CHAPTER TWO

The Stoics on the Sage and Pain

Of all the Hellenistic philosophers, the Stoics were the most concerned about how the sage would endure hardships.  Their basic position was that the sage is always happy and the fact that he is being tortured makes absolutely no difference to his happiness.  As this doctrine is at the core of the Stoics’ philosophy, and they have the most to offer to current ethical debate, this second chapter will study the philosophical foundation of the Stoics’ position.  In this way I will expound  some of the central features of the Stoic ethical system and lay the groundwork for understanding how they can contribute to current ethical debate on the merits of impartialism and the nature of the emotions.  Before I explain their position, I would like to stress this was not a purely theoretical concern for the Stoics.  Some of the Stoics- Epictetus is the best known example- did suffer severe physical hardships and did maintain their philosophical position while they were suffering.

Following nature was the key Stoic position.  The Stoic philosophy is based on doing what is natural and the basis of their philosophy is that the good is that which is according to nature.[1] Zeno and all Stoics agree that the end of man is a “‘life in agreement with nature’ (or living agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life.”[2]

Living according to nature may be thought to be rather nebulous or vacuous concept.  After all, what exactly is nature and how do we determine what is natural?  John Stuart Mill thought this concept offered no moral guidance at all.  Mill thought nature had two meanings: either nature was seen as the entire system of things or it denoted things as they are apart from human intervention.  On the first meaning the idea of following nature “is unmeaning since man has no power to do anything else than follow nature.”[3] On the second meaning of the word nature, the concept is positively immoral according to Mill as nature kills and harms many beings unjustly, recklessly, and cruelly.[4]

The Stoics deny that nature has only these two meanings.  They propose a different meaning of nature which sees all of nature as an organism that we are a part of.  Following nature thus becomes doing our part in this larger whole by being virtuous and following the will of God.  While one may not agree with the Stoics’ concept of nature, their maxim to follow nature does offer significant moral guidance because the Stoics have this organic conception of nature that is significantly different from our modern conception of nature.

Oikeiosis

In order to appreciate the Stoic position it is necessary to understand their doctrine of oikeiosis; for this is the central position of the Stoics about our changing notion of the self and our human nature as we mature.  Oikeiosis has too much significance and wide meaning to be easily translated by one English word.  The easiest way to get a handle on the word is to realize it is derived from the verb which denotes the process of making something one’s own.[5] So oikeiosis means something that belongs to one’s self or has been appropriated as belonging to one’s self.  Oikeiosis is the opposite of allotrion, that which is alien.[6] Inwood maintains the best single word to translate oikeiosis is orientation[7] and there is something to that point as long as one realizes that it is orientation to what one considers as belonging to one’s self.

The importance of this process of oikeiosis is that we all begin having a natural affinity for our own body and self, but then extend that sense of self.  That sense of self is extended so far that we finally understand the good to include conformity with the order and harmony of the universe as a whole.  In this final stage, we have an oikeiosis for all humans not just our individual concerns.[8] So we start out caring for our own body and such things as pleasure and pain, but as we extend our sense of self, those things no longer matter; only virtue and doing our part in the cosmic whole matters to us.

An animal’s first impulse, say the Stoics, is to self-preservation, because nature from the outset endears it to itself, as Chrysippus affirms in the first book of his work On Ends: his words are, ‘The dearest thing to every animal is its own constitution and its consciousness thereof’; for it was not likely that nature should estrange the living thing from itself or that she should leave the creature she has made without either estrangement from or affection for its own constitution.  We are forced then to conclude that nature in constituting the animal made it near and dear to itself; for so it comes to repel all that is injurious and give free access to all that is serviceable or akin to it.[9]

This passage shows that the Stoics maintain that all animals have a primary orientation to what naturally accords with their constitution and thus what promotes their self-preservation.[10] Most importantly, these things are not chosen simply because they promote the animal’s self-preservation, but because they are loved for their affinity with the animals’ nature.[11] Here, right at the very beginning of their ethical theory, the Stoics stress that something is valued not just for its useful functions, but because the person recognizes an affinity with it and wants it for that sake.  The person wants to maintain her constitution in its natural condition and to do that she chooses things that are in affinity with her constitution.[12]

