One of the first ideas that came to my mind when I began considering writing a book on John Lachs, was how could I square it with George Santayana (1863–1952), the Spanish-American philosopher and cultural critic, whom I had studied extensively during my post-Ph.D. years. Lachs’s abundant clarifications and penetrating interpretations of Santayana’s works have always been an interesting challenge for me. While reading his books and articles, it appeared to me that Lachs was an intriguing thinker in his own right, apart from his studies of Santayana. He had many other, original things to say. When he finally coined the term stoic pragmatism (henceforth sp) for his mature philosophical position, I thought it a good idea to give it more scrutiny. In a previously edited book of mine, John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy: Critical Essays on His Thought with Replies and Bibliography (Skowroński 2018, henceforth jlpp), I gathered together pieces on Lachs’s scholarly output, authored by international scholars predominantly from a philosophical perspective, especially the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism. Interestingly enough, Lachs more and more, in recent years, has been criticizing pragmatism for what he views is its insufficiency in carrying out its important social, public, educational, and cultural functions outside of academia.

The present book focuses exclusively on his idea of stoic pragmatism as expressed in his book Stoic Pragmatism (2012), buttressed by other material scattered throughout his writings. I want to develop his efforts into a broader perspective. I see stoic pragmatism as a cultural project, rather than merely philosophical reflections stemming from an individual position, although his original idea has a pronounced philosophical pedigree. By studying stoic pragmatism and its practical roles, I maintain that one gathers from the trajectory of Lachs’s work the ideas of a meaningful life, a good life, and a life of quality. He weaves them into a thread of insights as to the multifarious ways people view the world, the pluralism of values, and the incommensurability of oppositional ethical positions in a culturally diverse world.

Why I have chosen these insights is the second reason why I wanted to write this book. There is a growing concern about a meaningful life these days among people who live amidst different contexts of cultural diversity, be it the American melting pot, the union of European nations, the multiculturally globalized environment, the multiformity of feverish neo-tribalism, the hectic mess of promoted lifestyles on the Internet, the atmosphere of social polarization accelerated by social media, the streams of fashionable bubbles of opinion driving ignorant attitudes towards the covid pandemic, as well as conflicting takes on the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. What interests me most of all is the possibility of the melioration of an individual’s life within the parameters of available resources, against the odds, or rather in spite of the odds (economic or political conditions, for example). I try to see the pluralism of cultures, values, norms, and lifestyles as enriching and empowering. This may not be that easy, because we live in an age of globalization, and we confront opposed ways of living and thinking on a regular basis. Distinct lifestyles and traditions force us to consider that perhaps the values underpinning “our” lifestyles or “our” traditions, whatever they may be, could be undermined and exposed to unwonted revisions and influence. The appearance of other perspectives, equal in importance to “ours,” sparks disorientation and concern in many quarters. The rapidity and extent of the cultural transformations that many of us experience today, especially in countries like my own, heighten the disorientation.

Lachs, an American with a Hungarian background, and a joint Canadian/American education, possesses a culturally diverse perspective as did his intellectual hero, Santayana. Stoic pragmatism encases his pluralistic approach and his multicultural experience in dealing with the problem of a meaningful life, and I want to expand these aspects, along with the intercultural background, that are the centerpiece of my book. It seems to me that our (Lachs’s and mine) Central/East-European postcommunist sensibility sculpts us into a similar mold. First, to have experienced what it means to have very little is a surefire experience leading to an appreciation of what the wealthy, liberal West can offer, even during aleatory crises. Second, this appreciation needs to be accompanied by a knowledge supporting a learning how to use this wealth and liberty intelligently and in an enjoyable manner, rather than lamenting about not having more. I am, as many Central/East Europeans from my generation also are, sensitive to this fact. Having parents who survived wwii and having spent over a third of my life under a totalitarian regime in my native Poland, including martial law imposed by the military junta in the 1980s, and living most of that time in a city (Opole) that is located between two former Nazi concentration camps (Auschwitz to the east and Gross Rosen to the west) compels me to be even more grateful for the relative freedom and prosperity that I and my compatriots now enjoy. This attitude corresponds to what Santayana, an iconic figure for both of us, claimed about human existence, and I quote here a short passage from Lachs’s book George Santayana: “The ultimate futility of it all stands as but an insignificant terminal point that is unable to rob us of what we have. If we think of the world as our host, there is no reason to stop the feast because the time will come when we will have overstayed our welcome” (gs 17). I admit that I am also sensitive in another sense, one that links me with Lachs (and Santayana) even more so, especially since Lachs himself experienced the reality of Communist Hungary in his childhood.

