prior probability

Today (May 1st), I want to commemorate all the victims of communism — past and present — from all over the world. The myriad moral evils committed in the name of “equality” and “brotherhood” never cease to amaze me.

The Daily Stoic, a popular Internet platform created by Ryan Holiday (see here), sums up Stoicism in one sentence as follows: “A Stoic believes they don’t control the world around them, only how they respond–and that they must always respond with courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice.” (Daily Stoic, 4 Feb 2019) I will therefore start off my survey of Stoicism with the most famous Stoic moral precept of all: the crucial distinction between things that are in one’s power–i.e., one’s actions, thoughts, beliefs, desires, and judgments, all of which are entirely under one’s control–and externals or “indifferents” (ἀδιάφορον), such as one’s reputation, social status, and other people’s actions, none of which are ultimately under our control. This distinction is so crucial for the Stoics because it points us in the right moral direction, making it possible for us to live a good life by acting in harmony with nature and in accordance with reason.[1]

The Stoic doctrine of indifferents is not just relevant to one’s moral life; it also plays out in the business world as well, for some business outcomes are the result of pure chance, of factors outside one’s control, while others are the result of one’s hard work and good planning. As such, a shrewd capitalist must be able to distinguish between luck and skill when making decisions.[2] Billionaire financier Robert Rosenkranz, for instance, illustrates this key capitalist mental trait by asking us to imagine a group of dart-throwing monkeys:

“By the laws of statistics, if 1,000 monkeys pick stocks by throwing darts at a stock table, 500 of them will do better than average in a year and 500 will do worse. Repeat the exercise and 250 will outperform two years in a row; 125 will outperform three years in a row…and so on until you have thirty-one monkeys with great five-year track records. Quite a few of those lucky monkeys will be showing up in your office, touting their billion-dollar hedge funds and encouraging you to invest with them. The challenge is to distinguish luck from skill in an investment track record.” (Rosenkranz 2025, p. 134; ellipsis in original)

But if we dig a little deeper, we will see just how superficial the parallel between these two distinctions is, between the astute capitalist’s ability in the business world to separate skill and luck and the Stoic ability in the moral realm to discern the difference between things that are in one’s power and things that are not. Simply put, the correspondence between these otherwise similar abilities breaks down for two reasons. One is that they are qualitatively different. Unlike the Stoic dichotomy of control in which things either are or are not in one’s control, the distinction between skill and luck in the business world is more a matter of degree, rather than two separate or self-contained categories. In fact, it would be more accurate to talk about a “luck-skill continuum” (see, e.g., Mauboussin 2012, pp. 174-174), since most business outcomes are the result of some combination of luck and skill.

But even if we put aside this qualitative difference, the other, more fundamental reason this correspondence breaks down is because the capitalist is focused on (literally) the bottom line, while the Stoic is focused on intentions, efforts, and character. We can use the Stoic archer metaphor (see, e.g., Stephens 2012, p. 94) to illustrate this crucial difference between capitalist and Stoic mindsets. On the one hand, the sole aim of the capitalist archer is to hit his target, so to speak (e.g, meet projected sales, expand market share, close a good deal, etc.). Why? Because in order to get ahead in the world of business (or to “better one’s condition” in the parlance of Adam Smith), you have to get results: “Show me the money!,” as the fictional sports agent Jerry Maguire would say. The main objective of the Stoic archer, by contrast, is more process-oriented as opposed to outcome-oriented: the Stoic archer will do his utmost to develop his skills and talents, but whether his arrows actually hit the target is an indifferent to the Stoic.[3] (To be continued …)

[1] Marcus Aurelius equates reason with nature in Meditations, 7.11: “For a rational being, to act in accordance with nature is also to act in accordance with reason.”

[2] See generally Mauboussin 2012.

[3] Cf. Stephens 2012, p. 94: “The archer musters all her skill to try to hit the target. But once the well-aimed arrow is shot from her bow, what happens to the arrow is no longer up to her. If an external factor causes the arrow to miss the target, the archer has not failed to shoot expertly. Similarly, the Stoic who does all she can to act justly and wisely succeeds in hitting her target, even if the world is not caused to improve by her virtuous ‘shot’ (attempt).”

