Modern Stoic Philosophers: My Favorite Maxims: Viktor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, and Others

Today we will reflect on my favorite maxims from
modern Stoic philosophers, many which mirror the
quotes by the ancient Stoic philosophers.

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
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We have several stoic quotes from two modern figures, one a
political leader, the other a psychologist. Both were imprisoned,
Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison for opposing apartheid,
and Viktor Frankl was imprisoned in the Auschwitz work camp,
daily facing death in the Holocaust. These maxims, and some
maxims from other Civil Rights leaders, have been covered in our
prior videos, but the other maxims are new for this Channel.
We have previously reflected on our Favorite Maxims from
Roman Stoic Philosophers, and also Favorite Maxims from Greek
Stoic and Cynic Philosophers.

Nelson Mandela: From Prison to Presidency

Nelson Mandela read the works of the stoic
philosophers during his years spent in a South African
prison for his struggles against apartheid. He was not
to angry or bitter with his South African jailers, many
of them were fundamentalist Afrikaner churchgoers
who were paradoxically both devout Christians and
supporters of the brutal apartheid regime.

Mandela echoes Epictetus when he
writes: “Prison and the authorities
conspire to rob each man of his
dignity. No man or institution can
rob me of my dignity because I
refuse to part with it for any price
or pressure.”
Bill Clinton tells us in the foreword,
“I once asked Mandela to describe
his long walk from prison to the
presidency. ‘When you are young
and strong,’ he told me, ‘you can
stay alive on hatred. And I did, for
many years.’”
Protests against Apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.

“Then one day after years of
imprisonment, physical and
emotional abuse, and separation
from his family, Mandela said, ‘I
realized that they could take
everything from me except my mind
and my heart. They could never take
these from me. I still had control over
my mind and my heart. And I decided
never to give them away.’”

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela learned the Dutch
Afrikaner language spoken by his white jailers so he could talk to
them in their native tongue. Later, when he was negotiating his
release from prison to replace the apartheid with a democratic
government, he compared the freedom struggles of the Dutch
Afrikaner settlers when they rebelled against the British crown to
the current struggles of the black ANC Party against apartheid,
while speaking in their native Afrikaner tongue rather than
English. Mandela sought reconciliation between the black and
white Afrikaner citizens of South Africa, especially after he was
elected President.

F.W. de Klerk,
left, the last
president of
Apartheid
Era South
Africa, and
Nelson
Mandela, his
successor,
speak in
Philadelphia,
1993

This was Mandela’s message to his
fellow blacks during his presidential
campaign after Apartheid was
abolished: “Do not expect to be
driving a Mercedes the day after
the election or be swimming in your
own backyard swimming pool. Life
will not change dramatically, except
that your self-esteem will increase,
and you will become a citizen in
your own land. You must have
patience.”

In the closing pages of his autobiography
Mandela shares some comforting thoughts, “No
one is born hating another person because of
the color of his skin, or his background, or his
religion. People must learn to hate, and if they
can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for
love comes more naturally to the human heart.”
Mandela remembers: “Even in the grimmest
times in prison, when my comrades and I were
pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of
humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for
a second, but it was enough to reassure me and
keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that
can be hidden but never extinguished.”
This is the official photo of Mandela
casting his vote in the 1994 elections.

https://youtu.be/X3UnZYeE_kA
Mandela is ever the Stoic in these closing
words of his autobiography, “A man who
takes away another man’s freedom is a
prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the
bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I
am not truly free if I am taking away
someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I
am not free when my freedom is taken from
me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike
are robbed of their humanity.”

Viktor Frankl: Surviving Nazis & Auschwitz

Although many scholars note the many similarities
between Frankl and the Stoics, Frankl does not have any
direct references to Stoics in his famous Man’s Search for
Meaning, his story of surviving the Auschwitz Work Camps
in the Nazi Holocaust. Also, his psychological system is
called Logotherapy, after the Greek word for Logos, or
Word. But his Logotherapy is very similar to the modern
CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is inspired by
Stoicism.

