CHAPTER THREE
The Stoics, Emotions and Happiness
Before I consider whether the Stoic sage is happy, I want to emphasize that the Stoics themselves would consider this a very appropriate question. The Stoics are much different from Kant who separates the realm of morals and the realm of happiness into two distinct realms. While Kant has a dualistic view of human nature maintaining people have a physical aspect whose goal is happiness and a higher rational nature whose purpose is morality, the Stoics have no such dualism.[1] While Kant emphasizes the a priori element of morality,[2] for the Stoics “reason cannot function properly unless it consistently seeks to produce results which are ‘in accordance with nature,’ i.e., agreeable to one’s own normative condition and that of others. The legislative principles on which we act are grounded in empirical data- e.g. the naturalness of health, family affection, social cohesion to human beings.”[3] It is important not to interpret the Stoics as early Kantians, as then they have little to contribute to our present ethical concerns. Too many modern scholars, such as MacIntyre and Annas, misinterpret the Stoics because they force them into a Kantian framework. It is good to keep in mind that Hume was much influenced by Cicero’s Stoic work De Officiis and he said, “I had indeed, the former book [sc. De Officiis] in my Eye in all my Reasonings.”[4] While there are similarities between Kant and the Stoics because Kant was influenced by the Stoics, there are also many differences and one of the major differences is that the Stoics thought a valid test of an ethical theory was whether or not the theory helped people to become happy.
Because nobody can be happy without a satisfactory emotional life, two common misconceptions about the Stoics have to be dealt with before it can be considered whether the Stoic sage is really happy. These two misconceptions both concern how the Stoics deal with emotions and emotional ties. The first misconception is that the Stoics eradicate the emotions and become unfeeling brutes. The second misconception is that the Stoics advocate cutting off all close emotional bonds so that they can live tranquilly. While Stoics advocate positions that lend themselves to these misinterpretations, these are significant misinterpretations of the true Stoic position. The Stoics have a much more interesting and nuanced theory and their position is defended by modern psychologists.
After I have shown that the common charge that the Stoic sage is unhappy because of the way she deals with emotions is not true, the question of the sage’s happiness is still not settled. For the Stoics maintain that the sage is happy because the sage is part of a larger whole and she identifies her interests with the good of the whole. While Barnes’ attack on this position does not succeed, the Stoics’ theory ultimately is unsatisfactory because they give no compelling reason to think this identification with the interests of the whole makes a person happy.
The Stoics and Emotions
The first and most important misconception about the Stoics is that they are unfeeling people who have purchased their happiness and equanimity by cutting themselves off from their emotions. Hicks writes that the Stoics are “conceived too often in the popular imagination as severe, morose, apathetic persons, stifling all emotions with pride.”[5] Not only is this the popular view, philosophers also have it too. Thus Brand Blanshard maintains that “the Stoics tried not merely to control feeling but to annihilate it.”[6] For these reasons a true Stoic is often considered to be someone “who did not get much enjoyment out of life.”[7]
According to this line of criticism, the Stoics can only claim to be happy while tortured because their normal life is so bereft of happiness. This criticism seems plausible when we remember how a Stoic sage reacts to torture: as something happening to someone else or to an alien entity. This view about the unfeeling Stoic has a long history. In antiquity it was a common charge that the Stoic sage had achieved his imperturbability at a high price; thus Crantor and Plutarch charged that the Stoic sage has achieved his goal of apatheia only at the price of brutalizing his soul. Crantor said the Stoic “state of apathy is not attained except at the cost of brutishness in the soul and callousness in the body.”[8]
While it is not true the Stoics have brutish souls, there are many Stoic passages and slogans that foster this mistaken impression. One such phrase which is easy to misunderstand is the Stoic demand that we should extirpate or eradicate the passions. “The question has often been raised whether it is better to have moderate emotions, or none at all. Philosophers of our school reject the emotions; the Peripatetics keep them in check. I, however, do not understand how any half-way disease can be either wholesome or helpful.”[9] This passage from Seneca could easily give the impression that the Stoics proudly eradicate the emotions. While I will demonstrate later that this charge is not true, it is not the only passage that lends itself to this interpretation. “Reason herself, to whom the reins of power have been entrusted, remains mistress only so long as she is kept apart from the passions; if she once mingles with them and is contaminated, she becomes unable to hold back those who she might have cleared from her path.”[10] Passages like this one are often interpreted to mean that the Stoic uses reason to repress his emotional responses. For this reason, even though the Stoics claim to be happy, many people do not take their claim seriously. For the Stoic seems to be saying that he is happy because he lacks emotion and lives tranquilly shut up in his mind. In this vein Cicero writes “the wise man is free from all those disturbances of the soul which I describe as passions; his heart is full of tranquil calm forever. And anyone who is self-controlled, unwavering, fearless, undistressed, the victim of no cravings or desires, must inevitably be happy.”[11]
As if this is not bad enough, it does not help the image of the Stoics that they extol the state they call apatheia. Seneca describes apatheia as the state of a “man who refuses to allow anything that goes badly for him to affect him. Consider then whether it might not be preferable to call it a mind that is ‘invulnerable’ or ‘above all suffering.’”[12] Unfortunately for the Stoics though, apatheia is too often translated as apathy. This mistranslation is then easily misinterpreted to mean that the Stoics are praising a life without feeling and caring.
Because many readers do not know that the words pathos and apatheia are being mistranslated when they read the Stoics praising the extirpation of the emotions and extolling apathy, they naturally think the Stoic sage is totally emotionless. This is a tremendous misrepresentation of the Stoic position. As I will show below, the Stoics praise many emotions such as joy, affection, gentleness and erotic love. The Stoics were not against emotion, they were against a specific subset of the emotions, a pathos, which was a certain kind of unruly passion which caused a person to do unnatural and irrational things.