Can a fat-cat capitalist like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk be on “Team Stoic”? On the one hand, “Stoic capitalism” sounds like an oxymoron, an incongruent combination of two competing and diametrically-opposed world views — one based on fleeting and insignificant “externals” (wages, capital, land, etc.); the other based on rational self-reflection and deep introspection. At best, wealth, material goods, and other externals are but secondary concerns or “preferred indifferents” in Stoic lingo. But at the same time, Stoic sages come in all shapes and sizes. Among the greatest Stoics of all time, for example, are a Greek slave (Epictetus), a Roman emperor (Marcus Aurelius), and a usurious tycoon (Seneca)! If a slave or an emperor can be a good Stoic, why can’t a CEO or a hedge fund manager?

But how far does this logic extend? Can a pirate or a bank robber be a good Stoic too? Building on the central tenets of Stoic philosophy and on Robert Rosenkranz’s new book The Stoic Capitalist, my next few posts will survey three moral domains where the sublime and ethereal world of Stoic ethics and the rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog world of free-market capitalism might intersect, after all: (i) the foundational Stoic doctrine of indifferents, (ii) the centrality of pro-social cooperation in Stoic ethics, as well as (iii) the Stoic moral imperative requiring us to promote the common good (cf. the “bee and hive” metaphor in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations). Stay tuned. I will compare and contrast Stoic versus capitalist conceptions of the indifferents in my next post.

Last week, I read a fascinating memoir titled The Stoic Capitalist: Advice for the Exceptionally Ambitious (Bloomsbury, 2025). This beautiful book is intriguing for two reasons. One is that it was written by a modern-day Marcus Aurelius, the billionaire financier/philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz. The other is its iconoclastic title, which brings me back to the original “Adam Smith problem” of lore: what is the relationship between ethics and economics, between the pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of profit? More specifically, how can a life devoted to money, power, and material wealth–i.e. “the capitalist life”–be consistent with the pursuit virtue for its own sake, i.e. the wisdom of an ancient Stoic sage? How can we mix such sublime and ethereal Stoic ethical precepts as reverence of the divine and the love of wisdom and justice with the rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog world of stock markets and business deals, like vinegar and water, into a logically coherent and soul-cleansing whole? Stay tuned, for starting tomorrow (30 April) I will begin a new series of blog posts exploring these critical questions and the relationship between Stoic virtue and the capitalist ethos more generally.

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from the last chapter (Ch. 13) of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold.)

“Which questions should we pose to Adam Smith, and which questions remain open or unanswered? Or is it the other way around? After all, as we have seen throughout the pages of this book, it is Adam Smith who still poses questions to us, and it is Smith who leaves it up to us to provide our own answers. We conclude, then, with the most difficult and contested open question of all, Das Legacy Problem. Who was Adam Smith, really? How should he be remembered? What is his true legacy?

“The deeper we dig into Smith’s life and work, the more surprises and contradictions we continue to find. He was a college dropout —but why did he drop out? He was a freelance lecturer — but where are those lectures? He is often described as an absent-minded college professor — but was he really all that absent-minded or was it just an act? He was also a tireless university administrator and general busybody — so how did Smith juggle his teaching and administrative duties? He was a jurisprude and doctor of law — yet he never practiced law, did he? He was an advisor to statesmen — yet his advice was never taken in his lifetime, was it? He was a tourist and tutor — but why give up his professorship? He was a solitary author — but how much of his Wealth of Nations did he borrow and how much did he steal? And he was a customs officer —cognitive dissonance, anyone? Doctor Smith was and did many things, all of which poses many more questions than answers.[1]

“For our part, given Smith’s many foundational contributions to the fields of moral philosophy and political economy, we are tempted to see Smith as the world’s first (and perhaps only) moral economist.[2] But we also have a nagging suspicion that none of these various pigeonholes or sundry labels can truly capture the many-sidedness of Adam Smith. We therefore conclude with the following conjecture: what if we have been getting Smith and his legacy completely wrong all along? After all, although Adam Smith is credited with creating an entirely new discipline,[3] his writings extend far beyond political economy and moral philosophy, for he thought about and contributed fresh insights to such diverse fields as education, history, law, linguistics, logic, politics, religion, rhetoric, taxation, and the arts.[4] Given this multiplicity of intellectual pursuits, how did the flesh-and-blood Adam Smith see himself? Was it not, first and foremost, as a man of letters, a prose poet? For us, Smith’s love of language and les belles lettres is the golden thread that unifies the many-sidedness of Smith’s life and works. Perhaps we are wrong, but in the words of our colleague and friend Paul Sagar (2024): ‘what is the point of any of this if we are not willing to debate things through?'”[5]

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from the penultimate chapter (Ch. 12) of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold. Also, check out this website devoted to “Robert & Andrew Foulis, the Foulis Press, and Their Legacy.”)

