askēsis

Askēsis means training, exercise, practice. The English word ascetic descends from it, though the Stoic sense is broader than the modern association with self-denial. In the Stoic conception, askēsis is whatever exercise of the soul makes philosophical understanding actually transfer into a life — the practices that close the gap between knowing the doctrine and being changed by it.

The Cynics, who heavily influenced the early Stoa, took askēsis in the direction of bodily austerity — Diogenes in his jar, Crates giving away his estate. The Stoics admired the discipline and moderated the extremity. They did not require poverty or homelessness; they did require a practiced acquaintance with the absence of comfort, performed periodically, so that comfort would stop being load-bearing for one's wellbeing. Seneca's Letter 18 generalises the principle beyond the bodily case: in peacetime the soldier performs manoeuvres and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, so that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. The training does not produce the crisis. It produces the equanimity with which the crisis is met when it arrives. Pierre Hadot recovers the term in its full ancient sense — askēsis names the set of spiritual exercises (prosochē, the view from above, the evening examen, premeditatio malorum, contemplation of the sage) that together constitute the practice of philosophy. The exercises do not replace doctrine; they install it where it can affect conduct.

The Stoic prokoptōn's askēsis is not optimisation. Cold showers may or may not boost dopamine; the Stoic does not care. The discipline is the discovery that one can take the cold shower, and that the seductiveness of avoidance loses some of its grip. The will, exercised against small comforts, becomes the will that can also do other things — finish the difficult work, have the difficult conversation, stay with the unpleasant feeling until it has been fully looked at.