To manifest the unimaginable, Nazi propagandists infused various media with images and with messages designed to associate Jews with bacilli, and to categorize Jews as vermin, intending that the presence or to the image of a Jewish person might trigger the same disgust response most persons experience encountering visual images (or graphic accounts) of swarming bacilli and vermin. The success of this association made possible the concentration camps and their hellish, murderous environments, for Jews became classified as diseased and unwholesome, as subhuman entities whose extermination was not only made excusable by degradation to the subhuman, but thought essential for preservation of the health of the larger, non-Jewish German population. Good health depends on purgation of what is diseased, and continuance of health requires separation from whatever is in a (contagious) diseased state, or whatever is poisonous to the body, and the disgust response evolved to ensure avoidance of what is diseased or infected and therefore corrupting of wellbeing.

As though human nature is a malleable material, many people thought – or hoped – that the horrors of the Holocaust were so shocking that human nature had been forced to a profound and an enduring transformation, and that henceforth the unthinkable was removed as a possibility; never again would genocide be tolerated, with such barbarities being an unfortunate reality of the past, but an unthinkable possibility for the future. Through its repeated utterance, the empty slogan ‘never again’ was accepted as self-evident truth, but human nature remained as it has always been, and the barbarities of the Rwanda genocide were facilitated by targeted propaganda, with Tutsi tribe members being labeled as cockroaches, and what does one do with such vile things? Exterminate them. One does not desire peaceful coexistence with cockroaches in one’s own home.

The human disgust response in itself is nothing immoral, and indeed is vital to wellbeing, but as with almost any human capacity, this trait can be motivated for malicious ends. Our disgust response of course is adaptive, for health and longevity, requisite for gene propagation, are aided by avoidance of harmful substances, and hence nature endowed humans with a sensitive disgust response that we may usefully avoid various substances and situations that threaten good health. The disgust response varies within individuals, and therefore individuals are not uniform in their disgust responses, but typically we are  disgusted by what has turned rancid and noxious, and the response of many if not most individuals to an incidence of incest is disgust. Nature did not require scientists to inform her of the potential deleterious consequences of reproduction amongst close kin, and nature instructs us that the consumption of spoiled substances can prove quite harmful indeed.

The disgust response is protective, its purpose to exclude, and therefore the disgust response tends to establish an insulating bubble around the individual or the group, to segregate, to distance the healthy or those assumed healthy from whatever is unwholesome or whatever is stigmatized as such. The danger, then, arises when a government or a government agency, desiring to restrict or to encourage particular behaviors, crafts messages and policies designed to persuade some substantial portion of the population that those declining to conform to whatever rules, restrictions, or compelled behavior the government promulgates as necessary or at least advantageous, are contagious hosts of virulent diseases and a threat to the health of the compliant. The tacit assumption here is that the compliant are free of disease. Hence the disgust response is worked upon intentionally, to encourage degradation of all members of the disobedient group. Human beings are highly susceptible to in-group/out-group dynamics, with members of one’s own group thought superior, including morally superior, to members outside of the group, and one is primed to judge outsiders as corrupted, not just morally but physically as well.

That the disgust response can serve the aims of political powers and dominant classes in establishing and in maintaining a desired hierarchy, through facilitating a stratification and segmentation of society needed to manifest that hierarchy, is given ample evidence by the existence of caste systems, such as in India. The ‘untouchables’ were held as such due to their assigned place in the social hierarchy, which in fact was no place at all, so degraded were they considered, with the disrespect and the ostracization of these poor souls not based on any innate characteristics of cognitive capacities or physical limitations. Their position at the lowest level of society, or even outside or beneath society, required that they must perform the most degrading of labor in order to survive, and by their need to perform this debasing labor their position was cemented. Hence their optionless need to perform the only labor available to them if they were to eat ensured that they remained socially excluded. So subhuman were the untouchables deemed, they were thought outside of the caste system. The upper classes believed that they could be contaminated by a mere brushing against an untouchable. Here, the human disgust response, so useful in many ways, was exploited by hegemonic powers to maintain social injustices, with the social injustices necessary for continuance of the hierarchy.

The practice of untouchability was outlawed in 1950, but human nature is less tractable than the law, and consequently widespread discrimination within a caste system endures, with 160 million or so persons still deemed tainted at birth due to their being born to members of the lowest social stratum (the Dalits), and by this membership being classified as impure. The Dalits routinely are treated abominably, and rarely can the Dalits find justice or any form of compensation through the legal system, for the law supports this discrimination. Dominant caste members frequently assault, and sometimes even murder, Dalits, and do so with the expectation of impunity, an expectation that rarely is frustrated.

