My course “Self-Cultivation and Spiritual Practice” starts from the premise that philosophy — at least as it has existed outside of today’s analytical philosophy departments — has generally been about how to live, and that the best philosophers around the world have offered detailed instructions on how to get better at that. Historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot has called those “spiritual exercises,” and some contemporary philosophers (including Michel Foucault in his last years and Peter Sloterdijk more recently) have tried, in some ways, to make it that again. Since that dovetails well with the current popular interest in spirituality, yoga, mindfulness, and other such things, I offer the course to provide some historical and cultural grounding to practices found in the spiritual and philosophical “marketplace” today.
It’s a survey course that moves from the ancient world (Greece, India, China) to today’s emergent spiritualities. We just covered the Hellenistic world last week, and one of the little tidbits I shared included some advice for living in difficult times. It’s intended to help students distinguish between the perspectives of the Stoics and the Epicureans, and specifically between what Stoics call the “view from above” — a kind of universe’s view on our lives — and what the Epicureans might have called the “view from within” (or the “argument from nature”). While the views below aren’t exactly demonstrative of these, I think they work in our present context.
I prefaced the comment by noting that I teach and research the cultural dimensions of the environmental crisis. (The spiritual practice course is a special course taught for my university’s Honors College.) That means that I’m as aware as anyone of the scope, scale, and difficulty of the challenges humanity is and will be facing in the coming decades — an awareness that is enough to make anyone a pessimist (no kidding). The Covid-19 pandemic has only made that awareness feel more acute. So these are ways of tempering a “pessimogenic” situation with what I think of as “realistic optimism.”
Perspective 1: A neo-Stoic “view from above“:
We live in a world of tremendous challenges, but also real possibilities. For all the difficulties, tribulations, and tragedies occurring around the world at this very moment — people falling ill and dying, hurricanes and wildfires forcing relocation, species going extinct, and all the rest — there are also decisions being made, relationships being built, objects and moments of beauty being witnessed, shared, and made meaningful.
On the grand scale, our time is the best of times and the worst of times. The worst is easily conveyed (read this blog, or almost any environmental news). The best is well to be reminded of. There have been good times in the past — civilizational “bubbles” that lasted for decades or even centuries (I have some personal favorites). When measured in aggregate, ours can plausibly rank among them. It’s quite probable, for instance, that more people today — not just in absolute numbers (which is certain) but as a proportion of humanity — are living longer, healthier (or at least more secure), and more creative lives than at anytime in the last 5000 years.
To put all this into more “cosmic” terms (which reflect the Stoic understanding of the Logos): We know that we live in a universe in which life can flourish. It does here on Earth, so it likely does that on other planets in the universe (billions of them, according to the estimates of astrobiologists). This capacity of the universe to give rise to self-aware, reflective, and reasoning beings reflects both a challenge and a possibility. Humans today are coming to understand their collective power in transforming the living systems of our planet. As we do, we can draw upon more knowledge — about how other societies have dealt with their challenges — than was ever amassed before on this world.
With our power, we could lead to the destruction of the biodiverse life on our planet, or, alternatively, to its flourishing. All that may be needed for the latter to occur is a virtuous, exemplary, and inspiring minority. But irrespective of the results of our efforts, we can be certain of one thing: that it is in the “nature,” or the Logos, of the universe to allow the emergence of conditions for the flourishing of such planetary life-systems. That this, in other words, is a universe that’s friendly to life and to the exercise of effort to make that life flourish into beautiful, complex, sentient, and harmonious forms.
Whatever comes of our efforts, others on other worlds will certainly make such efforts, too. And in a universe of such immensity, whatever is possible, with effort will eventually occur, sometime, somewhere. If we can contribute to it, that in itself is wondrous and worthy of gratitude. In the grand scheme of things, there are things we can do right now that would contribute to the universal good. Happiness is found in doing them.
Perspective 2: A neo-Epicurean “view from within“:
We do not know if there is a cosmic order; we do not know if the world is going to hell or to heaven. (We’ll be long gone before we get to either place.) Let’s leave those questions aside and bring ourselves back to the basics of life.
The most basic fact is that from the very first moments of life and throughout our lives, we experience pleasure and pain; we feel hunger and thirst, but also satisfaction and happiness. When faced with a choice between them, we opt for pleasure because it is more satisfying. Every creature demonstrates this, humans no less than others.
To the extent that we have experienced happiness in our lives (at some points in time), we can learn what it is that makes happiness possible and more likely, and how we can arrange our lives in ways that generate greater happiness and pleasure for ourselves and with and for others. We can also learn what kinds of things take away from such happiness.
Once we set our minds on doing this, it’s actually not difficult to do. It doesn’t require advanced degrees or great expertise (which is why Epicureans had more women, slaves, prostitutes, and all kinds of other people among them — treated equally, since that was naturally what brought greater happiness). It only requires either a reliable guide or a reliable sense of inner guidance — which we could get from trusting our own moments of happiness and infusing them with the exercise of good judgment. All that is part of human nature; it is, so to speak, our birthright.
What that means, in a confusing world, is this: Don’t trouble with problems you can’t unravel; don’t fret about puzzles you cannot solve. Cultivate friendship, physical health, reliable and nourishing food, and edifying conversation. Do this attentively and joyously, and others will share from the benefits it brings you. There is nothing else that is more important, and there is little that is as easy as that.
