The Yes Woman: What would Seneca and Socrates do?

This column has made quite an impact on my life. Although I haven’t undertaken anything world-altering, my own world has expanded. The purpose of the column was to take a person (me) – a trenchantly stubborn, introverted and unsociable malcontent – and force her out into the world. As a pessimist, I’ve been brimming with reluctance on the precipice of change.

With the arrival of the new year comes reflection on the last one. Poor decisions are dragged dustily from the cupboard and deposited in your eye line like cat sick on the carpet. There are the more serious ones: contemplations on family, relationships or work, and the niggling but less significant conundrums such as where to place the ugly but well-meant Christmas gifts you received. Would a bust of Lenin look weird in the bedroom? Do you have to put the fluffy toilet seat cover your aunt gave you on the toilet when she visits?

This week, I’m reflecting on how practical philosophy can be used to cope with everyday problems, which can seem even more urgent at this time of year. I said yes to philosophy years ago; it is my greatest passion, but there’s no harm at all in conducting an annual check to ensure it’s being put to proper use.

When I talk to people who aren’t familiar with much philosophy, they generally respond in one of two ways. With fear, because it seems terribly complex, or with disdain, because as far as they are concerned they’ve lived however many decades without any need for such pretentious frippery, and aren’t they only grand anyway?

Well no, not really. You use the principles and method of philosophy in every minute decision or observation you make in daily life. You’re likely to be using them rather poorly if you’re unaware that you’re using them, but they’re in there.

When you weigh up which course of action is best, ponder how best to raise your children or adopt a political position, you’re thinking philosophically. You can extend the process to enormously complex questions such as whether there is a difference between a mind and a brain, or whether we have free will. You can also use it to thoroughly consider whether you should have that doughnut at lunchtime.

Philosophy is the theory of everything. An education in it (and not necessarily a formal one) unlocks an ability to think efficiently, to lead a conscious life, and to see all the way to the bottom of another person’s perspective as well as your own. Ideas unfold before you, and poor thinking becomes very easy to spot.

Once more, without feeling

Seneca was kind of a big deal. He tutored the mad emperor Nero and eventually ended up being ordered to kill himself by that ungrateful student. However, before that whole mess happened, he made some very helpful observations. According to Seneca, how you feel is your own responsibility and nobody else’s.

It’s a very simple concept, but not one we tend to accept. We love phrases sucn as “you made me feel bad” or “you offended me”. Seneca says we can stop that nonsense this minute. Our emotions aren’t a force over which we have no control; a bag of cats that anyone can come over and hit with a stick to send us into a frenzy.

His favourite example is anger. Anger is a tricky beast. It feels like something that happens to us, a process to which we don’t consent. Not so, according to Seneca. Anger is an error in reasoning; a misplaced expectation. You get angry in traffic because you hold the unreasoned belief that other people should be very good drivers, and so you have no tolerance when they make a mistake or act selfishly. If you didn’t hold that expectation, you wouldn’t get angry. You get angry as a result of the ideas you hold, and not because of anything another person has done.

He’s right. No one can impinge on the workings of our minds unless we permit them. Upon consideration, it’s annoying because we can’t blame other people’s bad behaviour for our mood. And yet it gives us supreme control, which is immensely liberating. This knowledge is quite powerful: with thought and effort, we can master our impulses, and our moods are creations in which we are heavily complicit. We have the ability to remain calm regardless of what happens to us.

When we argue with family or friends, or anyone, the argument is pointless most of the time. Not because we should always get on with our loved ones or any such piffle, but because you’ll generally discover, towards the end of what may be a very long argument, that you’re arguing about different things. The argument is likely based around an accusation or a concept – like goodness or selfishness – and you discover quite a way into the shouting match that what you mean by “selfish” is not what the other person understands it to mean.

So you’re arguing about two different concepts. You might as well be fighting over the truest version of the colour red. “It’s vermilion, I say.” “You Philistine; it’s tomato if it’s anything.”

Looks aren’t everything

That’s where Socrates comes in. He never wrote a word, but Plato gives us a pretty colourful account of him. Socrates was apparently very small and very unattractive. He shambled about on dirty feet and his protuberant eyes possessed a fish-like quality.

Yet he gave us definition of terms. Socrates used it to clarify challenging concepts, but it can be used to ensure that your arguments are never a waste of time. Teaching a first-year undergraduate class, I’ve heard the statement, “Well I know for a fact that God exists”. I generally ask the student what they mean by God, at which point they look entirely baffled. If I’m feeling ungenerous I’ll ask them what they mean by “a fact”.

Thanks to Socrates, we don’t ever have to use a term without ensuring that both parties agree on what it means. That goes for any term: if a whole debate or argument is hinged on a word or concept, agreeing on what it refers to is a very good start.

Bad behaviour is more often than not a result of ineffective thinking. Bin the self-help books this month and pick up some philosophy. Your mind will thank you and you’ll win every family argument.

The Yes Woman says yes to . . . thinking well, and no to . . . acting like a bag of cats