I grew up in a complex Communist reality. Having only a vague idea of what “Western culture” meant, I, during my teenage and university student years, was sure that it was impossible to suffer frustration, anger, or a sense of a meaningless life if one lived in the bounteous, democratic West. “West” meant “paradise” to me and to my generation of Central/East Europeans. Only thoughtless people, I then thought, could complain while having access to all the goods and services they wanted. And even more problematic was that they had access to so many things they did not need, as has happened in Western societies in recent decades with hyper-consumption! With time, my country became relatively wealthy, free, secure, and democratic. Most of my compatriots earned enough to obtain what they wanted, and I was happy to observe their salaries (and mine) ballooning and the political, economic, and social situation improving to the most stable state ever in Poland’s history. Nevertheless, their happiness and sense of a meaningful life did not augment proportionately. They had been striving to have access to more material goods and services in order to become happy, but despite having more their happiness was incomplete and, frequently, converted into a frustration at not having more. This version of the Easterlin paradox, practically experienced, is one of the main lessons that I have learned from the transition of my country from communist Eastern to capitalist Western. This book has as its social background this story and my firsthand observations that took place in the social, economic, and political processes that framed this transition. I am quite certain that Lachs understands this problematic aspect of the capitalist West perfectly well—after all he claimed that “improvements in the standard of living leave us more comfortable but not more happy” (im 35–36)—as would have Santayana who, as an outsider, happened to witness late nineteenth century capitalism in New England.

An integral part of my experience in this respect is the view of the West that my numerous international non-Western students have expressed to me on so many occasions in my university classes. Apart from my meaningful contacts with students that I was happy to have in the West, that is, in the US, Spain, and Germany, tremendously influential on my views have been the thoughts of students I teach on a regular basis at the University of Opole, which is one of Poland’s most internationalized universities. These students come predominantly from non-Western countries and regions: Ukraine, Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia, China, Latin America, and Africa. Many of them seem to have problems with understanding why we, Westerners, do not appreciate what we have and why we complain so much about the social arrangements that they only dream of having in their own countries. I am very grateful to those students for their eye-opening comments and exchanges. The lack of appreciation for what we, Westerners, have available, is one of the primary sticking points of my philosophical reflections on contemporary Western culture.

I cannot hide the fact that my interest in Stoicism, apart from my interest in Santayana and American pragmatism, is also an important reason why I wanted to write this book. Many years ago, I dedicated my ma. thesis and, later, my Ph.D. dissertation to Henryk Elzenberg (1887–1967), a Polish philosopher of Jewish origin educated in Switzerland and France (Ph.D. at the Sorbonne). He was a modern stoic who tried to read historical Stoicism, especially its late Roman version, through the lens of a philosophy of values and proposed a concept of culture that would be based on value-oriented actions and activities. In my first scholarly paper published in English, I tried to point out some common points in Elzenberg and Santayana in viewing values as an important point of reference in their works (Skowroński 2003).

Recently, I have become interested in quite a number of scholarly books dedicated to resuscitating the historical Stoic ethics, devoid of Stoic metaphysics, and transposing their insights into contemporary contexts. Honestly, I am surprised by the popularity of this intellectual and cultural trend, frequently called new stoicism or modern stoicism (e.g., Stockdale 1993, Irvine 2009, 2019; Morris 2004, Mazur 2014, Holiday 2016, Brouwer 2018 [2014], Becker 2017 [1998], Pigliucci 2017, Williams 2019, Stankiewicz 2020), and even more surprised to see how suffused with pragmatist tenets modern stoicism is. Although I have some reservations about claims (e.g., McLynn 2010 [2009]) that historical Stoicism was a primitive Roman version of American pragmatism, I refer to such claims in the book since they widen and enrich the panoramic view of stoic pragmatism. As a matter of fact, I think it would be great to see if stoic pragmatism could become a sort of common platform for both pragmatism (especially in its Jamesian version) and stoicism (modern). I have no reason to believe that Lachs has ever heard of modern stoicism, but I am sure that his intention was to wed American pragmatism with Roman Stoicism, since they have many important things in common despite their significant and obvious discrepancies.

