Being Philosophical

Interest in philosophy rises during troubled times:

Clockwise from top left: Socrates, Michel
de Montaigne, Henry D Thoreau. (WSJ)

today’s lockdowns (partial or full) force us to pause and question assumptions so deeply ingrained that we didn’t know we had them. This, said Socrates, is how wisdom takes root. We crave a return to “normal,” but have we stopped to define normal? We know these times demand courage, but what does courage look like? Already, we’ve expanded our notion of “hero” to include not only doctors and nurses but grocery clerks and Grubhub couriers. Good, Socrates would say: Now interrogate other “givens.”...

Stoicism was born of disaster—its founder Zeno established the school of thought in 301 B.C. after he was shipwrecked near Athens—and it has been dispensing advice on coping with adversity ever since. No wonder it’s enjoying a resurgence, one that began before the pandemic.

Stoic philosophy is neatly summed up by the former slave turned teacher Epictetus: “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about things.” Change what you can, accept what you cannot, a formula later adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and crafty T-shirt hawkers.

A good Stoic would have prepared for the pandemic by practicing premeditatio malorum, or “premeditation of adversity.” Imagine the worst scenarios, advised the Roman senator and Stoic philosopher Seneca, and “rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.” A modern Stoic’s list looks a bit different—a screaming child, unpaid bills, a worrisome fever—but the idea is the same. By contemplating calamity, we rob future hardships of their bite and appreciate what we have now. Adversity anticipated is adversity diminished...

The pandemic has made a mockery of our grand plans. Graduations, weddings, job prospects—poof, gone, rolling back down the hill like Sisyphus’s boulder. Yet we must persevere, said Camus. Our task, he said, isn’t to understand the meaning of catastrophes like Covid-19 (there is none) but to “imagine Sisyphus happy.” How? By owning the boulder. By throwing ourselves into the task, despite its futility, because of its futility. “Sisyphus’s fate belongs to him,” said Camus. “His rock is his thing.”

Are you working on a seemingly fruitless project, a dissertation or a marketing strategy, forever delayed, buffeted by the gales of circumstance? Good, Camus says, you’ve begun to grasp the absurdity of life. Invest in the effort, not the result, and you will sleep better. His prescription is our challenge in the age of Covid-19: staring down the absurdity of our predicament but stubbornly persisting rather than yielding to despair. Just like a good philosopher.

One would be mistaken in thinking that philosophy--and religion--are ascendant at the expense of science.

Some may have "lost their faith in science", but true scientists have never claimed that science had the answers. Global warming, whether a coronavirus vaccine will work, smoking cigarettes will kill you, etc. are all outcomes that are couched in probabilities. Furthermore, true scientists are open to new evidence that could overturn long-held hypotheses.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger," Friedrich Nietzsche famously said. Science, philosophy, and mankind will ultimately come out of these times stronger than ever. Nietzsche, of course, was a philosopher.