The Stoic conception of pathos
The first and most important step in comprehending the Stoic position is understanding what the Stoics mean by a pathos. It is a severe misrepresentation to the Stoics to translate pathos as emotion as that gives the impression the Stoics are against all emotions and consider them a disease.[13] Pathos is not always translated as emotion and more often it is translated as passion. This is a better translation of pathos as it more accurately indicates what the Stoics are concerned about and I will use the word passion to translate pathos. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that passion is not a totally accurate translation of pathos and the Stoics mean by pathos only a certain kind of negative passion that is out of control.
For the Stoics a pathos or passion is an unreasonable motion of the soul that goes past the appropriate reaction to a situation. “Passion, or emotion, is defined by Zeno as an irrational and unnatural movement in the soul, or again as impulse in excess.”[14] “Passion is impulse which is excessive and disobedient to the dictates of reason, or a movement of the soul which is irrational and contrary to nature.”[15]
In order not to misconstrue the Stoic position, it is important to understand what they are referring to by a passion that is obedient to reason. For too many people, the Stoics’ praise of being rational conjures up images of the Stoics repressing all the emotions and living only in the mind. Blanshard misconstrues the Stoics in just this way: “Stoicism is the most remarkable experiment on record in the surrender of life to reason at the expense of feeling and desire.”[16] The Stoics, however, were not advocating surrendering feeling in order to live in their mind. For them, something was reasonable or rational if it was in accord with nature or how things should naturally exist. Thus they called a movement of the soul irrational if it was a “movement contrary to nature.”[17] For this reason, the Stoics thought a feeling was a passion if it exceeded the natural and proper emotional response to a situation. Chrysippus gives two examples to clarify his definition of a passion. His first example is Medea killing her children which clarifies what it means for a passion to be irrational. His second example is the difference between the control a person has running and walking which clarifies the meaning of excessive impulse.
Medea was the classical Greek mythological figure who helped Jason steal the golden fleece. Eventually Jason severely mistreated Medea and she became fixated on getting revenge on him. She got her revenge in a most gruesome manner: by killing the children she had by him. Chrysippus often used the example of Medea to illustrate a person who is in the grip of a pathos. For her act of killing her children to get revenge on Jason was his prime example of acting beyond what is reasonable and according to nature. Medea’s actions were judged overly passionate because they were “counter to what a reasonable human being and mother would naturally want to do.”[18] Medea was letting her desire for revenge get the better of her motherly instincts and this was beyond nature and hence an irrational passion. The Stoics base their ethics on following nature and to them a “passion itself is a rational impulse which has deviated from nature’s norm.”[19] For the Stoics, “Natural means here ‘normal and healthy.’”[20] So a passion is something that is outside of nature’s norm as illustrated by Medea who had transgressed nature’s norm for a mother. “Passion is thereby revealed as an unhealthy state of mind, not synonymous with emotion in ordinary language.”[21]
So by advocating being reasonable, it is clear that Chrysippus does not mean a kind of reasonability that represses all emotion, but a reasonability that keeps emotion in the place that nature assigned it. While we might wonder how we can tell what is the natural place for any emotion, at least this example makes it clear that the Stoics did not advocate eradicating the emotions; the Stoics merely advocated the much more sensible position that we should not let our emotions become destructive.
Chrysippus’ second example also brings the Stoic conception of a passion into much sharper focus. He maintains that the difference between a natural emotion and a passion is the difference between a man walking and a man running.[22] According to Chrysippus, in the case of a walker the body is controlled by what the person desires. A walker is in control of her movements as she can stop if she wants to or turn in another way. On the other hand, a runner does not have the same control that a walker does over her movements: “the movement of the legs exceeds the conation, so that they are carried away and do not obediently change their pace.”[23] Chrysippus thinks that swift runners could not stop instantly even if they wanted to.[24] For this reason, a runner is different from a walker as a runner cannot control his movement so that his body goes where he wants it to go. Galen thinks Chrysippus is wrong in his understanding of human movements. For this reason, Galen supplements Chrysippus’ example of a runner with the idea of someone running down a hill who has momentum carrying them forward.[25] The runner who has momentum behind her cannot instantly go the way she wants to because of her momentum. For Chrysippus, a runner with momentum behind her is like a victim of a passion, as the runner is not in control of her movements and is not able to do what she really wants to because of the excessive impulse. On the other hand, the walker is Chrysippus’ model of a reasonable person who is not a victim of a passion because the person is in control of the situation and able to make her body follow her desires. So for Chrysippus “reasonable action leads me where I want to go. Passionate action leads me where it goes. It is always in excess….if I am impassioned, I am ‘out of myself’ and am not free but a slave, that the truly natural symmetry of my powers is upset, and I do not go just so far as I myself wish. From this point of view the passionate impulse is unnatural.”[26]
The Stoics are not advocating the elimination of the emotions. Their primary concern is to eliminate emotional outbursts that are unnatural like Medea’s or beyond what we desire to do. They dislike passions because we are “carried away by the intensity, as though by a disobedient horse.”[27] When we are in the grip of a passion, we are no longer able to do what we want to do; the passions are in control and we are “in a position of being controlled by their tyranny.”[28] The Stoic is not advocating annihilating all feelings or being totally emotionless. They are advocating the much more understandable position of eradicating passions like Medea’s which caused her to kill her children to get revenge.
