Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind by Nancy Sherman.This year had been a year of stoic readings and this book is one most the contemporary and most pragmatic book of all. Stoicism for military seems oxymoronic but it will be self-evident once you read this book.
A word of caution:
I urge that an appreciation of Stoic texts must always be critical and wary of the Stoic tendency to both over-idealize human strength and minimize human vulnerability. Stoic consolations can soothe the soul and, as the Stoics say, lead to an "even-flowing life." But as we approach Stoic and military themes, we should not be so zealous as to demand of ourselves or others either infallible control or perfect virtue.
Stoicism Theme of Epictetus:
Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or that is, whatever is not our own doing.... So remember, if you think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own, you will be thwarted, miserable, and upset, and will blame both gods and men. ... And if it is about one of the things that is not up to us, be ready to say, "You are nothing in relation to me."The circumstances may be beyond our control, but ultimately what affects us for good or ill are only our own judgments about them. We undermine our own autonomy and dignity if we make material and external things responsible for our happiness.
Misinterpreting Epictetus:
It is tempting to read Epictetus as urging complacency in his listeners or at least a retreat to a narrow circle of safety. But this is not the message. We are to continue to meet challenges, take risks, and stretch the limits of our mastery. We are to continue to strive to the best of our efforts to achieve our ends. We are to push our agency to the limit. In this sense, the message is one of empowerment. But at the same time, we are to cultivate greater strength and equanimity in the face of what we truly can't change. We must learn where our mastery begins, but also where it ends.
On Wisdom:
Wisdom is stably beneficial to its possessor; it cannot be misused in the way that money without wisdom can be." We might say wisdom does not depend upon anything outside itself in order to be beneficial to its possessor. The Stoics strengthen the position, holding that only virtue (that is, wisdom) is a genuine good and only vice a genuine evil; everything else is an "indifferent."
On Resilience:
Consider which of the things you proposed initially you have mastered, and which you have not, and how it gives you pleasure to remember some of them, and pain to remember others, and, if possible recover the things that you have let slip. Those competing in the greatest contest should not fade out, but take the blows too. For our competition is not to do with wrestling or the pancration-where success or failure can make all the difference to a man's standing-and indeed make him [in his and the world's eyes] supremely fortunate or unfortunate-but over real good fortune and happiness. What then? Even if we fail here and now, no one stops us from competing again; we don't have to wait another four years for the next Olympics, but as soon as a man has picked himself up and renewed his grip on himself and shown the same enthusiasm he is allowed to compete. And if you give in again, you can compete again, and if once you win, you are like someone who never gave in. Only, don't let sheer habit make you give in readily and end up like a bad athlete going around beaten in the whole circuit like quails that run away."
A word of caution:
I urge that an appreciation of Stoic texts must always be critical and wary of the Stoic tendency to both over-idealize human strength and minimize human vulnerability. Stoic consolations can soothe the soul and, as the Stoics say, lead to an "even-flowing life." But as we approach Stoic and military themes, we should not be so zealous as to demand of ourselves or others either infallible control or perfect virtue.
Stoicism Theme of Epictetus:
Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or that is, whatever is not our own doing.... So remember, if you think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own, you will be thwarted, miserable, and upset, and will blame both gods and men. ... And if it is about one of the things that is not up to us, be ready to say, "You are nothing in relation to me."The circumstances may be beyond our control, but ultimately what affects us for good or ill are only our own judgments about them. We undermine our own autonomy and dignity if we make material and external things responsible for our happiness.
Misinterpreting Epictetus:
It is tempting to read Epictetus as urging complacency in his listeners or at least a retreat to a narrow circle of safety. But this is not the message. We are to continue to meet challenges, take risks, and stretch the limits of our mastery. We are to continue to strive to the best of our efforts to achieve our ends. We are to push our agency to the limit. In this sense, the message is one of empowerment. But at the same time, we are to cultivate greater strength and equanimity in the face of what we truly can't change. We must learn where our mastery begins, but also where it ends.
On Wisdom:
Wisdom is stably beneficial to its possessor; it cannot be misused in the way that money without wisdom can be." We might say wisdom does not depend upon anything outside itself in order to be beneficial to its possessor. The Stoics strengthen the position, holding that only virtue (that is, wisdom) is a genuine good and only vice a genuine evil; everything else is an "indifferent."
