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At its core, Stoic ethics depends on the possibility of insulating the mind from its environment, and therefore render it independent. Thus, we are told, impressions that would harm the well-being of an ordinary man become powerless over a Stoic sage. For while the body is not free from the physical adversities of the world, the mind is supposed to be able to choose whether it should transform the bodily harm in a spiritual one. Clearly, then, it seems that they are dualists, for they suppose that mind and body are fundamentally different.

Yet, Stoic philosophy also strongly suggests a materialistic view of the world. We are supposed to be part of the natural order, and this is one reason why death should not be feared. Death, under this perspective, is nothing but the dissolution of the body, whose fundamental elements (atoms, if you will) then return to nature. There is merely a reorganization of matter, and it would be silly to fear it, much like it would be silly to fear the reverse of death, namely, birth. So, from this point of view, they are monists.

It is strange how one could hold these two different views. One explanation might be that they thought that it was so obvious that mind could not be reduced to matter that they didn’t even bothered to clear up the confusion. It must be remembered that until fairly recently, it was quite hard to see just how things might be different. Until the idea of the general purpose computer came into fruition, we may well imagine the difficulty involved in trying to guess just how the detailed process of the mind could be reduced to something mechanical. And if we add to this the taste for mathematical abstraction found on the ancient Greeks, we may conclude that this question was perhaps taken for granted. In this sense, the body, while entirely material, could have its organization abstracted away in the form of a supernatural mathematical force, the Logos. And it was this Logos that would confer protection for the human mind, perfect as it was in its formal realm.

However that may be, this difficulty poses a problem to us, their modern heirs. So far as we can see, every mental process can be explained in materialistic terms. The idea that there might be a universal Logos, of course, is not absurd. But the problem is that we are more and more aware of the causal links between what we call “matter” and what we call “mind”. All Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience assume and advance these links. Suffering can be modulated by chemical substances, delirium can be both caused and stopped in a similar manner. Damage to particular areas of the brain have well-known consequences. The examples are many, hence suggesting that whatever Logos might rule the universe, it has little to do with the independence of our minds.

If we are to accept this modern monist view,  as the evidence urges us to, the basis for Stoic ethics is all but destroyed. The mind becomes causally related to the material world, and as a consequence loses its independence. Assume, for example, one’s dear friend dies. The Stoic would recommend that one should perhaps be sorry for that, but not allow it to damage one’s well-being, and that the mind would have the power to see things in this manner. And in so far as practical advice goes, this may well be possible. But a modern man could one day discover a part of the brain that somehow regulates the associated feelings, and invent a drug that would cause self-control and restraint to become impossible. Alas, the mind would not then be independent, for its most intimate processes could then be manipulated at the will of a sufficiently intelligent scientist.

I wonder what alternatives one could create to restore at least some of the very desirable properties of Stoic ethics. Perhaps one could take it as an approximation. For most practical purposes, it is true, we can for the moment assume that direct manipulation of the brain cannot be achieved in any great detail. Therefore, a certain separation of mind and body can be assumed, although the problem then moves to the qualities of the mind. Is the mind, for instance, capable of the perfect control that stoicism requires? And can reason, given sufficient training, use this control for its purposes? For if it can, at least evils that come from logical misunderstanding, of which there is no shortage, could disappear as if by magic.

These are all empirical questions, something that the Greeks were not very good at. But in the same way that we managed to transform ancient metaphysics into scientific physics, I suppose that something similar can be done for ancient ethics. In any case, the Stoic stance is at least a rather optimistic one, and has proven useful and philosophically fruitful for centuries. It would be silly to discard it entirely without trying to fix it first. In fact, improvement would not at all be strange to Stoicism, which has gone  through several modifications during its history. At any rate, as far as unsound systems go, it is several orders of magnitude better than the religious doctrines that dominate our current world.