The Stoic conception of apatheia
The Stoics emphasis on elimination of the passions instead of their moderation has caused the worst misinterpretation of their position. In order to understand what the Stoics are claiming for the sage when he experiences apatheia or the state of having no passions, it is necessary to contrast the Stoic sage with the Platonic and Aristotelian sage. For the Stoics deny a fundamental premise that is at the basis of the Platonic and Aristotelian position and they instead return to Socrates’ view of the soul. While Plato and Aristotle maintain that there is an irrational part of the soul and this irrational part of the soul is the cause of our lower desires, the Stoics maintain that the soul is unitary, i.e., it is only rational. Thus there is no irrational part of the soul for the Stoics.[29] Therefore the Stoic cannot say that our emotions are the result of the irrational part of our soul; instead for the Stoics all emotions have to be movements or inclinations of the rational part of the soul.[30] What differentiates the rational inclinations of the soul from the irrational inclinations are not where these inclinations originate from, as they all originate in the rational part of the soul, but the fact that the rational emotions result from a reason which has not been colored or influenced by false assumptions about the nature of reality.[31] On the other hand, the irrational inclinations of the soul are caused by not seeing what is really valuable and choosing that.
As the Stoics believed in the unitary soul, a passion is dangerous to the soul as passions cannot be confined to the lower part of the soul. As the passions cannot be moderated as the Platonists and Aristotelians thought, the Stoics called for their eradication. The Stoics thought that if the passion is in the soul at all, it twists the ruling element around in their direction and corrupts the person.[32] “One cannot be partly or moderately irrational, rather as one cannot be half pregnant. The logos is the guiding principle within the soul, and it is the only principle, since the soul is unitary; either it is perverted or it is not. It cannot be in full or partial control of some other ‘irrational’ element within the soul.”[33]
While the Stoics are calling for the elimination of the passions, they mean by passion the feelings and impulses that are out of control and lead us to commit unnatural acts. So the “Stoic temper does not imply absolute freedom from all emotion, but only from irrational mental storms.”[34] In the end, the Stoics’ position is not much different from the Platonist and Aristotelian moderation of the passions. Rist points out that the Stoics’ conflict with the Aristotelians and Platonists over moderation of the emotions “is revealed as a battle in which both sides might have found themselves in agreement if they had been able to agree on what a pathos is. For if the pathe are viewed as diseases, as pathological disturbances of the personality, it is easy to see why the Stoics advocated their complete suppression. It would be rather stupid to argue that the effects of a disease should be moderated when it would seem to be possible to banish the disease altogether with much more desirable results.”[35]
The Stoics make it very clear that the sage has not eradicated his emotions because the Stoics maintain that the sage has emotional feelings. While there are four chief passions that normal people have (desire, fear, grief, and pleasure), the early Stoics said there will be eupatheiai, or good feelings the sage will feel corresponding to these four chief passions. The Stoics “say that there are three emotional states which are good, namely, joy, caution, and wishing. Joy, the counterpart of pleasure, is rational elation; caution, the counterpart of fear, rational avoidance; for though the wise man will never feel fear, he will yet use caution. And they make wishing the counterpart of desire (or craving), inasmuch as it is rational appetency.”[36] Here it is important to remember that by “rational” the Stoics meant what was in accord with nature and appropriate to the situation. On the other hand, Medea was irrational when she killed her children. So advocating rational elation is not merely allowing the sage a meaningless feeling as it seems to some interpreters, but saying that the sage will have elation that is appropriate to the situation.
The fact that the Stoics are encouraging the sage to be emotional is made clearer when we understand how the Stoics define these beneficial feelings. For under wishing they include “kindness, friendliness, warmth, affection; under caution, reverence and modesty; under joy, delight, mirth, cheerfulness.”[37] The Stoics clearly maintain that the sage will experience emotional states such as mirth, delight, and affection. Obviously the sage is not a totally emotionless person as he is often misunderstood to be.
Nussbaum’s critique
Despite the fact the Stoics only wanted to eradicate dangerous emotions and they maintained the sage had feelings, critics of the Stoics maintain that while the Stoic sage has some emotions, he does not experience many of them. Nussbaum makes this charge in an influential attack on the Stoic treatment of emotions. She quotes a passage from Seneca where he claims the Stoic sage is happy but then she writes: “I believe that we should not be lulled by this sort of Stoic rhetoric into thinking that extirpation will leave much of human happiness where we are accustomed to find it, while merely getting rid of many difficulties and tensions. The state that Seneca describes is indeed called joy. But consider how he describes it. It is like a child that is born inside of one and never leaves the womb to go out into the world. It has no commerce with laughter and elation. For wise men, we know, are severe.”[38] Then she again quotes Seneca who says that “real joy, believe me, is a stern matter…it is not a cheerful joy…The joy of which I speak…is something solid.” Relying heavily on Seneca, Nussbaum maintains that the Stoic sage experiences a much different kind of joy from what we experience. Our joy is one born from suspense and elation while the Stoic joy comes from “solid self-absorption.”[39] In this article, Nussbaum makes two charges against the Stoic sage. The first is that the Stoic sage is severe and does not have any real joy. The second is that the sage experiences “solid self-absorption” inside a protective womb and does this only by giving up the important emotional bases of his life.[40] Neither of these charges is true, but they are common misconceptions about the Stoics and so I will demonstrate their falsity.
First it is important to point out that Nussbaum is almost exclusively relying on one Stoic–Seneca–for her interpretation of Stoicism. This is important because Seneca among all the Stoics particularly emphasizes being stern and severe. Sometimes other Stoics say that the sage should be severe or stern but the Stoics are very equivocal about that. For example, one passage besides Seneca which Nussbaum quotes where the Stoics advocate being severe is in Diogenes Laertius, and the same passage also maintains that the sage will experience “delight, mirth, cheerfulness.”[41] The trouble with Nussbaum’s interpretation is that she is emphasizing the sternness of some Stoics and then maintains that this sternness was a necessary part of being a Stoic. This is just not true.