On Resilience:
Consider which of the things you proposed initially you have mastered, and which you have not, and how it gives you pleasure to remember some of them, and pain to remember others, and, if possible recover the things that you have let slip. Those competing in the greatest contest should not fade out, but take the blows too. For our competition is not to do with wrestling or the pancration-where success or failure can make all the difference to a man's standing-and indeed make him [in his and the world's eyes] supremely fortunate or unfortunate-but over real good fortune and happiness. What then? Even if we fail here and now, no one stops us from competing again; we don't have to wait another four years for the next Olympics, but as soon as a man has picked himself up and renewed his grip on himself and shown the same enthusiasm he is allowed to compete. And if you give in again, you can compete again, and if once you win, you are like someone who never gave in. Only, don't let sheer habit make you give in readily and end up like a bad athlete going around beaten in the whole circuit like quails that run away."
Moderate Stoicism:
The task for the individual, whether civilian or military, youth or adult, is to temper control with forgiveness, soldierly strength with tolerance for human frailty. A healthy Stoicism of this sort, if we can successfully reconstruct such a thing, would push us to self-mastery, but never at the cost of self-renunciation or excessive self-punishment. It would exhort us to be sturdy in the face of disappointment, but not fully invulnerable. It would teach us to value self-reliance and a can-do spirit, but at the same time it would encourage us to know the place of fellowship and mutual support. In the face of our defects and vulnerabilities, empathy and compassion toward self and others would be recognized as crucial tonics.
Epictetus, whose counsels can be uncompromisingly severe, cautions his students against thinking that their actions can ever be error-free in the way requisite of a sage: "So is it possible to be altogether faultless? No, that is impracticable; but it is possible to strive continuously not to commit faults. For we shall have cause to be satisfied if, by never relaxing our attention, we shall escape at least a few faults.
Respect for Human Emotions:
In the military, unforgiving views toward the expression of emotions have led in the past to disastrous treatment of shell-shock victims and to demands for military men and women to compartmentalize their emotional lives in ways that both tear military bonds and strain service members' reintegration into their families and the civilian community. Appraising Stoic views and appreciating that the Stoics themselves embrace options other than a stolid repudiation of emotional life provides a bold lesson for the military.
On Human Fragility and Adversity:
The more frequently and matter-of-factly we remind ourselves of our fragility, the more prepared we will be to face adversity. So someone might ask: "But what if my friends should die?" What else could that signify except that men who are mortal have died? Do you at once wish to live to be old, and yet not to see the death of any one you love? Do you not know that, in a long course of time, many and various events must necessarily happen? That a fever must get the better of one person, a highwayman of another, a tyrant of a third? For such is the world we live in; such are those who live in it with us. Heat and cold, improper diet, journeys by land, voyages by sea, winds, and all kinds of accidents destroy some, banish others, and send one on an embassy, another on campaign. Such are the facts of luck and circumstance. We are ultimately all vulnerable.
Seneca begins his remarks (in Book II) by noting that wrongdoing in the world is legion. If the wise person habitually reacted to it, "his entire life would be spent in bad temper and grief." He would become a ranter and raver, not so different from those whose lives are filled with petty malice and spite, who, although "out of military dress," are "still at war with each other," bickering and fighting as if in a "school of gladiators." This is no life for a sage, or for even one who aspires toward virtue in more modest ways. Moral indignation robs one of a life of equanimity.
Epictetus on Happiness:
The contest of life has as its prize our own individual happiness. We compete against ourselves, not others.
On Suicide:
Epictetus's tone is optimistic. And yet, following traditional Stoic doctrine, he leaves the door open for a "well-reasoned exit" (eulogos exagoge) through suicide in extreme circumstances when one can no longer have the happiness that consists in practicing virtue.
Kant himself, famously dogmatic about truth-telling, surprisingly anticipates (indeed embraces) the role of pretense in social interaction:
Men are, one and all, actors-the more so the more civilized they are. They put on a show of affection, respect for others, modesty and disinterest without deceiving anyone, since it is generally understood that they are not sincere about it. And it is a very good thing that this happens in the world. For if men keep on playing these roles, the real virtues whose semblance they have merely been affecting for a long time are gradually aroused and pass into their attitude of will.
Cicero on not letting them fuck with you:
Sometimes it happens that it is necessary to reprove someone. In that case we may perhaps need to use a more rhetorical tone of voice, or sharper and serious language, and even to behave so that we seem to be acting in anger. However, we should have recourse to this sort of rebuke in the way we do to surgery and cautery, rarely and unwillingly.... One ought for the most part only to resort to mild criticism, though combined with a certain seriousness so as to show severity while avoiding abusiveness."
