrine within which the idea of free markets namely game theoretic decision theory games
are applied so so this is this is how it works so no liberalism is a kind of scale sensitive idea of human society, right, or society as such. The thing is that at the base, there is individual. At the top, there is a market. Okay. The market is the very idea of free competition. Now, just because you have free market-based competition, that doesn't make you a no liberalist.
That is not the case. What makes you a no liberalist is when you align the distinction between free competition of markets and human choices and decisions. That's essentially what neoliberalism is. So neoliberalism is a doctrine about the idea that on a macro level, you have such and such competitions free markets in the vein of free market and you can extend them to
individual choices and desires and also by the same token you can see every single decision of a human agency in the sense of free market competition. So you should understand that essentially neoliberalism is the doctrine that tries to align or kind of hastily bridge the criteria of micro, namely individual, and macro, namely market.
So this is the thing. I don't think that this can be applied to the ideas that we have been talking about with with regard to a stoicism, with regard to the idea of capitalism, so on and so forth. Because capitalism is not really no liberalism. No liberalism is a very specific instantiation of capitalist system. And this is one of the worst things that has happened, particularly in America, that people usually misguidedly align the distinction between capitalism
and neoliberalism. And to that extent, they come up with these restricted historical ideas, which can neither eject neoliberalism or capitalism as a system. Reza, don't you think that, you know, so when I speak to economists about neoliberalism, they say we have to be very specific about what kind of neoliberalism. Are we talking about Hayekian neoliberalism? Are we talking about Clinton's neoliberalism? That deregulation is not something that after like Keynesian economics has been stable. Do you think that there's different kinds of neoliberalism?
Sure, sure. But I think that the principles which buttress the idea of neoliberalism, even though they are different, have something fundamentally in common. in common. But I would say that, I don't want to say it. Say it, please. I think one of the greatest sins of left accelerationism was to pit capitalism, to pit neoliberalist doctrines versus communist doctrines.
No, no, no, you just don't do that. You see, neoliberal doctrines are so vague and so fluid that they can actually go through underneath your communist doctrines. And why do you think that capitalism, all of a sudden, became a worldly, a universal idea precisely through the strategy of neoliberalism, because neoliberalism is like the most enduring, persistent parasite.
It can, as a matter of fact, by virtue of its vagueness, positize every idea that you might call to be revolutionary. Do you know this group of Chilean economic reformers known as the Chilean boys? No. Under Pinochet's military rule, there were a group of Chilean economists who were schooled in
Milton's in Milton's tradition, Milton Friedman's tradition at the University of Chicago. They were known as the Chicago Boys. They were in stark opposition to Pinochet. But they were and Federico may know more about this. They suggested a market fundamentalism close to laissez-faire capitalism in opposition to fascism. And in this sense, I think this is why left accelerationism or just in general, like a lot of contemporary socialists will pit neoliberalism against communism because
there were two different seemingly viable options, not just in South America, but South America was a historical case in this time. You see, any person who actually pits a particular idea of what you might call to be political regiments, not the regime, regiments, against communism is so mistaken. Because communism is absolutely not a system. Really, communism is not a system. It's a process.
And those who conflate the idea of the process with the system usually end up to give a tyrannical idea of communism. Paul Potts, Mao. I mean, let's also talk about our French friend, Badiou. Reza, wouldn't then the communist, because I think I actually see it a lot here as well in Colombia and South America in general, the idea of communism as an end rather than a process,
it turns it into this quasi-religious thing. And I think maybe we can see, maybe in, I know that you, well, I don't know if you're fond anymore of de loso-gatarian ideals, but capitalism, I mean, communism might be a gradient of, You don't like it anymore. No, no, no. I am the enemy of the loser. He says this, but this is not good. It's more complicated. It's not about me.
It's about ideas. But I think like, yeah, like seeing maybe, I think I value this idea that maybe through the less authoritarian terms like revolution is always like over coded once again or re-territalized by capitalism. capitalism, but maybe even further, we could say that as Ressa says, communism is maybe just a gradient or a flavor or a divergence of capitalism, but it's not outside it. It's maybe at its core. It's there. It's not like the antagonist of capitalism.
