Stoic Warriors and Stoic Torturers: The Moral Psychology of Military Torture

Abstract

Nancy Sherman’s book Stoic Warriors provides an interesting reflection on how a modified version of the ancient teachings of stoicism may be applicable to the concerns and needs of the modern military. In the course of her book, she explains different aspects of the Stoic teachings, such as the importance of outward comportment and control of the emotions, and discusses how they might be relevant to the modern military. In this paper I will focus on her discussion of Abu Ghraib and other atrocities such as the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. I argue that her analysis of the contributing factors that lead to those abuses demonstrates a lack of understanding of how systematic atrocities come to occur and how military torturers are trained. In this paper I show that systematic torture arises not only out of unrestrained rage and hatred, but through a training process that builds on many of the features of basic military training and, ironically, incorporates many of the techniques of self-control and detachment that are characteristic of stoicism.     

Stoic Tolerance

This article considers the virtue of tolerance as it is found in Epictetus and MarcusAurelius. It defines the virtue of tolerance and links it to the Stoic idea of proper control of the passions in pursuit of both self-sufficiency and justice. It argues that Stoic tolerance is neither complete in difference nor a species of relativism. Finally, it discusses connections between the moral virtue of Stoic tolerance and the idea of political toleration found in modern liberalism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Stoic Conditionals,Necessity and Explanation

An examination of a particular passage in Cicero's De fato—Fat. 13–17—is crucial to our understanding of the Stoic theory of the truth-conditions of conditional propositions, for it has been uniquely important in the debate concerning the kind of connection the antecedent and consequent of a Stoic conditional should have to one another. Frede has argued that the passage proves that the connection is one of logical necessity, while Sorabji has argued that positive Stoic attitudes toward empirical inferences elsewhere suggest that that cannot be the right interpretation of the passage. I argue that both parties to the debate have missed a position somewhere between them which both renders a connection between antecedent and consequent that is not merely empirical and makes sense of the actual uses to which the Stoics put the conditional. This will be an account which grounds the connection between antecedent and consequent in a prolêpsis, a special kind of concept which plays a special epistemological role for the Stoics, especially in grounding scientific explanations. My contention will be that Stoic conditionals are true when there is a conceptually necessary connection between antecedent and consequent such that the former explains the latter via a prolêpsis     

Stoic pantheism

This essay argues the Stoics are rightly regarded as pantheists. Their view differs from many forms of pantheism by accepting the notion of a personal god who exercises divine providence. Moreover, Stoic pantheism is utterly inimical to a deep ecology ethic. I argue that these features are nonetheless consistent with the claim that they are pantheists. The essay also considers the arguments offered by the Stoics. They thought that their pantheistic conclusion was an extension of the best science of their day. Some of their most interesting arguments are thusa posteriori     

Socratic Courage in Plato's Socratic Dialogues

This article considers Socrates's conception of courage in Plato's Socratic dialogues. Although the Laches, which is the only dialogue devoted in toto to a pursuit of the definition of courage, does not explicitly provide Socrates's definition of courage, I shall point out clues therein which contribute to an understanding of Socrates's conception of courage. The Protagoras is a peculiar dialogue in which Socrates himself offers a definition of courage. Attending to the dramatic structure and personalities of the dialogue, I will point out that Socrates does not commit to the definition and that the hedonism and the definition of courage are used to disclose Protagoras's confusion regarding virtue. Following one of the clues within the Laches I will turn to the Apology and indicate Socrates's conception of courage which is based on his awareness of lack of knowledge of death and his religious conviction that nothing will happen for the good in life or in death. Finally I will show that such conception of Socratic courage satisfies the criteria in the Laches.     