The root of the word humiliation is humus, a Latin word for dirt. Hence there are associations between dirt and being, socially, in a debased state. The concepts of disgust, shame, and humiliation all have this common thread of debasement and lowliness, of something to be banished from sight, to be scrubbed out of existence. Health demands no less, and if a particular group can be associated with uncleanness, with disease and contamination threat, then by this manipulation of the disgust response this group can be scorned, condemned, isolated, expelled, or even exterminated. Justification for this treatment is presented as necessary for the public good, and therefore as reasonable and rational, but never was there any valid justification for condemning Jews as a defiling infestation of ‘sound’ German stock, nor can any sane case be offered that the Tutsi were in any way equivalent to cockroaches. Derogatory representations of Jewish persons and members of the Tutsi tribe were intended to offend the viewer, to thereby provoke revulsion and disgust. Clearly, the intent was to conjure a sense of shame for being Jewish or being a Tutsi through associating members of these groups with what is repulsive and disgusting, for once this association is successful these groups can be diminished to a class of the subhuman, thereby justifying their exclusion and mistreatment.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written well and widely on issues of shame, disgust, and humiliation, and as she asserts, shame and disgust are necessarily hierarchical, and that indeed, absent a hierarchical structure, shame and the associations with disgust that can accompany being in a shamed state are not supported. She holds that vulnerability to the state of shame is almost always correlated to socioeconomic status, and for confirmation of this claim, one need only consider how shameless often are the wealthy and the well-positioned, for in such individuals the emotion of shame is difficult to induce. Going in the other direction, the upper classes routinely and effectively induce shame in those of a lower socioeconomic class than themselves, and habitually exhibit disgust response behaviors towards members of a class they deem of a lower status than themselves.

The disgust reaction evolved initially to ensure avoidance of placing into one’s mouth anything rancid, putrid, or otherwise noxious in any way, but this reaction proved too useful to be contained, and concepts of dignity and of status required for their full development incorporation of expressions of contempt and disgust into social intercourse, that thereby rank and distinction may be established and maintained. Disgust is a common reaction towards those one deems one’s inferiors. Hence, shame and disgust are employed to establish, to define, and to perpetuate class distinctions that serve to justify the oppressions and the injustices perpetrated by a dominant class over lower classes. The sanitation worker will willingly, and without any evocation of a sense of disgust, don the coat of a rich person, but the rich person would not willingly don the coat of the sanitation worker, even though the sanitation worker’s garment may be the cleaner of the two vestments.

The disgust reaction is universal, yet it supports social disunity. In asserting, by word and by deed, that certain activities and the people who engage in them are ‘disgusting’ and hence worthy of distain and exclusion, the ones demonstrating the distain thereby establish themselves as above those upon whom they pour their contempt. Evidence of the disgust reaction serving to solidify hierarchy and social stratification is amply provided by the incident of some years ago of a member of the United States Congress stating that he desired that tourists not be allowed admittance into the Capital because they were of an offensive smell. One has little doubt that the politician so willing to publicly proclaim his disgust for members of the general public is of lower moral status than many of those he deems rabble, and surely no less prone to emitting offensive smells, but it was his social-political position and not the facts of the matter that motivated this demeaning utterance.

Though this politician was criticized for his comments, he suffered no consequences politically, and he himself was not degraded by his dismissive attitude and derogatory words, for he gave expression to nothing more than what has been practiced for millennia: the attempted or the actual stigmatization of others not because these others warrant such treatment but because this practice establishes and sustains dominance. The stigmatized are diminished socially and are vulnerable to exclusion, and in possessing and expressing such sentiments as distain, scorn, or contempt one feels superior, and feeling superior is ever a potent temptation. Humans always organize themselves into a hierarchy, and the higher in the hierarchy the more superior one believes oneself, and the lower in the hierarchy, the more one is likely to encounter scornful treatment. Humans tend to be disposed towards others on the basis of in-group versus out-group dynamics, and expressions of exclusion towards members of the out-group are assumed necessary to preclude contamination of the ingroup by the outgroup. By a disgust reaction, overt or disguised, stigmatization is attached to members of the outgroup, and thus members of the outgroup are intended to feel shame so that they may, by their disgusting actions, thoughts, appearance, or whatever, be propelled downward and justly excluded from acceptable, sanctified society.

In the psychological and sociological literature there is some effort at distinguishing shame from stigma, but the distinctions are not persuasive, and stigma and shame are conjoined such that one who is shamed is one who is stigmatized, and one who is stigmatized is one who is shamed. The term stigma has various meanings and applications, such as in real estate when a property is identified as suffering a stigma due to a present or a past issue with contamination, and here, of course, no element of shame is intended in this use of the term. Yet were one to inhabit a location deemed contaminated, and not necessarily physically contaminated, then the potential for stigmatization and shame is present. Additionally, the term stigmata has religious and other symbolic applications, referring to physical manifestations that may, but not necessarily so, involve an element of shame. These exceptions notwithstanding, in the context of shame considerations, there is the inescapable aura of stigma. 

One of the best-known works on stigma is Stigma, Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, and in this work Erving Goffman writes:

             “The Greeks, who were apparently strong on visual aids, originated the term stigma to                                          refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral                                            status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised
              that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor – a blemished person, ritually
              polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places” (1963, 1).