Now as a person changes over time, so too does her nature.  For at first the person has a primarily animal nature and is orientated like an animal.  But as the human matures, his nature changes and he develops into a more rational creature.  Moreover, some people, the sages, mature fully and realize that promoting the harmony of the whole is the only true good of life:

It is at this final stage that the Good properly so called first emerges and comes to be understood in its true nature.  Man’s first attraction is towards the things in accordance with nature; but as soon as he has understanding- in Stoic phraseology ennoia- and has discerned the order and so to speak the harmony that governs conduct, he thereupon esteems this harmony far more highly than all the things for which he originally felt an affection, and by exercise of intelligence and reason infers the conclusion that herein lies the Chief Good of man, the thing that is praiseworthy and desirable for its own sake; and that inasmuch as this consists in what the Stoics terms homologia and we with your approval may call conformity …But as it often happens that a man is introduced to another values this new friend more highly than he does the person who gave him the introduction, so in like manner it is by no means surprising that though we are first commended to Wisdom by the primary natural instincts, afterwards Wisdom herself becomes dearer to us than are the instincts from which we came to her.[13]

As the sage matures in wisdom, she comes to identify herself with her rational aspect and reason.  Following reason is being virtuous as well as being in accord with our nature.  Our highest function is our reason and so we most express our human nature when we act in accord with reason.

Reason and God

To correctly understand the Stoics’ use of reason, we need to keep in mind that reason is logos in Greek and the Stoics are another chapter of the history of logos philosophy.[14] One can seriously misunderstand the Stoics if one does not realize that the Stoics conceive of reason in a different way than modern philosophers conceive of it.  We tend to see reason as a purely instrumental ability or a capacity which enables us to draw certain conclusions if we are presented with premises which come from outside of reason.[15] The Stoics conceived of reason as much more than just this instrumental ability.  Indeed their primary definition of reason was a creative fire that crafted the universe and which permeates everything.[16] Their conception of reason is much closer to the Pre-Socratics than it is to Kant: “Zeno, and nearly all the rest of the Stoics, consider Aether as the Supreme God, being endued with reason, by which everything is governed.”[17] For the Stoics, reason is the principle of growth or the power of forming things in the right way.[18] The logos of the parts is identified with the tension of the parts; the loosening of the tension brings decay and the strengthening of the tension brings life or vitality.[19] All living creatures have a form of logos in them as reason pervades every part of the cosmos.[20] There is only a difference of degree in how much logos things have.[21] In plants and animals this is a lower form of logos which is equivalent to physis or psyche.  Humans have a higher form of logos which is orthos logos or right reason.[22] Thus right reason for the Stoics is not mere thinking straight or being unemotional as it is sometimes misinterpreted, but a much richer concept which is part of a Pre-Socratic framework.

For the Stoics, universal reason was identified with God.[23] Furthermore, God was not outside the cosmos but residing in it and was intimately related to our personal reason.  For our reason was a portion of God’s reason in a human body.[24] We thus do not properly understand reason unless we understand the connection between our individual reason and the reason which governs the cosmos.  For human reason is better understood as the world soul acting in us than our modern version of reason which is purely a calculating or thinking ability.  Chrysippus says, “That divine power dwells in the reason and in the mind and soul of the cosmos; he hails the cosmos itself as a god and also that the universally immanent world soul together with the sovereignty it exercises in the individual mind and reason.”[25] We need to constantly keep in mind when reading the Stoics that their reason is not our modern reason, but is a divine aspect of the cosmic reason.  This point is made starkly clear when we realize for the Stoics, all sparks of divine reason in human bodies merge back into God when the final conflagration happens.  As Marcus Aurelius writes: “You exist but as a part inherent in a greater whole.  You will vanish into that which gave you being; or rather you will be re-transmuted into the seminal and universal reason.”[26]

We can understand the Stoics’ position much better if we do not focus on their use of the word reason, but realize that the Stoics are advocating following the will of God.  To the Stoics, “All things obey and serve the Universe….For the Universe is strong and superior to us and has provided for us better than we can, ordering our going along with all things.  And, besides, to act against it is to side with unreason, and brings nothing with it but vain struggle, involving us in miseries and pains.”[27] So reason is equated with serving and obeying the universe while not serving the universe is explicitly identified with unreason.  For the Stoics, following reason means being virtuous.

The fundamental basis of Stoic ethics is a very religious feeling that our sense of self should expand so that we realize that we are an aspect of the universal reason and we are meant to do our part in the whole.  The Stoics took this position because they maintain that the universe is a live organism[28] and every person is a cell in this organism.  For this reason every person’s duty is to do our part in this organism.  Thus a fundamental position of Stoic ethics is a cosmic religiosity which understands every person as a cell in a larger organism that is Nature.  A foundation of this view is that the Stoics think that human nature and divine nature are manifestations of same principle from two different points of view.[29] The Stoics think man is “part of the universal stock of matter pervaded through and through by a part of god; or alternatively, he is a part of god pervading some part of the universal stock of matter.”[30] The Stoics are so concerned about God, that one commentator said that Stoicism is a religion and “may claim without presumption to be reckoned amongst the world-religions.”[31] Another commentator maintains that the history of Stoicism “resembles that of a religion rather than a speculative system.”[32]

Critique of Annas

In her book on Greek ethics, Annas mistakenly maintains that caring about doing one’s part in the whole or what she calls cosmic nature plays no essential part in the foundations of early Stoic ethics.[33] Annas maintains that Stoic ethics are based on the happiness of the agent.  Because she cannot understand how this eudaimonism fits in with the Stoic emphasis on attunement with cosmic nature, she denies that cosmic nature plays any fundamental part in Stoic ethics.[34]

There is no doubt that a good number of Stoics have an obviously religious basis because they so often emphasize doing the will of God.  Thus Cleanthes, the second leader of the Stoics, wrote the profoundly religious “Hymn to Zeus” in which he says:

Lead me, O Zeus, and lead me thou, O Fate,

Unto that place where you have stationed me:

I shall not flinch, but follow.[35]

Marcus Aurelius is noted for emphasizing the same point that we are only part of the whole and we have to do our part in the whole:

By remembering then that I am part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens.  And inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself.  For remembering this, inasmuch as I am a part, I shall be discontent with none of the things which are assigned to me out of the whole; for nothing is injurious to the part, if it is for the advantage of the whole….By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens.[36]

Epictetus also states the same point: “If I knew that it was fated for me to fall ill now, I should be bent on that.  If the foot had brains, it would be bent on getting muddy.”[37] This religious tendency of the Stoics is at the very foundation of Stoicism as reason itself is continually equated by the Stoics with Zeus and God.[38]

Annas does not deny these facts about Stoic ethical theory.  Instead she maintains that only the later Stoics and Cleanthes conceived of cosmic nature as the basis of Stoic ethics.  She contends these religious Stoics were an aberration from the mainstream Stoic position.  Annas is wrong here, but before I consider the arguments she gives to support her position, I want to point out a major problem with her thesis.

This problem is the tremendous amount of evidence from all the ancient sources concerning the Stoics’ concern for god and divine providence.  Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods is the best extant source for this material and it shows that all the Stoics were deeply concerned with God and providence and that this was a position commonly ascribed to all the Stoics in antiquity.  There is no evidence in this book that there was such a major division amongst the ancient Stoics as Annas is postulating.  Furthermore, her evidence for the division is not very sound.  Cleanthes was considered by the later Stoics to be a totally loyal student of Zeno who did nothing more than expound Zeno’s doctrines.[39] Also there is extensive similarity between Cleanthes “Hymn to Zeus” and a poem of Aratus who was another important disciple of Zeno[40].  Similarly, Epictetus considered himself a follower of Chrysippus and in the above quote from Epictetus in which he says that if he is fated to be ill, he would want to be ill, it is commonly thought that Epictetus is here quoting Chrysippus.[41] Nor is this the only statement Chrysippus makes that shows that our human nature is fundamentally linked with cosmic nature.  Chrysippus also says:

For our own natures are part of the nature of the whole.  Therefore, living in agreement with nature comes to be our end, which is in accordance with the nature of oneself and that of the whole, engaging in no activity wont to be forbidden by the universal law, which is the right reason pervading everything and identical to Zeus, who is this director of the administration of existing things.  And the virtue of the happy man and his good flow of life are just this: always doing everything on the basis of concordance of each man’s guardian spirit with the will of the administrator of the whole.[42]

In another passage Chrysippus says: “There is no other or more appropriate way of approaching the theory of good and bad things or the virtues or happiness than from universal nature and from the administration of the world.”[43] So often did Chrysippus emphasize theology that Plutarch says that Chrysippus makes God “the preface to every ethical inquiry.”[44] So there is much good evidence that Annas is wrong in maintaining that it was only Cleanthes and the later Stoics who were concerned about cosmic nature.

Annas agrees that religious arguments are prominent in the later Stoics, but she ignores the evidence that these arguments were not confined to just the later Stoics and Cleanthes.  Religious arguments were at the basis of Stoic philosophy and Annas is mistaken to think otherwise.  Instead she maintains that these religious arguments cannot control our whole interpretation of the Stoics.[45] She gives two main arguments for her position, neither of which stand up to analysis.

The first argument she gives is that the Stoic arguments  that cosmic nature is providential are very weak arguments.[46] I agree with her that the arguments the Stoics give for divine providence are extremely weak, but this weakness tells us absolutely nothing about their importance to the Stoics.  In fact, one could make a good case for the position that whenever a philosopher’s central arguments are particularly weak, the position they are arguing for is a very deeply held one and they are not holding the position because of the arguments, but because of their prior deep commitment to this position.

Annas’ second point is that the Stoics are fundamentally eudaimonistic and concern for cosmic nature does not fit in with this eudaimonism.[47] Annas maintains that the Stoics’ ethical theory starts with the agent’s own good and that doing our part in the cosmic nature “does the opposite of what is required; it pulls the agent away from the kind of attachment to her own concerns.”[48] She also maintains that if we think of cosmic nature as foundational for the Stoics, there is no way to derive the fundamental theses of the Stoics from this position.[49] Because she sees no way to reconcile the Stoics’ eudaimonism with this cosmic nature, Annas maintains that cosmic nature only enters in afterwards when the Stoics are studying ethical theory and its place in the wider scheme of Stoic philosophy.[50]

Annas is mistaken in this point because she does not fully understand that the basis of Stoic ethics is living according to nature.  This is the fundamental basis of Stoic ethics, not their eudaimonism or their concern for being reasonable.  Their eudaimonism is supported by their understanding of nature and the fact that nature made us beings that care about our personal happiness.  For as the oikeiosis passages cited above show, at the beginning nature has made us so that we are selfish and care about ourselves.  Nature made us that way and because nature is good, it is good that we care about ourselves and our happiness.  So the Stoics’ eudaimonism can be derived from an earlier commitment to nature being good and their idea that we should live according to nature.

Furthermore, the Stoics’ concern for cosmic nature or doing our part in the cosmic whole is also derivable from their commitment to following nature.  To understand this we have to remember the importance of the process of oikeiosis for the Stoics.  While we originally care only for ourself, as we mature in reason, we come to understand the good in another way.  We come to see that our essential nature is not our body, but reason.  Furthermore we see this reason makes us one with the divine.  So instead of finding ourselves caring just about our body, according to the Stoics we extend our sense of self to include all of reason.  Then we care about conforming to the harmony and order of the cosmos.  In this advanced stage of oikeiosis we have a new sense of self and care more for the whole than for our original sense of self.  As Cicero puts it:

But as it often happens that a man who is introduced to another values this new friend more highly than he does the person who gave him the introduction, so in like manner it is by no means surprising that though we are first commended to Wisdom by the primary natural instincts, afterwards Wisdom herself becomes dearer to us than are the instincts from which we came to her.[51]

Through the process of oikeiosis, the Stoics contend the sage has extended her sense of self and she will still be supremely happy as she cares for all that is akin to her.

So there is a way of combining the eudaimonistic aspect of Stoic ethics with their emphasis on cosmic nature if we fully take into account the process of oikeiosis and the changing nature of the self that the Stoics emphasize.  Annas is missing the full import of the process of oikeiosis and so she does not see how eudaimonism can be reconciled with the importance of cosmic nature.  Thus she mistakenly maintains that only some Stoics emphasize cosmic nature instead of seeing that this was a fundamental position of all the Stoics.

