The Stoic Socrates: Four Emotional Resilience Strategies

hi everyone I just wanted to do a quick video to talk about one of my favorite parts of the Socratic literature and it's a small section and Plato's Republic which is often overlooked and yet in it Socrates describes four strategies he gives a kind of bullet point list of four cognitive strategies that help the wise or philosophers to develop psychological or emotional resilience in the face of adversity so I can't call this a stoic Socrates because some of the things he says clearly seem to preempt the emphasis and emotional resilience building and later stoic philosophy so it's a very curious thing they he first talks about there's some book three of Plato's Republic where he says the end Greek tragedy the heroes often provide very bad role models unsurprisingly Socrates says that they're often me to give pitiful speeches excessively lamenting them misfortune as you can see well that's part of tragedy raised part of drama but it's interesting that he notes us and he thinks it's important we all know this already but infection it's part of rhetoric in a sense that the the protagonists exaggerated their distress and misfortune for theatrical effect so they give these speeches excessively lamenting misfortune and something says well this is interesting it's art but it's the opposite philosophies a good man in the real world wouldn't act like that he he wouldn't Socrates says even regard death as a cat such a catastrophic thing for somebody to suffer even the death of one of his friends which makes him like a calf cold-hearted or an odd thing to see at Frost but he's seen something that's fairly moderate he says a wise man won't Reeve over the loss of his loved ones and the way that Achilles is portrayed is doing for example because a wise man Socrates says is somebody who's self-sufficient someone as self-sufficient in fact as we could imagine being you know the the essence of wisdom and his view is a kind of self sufficiency self-reliance and so he would be less dependent than other people on others on other people so he does love us he doesn't need them at least he doesn't need them as much as those who grieve excessively are the unwise do so losing his son his brother his possessions or anything would seem less catastrophic less dreadful to the wise and good man than it would to other people he claims now Moses crucially he doesn't say that they wouldn't the observer at all just that they would be proportionately less upset than the majority of people they'll bill must miss what they'll be I must watch a more calmly though they won't complain about it as loudly he says and then he sets this aside for a long time and he returns to it at the end of the Republic and booked in and now he's more explicit about seeing that he's claiming training and philosophy to teachers to develop this kind of emotional resilience which he thinks is characteristic of the ideal wise man of the sage and he recalls his earlier comfort conversation about this had returns - and he builds honor and he says before even a wise man who's trained in philosophy can't help but feel sorrow in some situations nevertheless he'll moderator in these four ways so we do exactly what it says in the dialogue Socrates begins by saying the law that law of reason would say that to be peace under suffering is based and that we should not give way to impatience is there's no knowing whether such things are good or evil and nothing is gained by impatience for second also because no human thing is of serious importance and because grief stands in the way of that which at the moment is most required so let me just recap on that briefly so he says and this could be viewed as reasons why the wise man maintains his equanimity or cognitive strategies that help him to maintain that equanimity so he says number one there's no knowing whether there are such things misfortunes are good or evil nothing is gained by impatience or complaining about things because no human thing is of serious importance or such serious importance and finally because grief stands in the way of that which at the moment is most required and then Glaucon says well what's most required Socrates and Socrates says that we should take counsel about what has happened and when the dice have been thrown order our affairs and the way which reason deems based not like children who have taken a fall keep holding the parts track and wasting our time setting up a hole but always custom our custom in the soul training the mind forthwith to apply a remedy raising up that which is sickly and fallen banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art of philosophy he means again it's a good example there are Socrates Pratap presenting philosophy as he often does as a form of therapy for the mind of psychotherapy so please was set on his philosophical mission by Apollo the god of healing after all and here he clearly is describing philosophy as a healing art and glow Cahn replies yes that's the true way of meeting the attacks of fortune just to confirm that's what we're talking about here so I'm just recap on those four things briefly because I think they're really important and people don't realize the in the Republic you know I think when you study the Republic at university you case it seems kind of more dry and somehow you miss these little nuggets of psychological advice that I'm gonna do a statement like I say I think this has the ring they are of something that possibly came from Socrates maybe plato's embellished I don't know I said the end of the Republic this was probably written plainly but it does sound like just the sort of thing that Socrates would say and plate well then goes and links it to his tripartite model of the soul which probably isn't something that Socrates would have said but these basic bits of advice sounds like they can easily have come from Socrates and as we'll see the reflect advice that Socrates goes and other platonic dialogues and even in the dialogues of Xenophon so I'm going to stick what I can say to me this sounds like Socrates speaking in this passage and you know this advice is similar to advice I'd be happy giving this advice and you know maybe tweaking it slightly but to someone on a modern resilience building or CBT workshop you know Peter I think most people following stoic philosophy today would recognize the value of this advice by you know how many people have read the Republic had not even noticed that he says this you know he says it very concisely so what's unpacked out a lot about okay so number one the wise man bears in mind he can't know for certain and most events where the things are going to be good for him or bad for him because bad fortune often turns into good and vice versa so again in Greek drama there are many reversals of fortune like this is very familiar from Greek tragedy you know what to take the obvious example either purse marries Queen Jocasta which seems like good fortune then he finds out it's actually his mother but it seems like you know it