Signs are no longer burned into the flesh of those deemed worthy of branding, nor are individuals obligated as a condemnation of transgression to wear a scarlet A on their person, but modern society has its signifiers of inclusion and of exclusion, the compelled use of facial masks prevalent in the recent pandemic, and the shaming and the exclusion of those who refused their use, being but one example.
The criminal justice system has, to varying degrees over time, employed shaming punishments, doing so to impose a publicized identification of offense on the part of the offender, that all may know of her diminished (moral) status. The shaming punishment may involve the display of a sign on one’s person or on one’s property, a public utterance of some sort, or engagement in a demeaning ritual. Irrespective of the means, the intent is the same, namely, to identify the individual as having committed some act or failed to have abided by some favored practice, with the consequence that the individual is diminished in standing, and consequently can be excluded. Exclusion is the first and necessary step to condemnation and to eventual elimination.

Most people know that perfect justice is unattainable, but the desire that justice be as even and as widely distributed as possible is common, and most people wish to live in a society that values justice over one wherein injustice prevails. Research suggests that an understanding of the concept of justice may be built into the human psyche, for very young children, even infants, appear to exhibit responds that signal that the child is sensitive to matters of justice and of injustice, or at least what the child judges as such. Whatever innate tendencies humans may have concerning a sense of justice, in practice, justice, as is said of beauty, may reside in the eye of the beholder, and what one person or one particular group judges as just may be judged unjust by another person or another group. Yet however disparate particular judgments may be, human beings do seem to assign great value to justice, and often deem objectionable, even intolerable, instances of injustice, but what often goes unrecognized and even more often unacknowledged is that such judgments are influenced if not largely determined by the values of one’s particular social group, and thus may represent social rather than ethical distinctions. Therefore one might reasonably assume that most persons – assigning so high a value to justice – would be alert to, and would seek to resist, attitudes and modes of social behavior that encourage the sort of stigmatization, shaming, and disgust responses that perpetuate and expand the hegemony rather than encourage equitable treatment.
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The facts of human history, and of human nature, confirm the error of that assumption. Given the power of the disgust response to be exploited to unjust purposes, we should ever be vigilant against all attempts to manipulate our disgust response, particularly so if that manipulation is made with the intent to condition us to demean and to exclude others. Our vigilance against and our opposition to that manipulation must be unwavering when the effort at manipulation is made by authorities, governmental or otherwise, sending messages overt or suggestive that persons who do not comply with whatever restriction or mandate imposed by that authority are as a consequence of noncompliance disgusting beings corrupting of public health and welfare.
 
 
 

The philosophy of Stoicism originated in disaster, as befitting a Weltanschauung that views matters external to the mind, even matters such as material abundance or sudden destitution, as things of negligible worth, at least in comparison to the qualities of the mind, irrespective of how apocalyptic such matters may be for our earthly fortunes. The Stoics would approve of Hamlet’s declaration that “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” One’s perspective determines the view.  This is not to say that the Stoics did not prefer wealth over poverty, or health over illness, for the Stoics believed that virtue was necessary for happiness, and health and wealth can be advantageous in the practice of virtue. Ill health and material poverty exert pressures that can weaken the practice of virtue, particularly the latter when life offers such abundant evidence of those of least virtue prospering and enjoying a life of plenty and privilege. Yet the Stoics believed that not only is virtue necessary for happiness, virtue is sufficient for happiness, and thus so long as one practiced virtue one attained happiness even in the absence of health or in the circumstance of material want.

Zeno of Citium (c.334-c.262 BCE) was the founder of Stoicism, the name of this enduring philosophy deriving from Stoa Poikile, or Painted Porch, the famous site in ancient Athens, and the location from which Zeno taught his philosophy. Zeno, so the story is told, was driven to philosophy by the event of a shipwreck, which redirected him to Athens, and once there, he discovered at a bookshop the work of such philosophers as Xenophon, and thereupon enamored, inquired of where to find the likes of Socrates, and was told to follow Crates of Thebes, who happened to pass by at that moment. He became a pupil of Crates, a Cynic philosopher who gave away all his money and lived in poverty in Athens. Hence out of the disaster of a shipwreck did Stoicism emerge.

Stoicism’s influence has been profound and enduring, and in the present day, Stoicism garners a substantial audience amongst the general public, with many popular books being written whose intent is to capitalize on this present interest, and the internet is home to a substantial number of blogs touting the life-enhancing benefits of Stoic teachings. Stoicism is far richer and more complex than many of these sources suggest, and an immersion in the complexities of Stoic thought, presented in the three main areas of ethics, physics, and logic, requires sustained study, and there are numerous book-length works by philosophers well versed in Stoicism. If one engages with the more serious works on Stoicism, one soon comprehends that Stoicism is far more than this common conception of Stoicism as a philosophy that instructs us to suffer bad fortune without complaint, and desires we fortify ourselves with select Stoic sayings that we might become unconquerable ‘warriors’ and somehow triumph in life.

