On the Practical Joys of Lachs's Stoic Pragmatism

Chapter 12 ‘Raisins in the Bread of Life’: On the Practical Joys of Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism

Shannon Sullivan

The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) to build bridges between John Lachs’s recent books In Love with Life (1998) and Stoic Pragmatism (2012), thinking through the complex connections and tensions that run through them, especially with regard to his use of stoicism, and (ii) to understand the philosophical influences on Lachs’s culminating work, which as Lachs (2012, 1) explains is found in Stoic Pragmatism in particular. I also choose to concentrate on these books since in many ways they showcase why practical philosophy is important to Lachs: on his account, the purpose of philosophy is to enhance the down-to-earth practices and experiences of human beings. As readers of Lachs know, virtually all of his philosophical work, especially The Relevance of Philosophy to Life (1995) and most recently Meddling (2014), values practical philosophy. In that respect, In Love with Life and Stoic Pragmatism are not unique. But these two books are distinctive in Lachs’s considerable body of work because they explicitly take up stoicism as a tool for practical philosophy. In doing so, these books help bring out what I believe is the centerpiece of the practical enterprise for Lachs: the experience of joy. Ameliorating human experiences and activities might involve increasing material comfort and al- leviating certain stresses and pains, as it surely does in Lachs’s view. But without joy, as Lachs also would agree, none of those improvements matter. Joyful living—savoring the raisins in the bread of life—should be thought of as the essence of Lachs’s practical philosophy.1 None of the primary philosophical influences explicitly acknowledged by Lachs, however, adequately account for the powerful affective dimension of his work. As I will explain, because an affirmation of positive emotions, and of joy in particular, is so important to Lachs’s practical philosophy, I ultimately find it difficult to understand his philosophy as fundamentally stoic. Similar problems will emerge when we consider the roles played in Lachs’s thinking

1 The double entendre of “essence” is intentional here, anticipating the importance of Santay- anan essences to Lachs’s philosophy, which I will discuss later in the paper.

198 Sullivan by pragmatism and by Lachs’s first philosophical love, George Santayana. Following Lachs, I will underscore the importance of Santayana to Lachs’s stoic pragmatism, but I also will argue that reading Lachs’s stoic pragmatism through the lens of Santayana’s philosophy is insufficient. In my view, Lachs’s stoic pragmatism is best read also through the lens of another historical figure who could be considered one of Lachs’s unrecognized philosophical ances- tors: Benedict Spinoza. As we will see, the prioritization of joy by Lachs’s work resonates loudly with the emphasis on joyful passions found in Spinoza’s philosophy. I will examine that relationship by means of three questions intended to untangle the philosophical influences on Lachs’s work: To what degree is Lachs’s philosophy stoic? To what degree is his philosophy pragmatist? And to what degree is his philosophy Santayanan? I will close by underscoring the practical upshot of these questions.

Lachs’s Stoicism

Readers of In Love with Life might be surprised at Lachs’s endorsement of stoicism in Stoic Pragmatism given the bad rap that stoicism gets in the former book. While Stoic Pragmatism (Lachs 2012, 1) describes a process of self- knowledge in which Lachs came to recognize that his approach to and com- portment in life was that of a stoic pragmatist, In Love with Life (Lachs 1998, 26) criticizes the equanimity promoted by stoicism for getting in the way of maximizing what life has to offer. Stoics achieve “quiet satisfaction” and “total calm” through indifference, neither loving nor hating life, and “indifference of all sorts makes life dull” (ibid.). Lachs’s precise wording is important here because it reveals his particular understanding of historic stoicism, such as that of Epictetus. Whether Lachs’s account of stoicism is fully correct is not my concern here, in large part because what counts as an accurate understanding of stoic satisfaction can be a matter of intense debate (see, e.g., Miller 2015 and Nussbaum 1994). What matters for my purposes is that for Lachs in In Love with Life, stoicism equanimity is dull and lacks energy and passion. In contrast to stoicism, In Love with Life vibrantly affirms “the excitement of the explosive energy that drives us,” and claims that without this energy and passion, “there is not much left” to life (Lachs 1998, 26). Stoicism might be an appropriate approach to life when a person is trapped and must do something that she doesn’t like, but that’s about it (ibid., 42). And even in that case, Lachs is concerned that stoicism’s lack of concern for life is a defense mechanism due to the fact that it is powerless to transform unpleasant means into ends that are enjoyable (ibid., 46). Stoicism’s calm satisfaction might not always be