Wipe It Clean
Living the good life through proper judgments
Within each of us lies the ability to live a good life. This good life, according to the Stoics, comes from our ability to craft a life of virtue. Irrespective of our situation in life, whether we are in servitude like Epictetus or an emperor like Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics held that within everyone is the power to grasp the good life.
This is because the good life boils down to the pursuit of virtue and properly applying judgments to the events we face. The good life to the Stoics was an intricate pursuit of four main virtues, known as the Four Cardinal Virtues, that, when pursued in earnest, provides the individual with the ability to live a satisfying life.
The Four Cardinal Virtues are:
Wisdom
Justice
Courage
Temperance
To live in harmony with each is to live in pursuit of the good life. However, pursuing such virtue day-in and day-out poses difficulties as we are constantly inundated with desires, biases, and distractions, not only from within ourselves, but from the world around us. We are constantly watching what others do, what they want, and we base our own desires and actions around the paths others have taken. Too often, we let go of our own path and get caught up in life and what we think we want, what we think is correct.
The Stoics had a 3-tier mold for dealing with externals. They placed these externals into categories of value-judgments: good, bad, and indifferent.
“To live a good life,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself. “We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.”
To a Stoic, good represented something that would benefit the self, while also in pursuit of what is right and good aka what falls within line with the Four Cardinal Virtues. Bad represented something that did not benefit the self and could in fact do harm to one’s ability to pursue virtue. Indifference was reserved for when something neither fell into the good or bad category as a determination could not yet be made. As Donald Robertson, author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor once put it:
“They don’t make our souls better or worse, or affect our fulfilment (eudaimonia) in life. What matters ultimately is the use we make of them, good or bad, virtuous or vicious.”
We go about determining what is good, bad and indifferent through our examination of the external. It is not just experiencing the event—this tends to carry us away—rather, it is about really determining how the event imprints upon you. Are you allowing it to rile up your emotions and carry you away in a knee-jerk way? Or can you encounter the event with an even outlook and reserve judgment?
Next, we must see how this event falls into the bigger picture of the events of our lives. Every event is a single moment in the vast landscape of millions of moments that will make up the story of our lives. Often, we cannot see how a single moment in time will affect our lives. Sometimes the events we deem at a moment bad, are the ones that really aid us in the long run. Conversely, some of the events and moments we currently view as good, we may look back upon and realize they were actually a hinderance. As Kierkegaard once said, life can only be lived forward, but can only be understood backwoods.
Finally, if we rush to judgment and call something bad, we can and should step back and determine its truth:
“We could leave the page blank - and if a mark slips through, erase it instantly... If it's imposed by nature, accept it gladly and stop fighting it. And if not, work out what your own nature requires, and aim at that, even if it brings you no glory.”
We don’t have to accept the impression of the event that is placed upon us. We do not need to be carried away with that impression and allow our emotions to be riled up. We have the ability to come back to ourselves, to “erase” the impression and return to a neutral state.
So much of our lives are dictated by the constant emotional swings we go through. These emotions rise and fall based upon the value-judgments we place upon events. But, if we work at it, if we can distance ourselves from knee-jerk reactions to the events, we can view them with tranquility and truly learn to live the good life, one that we control rather than one being forced upon us.
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo