Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [12]
Yoda wisely knows that fear, anger, hate, and aggression lead to suffering and the Dark Side of the Force, and his wisdom allows him to tell the difference between the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force. Yoda explains to Luke that he will know the difference between the two when he is “calm, at peace, passive.”
Stoicism and the Virtues of the Sage
Several elements of Stoicism help us to better understand Yoda’s virtues. The Stoics believed that the goal of life was to live in agreement with Nature. This meant several things. First, Nature, that is, the cosmos as a whole, is structured and well-ordered through and through according to Logos, reason. As I will explain more fully below, Logos is akin to the Force. Second, to live in agreement with Nature requires embracing and making good use of all events that unfold in this rationally structured universe. So living in harmony with cosmic events entails living in agreement with our distinctive human nature. While we have various functions in common with other animals, the Stoics believed that reason is our special, distinctive natural endowment. So to live well is to harmonize our distinctive human reason as individuals with the larger rational structure of the universe. The Stoic Epictetus (ca. 55-ca. 135 C.E.) says:
God has introduced humans into the world as spectators of himself and of his works; and not only as spectators, but interpreters of them. It is therefore shameful that humans should begin and end where irrational creatures do. We ought rather to begin there, but to end where nature itself has fixed our end, and that is in contemplation and understanding and a way of life in harmony with nature.24
The Stoics understood the perfection of reason to be virtue itself. So the successful, good human life is the life in agreement with virtue. Virtue is the one and only necessary and sufficient condition for the happy life, according to the Stoics. Vice guarantees misery. Because of this, they believed that virtue is the only thing that is really good, and that vice is the only thing that is really bad. Knowledge of what is really good, what is really bad, and what is neither, they thought, is crucial to living well. Moreover, the Stoics believed that all the virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, self-control, piety, and generosity—were really just perfected reason applied to various spheres of conduct.
Reason leads the Stoic to concentrate his mind on what is up to him and under his control rather than worrying about, fearing, anticipating, or being distracted by anything that is beyond his control and not up to him. Timely behavior, for example, is under one’s control and is a virtue of the Stoic. This mindful concentration on what is within one’s control allows the Stoic to be calm and even-tempered no matter what happens, and to be high-minded and noble of heart by rising above trivial or frivolous matters that plague non-Stoics.
In addition, the Stoic seeks to free himself from all passion, excitation, and frivolity in order to be able to apply his reason reliably. The Stoics understood “passion” (pathos in Greek) to be a disturbing, unhealthy movement of the soul. That is why a sickness (of the soul) is called a pathology. The Stoic who has succeeded in freeing himself from all disturbances to his reason has become good. The Stoics believed that there are no degrees of goodness. Until a man is good, he is bad. For the Stoics, the good man thus functions as a prescriptive ideal known as the perfect wise man or “sage.” The sage’s soul is steady, orderly, completely virtuous, and it does not suffer from any “passion.” However, the Stoic sage is not devoid of all emotion. The Stoics believed that there were three “good emotional states” that were not pathological movements of the soul, namely, benevolence (wishing someone good things for his own sake), joy (in virtuous deeds), and caution (reasonable