Rabbi Kushner in the Foreword to
the book said that “Frankl saw three
possible sources for meaning, in
work, doing something significant;
in love, caring for another person;
and in courage during difficult
times.”
No matter how dire your
circumstances, you can always be
kind to those around you. Frankl
tells us, “Man’s search for meaning
is the primary motivation in his life
and not a ‘secondary rationalization’
of instinctual drives.”

What is the meaning
of suffering? Frankl
posits that “man’s
main concern is not
to gain pleasure or to
avoid pain but rather
to see a meaning in
his life. That is why
man is even ready to
suffer, on the
condition that his
suffering has
meaning.”

Frankl tells us the most important
lesson he relearned in the Nazi work
camps: “The truth is that love is the
ultimate and highest goal to which man
can aspire.” In the suffering of the
camps, Frankl tells us that he realized
that “the salvation of man is through
love and in love. I understood how a
man who has nothing left in this world
still may know bliss, be it only for a brief
moment, in the contemplation of his
beloved.”
Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial

Viktor Frankl tells us, “The experiences of camp life
show that man does have a choice of action. Apathy
can be overcome; irritability can be suppressed.
Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of
independence of mind, even in terrible conditions
of psychic and physical stress.”
Frankl believes that “the true meaning of life is
discovered in the world rather than in man or in his
own psyche, as though it were a closed system.”
“The more one forgets himself, by giving himself to
a cause or another person to love, the more human
he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

What is the meaning of love? Frankl
suggests, “Love is the only way to grasp
another human being in the innermost core
of his personality. No one can become fully
aware of the very essence of another human
being unless he loves them.”
“By his love he is enabled to see the essential
traits and features in the beloved person;”
both their obvious strengths, and also their
potential strengths, strengths hidden that
blossom with encouragement, like flowers
that bloom after it rains.

Likewise, Frankl reminds us that romantic
love is not merely sex, but healthy intimacy
is an expression of love. Frankl states,
“Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect
or by-product” of romantic love, “and is
destroyed and spoiled to the degree to
which it is made a goal in itself.”
Frankl decries that “our current mental
hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that
people ought to be happy, that unhappiness
is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a
value system means that the burden of
unavoidable unhappiness is increased by
unhappiness about being unhappy.”

Frankl explains, “No instinct tells
man what he has to do, no
tradition tells man what he ought
to do; sometimes man does not
even know what he wishes to do.
Instead, he either wishes to do
what other people do, he seeks to
conform; or he does what other
people wish him to do, which can
lead to totalitarianism.”

https://youtu.be/O-YtC9qGWPI
Dr Winslade continues, “Frankl was deeply committed
to the idea that even a vile Nazi criminal or a seemingly
hopeless madman has the potential to transcend evil
or insanity by making responsible choices.”

Inspirations from US Civil Rights Leaders

We reviewed our reflections on the civil rights
leaders, they have many interesting quotes on the
civil rights struggle and the circumstances blacks
faced in the Jim Crow days, and also some stoic
reflections. We don’t recall any historical mention of
these civil rights leaders studying the stoic
philosophers in particular.

Frederick Douglass, the black
abolitionist, was once forced,
because of his color, to ride in the
baggage car of the train. When
some of the white passengers
commented on how he should not
have been degraded in this manner,
he replied, “They cannot degrade
Frederick Douglass. The soul within
me no man can degrade. I am not
the one who is being degraded on
account of his treatment, but who
are inflicting it upon me are those
who degrade themselves.”
Frederick Douglass appealing to President Lincoln and his
cabinet to enlist Negroes, by William Edouard Scott, 1943

Booker T Washington observed:
“Experience has taught me, in
fact, that no man should be
pitied because, every day in his
life, he faces a hard, stubborn
problem, but rather that it is the
man who has no problem to
solve, no hardships to face, who
is to be pitied.”