Stoics on Happiness

Now that I have examined the foundation of the Stoic philosophical system, we can get a clearer understanding of their ethical theory particularly as it deals with happiness and pain.

The Stoics’ fundamental position is that moral virtue alone is sufficient for happiness.  “Moral goodness is enough by itself to create the happy life.”[52] For this reason the sage is always happy.[53] Not only is virtue sufficient for happiness, “happiness can only come from what is morally right.”[54] Indeed, the Stoics go even further; not only is virtue sufficient and necessary for a person to be happy, virtue “is the equivalent of a happy life, and therefore it alone makes a happy life, when it is present.”[55] Thus there is no need for any external goods such as health, wealth or family.  Because he is virtuous, the sage is always happy, even if he is tortured.  For this reason, Chrysippus said that the wise man is always happy, even if he is being roasted in the bull of Phalaris.[56]

The Stoics maintain that the only real good is virtue and the virtuous will of wanting to play our role in the cosmic whole.  Everything besides virtue such as health, wealth, friends, pleasure and pain, are considered indifferent.  The Cynics maintained that these external goods were totally indifferent and thought we should not be concerned with such matters as health and wealth.  The Stoics, however, did not go this far; while they said all external goods were indifferent, some of these indifferent things had value to them.  Because they had value, it was according to nature that we should be concerned about them and select certain of them.

The Stoics said that the indifferent things belonged to three separate classes: the first class was the preferred things such as health and friendship.[57] The preferred things had value, that is these made a contribution to harmonious living or living according to nature.[58] This class comprised such things a person naturally wanted and should try to acquire if the circumstances allowed them to be acquired virtuously.  The second class of indifferents was the rejected things such as poverty, death, mutilation and pain.[59] These were things that were contrary to our human nature and which we generally should try to avoid.  The third class was intermediate between these two classes and included such things as stretching out one’s finger or going for a walk.  These were things that were neither according to nature nor contrary to it.[60]

The most important argument that virtue alone was good was derived from Aristotle’s purely formal characteristics of happiness.  As indicated in the first chapter, Aristotle defined happiness as perfect or complete in itself, self-sufficient and immune to fortune.  From these formal criteria, the Stoics most heavily emphasized that the only thing which could be goods were those things that were above chance.[61] By this criterion, according to the Stoics moral goodness is the only good as it alone is independent of chance.[62] The externals that most people consider goods, things such as money, power or comfort, were not among the goods as they could be taken away by chance or circumstances.

The Stoics thought this emphasis on moral virtue cut out any consideration of moral luck.[63] Because it was always in our power to control our response to any event and this was something that no one could take away from you, being virtuous was not prey to fortune and chance they thought.  Among the Stoics, Epictetus particularly emphasized this point and made it the cornerstone of his philosophy.[64]

The Stoics, however, are only partially right in thinking that moral virtue is not prey to chance and moral luck.  They are right in thinking that if a person is already virtuous, no external event can affect that virtue.  For unlike possessions or other external goods, one’s moral virtue cannot be destroyed by someone else as it is purely a disposition of one’s personality.  In this way of thinking about being virtuous, one’s virtue is something that is invulnerable to fortune.  Nevertheless, this does not mean that being virtuous is not a matter of chance.  For the Stoics, unlike Plato in the Myth of Er, do not think that we have chosen our existential circumstances in this lifetime.  Instead for the Stoics it is a matter of chance if we ever become virtuous as it is dependent on our upbringing and training which we have no control over.  So the Stoics have not actually overcome fortune and moral luck as much as they maintain they have.

The Stoics were quite clear about the relation between the goods of moral virtue and the indifferent things.  They consistently and vehemently maintained that virtue was of a higher rank than the indifferent things and the smallest amount of virtue outranked the largest amount of indifferent things.  The Stoics maintain should always care about virtue and doing the virtuous thing, while we should select amongst the indifferent things depending on the circumstances and only as long as this did not clash with being virtuous.  The Stoics quite consciously made this ranking to ensure that we were totally concerned for moral virtue and to ensure that our primary concern was always for virtue.  The external goods most people care about “contribute to neither happiness nor to unhappiness.”[65] The Stoics were willing to push this position all the way to its logical extreme and say: “Therefore it follows that joy and a brave unyielding endurance of torture are equal goods.”[66]