First of all, Zeno said that only through misinterpretation could those who accepted his teaching become sordid, illiberal, bitter, rigid, cold, and sharp.[42] Furthermore, Epictetus emphasizes that the qualities of the Stoic sage are “gentleness, a sociable disposition, a tolerant temper, a disposition to mutual affection.”[43] Moreover, as I will demonstrate below, the Stoics continually emphasized the need to be affectionate as nature has rightfully implanted that emotion in us for our own good.
Diogenes Laertius also reports one account of Chrysippus’ death which maintained his death “was caused by a violent fit of laughter.” In this account, Chrysippus told a joke “and thereupon he laughed so heartily that he died.”[44] This may not be a true story, even Diogenes writes that it is only one account of Chrysippus’ death, but the fact that it was even reported is significant. Furthermore this account also fits in with other stories of Chrysippus that indicate he was not severe or stern. For example, Plutarch disapproves of Chrysippus’ desire for money and is disgusted at Chrysippus for saying “that the sage will even turn three somersaults if he gets a talent for it.”[45]
The Stoics and eros
The last reason Nussbaum is wrong about equating sternness with the Stoic sage is the important, but usually overlooked fact that the early Stoics continually emphasized erotic love. Indeed, Zeno put eros at the center of the republic he envisioned. Athenaeus quotes this report about Zeno: “Zeno of Citium took love to be a god who brings about friendship and freedom, and again concord, but nothing else. That is why in the Republic he said that Love is a god, there as a helper in furthering the safety of the city.”[46] We make a mistake if we do not notice this passage as we will not be alerted to the fact that the Stoics were very concerned about eros. “Writers on Stoic ethics ancient or modern seldom say much about their views on eros, i.e. erotic or passionate love; and the Stoic sage is popularly regarded as doing all he does guided by passionless reason. The starring role in Zeno’s Republic accorded to love is therefore unexpected.”[47] Schofield maintains that the passage from Athenaeus is to be trusted as truly relating Zeno’s views. For this information on Zeno and his emphasis on love “coheres both with some other items of information relating to views held by Zeno and the early Stoics, and more generally with evidence of considerable interest in erotic love among early Stoic writers.”[48] Schofield names the prominent early Stoics and demonstrates that “all the leading figures among them wrote on erotic love.”[49] Diogenes Laertius gives us a list of the books the most prominent early Stoics wrote on love: Zeno wrote the Art of Love and his conversations carried similar material. Persaeus wrote On Loves, Ariston wrote Erotic Conversations, Cleanthes wrote On Love and Art of Love, Sphaerus wrote Dialogues on Love, and Chrysippus wrote On Love.[50]
The fact that all the important early Stoics wrote on eros and the fact that the “Athenaeus text implies that erotic love had a central place in Zeno’s conception of the polis”[51] shows how important eros was for the Stoics. While this is a change from our standard conception of the Stoics, even more interesting is the way the Stoics thought of eros. Schofield points out two interesting points. First, for the Stoics love is not a response to a person’s virtue but to a youth’s beauty. Secondly, love which is so often thought of as the passion par excellence, is not considered a passion by the Stoics.
Zeno first defines love in this way: “Love is an attempt to make friends, on account of beauty being apparent, with young people in bloom.”[52] Zeno continues by claiming that the sage will be an erotic expert: “Which is why the sage will also be an expert in love, and will love those worthy of love, i.e., those well-born and naturally endowed.”[53] While it is not exactly clear what Zeno means by the phrase “naturally endowed,” Zeno in another passage describes in detail the physical bearing of the youth that is suitable to be loved.[54] Thus it is clear that erotic love for the early Stoics is a response to physical beauty, not just to the sage’s virtue as later ancient writers maintain.[55]
The second interesting point is that the Stoics did not conceive of erotic love as a passion.[56] Plutarch quotes the Stoics as saying: “Nobody would stop the enthusiasm of the wise for the young, given that there is no passion (pathos) in it.”[57] Furthermore, as “love is not a desire,” it is not a passion to the Stoics.[58] “It is striking, and presumably due to Zeno’s influence, that eros is the only state of mind ordinarily conceived of as a passion or desire (epithumia) that is not invariably defined as such in standard Stoic lists of desires.”[59] So while many people think of love as the passion par excellence, the important early Stoics did not conceive of it that way. As Schofield writes “they would doubtless have described it [eros] as an impulse in accordance with reason: not something purely ratiocinative, but an expression of the whole personality, conceived in good Stoic fashion as a unity.[60]
So the Stoics, like good Greeks, loved youths for their beauty and most remarkably do not think of love as a passion but something that is in accord with reason. All this evidence shows that it is not a fair charge to indict the Stoic sage as severe and beyond laughter. It is significant that Nussbaum almost exclusively relies on Seneca’s writings as the basis of this charge. For only the later Roman, upper class Stoics really fit her characterization of the Stoics. For this reason parts of Seneca’s writings say more about the upper class Roman mores than about Stoicism per se.