Booker T Washington notes that
“he used to sympathize with
colored people who were narrow
and bitter towards white people. As
I grew older” I noticed “that they
did not get anywhere, that their
bitterness and narrowness toward
the white man did not hurt the
white man or change his feeling
toward the colored race, but that,
in almost every case, the cherishing
of such feelings” hurt the colored
man more than the white man.
Booker T Washington giving a speech at Carnegie Hall, 1909

WEB Du Bois tells us that “one thing I
avoided, and that was envy. I tried to give
the other fellow his due even when I
disliked him personally and disagreed with
him logically. It was a point of honor to me
never to refuse appreciation to one who
had earned it, no matter who he was.”
Clarence Darrow said, “No other offense has
ever been visited with such severe penalties
as seeking to help the oppressed,”
and Walter Rauschenbusch,
“The championship of social justice is
almost the only way left open to a Christian
nowadays to gain the crown of martyrdom.”
WEB DuBois, Laura Wheeler Waring

Martin Luther King concluded
that “The most dangerous
criminal may be the man gifted
with reason but with no morals.”
During the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, Martin Luther King
addressed the crowd: “We do
not advocate violence. We want
to love our enemies. We must
love our white brothers no
matter what they do to us.”

We also reflect on several speeches by the three
generations of leading black leaders, including
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, Booker T
Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, and WEB
Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP.

We also reflect on the relatively short I Have a Dream
speech by Martin Luther King, and compare his Letter
from a Birmingham Jail to Hannah Arendt’s essay on
the Banality of Evil, her study of Adolph Eichmann,
the Nazi bureaucrat who administered the Nazi
Holocaust death and work camp system.

https://youtu.be/PqFAUEXbi8k https://youtu.be/IJ64y3nQA4Q
https://youtu.be/XtdVGx2C3Cc
https://youtu.be/GQesHoV5IdI

Other Modern Stoic Reflections

Many modern citizens who admire Stoic philosophy think it
affirms the principles of Buddhism, and some modern Stoics are
skeptical about Christianity. This is understandable, but the reality
is that Stoicism deeply influenced early Christianity, particularly
the Eastern desert monastics, who in turn influenced the Western
monasticism of St John Cassian and St Benedict. We also reflect
both on how the ancient warrior culture influenced both Judaism
and Christianity in our Reflections on our Channel Philosophy.

Many ancient Stoic philosophers speak interchangeably of
Zeus and the monotheistic God, though many scholars
posit that the Zeus of the Stoics is a henotheistic God,
since the Stoics do not deny the existence of the pagan
gods, but rather view Zeus as representing all the gods.
Many of the Stoic maxims are so similar to passages in the
Gospels and Epistles that I quote the Stoics, since so many
people close their ears when they hear bible verses.

Detail, Council of the Gods, by Giovanni Lanfranco, 1625

Why don’t the Roman Stoics discuss justice as much as Plato? In
the direct Radical Democracy of Athens, the citizens served on
the juries and passed the laws, which meant that ordinary
citizens participated in rendering justice. This is why Socrates
sought to educate ordinary citizens on justice. But in the Roman
Empire, the totalitarian Emperors and their servants were
responsible for the administration of justice, the ordinary citizens
no longer directly influenced the administration of justice. But
that is not the case in modern America and most democracies,
many ordinary citizens serve on juries and vote for many political
officials, local and national. Justice should be our concern.

Socrates Address,
by Louis Joseph
Lebrun, 1867

You can make a strong argument that Stoicism, like
Judaism and Christianity, is founded on the two-fold
Love of God and neighbor, that you should Love God
with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind
and all your strength and love your neighbor as
yourself. Plus, we have the St Maximus the Confessor
corollary, that we should be eager to forgive our
neighbor.

We learn from the Prayer of St Ephrem:
O Lord and Master of my life,
take from me a spirit of despondency,
sloth, love of power, and idle talk.
But give to me, your servant,
a spirit of sober-mindedness,
humility, patience, and love.
Yes, O Lord and King,
grant me to see my own sins
and not to judge my brother,
since you are blessed to the ages of ages.
Amen.

