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The problem with presentism
How should we evaluate the moral standing of people and cultures from the past?
Consider Marcus Aurelius: was he a wise ruler whose actions were informed by Stoic philosophy, or a brutal colonialist enforcing imperial rule? I have had this discussion recently on Substack’s Notes as a follow up to an article I wrote in which, among other things, I suggested that modern Stoics should stop regarding James Stockdale a role model.
Stockdale was an American pilot who was shot down during the Vietnam War. He was apprehended and spent several years in a Vietnamese prison where he endured torture and abuse. Stockdale credited his survival to having read the Stoic philosopher Epictetus and having internalized his famous fundamental rule: some things are up to us, others are not, and the key to life is to focus on the first ones and develop an attitude of equanimity toward the latter.
In my article I argued that Stockdale’s use of Stoicism is an example of (successful!) life hacking, but not of actually practicing the philosophy. You see, Stockdale had been present at the infamous incident of the Gulf of Tonkin, which the United States used as a pretext to start the war. The US Government claimed that the Vietnamese had attacked American ships unprovoked. But Stockdale was actually there and knew that…
