Stoicism versus Epicureanism–Sense versus Sensibility

 A PROFOUND PHILOSOPHICAL FUSION

Michael Sean Quinn, Ph.D., J.D., Austin, Texas

In the ancient world of Greek and Roman philosophy, Stoicism and Epicureanism were regarded as competing and contradictory philosophical systems, schools, outlooks, notions, and so forth.

I recently ran across a situation in which the two ideas can go together. The situation is an odd one. 

John Richardson, who died at 95 in 2019, spent many of his years writing a multivolume biography of Picasso. The last volume, entitled A Life of Picasso IV: The Minotaur Years, 1933-43, was not completed but was finally published recently.

The book was reviewed in the Books Subsection of the Wall Street Journal's Review Section for December 4-5, 2021. Maxwell Carter was the reviewer. He remarks that "The biographer's [that is, Richardson's] gift lay in fusing  the personal and impersonal, his experience as an art student and jobbing critic, the stoic's sense with an epicurean sensibility."

Maxwell Carter was the reviewer. He is head of the impressionist and modern art department at Christie's in New York. His semantic differentiation together with fusing the ideas is an insight that strikes me as profound.

Folk Anything

 

"Folk X" Is Usually Derisive

Michael Sean Quinn, Ph.D., J.D., Austin Texas Attorney, mquinn@msqlaw.com

"Folklore" and "folktales" are not terms of contempt, but many such terms are, like "folk wisdom," "folk-psychology," and so forth. The list goes on and on. This phraseology is often a professorial epithet used to refer to "common people" whom they regard as superstitious, ignorant, simple-minded, and to whom serious attention need not or should not be paid. 

I ran across this phrase used recently in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The partial was entitled "Folk Psychology as a Theory." Very sophisticated sounded, one must admit. However, one of the senses of the term "folk psychology" is this: "a psychological theory constituted by platitudes about the mind ordinary people are inclined to endorse." Sometimes, according to the article discussed here,  this idea is expressed by such phrases as "naive psychology."

Most of what is said in this kind of discourse is some sort of physicalistic account of psychology in which the mind is the brain and nothing else, so that platitudes of dualistic philosophy of mind are either reducible to physical brain states or they do not exist. Neuro-science and cyber conceptualization are the order of the day.

I cannot imagine that the "sophisticated" rejection of "folk psychology" has any real success in the kind of clinical psychology that involves curative talking, listening, dialogue, conjecture, possible insight, and so forth.

Similarity experienced jury trial lawyers know not to embrace rejections of so-called platitudinarian folk psychology, even in the most sophisticated cases. How matters may be handed in front of some judges is a different matter--not completely different, however. Most appellate judges are "folk" very much like even the sophisticated population. 

Further, one must wonder how sophisticated anti-folk psychologists deal with their spouses, children, and friends. Finally, it is hard to see how one could make much out of religious beliefs and commitments while rejecting this sense of folk psychology. Mystical insight, if one has one, is really a brain state which the person having it is having no mental state at all. I wonder if Christian talk about a soul is nothing but "folk-_____" something, especially is the soul is described as immortal.

PISSING ON THE PITHY--FALSE APHORISMS: A PREFACE

Michael Sean Quinn*

Almost all aphorisms--pithy sayings that are intended to dispense wisdom--are false, misleading, actually unwise, and quite often dangerous. One can be inspired to do a wrong thing, make a mistake, or turn down the wrong road. Aphorisms require brevity, but depth, wisdom, and hence subtlety. The pithy is almost the opposite. The profound difference between is not always immediately obvious.

Sometimes, aphorisms can be a good place to begin serious introspection, reasoning, and scrutiny, and sometimes they help in regulating attitudes and conduct, but this is almost never true if they are taken in-and-of-themselves to be profound propositions.  Virtually all aphorisms need to be subject to careful reflection and criticism.  Rarely, they may sound witty and profound, but they almost never are deep truths, or even truths.  Watch out for letting yourself be inspired by any of them.

Philosophy and wisdom require that the language of whatever is said be understood fully, more or less.  That often requires comprehensive attention to the language used—to the words—and often a certain degree of literalness. Sayings purporting to provide wisdom must be questioned.  If one simply grabs an aphorism and tried to follow it without contemplating and recontemplating it one will either fail to follow its true spirit, one will fail to really get rolling, or one will go in some wrong directions. Pithiness and centralized ambiguity go together, hand-in-hand, as it were.

Many aphorisms have immediate appeal to people and even popular acceptance.  Following most aphorisms, however, without sufficient reflection will not lead to situations that make one admirable. Actually, when really understood literally, they are seldom recipes for real success.

If they are treated as mere suggestions regarding consciousness, thought, emotions, intuitions, and conduct.  Consider one of the most famous: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As it stands, this is a very bad idea. What if you don’t love yourself much, but actually periodically despise yourself as a being unworthy of being loved. What if this leads you to flog yourself? Clearly, that is not how you should treat others, or yourself for that matter. 

But suppose you are stuck in a mental rut, and you can’t improve your self-image and the way you think and feel about yourself. 

At the same time, looking at this aphorism, which is central to both Christian and Jewish faiths, is a suggestion to learn how to love yourself more so that you can generalize that love to cover others as well.  You’d never know this from listening to the many, many repetitions of this aphorism one hears, not to mention variations on it.

The truth, of course, is that this apparent aphorism is not an aphorism at all.  It is a proposition that fits into a system of ideas and which cannot be understood by itself. It might even be worthwhile to think about an oddly analogous “suggestion” for living. Here it is: Think about how the truly admirable person thinks of, feels about, and relates to others. Then try to think of yourself as one of the relevant others; try to imitate his ways of relating; and then try to apply his outlook to how you think about yourself, as well as others.  This is hardly an aphorism. Way too complicated sounding. 

By the way, how should we react to the proposition "Know yourself."

*Michael Sean Quinn

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