In antiquity this doctrine was not considered consonant with ordinary experience and thus it was often attacked.  Nonetheless, when someone asked the Stoics, “Are you trying to make us believe that it does not matter whether a man feels joy, or whether he lies upon the rack and tires out his torturer?” the Stoics responded that a person blessed with external goods such as health and wealth is no more happy than one tortured to death.[67] Unlike Epicurus, the Stoics do not maintain that the sage will have a pleasant time roasting in the bull of Phalaris.  While the Stoic would prefer to be at a banquet, they also maintain that the “vexation and pain and other inconveniences [of being tortured] are of no consequence for they are overcome by virtue.”[68]

It is important to point out that the Stoics really are saying that the sage will be happy even if he is tortured and not the much weaker position that the tortured sage will maintain her integrity.  The Stoics’ position would be understandable if they were maintaining that the virtuous person always maintained her integrity even while being tortured.  That is not the Stoics’ position though, as they very consistently stated that the sage is in a state of eudaimonia or happiness.  The Stoics continually say that the wise man is happy and this “is happiness to a complete, supreme degree.”[69] Furthermore they contrasted their position with the Academics who say the sage is happy while being tortured but not supremely happy.  Seneca, referring to the Academic position, says: “With this view we cannot in any wise agree; for unless a man is happy, he has not attained the Supreme Good; and the good which is supreme admits of no higher degree.”[70] In discussion with the Aristotelians who maintain that the life which is morally good and without pain is better than one with pain, the Stoics reply: “we deny this altogether.”[71] This Stoic continues his attack on Aristotle by saying that “as the light of a candle is obscured and put out by the light of the sun; and as a drop of brine is lost in the magnitude of the Aegean sea; or an addition of a penny amid the riches of Croesus; or as one step is of no account in a march from here to India; so, if that is the chief good which the Stoics affirm is so, then all the goods which depend on the body must inevitably be obscured and overwhelmed by, and come to nothing when placed by the side of the splendor and importance of virtue.”[72] So clearly the Stoics are maintaining that the sage is always completely happy.

Stoics on Pain

If the Stoics thought the sage was able to be tortured or experience injury without feeling pain, this would be an easy explanation to why the sage is always happy.  There are many Stoic passages which give the impression that the Stoics think pain is something which does not really exist.  “Our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.”[73] “Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed.’ Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”[74] These two passages from Marcus Aurelius give the impression that the Stoic position is that a person is in pain only as long as she thinks she is in pain.  Nor is Marcus Aurelius the only Stoic who gives this impression; Seneca and Cicero also seem to be making the same point.  Seneca asks: is the sage “‘not to fear death, imprisonment, burning, and all the other missiles of Fortune?’  Not at all; for he knows that they are not evils, but only seem to be.  He reckons all these things as the bugbears of man’s existence.  Paint him a picture of slavery, lashes, chains, wants, mutilation by disease or by torture, – or anything else you may care to mention; he will count all such things as terrors caused by the derangement of the mind.”[75] Furthermore, when talking of the rack and torture, Seneca says “that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.”[76] Cicero, when talking of tortures many people have endured, says, “Do you not see that evil [like pain or torture] is a creature of the imagination, not a reality of nature?”[77]

From passages like these, it is easy to get the impression that the Stoics thought pain and torture were insignificant matters and we would not even feel them if we reasoned correctly.  The Cynics did maintain this position because they said that all things besides virtue were totally indifferent to us.  The Stoics, though, do not take the Cynics’ position; the Stoics think that the sage will indeed feel the pain of torture and it is something that the sage would prefer not to have.  Nevertheless, pain and torture are not really evils as only the lack of moral virtue is an evil.  The Stoics think such things as bodily pain or torture “do buffet the wise man, even though they do not overthrow him….I do not deny that the wise man feels these things; for we do not claim for him the hardness of stone or of steel.  The wise man does receives some wounds.”[78] So the Stoic sage will feel the pain of torture or injury as the sage still has normal human qualities.  “You must not think that our human virtue transcends nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain, will turn pale.  For all these are sensations of the body.”[79] The Stoics say “we all have an inborn affection for our body,”[80] and thus “it is natural for us to shrink from pain.”[81]

The Cynic position that virtue is sufficient for happiness is consistent because the Cynics also maintained that someone could totally inure himself to pain and not care about pleasure.  But how can the Stoics say that the sage will experience pain and still be happy, even if tortured?  How could virtue be sufficient for perfect happiness if one’s flesh is slowing roasting as one is tortured inside the bull of Phalaris?