stunned into a bad thing to his horror he finds that it's a Greek tragedies all about these kane of reversals and you know even in the the far softcore literature you can find many examples of this socrates like these paradoxes people complain about being poor the Socrates pointed out to them that under the regime of the thirty tyrants the oligarchy which was a kind of reign of terror and Athens Socrates lived through the thirty rounded-up fifteen hundred Athenians and slaughtered them like they executed them in the Agora and they mainly pecked on Democrats and wealthy emigrants because they wanted to seize their assets so if you were rich and you happen to live and the regime of the thirty tyrants you're a good fortune and being wealthy could get you beheaded because they wanted to take your money so people who were kind of anonymous and pure they complain about the poverty and like a reputation Socrates would say well let's tumble it to be high in your interests when the oligarchy took power because it meant that you avoided being butchered by them and having a property stolen and so we can't always be certain like whether something's actually in our interests or not and you know we shouldn't be misled by appearances Socrates his whole philosophical mission was to question people and undermine who he describes as a kind of intellectual conceit whereby people assume that they know what is good and the method the Socratic question is is all about puncturing that and the apology he describes that very clearly it's a conceit that people have that they know us of arrogance and that they think they know about virtue and what's truly good in life but many questions and I just kind of follow us apart and that's linked to what he's saying here why we shouldn't be conceited and jump to conclusions about what's good or bad in any given situation in fact Socrates would say it's the way that we deal with the situation that really constitutes our true good or what's truly bad for that I was depending whether we respond wisely or foolishly to a situation there's also a really interesting example of this in Plato's apology where the end of the trial the last thing that Socrates says the last thing he the last words he utters of these the hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways I to die and you to live which is better god only knows no that's a clearly seems to mirror the strategy we can't be certain what's good or bad in any situation and so we should kind of reserve judgment not suspend judgment rather than kind of just assuming it's a catastrophe and so the wise man never Akane of has those firm negative catastrophic beliefs that lie the rural distress number two grieving too much does is no good now he could have gone further than that and said grieving over much about things does more harm than good and mystics really pick up this theme and run with it they're often saying in fact it's cool perhaps father again our phrasing it in a slightly different way one of the sort of the the favorite Maxim's of the Stoics is that fear of something is often worse than the thing itself so grieving Socrates says does us no good does us more harm than good it simply adds to our suffering it's not worth that why what's the point of it we were just adding another way out our suffering it's a point that he's making there and I saw the stories like I say would go further and say eh you know normally that way the grief is actually worse than the thing that you're grieving about in many cases so number one we can't always be sure what's good or bad in any situation number two grieving too much does us no good now we're on to number three nothing is that important Socrates says nothing has that much value Axia are that much importance in the grand scheme of things nothing is worth getting that upset about no this is the one that people sometimes question because they say well there are terrible things that happen in the world but Socrates are saying well the something about the excessive grief grief of girls like Achilles that seems to go where a proportion to that though when we look at events in the bigger picture which is the truth which is reality we tend to view them more moderately and more objectively the only way we could get the upset about something is to ignore everything else that's going on in the world and just focus on in isolation and that the Stoics and socrates would say is a kind of lie of a mission we're taking events out of context there's a ton of research on modern psychotherapy that shows that when people are emotionally distressed they tend to narrow the scope of their attention they become threat focused so it's kind of like putting things under a magnifying glass it's the Stoics would say well yeah nothing is worth getting that upset about in part because when you view it and it's true context as part of the bigger picture it becomes kind of diluted the other all the other good and bad things balance out or compensate for it to some extent so no longer seems like everything is just all negative we have to take things out of context to get catastrophic cleanups say about so number one we can't be certain where things are good or bad in a situation number two grieving too much doesn't look good number three nothing is that important and number four grief prevents us from actually doing the thing that's most required in the face of a crisis which is to think calmly and solve the problem that we face because when we become upset clothes or judgment again there's a ton of research that shows that strong negative emotions introduced loads of cognitive biases we become stupid when we're angry or upset so Socrates are saying well the thing that we need most in a crisis is a cool head and problem-solving we need to deliberate debate things within ourselves and figure out a solution you can't do that if you're really upset if you're freaking out like Kelly's for example or either piss so I just wanted to go over those four points for you because I think they're really important and you know he essentially Socrates is very clearly describing a kind of emotional resilience they are and I wonder what you think about that so let me turn them into some questions you know what do you think of that advice in general and the Republic but three and book ten do we need to keep an open mind about whether events will turn out in the long run to be for the better or for the worse or whether they're really intrinsically good or bad do we just harm ourselves needlessly by over indulging in grief when we become extremely upset we kind of forgetting about the bigger picture and placing more importance on events than they actually justify on merit and those becoming upset actually tend to get in the way of our ability to solve problems and a crisis situation let me know what you think if you want to comment below that'd be fantastic I hope you find that you

Channel: Donald Robertson

Views: 8,972

Keywords: Socrates, Stoicism

Id: YzXIzy1BFkE

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018