The Stoics and emotional ties
The second of Nussbaum’s contentions–that the sage is self-absorbed and cuts out the basis of his daily life–is related to the second common misconception about the Stoics I will address in this chapter. This second misconception about the Stoic sage is that he has eradicated all his emotional bonds to his family or friends. Brenda Almond makes this charge against the Stoics.[61] Her evidence that the Stoics advocated cutting off all emotional ties is a passage from Epictetus:
Whenever you grow attached to something, do not act as though it were one of those things that cannot be taken away, but as though it were something like a jar or crystal goblet, so that when it breaks you will remember what it was like, and not be troubled. So too in life; if you kiss your child, your brother, your friend, never allow your fancy free rein, nor your exuberant spirits to go as far as they like, but hold them back, stop them…remind yourself that the object of your love is mortal; it is not one of your own possessions; it has been given to you for the present, not inseparably nor for ever, but like a fig or a cluster of grapes, at a fixed season of the year, and that if you hanker for it in winter, you are a fool. If in this way you long for your son, or your friend, at a time when he is not given to you, rest assured that you are hankering for a fig in wintertime.[62]
Brenda Almond misinterprets Epictetus here and maintains that the Stoics are advocating never being committed emotionally to another person and never making any bonds with anyone else, even your children.[63] She maintains that the Stoics advocate cutting off all emotional ties in order to be perfectly safe: “Therefore, the logical consequence of Stoic and other ideals of apatheia is the complete cessation of feeling and experience that can be attained only by ceasing to exist at all: in other words, in death. It is not surprising, then, that suicide as a practice was associated with Stoicism in ancient times. Bonds keep people alive, so that if we value life we value the ‘ties that bind’.”[64] Almond’s interpretation of the Stoics is the same as Nussbaum’s claim that the Stoic sage is self-absorbed and has cut off his emotional ties.
While Epictetus’ approach to our bonds with our children may seem inappropriate to many readers, I will demonstrate that he has an excellent way of dealing with our emotional bonds. First, to show that Almond, Nussbaum and others are misinterpreting the Stoics, I will show the Stoics emphasized affection and concern for other people. Their emphasis on affection demonstrates the inappropriateness of charging them with self-absorption or cutting off ties to other people. Second, I will look at part of the passage that Almond deleted as that adds a significant detail to what Epictetus was saying. Then I will show how the Stoics maintain that our closest relationship is with God and follow Brad Inwood’s analysis which claims that at the basis of Epictetus and the Stoics’ attitude to emotional bonds is their doctrine of reservation. Finally, I will present evidence showing that extensive modern research into happiness extols the Stoic way of dealing with emotional bonds as the one that is most conducive to happiness.
Far from being self-absorbed, the Stoics heavily emphasized the importance of affection. For the Stoics thought that affection is natural and implanted in us by a beneficent god. We are by nature constituted to be affectionate and that is good.[65] Cicero emphasized this point very strongly when he said of the Stoics:
They think that it is important to understand that nature engenders parents’ love for their children….Hence it follows that mutual attraction between men is something natural….We are therefore by nature suited to form unions, societies and states.[66]
Echoing Cicero, Hierocles says: “The appropriate disposition relative to oneself is benevolence, while that to one’s kindred is affection.”[67] Epictetus agreed with Cicero and Hierocles: “for I aught not to be free from affects like a statue, but I ought to maintain the relations natural and acquired, as a pious man, as a son, as a father, as a citizen.”[68] Epictetus maintained this position because “all things are full of friendship, first of the gods, and then of men who by nature are made to be of one family.”[69] As I will show below, the Stoics thought we were so akin, we were closer than a family; we were one body. Thus as we are so closely related to one another, self-absorption is impossible and affection is our natural state.
Besides maintaining that affection is naturally implanted in us, in an important passage Epictetus maintains that affection is equally with reason the criterion of determining what is according to nature.[70] This is vitally important to understanding the importance of affection to the Stoics because the basis of their theory was acting according to nature. Thus the criterion of what is according to nature has a fundamental importance in the Stoics’ whole system. In this important passage Epictetus is discussing with someone the criterion of deciding which things are in accord with nature. Epictetus asks:
Does affection to those of your family appear to you to be according to nature and to be good? ‘Certainly.’ Well, is such affection natural and good, and is a thing consistent with reason not good? ‘By no means.’ Is then that which is consistent with reason in contradiction with affection? ‘I think not.’ You are right, for if it is otherwise, it is necessary that one of the contradictions being according to nature, the other must be contrary to nature. Is it not so? ‘It is,’ he said. Whatever, then, we shall discover to be at the same time affectionate and consistent with reason, this we confidently declare to be good.[71]
This passage shows that for the Stoics the important criterion of deciding what is according to nature is decided by what is affectionate as well as what is according to reason. So clearly the Stoics do not eradicate affection and live in reason alone.
Moreover, the Stoics criticized the Epicureans whom they said doubted affection was a natural tendency implanted in us by a beneficent nature. Because of their defense of affection as natural, the Stoics were disgusted by Epicurus saying that we should not bring up our children.[72] Epictetus also accuses Epicurus of trying to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind by maintaining positions such as: “‘Be not deceived, men, nor be led astray, nor be mistaken: there is no natural fellowship among rational animals.’”[73] Epictetus castigates this opinion of Epicurus and says the natural fellowship of men “is the strongest thing in men, nature.”[74]
The above evidence shows that the Stoics emphasized affection and the naturalness of being affectionate. In the Epictetus passage that Almond quoted, Epictetus is not advocating being unaffectionate but something different and much more interesting. Almond misinterprets what Epictetus is advocating because she does not understand the importance to the Stoics of following God’s will.
The first step in understanding Epictetus’ point is to take a closer look at the passage that Almond quoted. For Almond cut out a small, but very significant portion of the passage. The middle of the quoted passage reads: “if you kiss your child, your brother, your friend, never allow your fancy free rein, nor your exuberant spirits to go as far as they like, but hold them back, stop them…remind yourself that the object of your love is mortal.” The part of Epictetus’ passage that Almond omits is significant for it gives the passage a much different slant and reveals Epictetus’ true message. Italicizing the omitted words, the passage reads: “if you kiss your child, your brother, your friend, never allow your fancy free rein, nor your exuberant spirits to go as far as they like, but hold them back, stop them as those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal; remind yourself that the object of your love is mortal.” The omitted part of the passage refers to the Roman practice of having a slave whispering in the general’s ear that he is also mortal as the general celebrated his victory in a triumphal march through Rome. This reminds the general that while he is being feted now for his great victories, he should not get carried away with the moment and get a swelled head as this victory will not last forever. This reminds the general that he should curb his elation somewhat as life is not always going to be one triumphant march in which he is cheered by all.
