Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory

348 Pages·2020·3.546 MB·English

by  Will Johncock

Stoic Philosophy
and Social Theory
Will Johncock
Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory
Will Johncock
Stoic Philosophy
and Social Theory
Will Johncock
http://willjohncock.com
Sydney, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-43152-5 ISBN 978-3-030-43153-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43153-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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A
cknowledgments
To everyone I have informally discussed this book with since conceiving of
it in mid-2016, thank you. My formal appreciation to Palgrave’s Philip
Getz for having confidence in this project and to Amy Invernizzi for pro-
viding a seamless later experience. To my parents, thank you for being
curious about my research interests and to mum particularly for your
expert grammar insights. To my friend Dr. Scott McBride, thank you for
reading an early draft of the Introduction chapter and for providing valu-
able feedback.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Essential Versus External Social Being 1
Part I Subjectivity 15
2 Who Controls Your Thoughts? Epictetus and Émile
Durkheim on Mental Structure 17
3 When Are You Present? Chrysippus and Henri Bergson
on Continuous Time 43
4 Why Do You Care About Yourself? The Early Stoics and
Herbert Spencer on Self- Preservation 71
Part II Knowledges and Epistemologies 97
5 Do Preconceptions Determine New Knowledge? Epictetus
and Max Weber on Truth 99
6 Do People Know Why They Travel? Seneca and Anthony
Giddens on Ignorance 119
vii
viii CoNTENTS
Part III Physical Conditions 141
7 Is Climate Change Natural? Marcus Aurelius and Barbara
Adam on Death 143
8 What Causes Your Behaviors? Zeno and Pierre Bourdieu
on the Body 173
Part IV Collective Ethics 191
9 How Do We Regulate Our Affection for Others?
Hierocles and Claude Lévi- Strauss on Kinship Circles 193
10 Can Education Be Egalitarian? Musonius Rufus and Julia
Kristeva on Gendered Labor 213
11 Is It Natural to Be Social? Marcus Aurelius and George
Herbert Mead on Socialization 233
Part V Emotions 251
12 Is Reason External to Passion? Posidonius, Ann Game,
and Andrew Metcalfe on Self-Division 253
13 Who Benefits from the Management of Feelings?
Epictetus and Arlie Hochschild on Emotional Labor 279
14 How Individual Is Happiness? Chrysippus and Harriet
Martineau on the Universal End 299
References 321
Index 341
A A
bout the uthor
Will Johncock researches social theory, continental philosophy, and Stoic
philosophy, with a particular interest in themes concerning time. He is the
author of Naturally Late: Synchronization in Socially Constructed Times
(2019) which studies how philosophy and social science differentiate nat-
ural time from human time structures. He has lectured at the University
of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) and often publishes on current
social issues related to time.
ix
A
bbreviAtions
I&G Inwood, Brad, and Lloyd Gerson. 2008. The Stoics Reader: Selected
Writings and Testimonia.
L&S Long, Anthony, and David Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers:
Volume 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical
Commentary.
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Essential Versus External
Social Being
What Does this Book ContriBute? Why noW?
Ancient Stoic philosophy evaluates the socialized aspects of our lives in
two ways. The Stoics emphasize the importance of a cohesive social fabric.
Integral to this belief is the Stoic prioritization of the role that each of us
should play in that cohesion. We will indeed see throughout this book that
for the ancient Stoics, particularly of the later Roman eras, we are born for
community.
Alongside this focus on how embedded we are in social life however,
Stoic philosophies order us to be indifferent to many features of our social
existence. These features typically comprise what the Stoics believe is out-
side our individual control. Examples of socialized phenomena considered
by the Stoics to be outside our control include the class into which we are
born, our reputation, and numerous aspects of our interpersonal relation-
ships. The imperative to be indifferent to certain socialized elements of
our lives targets what the Stoics categorize as external not only to our
control but also to our entire subjectivity. An orthodox ancient Stoic view
is that what occurs socially is often estranged from our internal nature and
who we each really are.
Many of the Stoics implore us to be more attentive to this division of
internal self from external socializing factors. Given this mandate we might
presume that ancient Stoic figures from the founding era of Zeno to the
final days of Marcus Aurelius could be concerned about this book. I say
this because in this work we will study ancient Stoic positions in tandem
© The Author(s) 2020 1
W. Johncock, Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43153-2_1