To grasp the core instruction, the essential view, of Stoicism, then the word harmony serves best this end. The Stoics saw the universe as complex, but harmonious, with the universe existing and operating through a rational principle, an ordering reason that is not a supernatural entity, but can be understood as the harmony of the universe itself. The universe, so deemed the Stoics, is perfection, and is a living thing, and therefore, as a perfect living thing, must itself be god. The great 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza would use the expression Deus sive Natura (God or Nature), for Spinoza’s metaphysics was much influenced by Stoic philosophy, and since he held that there is only one infinite, eternal substance, God and nature are interchangeable. As Spinoza wrote in Book IV of his Ethics, “Nature herself is the power of God under another name, and our ignorance of the power of God is coextensive with our ignorance of Nature.”

The Stoics strove to comprehend the order of the universe, for they held that to achieve virtue one must endeavor to align one’s thought and one’s behavior in accordance with the harmonious ordering of the universe. Human beings are as much a part of nature as any other thing in existence, and whereas humans have the power of reason, then human beings are obligated to employ that reason in comprehending nature and nature’s laws, and in living in accordance with them. And whereas all humans have the power to reason, then all human beings have the capacity to live a blessed life, i.e., a life in harmony with nature. For the Stoics, practicing virtue was how one attained eudaimonia, which is that state of being of human flourishing and a live well-lived, and hence human happiness requires virtue. For the Stoics, practicing virtue required endeavoring to replicate the harmony of the universe within oneself, an effort that requires nothing outside of oneself, and therefore the best life for a human being is available to everyone, irrespective of whether one wallows in material wealth or whether one barely has enough to survive, whether one has the privileges and the power of an emperor, or one endures the indignities and the obligations of a slave. As the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “Nature intended that no great equipment should be necessary for happiness; each of us is in a position to make himself happy” (On the Shortness of Life).

Stoic philosophy is rich and complex, far more so than is represented in the plentiful popular books and numerous blogs championing the many useful life lessons Stoicism might offer to the individual open to the view that a rewarding life is not a life devoted to maximizing physical pleasures. The Stoics did not believe that pleasure, even physical pleasure, was harmful and to be eschewed, but did insist that virtue, and hence wellbeing, not be sacrificed or undermined in the desire for pleasure. The Stoic need not avoid what gives pleasure, but as well must not feel cheated or deprived in its absence. The Stoic should have the exact same attitude and outlook whether pleasure is abundant or pleasure is scarce. Achieving such indifference to all things external is perhaps an impossible attainment for any human being, and indeed Epictetus, the former slave who is now known as one of the great Stoic philosophers, is purported to have said “By the gods, I would love to see a Stoic. But you cannot show me one fully formed.” Why would Epictetus of all persons have made such a declaration? Well, if there were such a being as a fully-formed Stoic, then that individual would be as indifferent to his or her circumstance whether being tortured on the rack or being pampered by beautiful attendants on a tropical beach. Such a being has never existed.

The Stoic is not a stone statue, not an insensate being, and does suffer pain and does feel pleasure. Perhaps encouraged by the expression “he is being stoic”, applied to one displaying no evident sign of suffering or disturbance in a painful or troubling circumstance, it is a misconstrual of Stoicism to understand the Stoic as someone unfeeling or unresponsive, or as one who somehow so suppresses, or is in such control of, his or her reactions to pleasure or to pain that the Stoic is understood as someone less sensitive than the non-Stoic. As Seneca, the ancient Roman (Stoic) philosopher advised, “We remove from there not the sensation of pain but only the name injury, which cannot be sustained with virtue intact” (On the Constancy of the Wise Person, 16.1). What the Stoic does achieve, through the use of reason, is exemption from much of the suffering that results when one misjudges as good what is not, and the disruptions and distortions that occur when one fails to discern unhealthy from healthy passions.
None of us can wholly avoid misfortune, for there is much in life we can little influence, but for the Stoic, we always have control over the most important thing in life, which is our virtue. Our virtue determines our attitude towards the vicissitudes of life, for our virtue, claim the Stoics, depends on our wisdom. The wisdom the Stoics, and other ancient Greek philosophers, honor was practical wisdom, which they called phronesis. Such wisdom enables sound judgment and correct determinations of the proper actions in each situation. Practical wisdom overrides passion, and thereby enables our rendering decisions that not only are right in respect to being most efficacious, but also right morally.

Wisdom is one of the four cardinal virtues championed by the Stoics, the other three being courage, temperance, and justice. For the Stoic, courage is fortitude, for with fortitude, one is capable of enduring life’s “slings and arrows” without drowning in a caustic brew of despair, self-pity, or bitterness. For the Stoic, courage, then, is not an absence of fear but the presence of proper perspective, that is, proper perspective on what is truly harmful and what is not, and this proper perspective enables us to accept with dispassion the circumstances of our fate, when fate cannot be altered. Courage is choosing, no matter the misfortune one suffers, not only to endure with patience what one must, but also to continue to face circumstances with benevolence and with industriousness. Stoicism, it should be understood, is not quietism, and the Stoic is obligated to resiliently engage fully in his or her life, and to do so no matter one’s material and social status, no matter whether one enjoys plenty or one endures deprivation and hardship.