In a letter dated 17 September 1759 and addressed to his soon-to-be benefactor and grand-tour patron Charles Townshend (Corr. No. 39), Adam Smith mentions that he “sent about a fortnight ago the books which you ordered for the Duke of Buccleugh [from] Mr. Campbell at Edinburgh.”[1] These books were thus destined for Townshend’s stepson, Henry Scott, the 3rd Duke of Buccleugh, perhaps in preparation for the grand tour he would in a few years’ time be undertaking. (See Chapter 9.) According to Ernest Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross,[2] the books Smith is referring to in this missive were supplied by Robert and Andrew Foulis, printers to the University of Glasgow. In addition, Mossner and Ross tracked down the titles—46 separate tomes in all.[3] And as it happens, this catalogue contains many of great works of ancient Greek and Roman literature, including three different editions of Homer’s Iliad (see items #1, #10, & #16 below), or in the words of Mossner and Ross (1987, p. 57 n.2), “The list is instructive in representing the range of authors thought suitable for educating the young duke, and for reflecting the stock of the Foulis brothers, both as booksellers and printers.”

For reference, then, below is the complete catalogue of all 46 books that Smith had ordered for Duke Henry from the Foulis brothers as reported by Ernest Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross:

1. Homeri Ilias 2 Vol. large folio
2. —Odyssea 2 Vol. large folio
3. Callimachus Gr. cum figuris folio
4. Caesaris Opera folio
5. Sophocles Gr. 4to
6. Aeschylus Gr. 4to
7. Plinij Epistolae & Panegyricus 4to
8. Theocritus Gr. 4to
9. Minucius Felix 4to
10. Homeri Ilias 2 Vol. Gr. 4to
11. Caesaris Opera 4to
12. Boetius de Consolatione Philosophiae
13. Tyrtaeus Gr. Lat. 4to
14. Demetrius Phalereus de Elocutione
15. Terentij Comoediae, 8vo
16. Homeri Ilias Gr. Lat. 3 Vol. 8vo
17. Sophocles Gr. Lat. 2 Vol. 8vo
18. Aeschylus Gr. Lat. 2 Vol. 8vo
19. Theocritus Gr. Lat. 8vo
20. Minucius Felix 8vo
21. Aristophanis Nubes Gr. Lat. 8vo
22. Boetius de Consolatione, &c. 8vo
23. Antoninus Gr. Lat. 8vo 2 Vol.[4]
24. Plutarchus de Poetis audiendis Gr. Lat. 8vo
25. Euripidis Orestes Gr. Lat. 8vo
26. Aristoteles de Mundo Gr. Lat. 8vo
27. Epictetus & Cebes Gr. Lat. 8vo large print
28. Anacreon Gr. large print, 8vo
29. Theophrasti Characteres Gr. Lat. large print 8vo
30. Horatius, editio ultima 8vo
31. Virgilius, editio ult. 8vo
32. Sallustius 8vo
33. Lucretius 8vo
34. Paterculus 8vo
35. Tibullus & Propertius 8vo
36. Poetae Latini minores 8vo
37. Iuvenalis & Persius 8vo
38. Pomponius Mela de situ Orbis 8vo
39. Phaedrus & P. Syrus 8vo
40. Thucydides de Peste Gr. Lat. 8vo
41. Plinij Epist. & Panegyr. 2 Vol. 12mo
42. Tacitus 4 Vol. 12mo
43. Hippocratis Aphorismi Gr. Lat. 12mo
44. Epictetus & Cebes Gr. Lat. 12mo 2 6
45. Pindari Opera 3 Vol. Gr. small size
46. Ciceronis Opera 20 Vol. fine

We have questions! Who put together this comprehensive list of classical readings? Adam Smith or Charles Townshend? Smith’s letter to Townshend informs us that it was the British politician who ordered the books, but it must have been Smith who recommended the titles in this list, right? Either way, how many of these classics had Smith himself read and studied, and which ones were his favorites? Also, how many of these great works were assigned readings in Smith’s own public and private courses at Glasgow?

I will resume my series on Adam Smith in my next post; in the meantime, check out this wistful track by the Anglo-Australian electronic trio “Mel Blue” from their album Sanctuary Point. Bonus link: here is a review of their song.

