"So he professes Stoicism. Indeed. You wouldn't know it by his actions."

 

The Stoic Emblem

From The Humanist Contemplative

What the Stoics Did For Us

Massimo Pigliucci

November 28, 2017

New Humanist

When my thinking and behavior fail me in my estimation and what I infer to be the estimation of others I care about, as well as those for whom I don't give a fig, Stoicism has not failed me nor have I failed Stoicism.

The Stoic lifeway does not promise perfect thinking or consistent happiness for attempting the thoughts and acts it guides us toward. Nor does it offer eternal life or reincarnation as a 'higher' life form upon our death as rewards for our Earthly efforts, as some large and small religions do.

It is my self evaluator, my conscience, that has failed me due to my misapplication of it or its miscalibration of focus or tolerance. The miscalibration of one's conscience is a problem both long-standing and something inherently human - a tendency to go out of calibration from time to time from any number of causes.

As for my estimation of my social standing, many say such should be of no concern to me, ever. So do the Stoics when they assert the only concern an individual should have is cultivating one's personal virtue. In doing that, the Stoics say, the estimation of others will more often than not take care of itself.

If others misjudge us, it is not of our doing and something beyond our control, and therefore should not be of any concern to us. It certainly should not concern us in thought or action until their misjudgments result in actions of theirs that do fall unequivocally within our realm of control. And then it is only our thoughts and actions, not theirs, that we may choose to control.

Absolute triumph over one's thinking, behavior, and one's desire for happiness only occurs, we are often and correctly told, among saints and sages. 

But it is good for us to recall that saints are theological renderings of the surface impressions theologians form of those they tell us are saintly. The person behind and represented by those tellings is no different from each of us in terms of being imperfectly human in everything they are and attempt. Saintliness occurs among all humans as something lived, as a matter of degree not kind.

Sages also exist, more often than not in the judgements and renderings of our learned, more secular-inclined fellows. As with saints, a close look behind pronouncements of sagacity and the conferring of sagehood on a person reveal the same fallibilities of saints - wisdom, like saintliness, is in us all varying only in degree, not kind.

Even saints and sages sometimes in their earthly life stand naked, foul, failed, and ashamed.

Personal success or failure exists on a continuum. One's ever-changing place on that range of accomplishment depends on the degree of one's effort and persistence at living by the principles of Stoicism, the lifeway being considered here, and on matters beyond one's control.

Achieving completely perfect thinking and happiness for the rest of one's life without instances of failure, to some degree or other, cannot be achieved through Stoicism. But the Stoic way of organizing and directing one's personal and social efforts comes closest to such an ideal and ​reduces the number and degree of personal and social results that are less than perfect.

The essay linked above by philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci describes what Stoicism offers.