The final reason why I wanted to write this book occurred to me just when the coronavirus pandemic (covid) appeared, and the first global lockdown was initiated in March 2020. I set to work about that time, and I quickly realized that the proposal that sp carries with it may be, at least to some individuals, a response to this type of crisis. The stoic attitude towards trouble and the pragmatist way of looking at what is available to elevate the quality of living against the odds, can both be important tools in maintaining mental health and, additionally, in contributing to the cultural scene as a whole. Stoic pragmatism, as a sort of therapy or self-therapy, as the ancient Stoics saw it, can be, indeed, an example of practical philosophy helping people in general.

More tragically, in the final month of writing this book (February 2022), a new menacing convulsion occurred: a new war, this time launched by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Fortunately, thousands of nato troops, mainly from the US, arrived in my country to help prevent an unmanageable escalation of the conflict. The importance of a stoic pragmatist attitude in the face of contingency and the unpredictability of events, appeared to me as a necessity. Before I could pragmatically help or contribute to anything, I had to keep stoically my mind as sane and rational as possible, especially by sharing sanity and rationality with those closest to me, my family and friends, and then helping those others whom I could help. Witnessing vulnerable masses of Ukrainian refugees in Poland and watching their plight (traveling with them multiple times on train journeys), ninety percent of whom were women with children, was such a moving experience that it has become a point of reference for me in assessing cultural issues, and part of this experience is articulated in this book.

Let me add that the choice of the specific subject matter for the book—stoic pragmatism rather than John Lachs’s philosophy—excludes a biographical nature and a presentation of Lachs’s thought as such. Let me make this clear: the present project, despite the fact that it brings into play all of Lachs’s published books and numerous articles, is not an intellectual biography of Lachs and does not include a well-balanced, definitive view of all his ideas throughout his life. Nor does it include criticism of his ideas by other scholars, although one of the chapters (the last one) is dedicated to a critical examination of stoic pragmatism as presented in this volume, which is a very different story. Also, I do not put a premium on an historical approach, as Lachs himself did not, and no reconstructive effort will be done to compare historical Stoicism to the main claims of twentieth and twenty-first century pragmatism. Accordingly, this book does not have an historical perspective. Despite references, here and there, to historical Stoicism and to scholarly studies about the Stoics, it does not treat Stoicism in Western philosophy historically, and the same applies to pragmatism. Instead, I basically want to show that sp is a promising tool in dealing with the problem of a meaningful life amidst diverse cultures, and a pluralism of values, viewed from our contemporary Western perspective.

The present book has two distinct methodological parts. In the “Introduction” I focus on the figure of Lachs, on his idea of sp, and on the background of this idea. In the chapters that follow the “Introduction” I do something different. I depart from a scholarly position of studying Lachs’s ideas and, instead, assume the perspective of a stoic pragmatist myself, interpreting and assessing the problems of contemporary culture and the role of an individual agent in it from the viewpoint of stoic pragmatism. I leave behind Lachs’s thought on the whole. Instead, I use the material that constitutes the substance of sp, as a tool to interpret, complement, develop, and enlarge it, and I hash out cultural issues through the lens of an updated version of sp, hoping that I do not stray too far away from Lachs’s original intentions.

What do I claim is the book’s originality? The four obvious contributive originalities are:

1. 1)The first book on the thought of John Lachs.
2. 2)The first book on stoic pragmatism (apart from Lachs’s).
3. 3)A new contribution to pragmatism scholarship.
4. 4)A new contribution to the new/modern stoicism.

The response to the question immediately above is found in the following two claims, additional originalities with more in-depth explications.

5) As Lachs for the most part only outlined stoic pragmatism, there are numerous tenets contained in the idea, so to speak, that need to be complemented. For example, in the area of culture, including digital culture. In my focus on cultural issues, rather than the exclusively philosophical, I try to provide scrutiny, criticism, and development. I reformulate inconsistencies, supplement the material discussed, propose new vistas, embrace new contexts, and discuss possible future developments. I introduce an interest in digital culture, something that Lachs did not explore (cf. Lachs 1985) in any kind of extensive or probing manner. The electronic, digital age and its dynamics are relatively recent things, and difficult to breach satisfactorily by traditional (or not so traditional, being scholars who simply are more at home with book and paper) humanists of a relatively older generation. Lachs’s reflections about the role of tools in Intermediate Man, published thirty years ago, do not and could not include much insight into the roles of fb, yt, ig, Twitter and others, although there are some relevant thoughts concerning our contemporary situation involving digital tools and their prevalence in human life. I must admit that Lachs’s recent activity on the Internet (videos of his lectures and interviews) makes him, by that fact itself, a digital-culture public intellectual, and I devote Chapter 6 to championing this type of career as a suggestive antidote to the growing role of vacuous, mindless cyberspace in our lives. Also, in many places of the book, I square sp with the contexts of the recent covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, something that Lachs has not been able to do given his age and condition. All of these contemporary realities (that is, digital culture, the pandemic, the war) can be significantly clarified and illuminated by taking to heart Lachs’s original idea.