Yes, I would go for the second option. And what is, why do you think that I actually made this stupid course? Yeah, sure. To be honest with you, you are depressed, as we all are. can get pills, you know, but that is, but do you really think that it helps us? No, it does not. So the idea here is that we are living in an age where basically
we have realized that there is something like an agency. There is something like climate change, existential risks, so on and so forth. But what have we done, in true honesty, to address these issues? practically. You can always post an essay on EFLUX or on your academic institute.
But do you really think that it does make a difference? No, it doesn't. The whole point is that we should understand that there is a different idea of humanity. A humanity that is utterly practical. It is of the practical will. it's the most dangerous idea in the world. The practical will
is something that gives gods of cosmos a little bit of shivers. And that's what we are. We are agents, practical agents. We can make gods succumb to fear simply by the field of possibilities that we can explore and navigate. We are not fixed. We are revisable, repairable, and in fact, imperfect.
The imperfection comes and precedes the idea of perfection. And we should see ourselves at this historical juncture as such. Otherwise, who are we? Monkey flakes? Yes, we are actually monkey flakes, but we are not any kind of monkey flake. because we have the capacity to introspectively
and historically look into the history of our own genesis. so my recipe is that we should not give up on the idea of the human in the face of calamities because calamities don't mean shit death doesn't mean shit death only means something if you have already
confused the idea of life as the base idea such that if it is going to be suspended then basically all of your stuff that you have said is gone for good. No, no, no. That's not the idea of the human. Human is not coming from either a nihilistic thesis or a vitalistic thesis. Human comes from what the Stoics call the harmonics.
and harmonics what is the harmonics the idea of let us see in the critical vein how opposite forces challenge one another life and death individuality versus un-individuality, ego and the unconscious, so on and so forth. And what we should understand at this point is that such a challenge,
as put forward by Stoics is not really something that a materialist could ever come up with. Only a rationalist can come up with such a thing by telling you that even if you think your thoughts are complete. Your logic is totally consistent and complete. Perhaps for the sake of your own idea
and not the species, perhaps you should posit the idea of a counterfactual universe. come up with the idea that there is such a thing as the unconscious, as a reality that constrains you, as a nature that eats you. The Stoics don't talk about, you know, I mean, they try to speak of the Stoic tradition in conjunction with philosophy of mind, maybe stretching what the Stoics' intent was, but they do.
And this reading that we went over in the remarks between Rufus and Arian. I'm not trying to pronounce it as Arian. The remarks on Epictetus on mind, Zeno, and this book between... Chris and Zeno, there is this passage, things seen by the mind, whereby the intellect of man is struck at the very first sight of anything that which penetrates to the mind are not subject to his will, proprioception, this is what I make of it.
My comment would be not subject to his will means not subject to proprioception, nor to his control, but by virtue of a certain force of their own thrust upon the attention of men. It keeps going and then speaks of wisdom and evil, but this small portion seems to hint at a philosophy of stoic mind, stoic philosophy of mind. I don't know if it's a computational functionalism where it's reducible to these forces, these forces to which we don't have access. But it does hint at some interesting ways to think of philosophy of mind in conjunction with stoicism. Well, gladly, you pointed out something really interesting.
Stoicism is absolutely a philosophy of mind at its deepest core. As I mentioned earlier on to the fact that everything for Stoics is of a matter of practical significance, human mind is also a practical edifice. And to that extent, they actually, different stories go on different ways to elaborate what it means to understand mind as a practical edifice.
You see, one thing that I wanted to talk about is that all of this stuff that we have been talking about, cynicism, stoicism, and then we go to other kinds of genres of philosophy, They had an underlying enmity with regard to immediate experience. And unfortunately, our world today is dominated by immediate experiences.
Think about identity politics. And by that I don't mean identity politics in a bad way, but the undergirding the principles. Think about how we simply negate the other by virtue of the kind of experiences we had, chats, for example, I'm a Middle Easterner. You know, I am in this framework. I'm entitled to tell all of you, in fact, that whether you are black or white, you have not lived the life
that I lived because you're all Westerners. So you can always talk about these ramifying tales of human experience, but that is not really the Stoic way. And that's what I love about Stoicism. That even though you have all these particularities of lived experience, but experience doesn't give you anything about what to do and how to live.
