On Virtue
Epistemic status: My own views, based on 8 years of stoic practice
Category: Virtue ethics
A friend of mine has started taking steps towards virtue.1
Here are the steps he’s taking:
Ask yourself “what would a person I really respect do in this situaion?”
Do whatever your answer is
I like this way of getting started. You can learn fancy greek words for days without coming an inch closer to virtue. Virtue is lived, not learned. In this post, I’ll do my best to share my perspective on what virtue is. The aim is to provide you with a good enough map to enable the next steps on your journey toward embodying virtue.
Cultivating the wild-grown mind
The first time you sit down to meditate, you realize that you’re not in control.2 Even if you are motivated to focus intently, your mind slips away, your attention moving on its own to focus on whatever comes up.
These automatic (re)actions aren’t limited to meditation. As you move through life, most of your actions will be rote, based on habit and old patterns. You move along a route that’s under constant negotiation, with parts (a la IFS) that suck at cooperation. Most likely, you find yourself doing things that go against your own long-term interest, adding suffering to your life. Meanwhile, part of your brain will bullshit, patching together a narrative that explains your actions as if “you” are in charge.
It’s possible to aim for unity of mind, where the different parts of yourself align in harmony. It’s possible to reduce inner friction, overcoming patterns of behavior that hinder you. It’s possible to increase your own agency and skill, becoming better at living.3
Using virtue ethics, you can turn your embodied cognition from a wild-grown state into something that serves you better. A metaphor that springs to mind is a martial art for the mind, a system that allows you to move through life with fluidity and grace.
Virtue ethics is the intentional cultivation of your own mind. Virtues are character traits that you want to embody. You start doing virtue ethics when you start training yourself to embody virtue. Embodying virtue is an ongoing process.
As you gradually start acting in accordance with virtue, your agency will increase, as will your insight. This will escalate the process over time, a lifestyle with compounding skillfulness.
This is the role of virtue, and how virtue relates to skillful action. Now let’s go into the Stoic virtues. What are they, and how do they form a system?
The virtues
The four virtues of Stoicism are Wisdom, Sophrosyne,4 Courage, and Justice. The first time you see them, they seem a bit arbitrary, a bit like corporate buzzwords. Why not pick something else?
They are not arbitrary. They form a coherent system, balancing each other out while covering most (all?) areas required to live skillfully. Let me explain.
Wisdom is about having a correct world model, together with the skills needed to act in the world. This allows you to avoid unskillfulness related to incorrect information, encumbering perspectives, failures in reasoning, missing opportunities due to blind spots, etc. This is the sphere of rationality training, reading non-fiction, practical experience, analysis, and similar.
Sophrosyne is about aligning your desires with what’s good for you. Having to fight urges is hard work, training yourself to only want what’s good will save you a lot of effort. This allows you to avoid unskillfulness related to inner conflicts of interest, “lapses in judgment”5, failure&self-judgment cycles, etc. This is the sphere of self-love, Cognitive behavioral therapy (inspired by Stoicism), meditation, and similar
Courage is about actually acting in accordance with virtue, even when it carries short-term risk or discomfort. This allows you to avoid unskillfulness related to cowardly inaction6, short-term self-interest, etc. This is the sphere of comfort-zone pushing, counterphobic practices (such as exposure therapy), mindful usage of macho-vibes, and similar.
Justice is about having a purpose. Purpose gives you a sense of direction and enlivens your practice and life with a sense of meaning. This allows you to avoid unskillfulness related to apathy/nihilism, getting stuck in useless theorizing, value drift, etc. This is the sphere of activism, (effective) altruism, progress, x-risk, caretaking, and similar.
A common question from people new to virtue ethics is what to do when two virtues are in conflict with each other. Which one should you choose?
The answer is: start practicing virtue ethics. Don’t just pose theoretical questions about it.7 As you start using the virtues to inform your actions and ways of being, you will find that the virtues form a mutually reinforcing system. Most virtuous actions are in accordance with multiple/all virtues. In a way, the virtues are inseparable, different aspects of the same core thing. It’s up to you to embody that thing.
What is that thing? An excellent character, with brilliant:
knowledge, skills (wisdom)
judgments, desires (sophrosyne)
agency, integrity (courage)
telos, meaning (justice)
Embodying the Virtues
Embodying the virtues is a gradual process. Your ability to discern skillfulness from unskillfulness will grow over time. Your ability to act with skill will grow in tandem with your increasing discernment.
You can train your discernment by reading texts from the stoic perspective, learning patterns and mental frameworks that help you find a healthy way of relating to existence. Equipped with these perspectives, you will notice yourself stumbling repeatedly.
Stumbling is beautiful.
Take note every time you stumble, whether it’s an unskillful (re)action, an unskillful perspective, an uncalibrated emotion, or similar. Don’t judge yourself for stumbling, but rather try to understand the nature of your unskillfulness. Map it to the virtues mentioned above, and figure out a way to train yourself to change the pattern.
Stoic writings will help yet again, giving you access to techniques and practices to shape your patterns of being.
Rounding off
I’ve left two giant questions:
What are the mental frameworks and texts that will help promote discernment?
What are the practices and techniques for changing your ways of being?
Both of these are really the same question. Discernment and change are supposed to move in conjunction with each other.
If you want to read the classics, I heavily recommend the Enchiridion8 (beware of the connotations of “control”. More here).
If you want the normal take on stoicism, go read the daily stoic.
There’s also this excellent talk on the stoa: link.
If you want my somewhat quirky version, subscribe to this blog. Please write any questions/comments in the comment section, so I know what to focus on writing next.
But most important: start embodying virtue.
This post is an attempt to write about stoicism in sutra style
If you haven’t experienced this, I invite you to sit down and focus on the sensation of air passing through your nostrils. Sit for 15 minutes, and try not to let your mind wander.
The meditation example is not meant to imply that stoicism will increase your ability to meditate. I am a living counter-example. It will help you act skillfully in your day-to-day life, though.
Sophrosyne is usually translated into “Temperance”, which according to me has the wrong connotations. Temperance means self-restraint, while sophrosyne is all about removing the need for self-restraint. My view is based on mental models from Vervake, see for example Vervaeke & Ferraro 2013
This phrasing has some interesting connotations. I know this isn’t the correct interpretation, but if you read it literally, it implies that if you stop judging yourself for even one second, an unruly part of yourself will fuck things up.
I was about to say “related to being a coward”, but let’s not reify here.
If you have an actual situation where you feel like the virtues collide, get in touch with me and I’ll try to help out. You can write a comment or look me up on Facebook or similar.
Epictetus is a bit of a grumpy old guy, but he’s straight to the point