Reading Greek, missing the point – part I

Mary Beard, Emily Wilson, and what classicists get wrong about Stoicism

Classicist and historian May Beard. Image from Wikimedia.

Stoicism is nowadays a popular philosophy of life. Which means, predictably, that it generates distorted spinoffs and misguided criticisms. It is a bit disheartening, however, when the criticisms come from people who really ought to know better. Today I’m going to push back against two of them, despite the fact that I otherwise admire them greatly.

The two in question are both classicists, not philosophers, and perhaps that has something to do with their misconceptions. Or not, it’s hard to tell on the basis of such a small sample size. I’m talking about historian Mary Beard and translator Emily Wilson.

I greatly enjoyed Beard’s SPQR, and I once defended her on Twitter against the uninformed and rude criticisms of professional sorehead Nassim Taleb. As for Wilson, recently I enjoyed her appearance at the Brooklyn Public Library, where she read excerpts from her translation of the Odyssey – in ancient Greek! (If you’re curious, it sounds a lot like Klingon…).

And yet, when it comes to Stoicism both these scholars seem to me to completely, almost willfully miss the mark.

Let me start with Beard, specifically an interview she gave a few years back to the New York Times Magazine. Much of what Beard says there is both within her sphere of competence and – so far as I can tell – reasonable and accurate. But right at the end, the interviewer says:

“I don’t know if this is novel to you, but in the last few years there has been a real resurgence of popular interest in Stoic philosophy – why’d you just roll your eyes?”

Yes, why did you, Mary? Her response:

“All to the good when people are interested in the ancient world, but this is one of the more mystifying bits of interest: clichéd self-help from a philosophy that, if you looked at it really hard, was nasty, fatalistic, bordering on fascist.”

Wait, what? Pretty much every single bit of what comes after the colon is completely wrong. First, Stoic philosophy is so far from being a bunch of cliché that it inspired some of the most influential thinkers of the western tradition, from the early Christians all the way to the founding figures of the American revolution. Oh, and Stoicism led to cognitive behavioral therapy, the best evidence-based psychotherapy available today.

“Nasty”? I truly wonder what she meant there. Nasty means disagreeable, offensive, mean-spirited, or malicious. I simply can’t imagine how reading Seneca or Epictetus would lead to that sort of judgment. Just one counter from Seneca:

“Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business: learn how to feel joy.” (Letter 23.3)

“Fatalistic”? The Stoics did believe in something they called “fate,” but very explicitly what they meant by it was the set of outcomes determined by the universal web of cause and effect. If Beard doesn’t believe in that she has some catching up to do in her understanding of natural science.

And finally, “fascist”? I’m stunned that a historian, of all people, would use that word in such an anachronistic way. Fascism did not exist until 1919, when Mussolini established his infamous “Fasci Italiani di Combattimento.” True, the very symbol of fascism was the fasces, the bundles of rods with an axe that were distinctive of ancient Roman magistrates, but fascism as a political movement was a novel kind of totalitarian ideology that has absolutely no connections with ancient Stoicism. Indeed, and rather ironically, several ancient Stoics opposed imperial tyranny, most famously Thrasea Paetus under Nero, his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus under Vespasian, and Helvidius the Younger and Junius Rusticus under Domitian.

Unfortunately, Beard didn’t stop there. The interviewer went on to ask: “But what’s your hunch about why people are being drawn to Stoicism?” To which she replied:

“What comes out in Marcus Aurelius particularly is rather clichéd thoughts: Never take a major decision when your mind is troubled. We can all agree with clichés like that. And they come with the rubber stamp of great antiquity because they were written by an emperor – an emperor who was about as brutal in massacring the enemy as Julius Caesar. But we tend to forget that side of him because he’s a bearded ‘philosopher.’ It’s not very salutary to look at your Amazon ratings, but I always feel terribly pleased – though it doesn’t happen often – when I’m higher up than Marcus Aurelius.”

The only thing I agree with in that paragraph is that it is, indeed, unhealthy to look at one’s Amazon ratings. Setting aside the repeated accusation of cliché, Stoicism doesn’t appeal to people because it has the imprimatur of an emperor, unless one forgets that that emperor was highly influenced by Epictetus, who was born a slave, by far the lowest rung of Roman society.

And where on earth does she get that Marcus was as brutal as Julius Caesar? The latter embarked on a war of conquest, looting, and self-aggrandizing in Gaul that was illegal because unauthorized by the Senate. By contrast, Marcus fought no wars of conquest comparable to Caesar’s Gallic campaigns, and the record is clear that he did his best to use diplomacy whenever possible, and that he was merciful and even accommodating to his enemies, both external and internal.

And why on earth is the word “philosopher” in scare quotes? Beard must have fallen for the common trope that Marcus wasn’t an original thinker, just someone who was writing other people’s thoughts down in his personal journal. But that hasty judgment has been systematically dismantled by William Stephens in his excellent Marcus Aurelius–A Guide for the Perplexed, which clearly shows that Marcus was an original thinker who understood a wide range of philosophical positions, from Heraclitus to Plato to the Stoics.

Beard is a highly respected public intellectual, and the New York Times is the most famous newspaper in the world, which means a huge platform even in these days of influencers and online content providers. As Spider-Man would say, with great power comes great responsibility, and Beard ought to have been more careful when she ventured into a field not of her competence.

[Next time: Emily Wilson.]