Socratic Ironies: Reading Hadot,Reading Kierkegaard

This paper examines the seemingly unlikely rapport between the ‘Christian existentialist’, radically Protestant thinker, Søren Kierkegaard and French classicist and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot, famous for advocating a return to the ancient pagan sense of philosophy as a way of life. Despite decisive differences we stress in our concluding remarks, we argue that the conception of philosophy in Hadot as a way of life shares decisive features with Kierkegaard’s understanding of the true ‘religious’ life: as something demanding existential engagement from its proponent, as well as the learning or recitation of accepted doctrines. The mediating figure between the two authors, the paper agrees with Irina (2012), is Socrates and his famous irony. In order to appreciate Kierkegaard’s rapport with Hadot, then (and in contrast to Gregor, who has also treated the two figures) we first of all consider Hadot’s treatment of the enigmatic ‘old wise man’ who remains central to Kierkegaard’s entire authorship. (Part 1) However, to highlight Hadot’s Socratic proximity to Kierkegaard (in contrast to Irina), we set up Hadot’s Socrates against the contrasting portrait readers can find in John M. Cooper’s recent work on Socrates and philosophy as a way of life. Part II of the essay turns back from Hadot’s and Kierkegaard’s Socrates towards Hadot’s own work, and argues—again moving beyond both Gregor and Irina’s works on Hadot and Kierkegaard—that the shape of Hadot’s ‘authorship’, including his remarkably classical style, can be understood by way of Kierkegaard’s notion of indirect communication. In our concluding remarks, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, we pinpoint the fundamental difference between the two thinkers, arguing that for Hadot in contrast to Kierkegaard, a stress on existential commitment in no way speaks against the philosophical defence of a form of rational universalism. Reading Hadot via Kierkegaard allows us to appreciate Hadot’s novelty as attempting to ‘squaring the circle’ between an emphasis on subjectivity and, as it were, the subjective dimensions of philosophers’ pursuit of rational universality.     

The Stoic Samurai

In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot discusses the understanding of philosophy held by the Greco-Roman ancients. Philosophy was not understood only as an exegetical or analytical exercise, but as a spiritual practice - a way of life. Becoming a member of a philosophical school was tantamount to a religious conversion involving one's entire self. To make one's doctrines 'ready to hand' required a number of 'spiritual exercises' which, if regularly followed, were intended to evince such a transformation. Hadot discusses the role of such exercises for (among others) Platonists, Epicureans, Christians, and Stoics. I propose that the Samurai should be added to such a consideration. Their respective exercises allowed the adherents genuinely to adopt their system of beliefs. Many beliefs held by Stoics and Samurai are surprisingly similar. After having discussed some of these similarities, the most striking similarity will be revealed: the role of spiritual exercises in preparing both the Stoic and the Samurai for death.     

Nature,corruption, and freedom: Stoic ethics in Kant's Religion

Kant's account of “the radical evil in human nature” in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone is typically interpreted as a reworking of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. But Kant does not talk about Augustine explicitly there, and if he is rehabilitating the doctrine of original sin, the result is not obviously Augustinian. Instead, Kant talks about Stoic ethics in a pair of passages on either end of his account of radical evil and leaves other clues that his argument is a reworking of an old Stoic problem. “Radical evil” refers to the idea that our moral condition is—by default and yet by our own deed—bad or corrupt; and that this corruption is the root (radix) of human badness in all its variety, ubiquity, and sheer ordinariness. Kant takes as his premise a version of the Stoic idea that nature gives us “uncorrupted starting points” (Diogenes Laertius 7.89). What sense can be made of the origin of human badness, given such a premise? Kant's account of radical evil is an answer to this old Stoic problem, which requires a conception of freedom that is not available in his Stoic sources.     

Socratic Trees

The method of Socratic proofs (SP-method) simulates the solving of logical problem by pure questioning. An outcome of an application of the SP-method is a sequence of questions, called a Socratic transformation. Our aim is to give a method of translation of Socratic transformations into trees. We address this issue both conceptually and by providing certain algorithms. We show that the trees which correspond to successful Socratic transformations—that is, to Socratic proofs—may be regarded, after a slight modification, as Gentzen-style proofs. Thus proof-search for some Gentzen-style calculi can be performed by means of the SP-method. At the same time the method seems promising as a foundation for automated deduction.     