The Stoics continually emphasized the sage is happy to the supreme degree even if he is tortured because they maintained that the sage learns how to deal with the pain in a way that neutralizes or overcomes it and so does not diminish her happiness.  In this way the sage realizes pain is not something to be really feared and is a matter of little significance.

Seneca says that unlike the Cynics, the Stoic will feel pain and prefer not to have pain if that is a viable choice.  Seneca further says that joy is according to nature and pain is contrary to it.[82] Nevertheless, the “vexation and pain and other inconveniences are of no consequence for they are overcome by virtue.  Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances and wrongs; and wherever its radiance reaches, all lights which shine without the help of virtue are extinguished.”[83] So the power of virtue is so strong that the sorrows of the body are like a candle next to the sun in terms of how much effect they have on a sage’s happiness.

This emphasis on the power of virtue is continually repeated by the Stoics.  They repeatedly claim in their works that “the wise man, indeed, overcomes Fortune by his virtue.”[84] Why should we believe the Stoics when they say the sage will be absolutely happy even if the sage is roasting like a pig or being slowly cut open and the wounds allowed to heal so that they can be cut open again and again?  As the Stoics say the sage will feel the pain, they are not contending that the sage’s brain releases endorphins which blocks the pain.  So how could the sage be completely happy if she is tortured and still feels the pain?

The Stoics respond by saying that the wise man lives on an entirely different level from the ordinary person.  “His virtue has placed him in another region of the universe; he has nothing in common with you.”[85] “The injury will not reach him.  For the distance which separates him from contact with his inferiors is so great that no baneful force can extend its power all the way to him.”[86] If we doubt this, Cicero responds: “You know not, madman, you know not how great is the strength that virtue possesses.”[87]

This could be considered mere bravado, but this was not just idle talk for the Stoics.  Epictetus evidently was very calm while his master was beating him so forcibly that Epictetus’ leg was broken.  Cicero and Seneca both died violently.  Furthermore, the Stoics were so concerned about this whole issue because it was a practical daily problem for them; it was a real possibility that at sometime in their lives they might be injured, tortured or killed.

We need to ask three questions about how the sage’s virtue has the power to overcome physical pain so that the sage is absolutely happy even if he is tortured.  The first question is how did the Stoics think virtue could overcome pain?  How did virtue make this happen?  The second question is whether the Stoics’ claim is possible.  The third question is even if the sage could overcome pain through his virtue, is this a desirable state of affairs?  Even if the sage is able to overcome the pain of torture by the power of virtue, does the sage pay too high a price for this ability by becoming totally indifferent to human concerns or becoming totally closed off to his emotions?

Virtue and Pain

The first question to examine is exactly how the Stoics maintained that virtue could overcome the pain of torture.  The Stoics start their defense of the power of virtue by asserting that pain is not as bad as people commonly consider it to be.  Like Robert Hall, they say there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of pain so that we have to find it unpleasant.  The Stoics buttressed this contention by citing people who could easily endure pain: heroes such as Mucius who saved Rome by sticking his hand into a fire or a man who laughed while being flogged.  These and other people could endure pain happily and the Stoics maintained that this shows that the intensity of pain is not a fact about the nature of the world, but about our mind; pain itself has no intrinsic nature as unpleasant, we only think of it as so.[88] For the Stoics, pain is only a seeming evil.[89] If we focus on other things or see the world correctly we will not be bothered by the pain.