The world that should be recognized and the self that should be reconstructed. It is rather a recipe that is counter to the fact of the human experience. And that's really important to understand about Stoicism and Synicism. That all these ethical procedures are counter to the fact of experience. experience. Regardless of what we do experience, we can yet do something else, perhaps something better. So we have about 10 minutes remaining. I don't know if you wanted to wrap up at all,
or if we wanted to present it. I wrapped it. I think that anyone wants to say something? Okay, okay. Let me, let me. I have a question. I have a question. Yes, yes, yes. It's coming back to a little bit back in terms of like... Max, is that you? Yes, it's me. I'm coming up to the charts and call it my name earlier. But when we were talking about this kind of the harmonics that the Stoics are making these sort of world building, I guess you could say, does that have anything to do with their aestheticism? And is it like
is it maybe easier in a sort of way to be an aesthetic if you're trying to kind of build these new harmonies? I'm not saying that's like what you should do, but I've just been kind of unsure about that. Really, really good question. You see, the question of understanding the harmonics for them is that space is a physical question perhaps not in the modern sense of physics but in their understanding of physics who's this so yes harmonics
in ethics is predicated on the idea that nature is not homogeneous, is in fact contradictory. So, as I mentioned earlier on, this is why they were Heraclitians rather than Platonics or Eleatic. Because for Heraclitus, nature comes off as a systematic opposition.
Yet, I don't think that they were thoroughly Heraclitians, precisely because... My apologies, I have forgotten the name of that movie. Is this Werkmeister Harmony? Oh yes, brilliant film. Yes. Really good. I think that if you want to understand the idea of stoicism, of harmonics, perhaps you should watch the Latar's movie. So this is
essentially how it unfolds. So it is not as if that we should conform to the blind forces of nature even though they are opposite. It is rather the idea that our harmonic scripts adds something to the nature, to the opposition of forces and perhaps their integration, but not their unification. So Stoics do believe, like Hegel, that the end of virtue
is not that nature becomes thought or thought becomes nature, but rather they don't fuse, but rather they touch each other in a perfect harmony, integration. and of course such a harmony is always a recipe for a better harmony because it is rife with perturbations with disturbances
So did we want to coordinate presenters for next week? Are there particular texts that you wanted us to read? Why are you asking me this? Aren't you the moderator? For once, you should pick some people. Why do I always need to be the bad guy in this class? Well, I can pick someone, but are there texts that we should be reading? Is it Confucius or like a rather Confucian thought next week? We are actually next week,
we are still going to our epithetis, you know, cosmic indifference. If there is a time, then I will go to Middle Eastern idea of insanity. Then after that, we will touch on ideas of, you know, basically, I don't know. is basically sane and not sane by virtue of civil law. Civil law. So I'm going to
get a little bit of kind of a little bit of French Jacobian stuff. After that, we go to our pinnacle, which is neuroscientific understanding of how to experiment with oneself. So tomorrow we are mostly talking about epictetus with a little bit of neuroscience and other kinds of stuff. So who is going to be candidate? Are there specific texts that ought to be presented on or just those themes in general?
I will send you. Yeah. Okay. Are there any volunteers to present? Make me be a good dictator. Perhaps Juliet? Good. Good. Juliet. Julie, can you hear me? We can hear you. Yeah, that's okay. But you'll let me know what text? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Tomorrow I will send the texts. Yeah, sure. Cool.
Okay, and we need one more person. Maybe Max? Yep, that worked for me. Okay, so we have two people now. Now to see how dictatorship works. You always need to give the power to someone else to do the dirty job. It always works. Alex miraculously managed to get two people. I couldn't get these two people. He did.
Think about the miracles of dictatorship. Democracy perhaps is not a great paradigm. Dictatorship is a good one. All right, excellent. So are there any closing thoughts that you have or that anybody else would like to make before we wrap up? Yeah, please, two last questions. Of course, as always, I will remain online for 10 minutes after the course. Anything, any sort of concern, something that you always wanted to talk about,
you were afraid of? All right, well I guess we can finish for the day but we'll stop the recording and we can continue talking if there's anything else that comes up. Okay, okay, sure. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you, thank you.