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from the antepenultimate chapter (Ch. 11) of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold. Also, while we’re on the subject of artificial intelligence, check out the following essay by our colleague Brendan McCord: “Would Adam Smith Trust ChatGPT?“)

“Were he alive today, what would Adam Smith have to say about the introduction of powerful new ‘large language models’ like ChatGPT? Would he, for example, decry ChatGPT’s potential negative impacts on our ability to think and write for ourselves, or would he maybe liken ChatGPT to the great Encyclopédie, the most ambitious intellectual project of the Age of Enlightenment, the first methodical endeavor to assemble the entire corpus of human knowledge?[1]

“Alas, it’s hard to say, for as we already saw in a previous chapter (Ch. 3), we see this very same tension in Smith’s analysis of the division of labor in The Wealth of Nations, where he paints two opposing pictures of the division of labor, one of the central insights of his book. On the one hand, Smith describes the division of labor as not just one of the major causes of prosperity but as ‘the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour ….’ in the very first sentence of The Wealth of Nations. (WN, I.i.1, our emphasis) But on the other hand, Smith paints a radically different picture of the division of labor in Book V of The Wealth of Nations. There, he explains why this very same division of labor gives rise to ‘stupidity and ignorance.’ (WN, V.x.c.24) By the same token, the same argument can be made against ChatGPT and other large language models. After all, these A.I. tools can write up a research article, translate a text, generate a blog post, narrate a story, or compose a poem. These models are so powerful that they can even program other computers. To conjure this A.I. genie out of her bottle and make her carry out any one of these tasks, all you need to do is type your command directly into your preferred chatbot or ‘A.I. assistant’ and wait a few seconds for her reply. Talk about a division of labor! No thinking required—just conjure up the genie.

“But at the same time, Adam Smith was also a huge fan of the famed Encyclopédie. In fact, the Scottish scholar had appreciated the significance of this ambitious work of erudition as early as 1756. In his letter to the authors of the Edinburgh Review of that same year, Smith (1980, p. 66) writes ‘it is with pleasure that I observe in the new French Encyclopedia, the ideas of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton, explained in that order, perspicuity and good judgement, which distinguish all the eminent writers of that nation.’ Smith not only extolled the great work of Diderot and d’Alembert in his 1756 letter; he also used his influence at the University of Glasgow to acquire the first seven volumes of the Encyclopédie.[2] These volumes were a costly acquisition at the time, taking up nearly a third of the library’s budget.[3] Just as the Encyclopédie was a symbol of the Age of Enlightenment, has the ChatGPT genie become, for better or worse, a symbol of our times? What would Smith say?”

Nota bene: Below is a short excerpt from the concluding section of Chapter 10 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Our conjectures in this excerpt are based in large part on historian Nina Kushner’s fascinating book Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Footnotes are below the fold.)

“Could the ‘Madame Nicol’ mentioned as a love interest in Colbert de Castlehill’s 18 September 1766 letter to Adam Smith have been an actress?[*] By all accounts, Madame Riccoboni–an accomplished actress and novelist–and Adam Smith–an admirer of the stage and the arts–were avid theater and opera fans during Smith’s stay in the City of Light in 1766.[1] Indeed, it is reported that ‘it is very likely Smith took recommendations from Riccoboni as to which theatrical performances to attend,'[2] and so it is not far-fetched to imagine to them attending a play or opera or concert together. What many Smith scholars, however, have failed to mention is that these theatrical venues were also the center of an elite Parisian sexual marketplace, the famed dames entretenues or ‘kept women’ of French high society.[3]

“Famous for their talent, glamor, and beauty, the femmes galantes of the French stage were the most highly-sought after women of pleasure in all Europe, models and actresses who ‘earned their living by engaging in long-term sexual and often companionate relationships with men from the financial, political, and social elites, known as le monde (high society).'[4] Although not all theater women were kept mistresses or femmes galantes, this sultry scene overlapped directly with the world of the theater: ‘It was widely understood that any woman in the Opéra, and to a lesser degree the other theater companies, was a dame entretenue, or at least wanted to be.'[5] The world of theater was thus the center of this high-end sex market because ‘being on the stage greatly increased … “sexual capital,” the desirability of a mistress and hence the prices she could command for her services,'[6] and the theater district of the French capital was teeming with high-end brothels and places of ill-repute.[7] Although we have no other evidence to indicate whether Smith himself partook in a theatrical liaison, so to speak, who knows?”

