[Day 8] Inspirational Monday: The self-mastery of Socrates

We're used to thinking of Socrates as a wise philosopher, but did you realize he was also a decorated military hero and held up as an exemplary model of courage and self-discipline in the ancient world? Zeno was apparently converted to philosophy by reading the Athenian general Xenophon's account of his friend Socrates. According to Xenophon, Socrates was "the most self-controlled of men" in respect of his physical desires as well as his tolerance of hardship, including extreme heat and cold, having trained himself to have modest needs and to be content with the most basic material possessions. Despite being a pretty tough character himself, Xenophon was clearly impressed by Socrates' strength of character and self-mastery, which closely-resemble the virtue and practices that subsequently became the focus of both Cynicism and Stoicism.

We're told Socrates rigorously trained both his mind and body through his philosophical lifestyle. He argued, paradoxically, that "it is self-discipline, above all things, that causes pleasure." By exercising restraint, we learn to only eat when genuinely hungry, drink when thirsty, and so on. Appetite and thirst are the natural "sauce" of life and the secret to making even coarse bread and plain water seem delicious. Self-control is healthier and actually leads to more enjoyment than self-indulgence, particularly with regard to the most common sources of pleasure in daily life. By contrast, Socrates said that anything that impels us to eath when not hungry or drink when not thirsty, "ruined stomachs and heads and characters". Hopefully, this seems more like common sense than self-mortification, although it flies in the face of modern attitudes towards food and drink – we're constantly bombarded with advertising for more convenient and enticing, but often unhealthy, things to consume.

Socrates also taught his students that we should keep the body fit through appropriate physical exercise because it is employed in all human activity, even the act of thinking, as everyone knows that people can't think straight when they have certain illnesses. He apparently favoured dancing alone, at daybreak, as a form of physical exercise, because it involved the whole body rather than just some parts – but this was something that seemed quite eccentric to his associates. Overall, though, we're told that he believed that everyone should care for their health, by learning everything they can about it from experts but also by studying their own constitution, every day, and observing what food, drink or exercise actually do them good. Because everyone is different, he thought that ideally we should become our own physicians, learning from experience what's healthy in our own case. Xenophon likewise believed that just as people who fail to exercise their bodies become physically weak, people who do not train their characters, through self-discipline, become morally weak. The Stoics agreed, and we'll find them placing great emphasis on moral and psychological training in philosophy.

Sources
Robertson, D. (2013) Stoicism and the Art of Happiness, London: Hodder & Stoughton
Critical Voter (2016) The Consolation of Philosophy