In an interview on Philosophy and Everyday Living

Let’s go through the books you’ve chosen, then, and maybe say a bit more about Irvine’s book, The Guide to the Good Life, specifically. So he really is applying Stoicism to everyday life – I read one section where he’s in the shopping mall and his Stoic principles leave him completely unimpressed by the consumer goods.

I don’t necessarily completely agree with this book. What I like about it is that he writes beautifully and he’s very clear about what he’s doing: He’s trying to revive that notion of philosophy as a guide to life. That’s a really valuable contribution. We live in a culture where science has hegemony. Everybody looks to science; everyone, in a way, wants to be thought of as like a scientist. Philosophy is no exception. The kind of philosophy that sees itself as a handmaid to science, or as using some of the methods of science, has tended to dominate. So he’s reviving this other tradition.

Obviously he’s pushing the philosophy of Stoicism, and I think he does a very good job of making it plausible and attractive. He has to counter the common perception of Stoicism as advocating a rather tedious, boring, self-denying, joyless existence. He shows that it’s really not like that. It’s about deciding on certain values, and the Stoic prioritises the value of mental and emotional tranquillity. He argues that the ancient Stoics were actually very acute psychologists – in many ways they anticipated some of the findings of modern psychology – and they had a lot of insight into human nature. If tranquillity is your goal – and Irvine argues that it’s a worthwhile goal – then the Stoic way of life is pretty plausible.

So he goes through various Stoical techniques for dealing with issues. For example, as humans, we have a problem called “hedonistic adaptation”, namely that if I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I’d be happy for a month or two, and then would go back to normal levels of frustrations. To deal with this, Stoics advocate “negative visualisation”. So, for example, if you’re unhappy with your husband, just imagine he had an affair or left you tomorrow and you’ll appreciate him again.

Maybe! Yes, negative visualisation is one of the most memorable of the psychological techniques he talks about. He suggests that as a regular habit, just practise imagining how things might be worse – imagine the loss of loved ones, the loss of your job, that your country is at war, or that you’ve lost your health. He argues that if you practise this, it does pay dividends. This chimes with contemporary psychological research about gratitude. Psychologists have found that if people continually write down things they are grateful for, they do in fact find themselves more content with life. That’s pretty plausible. Since I read the book, I’ve been practising “negative visualisation” on a very small scale. I don’t do it every night, as he recommends, but I do it when I’m in a situation that’s less than desirable. For example, the other week I was stuck with the family in the car, on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was sleeting, we were in a horrendous, endless traffic jam, and we passed a couple of guys with a flat tyre at the side of the road. There we were in the car: We were warm, we were listening to a good audiobook, and I thought, “Well, yes, things could be worse.” It’s a small-scale thing, but it’s certainly better to be thinking like that, rather than just consuming yourself in annoyance, frustration, boredom and anger about the fact that things aren’t the way you’d like them to be.

His examples from ancient Stoics are just great. So there’s Seneca making a list of his frustrations before he goes to bed – the petty insults he has had to deal with over the course of the day – and how he gets out of his funk about them. They’re quite fun to read and Irvine points out how little things have changed over two millennia…

Yes, and there’s Marcus Aurelius. He gets up every morning, and says, “Today the following is going to happen to me: I’m going to be insulted, calumnied, and spat upon.” He starts his day preparing for the worst.

And that helps because he’s ready for it?

Yes, he doesn’t have unreasonable expectations. Whether I want to go all the way with Irvine, I don’t know. But I have a very open mind about the philosophy of Stoicism. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it. One thing I was impressed by is that although his primary value seems to be tranquillity, the book is called The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. He really tries to argue against the idea that Stoicism is the same as a certain kind of Buddhism, where you try to completely eliminate desire. He says that if you live the right way, you can achieve more than just the absence of pain.

I think of Stoicism as a fatalistic approach: If something bad happens you just have to shrug your shoulders and move on.

It has that too. A Stoic attitude is certainly accepting things that you can’t change. That’s another big plank of his philosophy, that there is absolutely no point in protesting against what you can’t change, shaking your fist at thunderstorms.

I think the negative visualisation techniques might need to be finessed a bit. At one point Irvine cites Epictetus’s advice that every time you kiss your child, you should imagine that they might die tomorrow. For neurotic modern parents, constantly anxious about the health and safety of their children, thinking of them dying tomorrow would probably not help tranquillity levels. Also, the advice to live each day as if it’s your last: That could be a burden for the hypochondriacs amongst us, who are already constantly worrying that we might die tomorrow.

Yes, it could be a recipe for enhanced anxiety. You could argue there’s something neurotic about that level of negative visualisation. He’s suggesting doing it as a result of a conscious choice, though, rather than as a symptom of anxiety.

One of the areas where I’m very sympathetic to Irvine is where he talks about luxurious living. He mentions people who get too accustomed to the very best food, the very best wine, the very best theatre, the very best music etc, and who come to be unable to appreciate more mundane versions. I think he’s on to a good point there. For example, I live in a college town and we regularly go to see the university theatre productions and the university orchestral performances. Obviously, it’s not the same as going to Carnegie Hall, and I’ve occasionally heard people express rather snobbish attitudes about student performances. But it’s a sad thing not to be able to appreciate art just because it’s not on a par with the very best. You really are better off being able to enjoy things on their own terms. Irvine says: “It’s a good thing to accustom yourself to a little bit of roughness in living, and a little bit of the less than excellent.” I wouldn’t advocate harsh deprivation; but when people become too precious over savouring the excellent, I see that as a limitation rather than a marker of their good taste.

I love cheap plonk and amateur music-making, and I possibly do too much negative visualisation. Reading this book, I’ve realised I’m definitely a Stoic. What about you?

I think I’m three-quarters a Stoic. I teach a course here at the university called Tightwaddery, the Good Life on a Dollar a Day. It’s what we call an honours class, a two-credit evening class and it’s both serious and somewhat light-hearted. We read Epicurus, we read Thoreau, we read articles about consumerism and advertising. We also do classes on personal finance, and there’s some jokey classes, like one where the students learn to cut each other’s hair. There’s a banquet at the end of the term, where everybody has to produce a meal very cheaply, from a Depression-era recipe. That aspect of Stoicism, the getting by on little, eschewing unnecessary luxuries, husbanding your resources, that’s definitely me. I’m very averse to spending unnecessary money, although I’ll spend money on the things I value, like travelling…

If you’re three-quarters Stoic, what’s the other quarter?

I’m not completely committed to stoicism because there is also something of the Nietzschean in me. Nietzsche was very interested in the Stoics because he himself was something of a Stoic. He lived like one, in a way. But he’s also something of a Romantic. He’s influenced by Goethe’s Faust and believes the finest life is one where you experience the whole gamut of human experience – life as a bit of a rollercoaster. That’s not the Stoic ideal. The Stoic ideal is tranquillity. So in a way I’m torn. I do favour that Stoic ideal, and yet I recognise the appeal of the Faustian or Nietzschean ideal of experiencing the highs and lows.