Stephen T. Asma: Ancient Antidotes for Timeless Troubles
[Stephen T. Asma is a professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago. His books include Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Buddha for Beginners, recently reissued by Hampton Roads Publishing.]
In Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge, the main character, Larry, leaves behind the rat race of the stockbroker's life and explores the East in search of meaning. When his millionaire friend, Gray, loses everything in the Wall Street crash of 1929, Larry finds him physically and spiritually destroyed. Gray is incapacitated by migraines, cannot even get out of bed most days, and must sit by helplessly as his family falls on hard times. Larry visits him, bringing secret Buddhist and Hindu wisdom from the East, and teaches Gray, by means both mystical and mundane, how to recompose his mind and achieve inner peace. As Gray slowly transforms his psyche from worried depression to acceptance and equanimity, his old vigor returns and his family life begins to flourish again.
Amid our own financial crisis, when many of us are in desperate need of some inner peace, it's ironic that we're more familiar with Eastern strategies than Western ones. Bookshelves are loaded with Eastern wisdom, designed to give Westerners a sacred rest and possibly even a way out of the perpetual chase for prosperity. We've all embraced the mythology of the West as an extroverted land of capital, craving, and luxury. Subsequently our homegrown Western schools of inner peace have been largely forgotten — slipping entirely off the curricula of philosophy departments, unseated by more analytically rigorous agendas. Even their names, Epicurean and Stoic, have become confused and twisted in the popular culture, contributing to their irrelevance. Epicureans were not gourmet diners or ancient "foodies." And Stoics were more joyful than the dour, indifferent people we usually denote by that adjective. But some of that neglect and confusion may soon be changing.
Several new books champion Epicurean and Stoic philosophy, and their timing could not be more apropos. Both the Stoics and the Epicureans argued that our capacity for personal happiness depends entirely on ourselves. We cannot control the external world (i.e., the vagaries of nature, the discontents of social life, and, of course, the stock market), but we can control our reactions. We can learn to respond to stresses in a healthier manner. We can learn to accept, with grace and style, the things that are beyond our control. We are responsible only for our own attitude, not the external tragedies that befall us. Epicureans and Stoics share a commitment to the idea that philosophy is a way of life, a theoretical art of reflection that seeks freedom in the practical world of action and experience. As such, the two philosophies are still vital alternatives to hedonism and consumer culture. It would be nice to see them take their rightful place among other such alternatives, like bohemianism or religious life....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
In Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge, the main character, Larry, leaves behind the rat race of the stockbroker's life and explores the East in search of meaning. When his millionaire friend, Gray, loses everything in the Wall Street crash of 1929, Larry finds him physically and spiritually destroyed. Gray is incapacitated by migraines, cannot even get out of bed most days, and must sit by helplessly as his family falls on hard times. Larry visits him, bringing secret Buddhist and Hindu wisdom from the East, and teaches Gray, by means both mystical and mundane, how to recompose his mind and achieve inner peace. As Gray slowly transforms his psyche from worried depression to acceptance and equanimity, his old vigor returns and his family life begins to flourish again.
Amid our own financial crisis, when many of us are in desperate need of some inner peace, it's ironic that we're more familiar with Eastern strategies than Western ones. Bookshelves are loaded with Eastern wisdom, designed to give Westerners a sacred rest and possibly even a way out of the perpetual chase for prosperity. We've all embraced the mythology of the West as an extroverted land of capital, craving, and luxury. Subsequently our homegrown Western schools of inner peace have been largely forgotten — slipping entirely off the curricula of philosophy departments, unseated by more analytically rigorous agendas. Even their names, Epicurean and Stoic, have become confused and twisted in the popular culture, contributing to their irrelevance. Epicureans were not gourmet diners or ancient "foodies." And Stoics were more joyful than the dour, indifferent people we usually denote by that adjective. But some of that neglect and confusion may soon be changing.
Several new books champion Epicurean and Stoic philosophy, and their timing could not be more apropos. Both the Stoics and the Epicureans argued that our capacity for personal happiness depends entirely on ourselves. We cannot control the external world (i.e., the vagaries of nature, the discontents of social life, and, of course, the stock market), but we can control our reactions. We can learn to respond to stresses in a healthier manner. We can learn to accept, with grace and style, the things that are beyond our control. We are responsible only for our own attitude, not the external tragedies that befall us. Epicureans and Stoics share a commitment to the idea that philosophy is a way of life, a theoretical art of reflection that seeks freedom in the practical world of action and experience. As such, the two philosophies are still vital alternatives to hedonism and consumer culture. It would be nice to see them take their rightful place among other such alternatives, like bohemianism or religious life....