Epictetus in this passage is thus making an interesting comparison; he is saying that being with friends or children is comparable to being in a great triumphal march. This linkage of being with a friend or child to a triumphal march shows how much Epictetus valued emotional attachment. His main message is that when life is going wonderfully, as in triumphal marches or when we are with our loved ones, we have to remind ourselves that our life might not always be so wonderful; in fact it probably will not always be so wonderful. He was not advocating cutting off our emotionally bonds, but reminding people that triumphs and emotional bonds are often temporary and we have to realize this in order to be able to deal with their possible loss.
The Stoic theory of reservation
To fully explain passages like the one from Epictetus, it is necessary to understand the Stoic theory of reservation. To understand that position it is necessary to realize that the Stoics maintained that following God and doing God’s work is the most important thing for achieving happiness. A. A. Long calls this the theocratic postulate[75] and it is essential to Stoic ethical theory as the Stoics maintained that following God was the most important thing in life. For them “the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe.”[76] So the Stoic claims to be happy when he is doing the will of God and his individual will is harmonized with the universal will. In the same section as the passage Almond quoted, Epictetus also said: “Wherefore the wise and good man, remembering who he is and whence he came, and by whom he was produced, is attentive only to this, how he may fill his place with due regularity and obedience to God…in the place of all other delights substitute this, that of being conscious that you are obeying God.”[77] God is so important that Epictetus maintained that the only way to happiness is to do what God wants you to do.[78]
This emphasis on obeying the will of God is at the foundation of the Stoic theory of reservation. Reservation (hupexairesis) is a Stoic term which explains how a person can deal with things that are not in his power.[79] Brad Inwood demonstrates that as a result of the Stoics’ desire to harmonize their individual will with the universal will, they developed this theory of reservation.[80] Because the Stoics always wanted to do the will of God, for the Stoic it “is his duty to adapt himself to this cosmos, to want events to occur as they in fact will.”[81] While the Stoics desire that their individual will be aligned with the will of Zeus, the problem is that she cannot know in advance all the time what the will of Zeus really is.[82] So the Stoics advocate that a person act with reservation in all that he does. This means that a person will try to do something as long as nothing interferes. So instead of assenting to “it is fitting for me to be healthy,” one assents to “it is fitting to be healthy unless Zeus wants otherwise.”[83] The person who is acting with reservation maintains that what she wants to do will be the best thing to do as long as this is what God also wants her to do. Because a Stoic acts always with this mental reservation, she can never be out of tune with the larger will of Zeus or be frustrated.[84]
These acts of reservation are at the center of the way the Stoics deal with their affectionate ties. For in the passage Almond quoted above, Epictetus is not advocating the lessening of affection for children or trying to deaden himself to life and the ties that bind. Instead he is reminding his listeners that sometimes God has only given them children for a certain time. In this way, if their children die, Epictetus’ listeners will be able to deal with the tragedy by understanding that emotional loss is part of life. By realizing that certain things are only given to us at certain times, we can deal with their loss better. So, just as most people can accept that they do not have figs in the winter time and do not curse fate for that, people should realize that our children and friends are not always around and we have to accept their loss without cursing God. By accepting the natural limitations of our life, we accept our situation and make the best of it and without wasting energy on what cannot be changed. This illustrates “the approach to life characterized by reservation and exemplifying how it makes accommodation to fate possible.”[85] It is important to stress that this emphasis on the possibility of setbacks still allows for determined efforts to meet one’s proper goals. Nevertheless, in a life filled with uncertainty, a person needs to carry out her plans with a mental reservation that if God does not want her plans to work out, her happiness is best served if she accepts that. “In this way one may attain the smooth flow of life which is characterized by consistency with oneself and the will of Zeus.”[86]
Modern research on Happiness
While the Stoic attitude is not an indication of lack of affection, Gisela Striker finds the Stoic attitude towards accomplishing God’s will to be strange:
It is disconcerting to be told that the wise person will indeed love her friends…but not to the extent of being distressed if one of them dies, or longing for them when they are absent, or being pleased upon seeing them again (cf. Cic Tusc. 4.72. Sen. Epp. 9 passim, 59.1-4). It is no comfort either to think that this virtuous person will risk her life to save a drowning child, but that she will not be sad or disappointed if she fails, being contented with the reassuring knowledge that what she did, and also what happened, was in accordance with nature.[87]
While the Stoic approach may be different from the typical modern way of dealing with life, nevertheless it does not conflict with happiness as it is conceived in the subjectivist conception of happiness. For extensive modern research into what kind of people feel the most positively about their life and report themselves as feeling happy supports the Stoic approach as the best way to ensure happiness in the subjective conception of it.[88] Mihaly Csikzentmahalyi has spent the last twenty-five years studying thousands of people in all walks of life throughout the world.[89] From these studies, Csikzentmahalyi concludes that the key to a person’s happiness is the ability to overcome the negative external things that are happening to us by focusing our awareness on ways we can create enjoyment for ourselves. Csikzentmahalyi discovered that happy people do not bemoan what fate has given them, but have the “ability to find rewards in the events of each moment.”[90] No matter how negative the external situation may be, happy people know how to find a response to the situation that allows them to find a way to derive enjoyment from the situation. Csikzentmahalyi says that happy people are the ones that overlook the negative features of a situation by controlling their consciousness and focusing their awareness on something else. In this way, happy people find something enjoyable in any negative situation including being imprisoned or being in a concentration camp.