6) The originality of the book lies in its attempt to locate and explore and assess Lachs’s stoic pragmatism in the cultural arena. I redirect the orientation into a cultural project, rather than keep it sequestered in philosophical introspection. In a sense, Lachs initiated the move by pointing out the limitedness of academic philosophy, and arguing that philosophical ideas should be promoted and discussed outside of academia. I propose an even wider approach and insist on sp having a cultural function, not only a philosophical legitimacy. This has been significantly developed in the book.

Interestingly enough, these and other considerations have forced me to think of how best to characterize the relationship between my view of stoic pragmatism and Lachs’s. Perhaps the following captures it well: I am an extension of Lachs’s insights and philosophy, yet I tender an independent view of stoic pragmatism that develops its own discourses when considered in the contexts of culture, digitality, along with the most recent challenging threats of the coronavirus pandemic (covid) and risings tensions with armed conflict in the European theater. Additionally, to better formulate my claims I refer, directly or indirectly, to sources that Lachs did not tap. Most importantly new/modern stoicism and the figures who have studied historical Stoicism and have shown us facets of its teaching in a new light: Bertrand Russell, Pierre Hadot, Martha Nussbaum, Anthony Kenny, and Henryk Elzenberg. My book is not an introduction to the philosophy of John Lachs. Instead, it stems from Lachs’s idea of stoic pragmatism and proposes more novel, wider, cultural perspectives.

A general sketch of the chapters that follow the “Introduction” is as follows. Chapter 1, “Diagnosis,” is an attempt to present the condition of contemporary culture in the West as seen through the lens of stoic pragmatism. It reflects, among many other things, that despite the most developed social security system and highest levels of education ever established in history for a majority of a population (in Western nations), for many people living a good and meaningful life seems to be a questionable, unresolved issue. It is not by accident that the chapter title includes a medical term. Lachs falls in line with the Stoics in proposing philosophy as something like a self-therapeutic tool, which I will discuss later on in the book. Chapter 2, “Agency,” focuses on compelling us to realize the importance of the potential of the individual agent in making life (more) meaningful. This potential is already recognized by Western moral thought. I assert the dignity of all humans and tie in constitutional charters, for example, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with which sp’s ideas are quite consonant. Chapter 3, “Appropriate Actions,” is devoted to thinking about the practice of making life meaningful according to the general line of argumentation that wisdom, knowledge, and self-knowledge are basic and useful tools. It also shows that it is pragmatic to employ the stoic dichotomy of control tactics in intending to thrive within areas that we, individual agents, have more control over rather than risk (emotional) failures and initiate unrealistic projects and efforts over which we have little control. Chapter 4, “Activities, Spirituality, and Self-Therapy,” identifies those types of acts that elevate particular moments of everyday life into something extraordinary and fulfilling. By pausing for a while and emancipating the humdrum from the drudge of the habitual into the status of the unusual or the beautiful, we can indulge in a technique that heightens our sense of living cost-free. Chapter 5, “A Meaningful Life as a Collective Culture Project,” discusses the link between the individual agent’s strife to make life more meaningful and contributing to culture understood collectively. Chapter 6, “Digital Culture,” proposes a practical response that stoic pragmatists might offer in the face of the present informational, technological revolution, especially in the context of education and promoting good practices to a greater swath of audiences. The final chapter, “Possible Criticisms,” wrestles with possible doubts and questions regarding the version of stoic pragmatism that is presented in this volume and tries to supply honest answers to this criticism. The book concludes with some final thoughts and my recommended reading in the hope that it could be edifying.

These chapters have been written in the hope that sp can somehow be an interesting contribution to the cultural landscape and an alternative way of viewing and absorbing contemporary cultural diversity. Most importantly, however, I would like build on Lachs’s hope about the viable development of his original project: “The details of a fully developed philosophy of stoic pragmatism have yet to be worked out” (sp 143). This book is a humble attempt to, at least partially, meet this challenge.