[*] For reference, here is our translation of the relevant passage in Colbert de Castlehill’s letter:

“And you, Adam Smith, Glasgow philosopher, high-broad Ladies’ hero and idol, what are you doing my dear friend? How do you govern the Duchess of Anville and Madame de Boufflers, where your heart is always in love with Madame Nicol and with the attractions as apparent as hidden of this lady of Fife that you loved.”

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from Chapter 9 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold.)

“The first letter Adam Smith wrote after arriving in Paris in February of 1764 was his official letter of resignation.[1] Smith’s resignation letter is addressed to one of his former students, Thomas Miller,[2] who was the Lord Rector of University of Glasgow from 1762 to 1764.[3] In this letter, Smith does two things. First, he officially resigns his professorship for good, and secondly, he asks that the remainder of his salary go to Thomas Young, another former student of Smith’s, who had taken over the Scottish philosopher’s lectures at Glasgow when he (Smith) had first notified his academic colleagues in the fall of 1763 that something was afoot.[4] But why did Adam Smith decide to resign his prestigious professorship instead of just taking a temporary leave of absence?[5] After all, Smith, by all accounts, was supposed to be a cautious and prudent man. Why give up a permanent professorship to become a temporary tutor?

“We know that Duke Henry’s stepfather, the British politician Charles Townshend, had intended to offer Smith the opportunity of serving as the young duke’s travelling tutor. (Corr. No. 31) In the fall of 1763, Townshend wrote to Smith, informing him that his stepson’s grand tour was now imminent. (Corr. No. 76) Upon receiving this news, Smith had a delicate and time-sensitive choice to make: he could remain in Glasgow until the end of the academic year and risk losing this opportunity to travel overseas, or he could drop everything and begin a new chapter in his life. In the event, he chose to cross the Channel with Duke Henry. Why? Was this decision based purely on financial considerations? After all, Smith was offered a lucrative compensation package by Townshend: twice as much money as he was making as a professor, plus a generous pension for life. Or did Smith just have a burning desire to travel abroad? Or was it some other reason?

“Whatever Smith’s motives were, he and the young aristocrat left for France in January of 1764, and soon thereafter Smith formally resigned his professorship in a letter dated 14 February 1764, the day after his arrival in Paris.[6] Why did Smith make such a drastic decision on his first full day in the City of Light? What was going through his mind when he resigned his professorship? Smith had been the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow for over ten years, and 15 months previously (October of 1762), the university had conferred on him the title of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). Also, if his Lectures on Jurisprudence from the 1762-63 academic year are any guide,[7] Smith was working on a new book on law and government. Why did Smith throw caution to the wind, so to speak, and put this ambitious project—as well as his academic career—on hold at this time?”

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold.)

“On the surface, Adam Smith’s years in academia are not all that mysterious. After all, we know that this pivotal chapter in his life began in January of 1751, when Smith was appointed Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasgow – then known as the College of Glasgow or ‘the College'[1] — and that it ended in January 1764, when he went overseas to France with the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. In all, Smith was a professor at Glasgow for 13 years, which the Scottish philosopher himself once described ‘as by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period’ of his life.[2] It was also during this time that Smith wrote his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, and was awarded a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree in the fall of 1762.

“What is mysterious, however, is why Smith chose to accept so many administrative posts above and beyond his full-time teaching duties. By the time he left Glasgow for good in January 1764, Smith was easily one of the most powerful and heavily-worked administrators of the college, for he had served as Quaestor, dean of faculty, and vice rector.[3] He was also involved in the delicate negotiations to finalize the new Snell Exhibition, and when it was known that he would be traveling to London, he was also asked to meet with the Barons of the Exchequer about the finances of the College.[4] In other words, Smith wasn’t just an ivory tower intellectual during his Glasgow years; he was also an administrator,[5] best-selling author,[6] and tutor to the sons of some of the most wealthy and powerful families in Britain.[7] The most important such pupil during Smith’s Glasgow period was Thomas Fitzmaurice, the younger brother of Lord Shelburne.[8] What better way to get the ear of the nobility than by becoming the private tutor to their sons? The move is quite explicable for someone who wanted a higher social status, someone on his way to rise in the world. Perhaps it is equally reflective of how Smith was perceived: a steady, reliable, and yet friendly professor.

“To recap, were Smith’s teaching duties really requiring so little time and attention? Or was the professorship a halfway house? If being a man of the world was his primary goal, then of course Smith’s tutoring and administrative activities make very good sense. Smith would be always visible, acquiring a reputation as a man of business, a genial personality, and someone who could accomplish the responsibilities he accepted.”