Temperance, or moderation, is a virtue readily associated with Stoicism, for what is moderation but self-control? Indulging excessively one’s appetites, be it for food, for drink, or even for self-criticism or self-pity, is hardly a wise choice, and thoughtful regulation of one’s impulses and cravings, and (as in all matters) using reason as one’s guide, is a surer path to a life well lived than is an undisciplined, intemperate indulgence of what offers immediate satisfaction and pleasure. The Stoic does not, as is commonly assumed, eschew or disparage pleasure, for the Stoic is free to enjoy what pleasure is available, but the Stoic maintains proper perspective on that pleasure, and does not sacrifice virtue to pleasure. Once whatever is providing the pleasure passes on, as all things do, the Stoic does not mourn its loss. Always the Stoic endeavors to be satisfied with what is within his or her reach without sacrifice of virtue.

Justice may not be a concept commonly associated with Stoicism, but in truth, the great Marcus Aurelius judged justice as the highest of the virtues, for without justice, what use the other virtues? To grasp why justice might be viewed by the Stoics as the highest virtue, what the Stoics fully intended by the idea of justice must be understood. For the Stoic, justice was not a term mainly confined to justice under the law, but had a wider application, a community-wide importance, for a sound society requires citizens that act justly to one another. Indeed, Epictetus gave us an early version of the golden rule, for he advised that “what you yourself wish not to suffer, do not cause others to suffer.” Justice, then, is inseparable from virtue.

An essential idea from Stoicism is that it is the individual who determines what is of value in life, it is the individual who must render moral judgments, and by these judgments determine the quality of a society. It is the use of reason that forms a harmonious and healthy psyche, and therefore the use of reason is the foundation of a healthy and harmonious society.

The significant gulf that exists between modern, popular Stoicism and what the Stoic philosophers believed and taught is formed by the erroneous understanding of Stoicism as a philosophy that requires something like steadfast unresponsiveness to pleasure or pain, particularly the latter. We are being ‘stoic’ when we manifest placidity in the face of suffering, is the common modern view. In actuality, the Stoics had complex views on emotions, and there is disagreement even today on just what various Stoics believed regarding emotions, and in what ways and to what degrees, for example, the views of Zeno on emotions differ from that of Chrysippus, with the former being the founder of Stoicism, but the latter being one of its most significant proponents. From a broad view, Stoics understood emotions as cognitive, and therefore not – or at least not wholly – as irrational forces over which we lack control. For a Stoic, emotions involve judgment, and this being the case, emotions involve voluntariness, and therefore are governable, if one has the awareness to do so.
 
The Stoic, then, does not view an emotion one may be experiencing as something automatic, something instinctive and outside of the individual’s control. Yes, each sane individual will have a deep and immediate response to the appearance of an imminent tiger pounce, but that response is not fear as the Stoics understood the term. For the Stoic, the movement from the initial experience, whatever that experience may be, to that of an emotional response requires assent, in that we assent to the initial impression, and thereby experience the emotion of lust or fear or suffering, or some other response, as dictated by the stimulus. If we are in a state of lust, we have assented in that we have misjudged, and consequently we experience lust because we have judged something good and desirable that is neither. We experience fear because we have an expectation of harm, but this expectation is not rational, as the expectation is the result of a misjudgment, and consequently we fear the loss of something that is not of true value, or we fear the loss even when the loss cannot be avoided. We can never experience fear over the loss of virtue, because we lose our virtue only by our own choices. For the Stoic, emotional suffering is never rational. Yet because the Stoic views lust and craving as irrational and resulting from misjudgment does not mean that the Stoic never experiences joy or elation, for the Stoics endorsed reasoned elation of the sort that derives from proper judgment of the worth of virtue, and hence the Stoic justly rejoices in its attainment. Though the Stoic views fear as misjudgment, the Stoic does endorse reasoned, rational caution concerning things that are harmful. For the Stoic, reasoned, rational caution is not fear.

For the Stoic, then, the ideal state is that of apatheia, which is best translated as equanimity and not indifference. If one attains the state of apatheia, one is not callously indifferent to all external circumstances, but rather one is liberated from unhealthy passions and hence one is free to find enjoyment in those things of the highest value, which are right reason and virtue. Emotions, therefore, are not shunned or dismissed or disparaged, but achieving equanimity requires giving assent to what is healthy and declining assent to what is unhealthy. Hence one’s attaining or not attaining apatheia is voluntary, for failure or success depends on judgment. Perfection is not possible here, for humans are flawed, but if we desired to attain apatheia, then we must continually strive to comprehend our misjudgments on what is good. By realizing our misjudgments and seeking correction, we aim ever closer to the mark, for then we grasp that emotional disturbance is the consequence of misjudgment, and that equanimity is found in declining assent to these misjudgments. It is in the act of withholding assent to unhealthy passions that the Stoic frees himself or herself from emotional suffering and turmoil and establishes a liberating equanimity that enables a clearer view of what is truly of importance and what is not, and such a view is essential to virtue.

