A couple of Stoics involved in politics you may be interested in are Cato the Younger [1] and, of course, Marcus Aurelius. [2] Suffice to say that if our political class today was comprised of men with even a fraction of either of these men's character, the world would be an exponentially better place for everybody.
Which is why it was upheld by people administering the slave empires, and rejected by those who ultimately opposed and overthrew them. It justifies existing hierarchies and domination as natural vs. arising from systems which can be fundamentally changed.
Various individuals, in modern Western history, that have held Aurelius' meditations in extremely high esteem range from the person who coined the term collective bargaining, to Bill Clinton, to an Army general. [1] Among countless others. Of course holding that book in high esteem is not the same as being a Stoic, but on the other hand I don't think it's terribly far from it. The book would be quite a pointless source of inspiration for one who wasn't endeavoring to integrate Stoic ideals into their life. Stoicism is what one makes of it - it's not like you get a member card, and manuscript of dogma and taboo.
More often than not, people are caught in the in-between where the spend absurd amount of time worrying about a specific problem but are unwilling/unable to take the action to resolve that issue.
The other side of that is that sometimes things happen to you for which you have no control. An inoperable brain tumor, the weight of the death of a friend, your company going under, etc. in those moments, all you can ask for is to handle those situations with grace, virtue, and reason. And how you handle those situations (those uncontrollable ones) is completely on you.
(Anecdotally, a friend of mine, who identifies as an adherent to stoic philosophy just organized his workplace and lead the unionization effort! He felt like he had the tools and power to help organize and make the changes in his work place! we told him that it was impossible/improbable and he's proved us all wrong.)
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Stoicism was not rejected past Antiquity, it was a major influence on later Christian philosophy. Also one of our foremost sources on Greek Stoicism was literally a slave.
I think this is a misunderstanding. Stoicism isn't about passivity or resignation but rather about proactive engagement with the world, guided by virtue and rationality.
If you have the means to change or shape the world, then do so...If you have the means to inspire people to change the world, then by god, do so....
There's plenty of examples throughout history of just that.
for example, Cato the Younger, a Stoic, vehemently opposed Caesar believing him to be a a threat to the then fragile Roman Republic. He stood against Caesar's rise to power, even to the point of his tragic end, and became a bit of a martyr in that regard.
Seneca the Younger, advised Emperor Nero (infamous madman) and tried to moderate Nero's rule with Stoic principles. Somewhat unsuccessfully, but he did try.
A more modern example in George Washington, whose infamous demeanor was key in guiding the United States during its formative years, including the U.S. Revolutionary War and as the First President of that fledgling republic.
Stoicism isn't a philosophy of resignation, Stoicism should be seen as a framework to navigate life's complexities with wisdom, reason, and virtue.
One of Marcus Aurelius’ most famous quotes actually encourages action:
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Is Girard saying that Christianity destroyed scapegoating and mythologized violence? Or simply archaic virtue? Because I can think of loads of scapegoating all over the Eurasian landmass, from 300 years of the Spanish Inquisition, to pogroms ordered by the Tsars, the Bolsheviks, the Cossacks, and the White Army.
Despite his later religious appeals, Girard’s original argument is more anthropological with regard to the emergence of various monotheistic traditions. Archaic virtues and religions were about hiding the nature of sacrilized violence, specifically the fact that the victim/scapegoat had no real power to dispel whatever crisis predicated their victimization. This becomes fully exposed for the first time in the Christian mythos, but had orthodox and heterodox precedents in almost every world religion,and especially Judaism, as Girard’s work itself engages with. Overtime, the effect of this mythos is to undermine the efficacy of sacrificial logics, such that we now, in modern society, more often than not, identify with the victims vs. the victimizers. This is a complete inversion of the archaic social order, as Nietzsche railed against in his notion of Dionysus vs. the Crucified. The impact of the Christian mythos obviously also extends into other world religions (e.g. Islam and its two billion adherents, where the Christ figure also holds special status) as well as into various secular moral philosophies that derive their origins from Abrahamic traditions.
Christianity stopped us from destroying the weak and the other?
It's weird then how the western Christian world has retained all of those negative traits for almost two millennia.
Without archaic notions of heroism and virtue, as Nietzsche railed against in the concept of “slave morality” overtaking this cultural order.
>Christianity stopped us from destroying the weak and the other? It's weird then how the western Christian world has retained all of those negative traits for almost two millennia.
Relatively speaking, yes. Historically, all of Europe was murderously at each others throats, or more recently, the idea of colonialism being morally repugnant would’ve been laughable (as was true in its archaic, imperial analogues). Of course, we have not entirely shed ourselves of these notions, but their power is much diminished to centuries past.