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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Conservatives love Stoics, Part 1: On small government

I'm guessing it's because of Stockdale.  Or because of the overt religiosity in Stoic writings.  Or maybe it's the emphasis on personal responsibility.  Whatever the reason, conservatives loves Stoics.

This may be a mistake, I think.  But I want to write a few blog posts to help me think through this.  To start, my view of the hallmarks of modern American conservatives are a preference towards small government, aggressive foreign policy, pro-religion and anti-environmentalist.

To keep this blog post short, lets just talk about small government.

I don't believe any of those positions really align with Stoic philosophy, and some outright violate it.  Small government can be argued: certainly a Stoic wouldn't demand a bunch of government programs to help him.  On the other hand, Epictetus did state that it's sometimes necessary to comfort and sympathize with non-Stoics.  In the face of suffering, you can't just insist everyone become Stoics.  And, let's face it, just about everyone is a non-Stoic.

There is a world of difference in insisting that Stoics should bear sufferings in a certain way and insisting that it's acceptable for those sufferings to occur in general because everyone should be able to bear it.  I haven't seen any evidence yet that Stoics felt that their philosophy was anything else that a private philosophy, to be taken up by free choice.

Just because I haven't seen evidence, though, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  I haven't actually read that much Stoic writings yet.  I'm working on it.  Let me know if I get this wrong.

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