Another misconception concerning the Stoics is that they were somber souls, seeking by their philosophy to endure the tribulations of life, rather than to relish life. In truth, Stoics sought and valued happiness, but they believed that happiness was not obtained through pleasure but was found in wisdom. With wisdom, we apprehend that which is under our control and that which is not, and therefore we do not generate for ourselves much misery by worry, fret, and fear over the latter. The Stoics were determinists in that they believed that the universe is fixed, for the Stoics understood the totality of all existence as inseparable from God, and whereas God is the perfectly rational being, how can the universe be understood as other than divinely ordered and therefore unchanging?
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Yet, as discussed, the Stoics insisted that human beings are free to adopt the right attitude towards events, and render judgments, and thus human beings in truth are not wholly determined. The Stoics are thought of as never having satisfactorily resolved this contradiction between determinism and free will, but their legacy is profound and enduring for good reasons, and they insisted that even if we cannot alter out destiny, we can always free ourselves from emotional travails by discerning what is of true value and what is not, and through this use of our reasoning faculties we can refuse to give our assent to the harmful emotions that are generated by misjudgments as to what is within our control and what is not, and what is merely meretricious and what is truly rewarding. If we do so, then we eliminate the sources of disruption and affliction in our lives, and we thereby achieve, or at least approach nearer to achieving, apatheia or equanimity, the blessed state of wisdom esteemed by the Stoics as the only means to an authentic and lasting happiness. 