Csikzentmahalyi often sounds exactly like the Stoics, for example when he says: “A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening ‘outside,’ just by changing the contents of his consciousness.”[91] He approvingly quotes Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius as they understood how to be happy: “‘If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.’”[92] Furthermore, he praises the Stoics as understanding how to control their awareness and thus knowing how to be happy: “This simple truth- that the control of consciousness determines the quality of life…was developed by the Stoic philosophers in classical antiquity.”[93]
The Stoics and modern research into happiness both maintain that the best way of dealing with troubles is to change your judgment of them and find a way to make yourself happy by focusing your awareness somewhere else. In a terrible situation, the most important trait to maintain a happy life is the ability to persevere despite obstacles. Csikzentmahalyi says to “develop this trait, one must find ways to order consciousness to be in control of feelings and thoughts.”[94] This is exactly what the Stoics were advising for dealing with difficult situations such as a friend dying. The Stoics thought that one had to persevere through troubled times by being in control of one’s thoughts and feelings. So instead of dwelling on the emotional loss of a friend, one had to focus on the idea that God was in charge of all that happened and be content because it was all for the best. So the Stoic sage would try to save a drowning child but would be content if the child drowned as that is what is for the best.
This approach is disconcerting to Striker, but extensive modern research into what kind of people report that they feel happy supports this approach as the best way to be happy. Csikzentmahalyi’s research supports the Stoics when they call for focusing our attention not on what we have lost (a friend or child) or what we have failed to do (save a drowning child) but in investing our energy in something else. Csikzentmihalyi says: “The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used…because attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness….we create ourselves by how we invest this energy…hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”[95] Just as it was wrong to dismiss the Stoics because they said the sage could be happy while tortured, it is wrong to dismiss the Stoics because of the way they deal with the emotions and emotional ties. Because the Stoics advocate focusing our awareness on life’s positive things, the most extensive modern research into happiness supports the Stoic approach to emotions as a very effective way to become happy.
Nevertheless, this research is not enough to show that the Stoics are happy on all conceptions of happiness. For Csikzentmihalyi’s conception of happiness is an extreme subjectivist one and his research supports only that conception of happiness. Csikzentmihalyi says that life really is meaningless because there is no meaning built into the fabric of nature.[96] Instead he says each individual gives his own life meaning by choosing a goal and working towards that goal. From the individual point of view “it does not matter what the ultimate goal is- provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy.” For this reason Csikzentmihalyi says the goal can be to cure cancer, to raise children or “the desire to have the best beer-bottle collection in the neighborhood.”[97] He says that any goal will serve equally well in helping people reach happiness as long as the goal provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and helps one concentrate on reaching one’s goal.[98]
Csikzentmihalyi assumes the extreme subjectivist conception of happiness as the happy person does not have to be actually reaching his goal. Furthermore the goal can be a totally trivial one such as collecting beer bottles. Most distressing of all, Csikzentmihalyi is also explicit that the goal does not have to be a morally good one. Criminals, warriors, and cruel people like the Marquis de Sade can all be very happy on his conception of happiness while they do horribly cruel things.[99]
Csikzentmihalyi is making someone’s felt personal experience the only element of happiness. This is not the Stoics’ conception of happiness. The Stoics agree with Lynne McFall that happiness is a comprehensive good which is sufficient for realizing the good life.[100] Furthermore the Stoics are objectivists about value because they think value is grounded in the nature of the cosmos and man. They would not agree that someone who was satisfied with their life but was deluded or pursuing a trivial or vicious goal was happy. For them, only someone who was really virtuous could be happy and someone could only be virtuous if they were following nature and obeying the will of God by doing their part in the cosmic whole.
Happiness and God
The Stoics say their relationship with God is at the center of their ethical theory and they say that the reason they deal with their emotions well is because they place something else ahead of affection towards children or friends: their tie with God. For the Stoics think we all have a more intimate relationship with the good or cosmic reason than with our country, our friends or with the members of our family; our most intimate relationship is with the good as “nothing is more akin to us than the good.”[101]2 As Epictetus says: “the good is preferred to every intimate relationship.”[102] Epictetus also praises Socrates for loving his children but doing it in a way that puts God first. “Did not Socrates love his own children? He did; but it was as a free man, as one who remembered that he must first be a friend to the gods. For this reason he violated nothing which was becoming to a good man.”[103] Notice that this is not the language of pure reason or law, but emphasizing that we are “akin” to the good and a “friend to the gods.” The Stoics think with have a bond with the good or God that is more intimate than our bond with other people. Stoicism is not fundamentally a philosophy based on reason and the law as some have maintained, but a philosophy based on our deep bond and intimate relationship with God in which we are all united into one. Far from being an ethics of implacable law as MacIntyre maintains,[104] Stoicism is very much one of relationship, but it considers our primary relationship to be with God or the cosmic logos.
The Stoics think we are all connected into one Whole; as Seneca writes: “we are all parts of one great body.”[105] Epictetus also advances a similar position when he thinks individual people are like a foot or a hand to the body which is God.[106] Epictetus also says “Our souls are so bound up and in contact with God as parts of Him and portions of Him.”[107]
This bond with the whole is very important for the Stoics and their claim that they are happy. For they continually maintain that as they are part of this larger whole, they naturally wish to work for the welfare of the whole.[108] Epictetus thinks because people are like a foot or a hand to the body, we should act for the good of the whole and desire nothing but the good of the whole.[109] While other Stoics advance this position, Marcus Aurelius emphasizes this point the most: “I am part of the whole…If I remember this, then insofar as I am a part, I shall not be vexed by anything allotted to me by the whole. Nothing which benefits the whole is harmful to the part…Thus insofar as I remember that I am part of a whole of this sort, I shall be content with whatever happens.”[110] Because we stand to the universe as part to whole, or as foot to body, “the good of the part is determined by the good of the whole, and both our moral duty and our psychological well-being are fixed by our particular status as parts of the stupendous whole.”[111]
The Stoics claim that he who rejects God’s plan is “profoundly unhappy, because he will be fundamentally at variance with his own nature, with the divine Logos which gives him life.”[112] On the other hand, we become happy by being related to the whole and doing our part in it.[113]
There are three questions that need to be asked about the Stoic position. First, is it true? Are we part of this cosmic whole as they maintain? Secondly, if the Stoic position is true, how do the Stoics explain the way we realize that we are part of this cosmic whole? Finally, are our individual interests so linked to the cosmic whole that our happiness is governed by doing our part in the whole?