Ellis and Epictetus: Dialogue vs. Method in Psychotherapy

Some recent commentators have found problems in the scientific status of Ellis's REBT, which seem not to be present in Beck's CBT. We argue that this may be partly because they drew differently from the traditions of thought available to them, which appears most clearly in their first published articles. Beck's articles were more in the modern medical tradition, whose history forms part of the search for method leading to abstract knowledge and control that has been so powerful a feature of Western culture. Ellis was more discursive in style and drew more explicitly on the dialogic tradition, in which obstacles to self-awareness and freedom are removed by enlisting the power of reason through question and answer. Socrates and Epictetus are the classical representatives of this tradition, and Ellis's first article shows clear signs of being modelled on Epictetus. Later, however, though continuing in this tradition in his personal style and popular self-help books, Ellis also developed abstract models and methods that belong to the medical tradition. His dual allegiance has made him vulnerable to criticism from both sides.     

Socratic Film

This article is about a relationship between the Socratic practice of philosophy and the aesthetic practice of watching and appreciating film. The conclusion that I defend is that certain narrative films, like the elenctic method in the hands of Socrates, are philosophical tools for examining our cognitive and emotional life and thus for gaining insight into aspects of our character. In the early sections of the article I construct an analogy between the practice of watching narrative film and the practice of self‐examination through dialogue and reflection. I argue that good aesthetic practice in film appreciation is analogous to good philosophical practice in the manner of Socrates, and I treat the elenchus as a method of self‐examination rather than of conceptual analysis and Socrates himself as an examiner of people rather than of abstract concepts. In the later sections I discuss three films directed by Christopher Nolan—Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), and Inception (2010)—as paradigm cases of Socratic film. I argue that these films show us something about ourselves by prompting extemporaneous emotional responses and cognitive judgments that we come, reflectively, to reject.     

Socratic Proofs

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Our aim is to express in exact terms the old idea of solving problems by pure questioning. We consider the problem of derivability: “Is A derivable from...     

CONSENT,CONVERSION, AND MORAL FORMATION: Stoic Elements in Jonathan Edwards's Ethics

The contemporary revival of virtue ethics has focused primarily on retrieving central moral commitments of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and the Neoplatonist traditions. Christian virtue ethicists would do well to expand this retrieval further to include the writings of the Roman Stoics. This essay argues that the ethics of Jonathan Edwards exemplifies major Stoic themes and explores three noteworthy points of intersection between Stoic ethics and Edwards's thought: a conception of virtue as consent to a benevolent providence, the identification of virtue as a singular and transformative good, and an account of moral formation as simultaneously self‐directed and received. Common ground between Edwards and the Stoics illustrates the value of recognizing Stoic moral thought as a philosophical framework that can enhance and undergird Christian ethicists' understandings of moral development and the nature of virtue.     

Critical thinking: A Socratic model

A concept of critical thinking is developed based on the Socratic method and called accordingly a Socratic model. First the features of critical thinking stressed in this model are stated and illustrated. The Socratic method is presented and interpreted, then taken to yield a model of critical thinking. The process of internalization by which the Socratic model helps us to become critical thinkers is described. Argument analysis is considered as a widely used instructional strategy adaptable for teaching critical thinking on the Socratic model. This Socratic model is advanced as one helpful way of organizing our ideas about critical thinking, helpful in unifying disparate factors and anchoring them in the humanist tradition.     

The Socratic Augustine

Augustine is both one of the great dogmatic thinkers in our Western tradition and also one of the most Socratic. How can that be? I suggest that Augustine is given to puzzling over questions of the form “How is it possible that p?”– for example, “How is it possible to measure time when no length of time is ever present to be measured?” Moreover, he asks questions of this form even when he is in no doubt that p is the case. (Thus he is in no doubt that we can measure periods of time even though, strictly speaking, no period of time is ever present.) I suggest further that we can learn something about good teaching from studying Augustine's Socratic-style inquiry.