Upon learning of a friend or a family member suffering a physical ailment, we inquire of the sufferer whether a medical doctor has been consulted, and if the answer is no, our natural and habitual response is to recommend that he or she do so, as soon as convenient. If we learn that the individual suffers an emotional disturbance, we may suggest consulting a psychologist or a psychiatrist, if we are persuaded that these professions offer diagnoses and remedies for an ailing psyche analogous to what the medical doctor offers for an afflicted body. And if the disturbance seems spiritual in origin, then one might urge consultation with a religious leader of some sort. Rarely in the present age, in an encounter with an absence of health, does one think to offer that the advice and the guidance of a philosopher might be desirable and beneficial.
There are philosophers who position themselves as offering therapeutic philosophy, and of course there is an association for the promotion of their services, but for the vast majority of the populace, consideration of consultation with a philosopher in times of trouble is almost unknown. Part of the explanation may be that philosophy is now largely classified as a profession, and hence when one thinks of philosophers one tends to think of philosophy professors, and irrespective of the excellences and the abilities of any particular philosophy professor, when the pressing concern is alleviation of mental or physical suffering, scarcely ever does a philosophy professor come first to mind.
Yes it is true, unfortunately, that philosophy has – substantially so, anyway – retreated to the redoubt of the academy, yet are all those who teach philosophy themselves philosophers, and are all those who are not academics not philosophers? Hardly so. One need only think of just a few of the greatest of philosophers to grasp the inessentiality of academic residency to philosophic excellence. Socrates, Spinoza, Hume, to name but three, were not academicians, and the proverbial wise old woman (or man) of the village, sought out and esteemed for her wisdom, offering her pearls for the benefit of others - is she wholly undeserving of the appellation philosopher?
Much of philosophy today does seem far removed from the everyday concerns of most people, as almost all ‘professional’ philosophy today consists of papers written for consumption by other professors, these papers published within the pages of numerous professional journals, and many of these papers require considerable specialized knowledge on the part of the reader for meaningful comprehension of what is being offered. Yet those who came to speak with or listen to Socrates were largely concerned with matters relating to a good life, such as what is justice and what is honor, and how one might discern virtue. Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and a man of extraordinary character, found consolation in Stoic philosophy. Indeed, the once wealthy and powerful Boethius, a Roman Senator, having lost the favor of Theodoric the Great and finding himself in 523 imprisoned and divested of all worldly rewards, wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, in which he instructs us, through an imaginary conversation with a personified Philosophy, on the transitory nature of wealth and fame, and the potential endurance, despite of the loss of all else, of virtue, should we so desire its continuance. Hence Boethius, having descended from the heights of privilege and power to the depths of ignominy and deprivation, desires us to be instructed of the immeasurably greater worth of the life of the mind over earthly emoluments. In this work we learn, as others before Boethius had revealed, that happiness is the summum bonum, for happiness, as his personified Philosophy proclaims, is a good that “once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired.” Philosophy tells Boethius that some men equate the highest good with an absence of wants, and hence pursue wealth, while other believe that being worthy of respect is the true good, and therefore seek positions that garner respect from fellow citizens, but that most people believe that pleasure is the source of greatest happiness. Yet even should we attain these states and revel in the rewards, how quickly they can be lost, and how insufficient many who are fortune enough to acquire them, once in possession of them, may deem them to be. As Philosophy states, “wealth cannot extinguish insatiable greed, nor has power ever made him master of himself whom vicious lusts kept bound in indissoluble fetters; dignity conferred on the wicked not only fails to make them worthy, but contrarily reveals and displays their unworthiness.”
For Boethius, philosophy offers wise counsel indeed, for his personified Philosophy is described as “a woman of countenance exceedingly venerable. Her eyes were bright as fire, and of a more than human keenness; her complexion was lively, her vigour showed no trace of enfeeblement; and yet her years were right full, and she plainly seemed not of our age and time.” Clearly this is a woman whose words were worth heeding, and whose person is worthy of deepest respect. We can little doubt Boethius’s meaning when he offers that “Her garments were of an imperishable fabric, wrought with the finest threads and of the most delicate workmanship.” Interestingly, he goes on to write that in respect to her garments “her own lips afterwards assured me, she has herself woven with her own hands.” Boethius informs us that upon her first appearing to him, at that moment so distraught and engulfed in weeping was he that he at first discerned not who was this woman of “authority so commanding,” and that in response to his sorrowful state, she instructed him that the time “calls rather for healing than for lamentation.” Philosophy offers healing. Indeed, Boethius’s personified Philosophy identifies herself as a healer, admonishing him that “If thou lookest for the physician’s help, thou must needs disclose thy wound.”
Of course even if we appreciate the insufficiencies of wealth, fame, and influence, such knowledge does not dissuade us, necessarily, from desiring and actively pursuing these earthly prizes, for indeed the wealthy and the influential have access to the good things in life denied to the masses, and to name but a few, these include the freedom to live where one wishes, to purchase what luxuries one desires, and not least of all, the ability to secure the best advantages for offspring. What philosophy does teach us is what Epictetus, born a slave, warned: “Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.” All worldly goods, possessions, and positions depend, to lesser or greater degrees, on others. What does not depend on others is our virtue.
Philosophy, then, has very much served as an essential source of comfort, consolation, and instruction, and certainly the ancients did not consider it inappropriate to judge philosophy as analogous to medical science, and hence judge a philosopher as analogous to a doctor endeavoring to cure diseases of the body, with the philosopher seeking to cure afflictions of the mind or of the soul. As Chrysippus, the great Stoic philosopher, wrote, “It is not true that there exists an art called medicine concerned with the diseased body, but no corresponding art concerned with the diseased soul. Nor is it true that the latter is inferior to the former, in its theoretical grasp and therapeutic treatment of individual cases” (Galen, 129-c. 200 CE).
How might philosophy ‘cure’, or at least alleviate, in any sense? Well, the tools of philosophy are reasoning and arguments, and sound reasoning employed to develop can be instrumental in regaining health. Philosophy can do so by revealing our errors in judgment, and by demonstrating how our beliefs may be unsupported or even opposed to truth. The mind, therefore, can be diseased by errors in judgment and by false beliefs, and philosophy can be the source and the means to a return to health. Indeed, for centuries, philosophy was less concerned with recondite disputations between academics and more concerned with offering guidance on a life well lived. As Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and founder of Epicureanism, declared, “Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sickness of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul” (translation in Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, pg. 102).
What Epicurus and many other ancient Greek philosophers understood is that philosophy’s highest purpose and greatest use is found in its capacity to provide illumination of and guidance on the best life one can live. As Socrates so famously opined, in Plato’s Apology, the best life is a life of examination, and philosophy is the means by which we investigate just what is a life well lived, and how it is attained. The great emperor Marcus Aurelius and the former slave Epicurus were both exemplars of Stoic philosophy, and thus the indisputable truth: philosophy cares nothing for wealth, or position, or power, and whether one is rich or poor, young or old, a public figure or scarcely known to anyone, philosophy consoles, instructs, and illuminates, and for these rich offerings she requires no other remuneration save attention and a willingness to question one’s entrenched beliefs, and a willingness to identify and to challenge one’s unexamined assumptions. With such a bargain accessible to every purse, from empty to overflowing, all desirous of a life well lived should seek philosophy’s wise counsel.

One of the most disputed but enduring ideas to come to us from ancient Greece is the proclamation by the first and foremost of the Sophists, Protagoras of Abdera, who declared “man is the measure of all things.” What Protagoras precisely intended by this statement is, of course, debated, but to claim that Protagoras was declaring for a relativist condition on knowledge is not very controversial. As Plato has Socrates propose in Theaetetus (152a), Protagoras was acknowledging that “as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you.” That is, we obtain information about the world from our senses, but human beings are not uniform in their sensory responses and interpretations, and consequently, for example, a blowing wind will feel chill to one individual but not so to another individual standing by her side. Even the same individual, depending on her particular age at the time, or her mood, or the setting, and even her immediately-preceding experiences, will interpret the same sensory signals differently, according to these and many other factors.  
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The Sophists have suffered under a rather disreputable image for millennia, for they were professional teachers expecting remuneration for their instructional services, not as uncontroversial a practice as it is today, but more significantly, the sophists were criticized for providing instruction not on how to arrive at truth but how to prevail in an argument, irrespective of what side one took in an argument. As the literary critic/philosopher/novelist/professor George Steiner writes, the name sophist has been “pejorative throughout history,” for the name connotes “mendacious argument, the ability to take either side of a case with equal and factitious rhetorical brio, logical virtuosity without substance or moral reference” (Lessons of the Masters, pg. 12).

