I practice philosophy—and more specifically virtue ethics—as a way of life. That means that I try and let moral excellence guide every aspect of my life, not just bits and pieces of it. I don’t do it very well. I fail frequently, and I might be a hypocrite sometimes. But I don’t pretend that ethics is a hobby or a side-project: ethics is life, and it has to permeate every moment. No topic or activity is outside its scope. Certainly not politics.
A few days ago, philosopher Sandy Grant wrote a piece for Quartz that lambasts Stoicism for being at best politically ineffective, and at worst “an evasion that aims to keep both master and slave in their places.” Stoicism, to her, is a philosophy of inaction and of suppressing the complaints of the marginalized.
I believe the opposite, of course: Stoicism is a philosophy that emphasizes action above all else, that takes injustice very seriously, and that is (or ought to be) sensitive to the complaints of the oppressed.
The good and evil of a rational, social animal consist in action and not in feeling, so it is not what they feel but what they do, which makes mankind either happy or miserable.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.16.
Continue reading “Dear Sandy Grant: I’m a Stoic who Marched on Washington”