The Church Fathers teach us that instead of giving
yourself a break and judging your neighbor, you
should instead judge your own failings and give your
neighbor a break.
It is far better to think the best of someone and be
mistaken than to think the worst of them and be
mistaken. When you think the best of your
neighbor, then you bring out the best in him. Think
the worst of him, and he may be drug down.
Everyone we meet, everyone who is part of our
lives, should be slightly better people because they
met us, and because we are part of their lives.
Icon of St Ephrem of Syria

The wise man of compassion lives a life
of purposeful naivety. Others may have
hurt us in the past, but we must
presume those we know today will not.
If you seek to live a godly life, often you
will be happy, but sometimes not.
If you seek to live a godly life, you need
to ponder and study philosophy and
morality, so you are not deceived either
by the deceiver’s deceits, nor are you
deceived by the preponderant prejudices
of your culture.
Good Samaritan, after Delacroix, by Van Gogh, 1890

God has a plan for you, regardless of
your situation or failings. The plan is
simple, be kind to someone
tomorrow. Or better yet, be kind to
everyone you meet tomorrow. What
plan is more important than this?
When someone close hurts you, or is
cruel to you, they may be instead
instinctively responding to someone
who hurt them long ago, or to
someone who hurt their parents, who
taught their children not to trust
those who say they love them.
The Good Samaritan, by Jacob Jordaens, 1616

Anger should be rare and deliberate; you should
only permit yourself to be angry for the best
motives. Your neighbor will recognize your
anger only if you are rarely angry.
If you want to have a happy marriage,
remember the After Five rule: the woman is
always right. The corollary for work is the Before
Five rule: the boss is always right.
Shouting falsehoods on the rooftops loudly,
passionately, repeatedly, persistently, does not
make lies true. Likewise, employing attorneys to
legitimize falsehoods does not make them true.

The major difference between a slave and
an employee is that an employee can
choose his master, plus an employee is paid
far better. We should work diligently
realizing that Jesus is our true boss.
A minimum wage employee is a wage slave.
FDR in his New Deal proclaimed that anyone
who works a forty-hour week, regardless of
how menial his job, is entitled to a wage
that will enable him to adequately feed,
clothe, and house his family with dignity.

Jordan Peterson reminds us that not all
minimum wage employees are lazy, lacking
initiative. There are many employees with
below-average capabilities who can only
qualify for minimum wage jobs.
Christians should show compassion
towards the less fortunate in our society.
Christians should not assume that the poor
are responsible for their own poverty.
Cruelty is not the point of Christianity.
If you are young and do not possess a
greedy soul, seriously consider a helping
profession.
Worker with Wheelbarrow, by Edvard Munch, 1920

If you are weary of trying your best at work,
but feel like you are not valued, and people
do not listen to you and take advantage of
you, always remember that your boss always
remembers and encourages you every
payday. This maxim is more effective when
you inset your boss’ name.
If you are weary of people mistreating you,
taking advantage of you, and not
appreciating you, remember one day you
will go to a place where everyone is always
kind, appreciative, and friendly. But once you
start singing with Elvis, you cannot return.

Financially successful consultants
always tell their clients what they
want to hear.
One benefit of drawing social
security is you are no longer
obligated to be a success.
You know you are having a bad day
when you talk to yourself, and you
feel like you are being ignored.

You should live healthy and
never smoke, because everyone
who smokes eventually dies,
without exception.
Remember that a plane ticket is
only a promise to fly you to a
destination sometime in the
future. The cost of the airlines
striving towards a zero-mortality
rate is occasional delays.

We will close with what we can learn from Sunday
liturgy.

In their Liturgy, the Orthodox
pray to God that they not sin
today. Tomorrow is another
day.
In their Liturgy of the
Eucharist, the Catholics pray:
Lord, I am not worthy
that you should enter under
my roof,
but only say the word
and my soul shall be healed.
Vatican Mass, 2010

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Road to Freedom, is a
fascinating story of many transitions, from South Africa as a
British colony gaining its independence, from his rural tribal
Africa to life in the city as an attorney, from a liberal society to
apartheid, and finally from apartheid to a multi-racial democracy,
as Mandela himself went from his prison cell to the Presidency.
Viktor Frankl’s Holocaust autobiography, Man’s Search for
Meaning, is a life-changing book that is one of my favorite books
that changed my perspective on the meaning of life. Reading this
book is a transformative experience for many.

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