Truth, then, was not the primary concern of the sophists, and this devaluation of truth was the essence of what irked Plato, for he charged the sophists with possessing only a pretense to knowledge, and therefore the sophist profiting by appearing to offer something of great value, worthy of charging a fee to obtain, when in truth they were “a kind of cheat who imitates real things” (Sophist, 235b). Though sophist from the Greek sophistes originally meant one who is wise or one who is an expert, from Plato’s writings the term sophistry is now understood as denoting an instance of offering fallacious arguments, as employing reasoning that appears sound but in truth is unsupported and is intended to mislead. The Sophists, however, and their methods are experiencing a reappreciation, as the benefit of instruction on, and competence in, being able to argue both sides of a question is increasingly evident.

Protagoras has been charged with relativism, the doctrine that truth is “relative to the standpoint of the judging subject” (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). The belief that there are no objective standards for judgment, that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is prevalent in our current age, but this belief is a perennial temptation, and many agree with Hamlet that “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act II, Scene 2). The flaw with relativism is that it is a vacuous viewpoint, as it nullifies any search for truth, for why bother to search for truth if in fact there is no truth? If each judging subject has an equally valid claim for the truth of his or her judgment, then there is no truth. Truth requires discrimination from falsity.
The philosopher whose views have most thoroughly shaped modern thinking on whether truth is a fixed star, an invariant essence for all beings for all times, or whether truth varies according to viewpoint, is Friedrich Nietzsche. His thoughts on truth and its questionable fixity are classified as perspectivism, with these views being well illuminated in this passage from his The Dawn of Day, wherein Nietzsche asks us to consider our response were we to perceive someone laughing at us as we passed along a public street:

       “In accordance with whatever craving has reached its culminating point within us at 
        that moment, this incident will have this or that signification for us; and it will be a    
        very different occurrence in accordance with the class of men to which we belong.             
        One man will take it like a drop of rain, another will shake it off like a fly, a third    
        person will try to pick a quarrel on account of it, a fourth will examine his garments
        to see if there is anything about the likely to cause laughter, and a fifth will in       
        consequence think about what is ridiculous per se, a sixth will be pleased at having   
        involuntarily contributed to add a ray of sunshine and mirth to the world”

Nietzsche persuasively is demonstrating that our perspective on any particular incident will determine in what manner we interpret that incident. We can react with anger, with thoughtfulness, or with benevolence.
The doctrine of relativism can be understood as one means of attempting to account for the fact that our viewpoints often differ due to such influences as our social environment, our economic standing, varying cultural influences, our psychological makeup, and even our inconstant sensory capacities. Hence, per relativism, ‘truth’ is a matter of interpretation, and therefore Nietzsche’s perspectivism is relativism to the extent that both understand truth as an interpretation from a particular viewpoint, and as Professor John C. Solomon writes, “Perspectivism is the view that every “truth” is an interpretation from some particular perspective. There is no neutral, all-comprehending, “God’s-eye” view available (even for God). There are only perspectives” (What Nietzsche Realty Said, pg. 108).

Yet Nietzsche’s perspectivism is not wholly synonymous with relativism, for if we embrace fully the relativist stance, and hold that no claim for truth can be privileged over any other truth claim, then in effect we abandon the search for truth, and this surrender is not embraced by most individuals, and certainly not philosophers. Yes, Nietzsche stated in Human, All Too Human that “there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths,” but this view did not dissuade Nietzsche from a vigorous pursuit of truth, as he advocated strongly for “rigorous reflection” in all matters of significance. What, then, should we take from Nietzsche’s perspectivism? Nietzsche calls us away from an indolent acceptance of dogmatism, calling us to awaken our critical faculties and think for ourselves, irrespective of how contrary to received opinion the results of that thinking. If we do so, if we accept that what knowledge we have and what knowledge we may gain are ever perspectival, and we thus endeavor to understand how knowledge is influenced by perspective, then we acquire a more nuanced apprehension of the world and of the human condition.
We can accommodate relativism in our thinking, without adopting a cynical, easy view that there is no truth, and that one opinion or one viewpoint is just as valid and just as worthy as any other. Nietzsche most certainly distained such shallow thinking, even though he declared that every standpoint depends upon the perspective in which it originates. We can accept that our knowledge often is provisional, and may change as we acquire new knowledge, or a new perspective. An appreciation of Nietzsche’s perspectivism should dissuade us from an unrefined relativism that can readily envelope us in a quicksand of cynicism. Accepting that our point of view is perspectival need not persuade us that every point of view is of equal validity, nor deter us from engaging in a rigorous pursuit of truth.