Richard Sorabji: Who needs drugs when you're Stoic?

From a lecture given at Gresham College, London, by the Professor of Rhetoric

What is it to face things stoically? Perhaps we think of people who clench their teeth and keep a stiff upper lip. But this is not Stoicism at all. Stoic serenity was supposed to have passed beyond the stage of inner struggle.

There may be parallel misconceptions about taking things philosophically. Oliver Edwards once said: "I have tried, too, in my time to be a philosopher; but I don't know how, cheerfulness kept breaking through." Yet the Stoic philosopher was free to be cheerful.

The Stoic School was founded in Athens in 300BC and it modelled itself on Socrates, who had been executed in Athens 99 years earlier. Socrates was a model for the Stoics. He had in 399BC voluntarily stayed in prison and drunk the fatal hemlock, rather than violate the laws that had, however unjustly, led to his being condemned.

But, if one report is to be believed, Socrates achieved his serenity by different means. When he saw the danger of anger coming on, he would put a smile on his face and slow down his walk. He was thus relying on neurophysiological feedback to remain calm. The Stoics relied entirely on thoughts, and on changing their thoughts, so as to maintain the right attitude of mind.

Part of the Stoic recipe for calmness would be useful to us today. The Stoics believed that emotions were just judgements, evaluative judgments. This was relevant, because it meant that unwanted emotions could in principle be changed by rational means, by thinking more carefully, so as to view the situation differently.

One did not have to use physical means or change one's diet to calm one's emotions, as some ancient doctors recommended; nor wait for the invention of drugs.