Stoic pragmatists and epicureans

LISTEN. Josiah Royce took the long and hopeful view, in supposing we'll have (as a species) "thousands of years to develop for humanity the full significance of [a given philosopher's] reflective thought." Or more.

There's a nobly Stoic dimension to that kind of patience, in its way admirable but also possibly not the best fit for the urgent and even desperate moment we find ourselves in. If it takes a philosophy that long to mature, to find ripeness and relevance, we'd better look back a millennium or two for vintage wisdom to apply to the converging crises of the 21st century. We don't have all the time in the world, we certainly don't have time to grow a new Stoic philosophy.

On the other hand, Thoreau said it's a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. I'm sure his 19th century felt every bit as bustling, chaotic, and out of control. The steam locomotive and telegraph were agents of rapid and unforeseen violation of old norms, much as the Internet and social media are ours. (Who was their Trump? He's probably unprecedented.)

Stoicism should be in the mix, in our search for saving wisdom we can use now. And Pragmatism, which after all is just "a new name for some old ways of thinking." So...

Stoic Pragmatism it is. What can philosophy do to make life better? What's the right therapy for our disease, the cure for our ills? First, says John Lachs, it's the recognition that "many things riling people greatly do not matter at all." Second, it's a deep appreciation of "ordinary experience, immediacy, and the qualitative element in life." Stoics aren't easily riled by trifles, stoic pragmatists are sharply attentive to "modest pleasures" and the saving graces of everyday. They may in fact be indistinguishable from Catherine Wilson's Epicureans. Theirs, again,

is not a fatalistic philosophy. It lays great weight on human choices and preferences... It invites us to take pleasure in what is near at hand: in warmth, food, and drink, in moderation; in the company of those we happen, for whatever reason, to like; in the recurrence of spring after winter; and in the surround of foliage and flowers, and the appearance of new life.

But third, crucially, our therapy is going to have to bestir itself to understand that the recurrence of spring and new life can't be taken for granted. If we want our garden to grow we must nurture the soil, stop leaching the planet, listen to Greta.