Seneca on Anger:
The first is the claim that we can more effectively change others through therapeutic reform than through retribution. We should take up the "kindly gaze of a doctor viewing the sick" and get on with the business of cure rather than moral protest. We are better off viewing wrongdoing more as pathology than as evil. Our souls are like leaky ships. Surely a man whose ship has timbers loose and leaking badly will not be angry with the sailors or with the ship itself? Sufficient help is what is needed. Seneca implies that even an impersonal protest that is not defiant-one that focuses on a moral mistake (and not the victim's injury) and defends the value that makes the action wrong-is misguided.
If reason starts to mix with anger, then anger may prevail in a way that prevents reason from "rising again." How can it free itself from the chaos, if the admixture of baser ingredients has prevailed?
Seneca on Bravery:
And what is bravery? It is the impregnable fortress for our mortal weakness; when a man has surrounded himself therewith, he can hold out free from anxiety during life's siege; for he is using his own strength and his own weapons." The critical point for us is that Seneca accepts the notion of some losses as tragic, even though he thinks that in such circumstances, control and "faking it" are still possible and prudent.
A Supple Stoicism:
What I wish to underscore is that Seneca constantly struggles within his own writing to articulate a more supple form of Stoicism. In this spirit, we too need to see if there is a brand of Stoicism that prepares us for enduring the worst tragedies without compromising our fundamental humanity. That, it would seem, is a Stoic ideal worth supporting. The more human face of Stoicism also emerges when we adjust our focus, as Seneca often does, to include not only the sage but also the advanced moral learner, or "progressor," to use the Stoic term. This is the morally decent yet morally imperfect adult whom Seneca addresses in many of his essays and letters. The work of exhortation is not for the sage, who has already arrived, but for those who are still aspiring. Although in strict Stoic terms anyone who is not a sage is a fool, Seneca's letters show the abundant room for moral growth that can preoccupy even a fool. Similarly, the Stoic notion of "appropriate" acts performed by sage and non-sage alike (in the case of the non-sage, with "well-reasoned" [eulogos] but not perfectly right motives) is evidence that good conduct is not an exclusive moral category, open only to the most morally elite." Those in the military who insist on the perfectionism implicit in a zero-defect policy have something to learn from this important Stoic concession. Here we can do no better than to cite a now famous anecdote Colin Powell offers in his autobiography. At one point in his early years, he lost his sidearm, a fairly serious offense for a junior officer and one that under a zero-defect policy can be career-ending. But Powell's superior officer spared him. Powell (and others-I first read about it in an e-mail circulated at the Naval Academy) tells the story as a cautionary tale: too harsh a screening process can weed out some of the military's best. In addition to any moral implications, in sheer economic terms it can be too costly.
Preserving our Humanity:
The fear of losing one's soul in war is real, felt over and over again by those who wear a uniform. Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy captain and senior chaplain assigned to General Wesley Clark in the European Command during the war in Bosnia, told me of a colonel who sought him out while serving in Bosnia. "Chaplain," he said, "the Army trains me to kill people and break things. Your job, chaplain, is to keep me from ever getting to a point where I like doing it." The late philosopher Richard Wollheim told me of a similar piece of advice given to him by a commanding officer he deeply admired for his courage on the battlefield: "Never, but never, get to the point where you like war."
"We don't want our people just to come home physically; we want them to come back close to the human beings they were before they went in." That, as the biblical texts suggest, "is not something that you can wait and just start afterwards. It's something that you do before."
On Tears:
"I always say strong men do weep. It's part of their strength. But you don't cry in front of your subordinates; you don't walk around sobbing, `We've had a battle and I've lost eight of my men."' But service members do cry at funerals in the field, and privately in their tents at night, and in returning to the battlefields where they fought. "No one would think anything less of the guy.... He is simply a human being that cares."
Let Us Cultivate Humanity:
The Stoics are surely wrong in thinking that we can become rock-ribbed and resilient if only we protect ourselves against the vulnerability love and friendship invite. They are right, however, to suggest that those attachments cannot be the limits of our moral regard. We need to conceive of a community whose bonds go beyond the partialities of love and affection and religious or tribal kinship. But we cannot build that community simply by reciting mantras of respect and dignity for fellow humans. As Hierocles insists, we need to do the hard work of positioning ourselves to make that respect available in the hardest cases. In short, it requires cultivating humanity through empathetic identification and respect. "Let us cultivate humanity," Seneca exhorts in his famous final injunction in On Anger. The words should be a part of any warrior's honor code.
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