Cosmic Whole and Gaia
First, I think the Stoics are right that we are part of a cosmic whole; we are cells in a larger organism. I take this because I have had what is best described as a mystical vision of the nature of the cosmos. Mystical visions once carried lots of weight in Western culture and many people have had mystical visions like mine. Nevertheless, mystical visions are by their very nature private affairs and in seventeenth century science embraced the public and mutually corroborated experimental method as a necessary aspect of truth. The interesting point is that current science might support the Stoics’ position that we are part of a larger organism.
The most important scientific interest supporting the Stoics’ position goes under the name of the Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis was developed by NASA scientist James Lovelock. Lovelock was part of a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory assigned by NASA to explore if there was life on Mars.[114] As part of that work, he developed the Gaia hypothesis which basically treats the Earth as one living organism. “The most prominent theory about a living Earth is the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis….Put simply, the Gaia hypothesis postulates that the Earth’s biosphere (that band of air, land, and water that contains life) acts as a superorganism with the ability to regulate environmental conditions to sustain itself, in much the same way that the human body’s homeostatic processes maintain the body’s water content, temperature, and so on, at a relatively constant state (homeostasis) to keep the superorganism of the whole body alive. The Earth is one big body, according to Gaia.”[115] Theodore Roszak remarks that with the Gaia hypothesis Plato’s world soul is returning to western consciousness and the “anima mundi was being reborn.”[116]
The Gaia hypothesis is not in the realm of philosophy but in the realm of science. Indeed it is treated very seriously by many scientists and is currently being investigated as a scientific hypothesis. In March 1988, there was a week long American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference on the hypothesis. The conference brought together many biologists, chemists, geologists, geophysicists, and atmospheric scientists, and the conference’s papers were published in a large book which weighed over three pounds.[117] The magazine Skeptical Inquirer, noted for its attacks on the New Age movement which it identifies with Shirley MacLaine and crystals, endorses the Gaia hypothesis: “Gaia, both as scientific theory and as environmental philosophy, is valuable in its own right, too valuable to be unjustly tainted by association with the New Age.”[118]
If the Gaia hypothesis is correct, science will be leading us to a much different conception of human nature. For “if the Gaia hypothesis is correct, we shall have to admit that we exist in this planet rather than on it.”[119] Humans will have to realize that are part of a larger whole with interests of its own instead of just living on dead matter.
While the Gaia hypothesis is not the same as the Stoics’ God who is an organism that we are cells of, it is certainly a step in that direction. Thus scientific proof of the Gaia hypothesis would lend more credibility to the Stoics’ view of God. For if the Earth is a larger organism and we are part of it like cells in a body as the Gaia hypothesis maintains, that is a major step towards saying that the whole cosmos is an organism and we are cells in that.
Nor is the Gaia hypothesis the only scientific research that seems to support the Stoic vision of the cosmos. Carolyn Merchant, a feminist historian of science, claims that many modern scientific developments show that our culture is moving past the mechanistic paradigm and towards seeing the universe as an organism.[120] She points most prominently at many quantum physicists who maintain that mechanistic science with its view of matter as divisible into parts which are moved by external forces is giving way to a view which stresses the primacy of process with contextual dependency. In quantum physics, instead of starting with parts, we need to start “with undivided, multidimensional wholeness (a flow of energy called the holomovement” with parts derived from this wholeness.[121] Physicist F. David Peat says of the quantum theories of John Bell and David Bohm “that nature does not fit the old billiard ball model but ought to be known as a wholly interconnected organism.”[122]
Other scientists agree that current science no longer supports the mechanistic world view, but is moving toward a view that supports the Stoics’ position. Modern science “suggests that the universe is not a dead thing, composed of separate parts in mechanical interaction: rather, it is organic.”[123] Another scientist says: “The new concept of reality emerging in the avant-garde sciences is that the cosmos is an integrated and self-energizing system- a totality that creates itself….Throughout the new natural sciences, the understanding of the whole has become the precondition of understanding the part.”[124]
The most interesting point is that modern science not only seems to be supporting the Stoic view that the cosmos is an organism, but even the Stoic view that it dies and is reborn. As one scientist says: “The vision of the cosmos emerging from these theories is that of a cyclically self-renewing, self-organizing whole….If the newest cosmologies are basically sound accounts of the nature of the cosmos, the observed and observable world emerges periodically from an enduring sea of potential energies.”[125]
At this moment in time it is not clear whether modern science will confirm the Stoic position. But it is taking major steps towards that position. The Stoic claim that we are part of a larger organism could indeed be proven by science to be the correct conception of the nature of the cosmos. At the very least, the modern assumption that we inhabit a mechanistic universe is not obviously true anymore.
Despite the fact that modern science is moving in a way that is at least sympathetic if not very supportive of the Stoic claims to be connected to a larger whole, few philosophers have taken this position seriously and analyzed it. Jonathan Barnes does and he