We all commonly experience aversion to pain and many people regard this as an innate fact about human nature.  As the Stoics claim that pain is not intrinsically a negative experience, but is in only our mind, then the onus is on the Stoics to explain why so many people think of pain as intrinsically negative.  Hall maintains that we do not have to dislike the feel of pain and we only dislike it because of past conditioning and because pain is often associated with bodily harm.  The Stoics give a very similar answer; they say it is only custom which makes us wince and shrink from pain.[90] For, as Seneca said, the Stoics thought it was only by common consent that injury and bodily harm was seen as painful.[91] The solution was to get used to the pain just like lazy and slothful people have to get used to work.  The Stoics were fond of giving examples of people who could smile at horrible pains by overcoming them with reason.[92] The Stoic claims the wise man is skilled at overcoming evils such as pain; indeed he tames them.[93] The sage tames pain so well that he regards “all those things which provoke cries and groans as unimportant and beneath notice.”[94]

Because we could train ourselves to deal with pain as well as others do, Epictetus and Seneca advised practical training exercises to help people be ready for it.  Some of these exercises involved spending a day not eating or continually reminding ourselves of the possible impending arrival of pain and other things like exile or loss of a loved one.  Through these exercises, the Stoics claim we can train ourselves to be prepared for these events and not be troubled by them when they happen.[95] One key to deal with pain is to value and think about things in the right way.[96] We need to realize “the body is nothing to me: the parts of it are nothing to me.”[97] If a sage’s body is badly tortured, “if he is pierced in this place and that place continually, if he sees his entrails in his lap, if he is tortured again after being kept waiting in order that he may feel the torture more keenly,” he needs to look down at his body as one “who is comforting a sick friend.”[98]

This attitude towards the body often gives people the impression the Stoics are too distant from their selves and also cold and inhuman.  There are two things we need to keep in mind at this point.  The first is that the Stoics were giving practical advice in order to help people be strong enough to follow through with their care and concern for their country or family.  The second point is that current pain control experts advocate the same way to alleviate pain as the Stoics advocated.  There is much research supporting the effectiveness of the kind of tactics the Stoics used to deal with pain.[99] Thus modern research indicates that a good way to feel less pain is to imagine the painful part of one’s body is totally numb or does not even belong to one’s body.  This imaging is exactly what the Stoics advocated when they said that if we are tortured we should not consider our body to be ours, but one belonging to a friend.  Furthermore, there is research showing that theses images that the mind generates are filtered through the hypothalamus which regulates our allegedly involuntary maintenance functions such as heartbeat and circulation and that these images influence bodily functions such as the amount of pain we experience.[100] Thus modern pain research supports the tactics the Stoics used in dealing with pain and gives a physiological mechanism to explain them.

The Stoics also give another argument why the sage is happy even if she is tortured and this argument is centered on our relationship with God and nature.  The Stoics maintain that God or Nature is behind all that happens and as God or Nature is benevolent, all that happens to a person is for the good of the whole.  Epictetus and other Stoics maintain that the relationship of a person to God is like the relationship of a foot or a hand to the body.  Thus we should act for the good of the whole and desire nothing but the good of the whole.[101] As we are not just individuals, but part of the larger benevolent whole, we should realize that it is for the sake of the whole that these seemingly negative things happen to us.[102] As we are part of the cosmic whole and everything is providential, then if it is our part to be tortured, we should bear it with equanimity.  Thus a major reason that a sage can endure suffering is by realizing that her sufferings are for the good of the whole.  If we do the right thing such as standing up to an evil king, torture might just be our right place in this whole and we should endure the torture knowing that.[103]

These were not the only theological arguments the Stoics gave considering our ability to deal with pain.  The Stoics strongly stressed that God gave us everything to use as long as God sees fit for us to have it.  When God takes it back, there is nothing for us to do but thank God for letting us have the thing for so long and not be attached to it.[104] Thus if we are being tortured, we should not complain; after all our body does not belong to us and God was good enough to let us enjoy our body for a short while without pain.

Modern research into pain has shown that the attitude a person has makes a lot of difference in how much, if any, pain the person feels if she is injured.  So it is certainly possible, and indeed likely, that if one has the faith that one’s suffering is for the greater good, then it would be a lot easier to deal with that suffering and indeed one might even be able to be happy while suffering.  Furthermore, research I cited in the first chapter seems to show that some people are totally even ecstatically happy while being subjected to tortures like the Stoics described.  So it is possible that the Stoics are right that the sage could be happy if she is tortured.

Here it is important to point out that the Stoics’ claim is not that all people are able to be totally happy in such a negative situation, but only that the sage would be totally happy.  The Stoics further maintain that the sage is very rare, as rare as a phoenix,