Stoicism

You either have passion or reason. This was the core teaching of the Stoics, as I see it, and it was fundamentally right.

I have believed this for a while; and so it was that, in one of my earliest posts, a haphazard treatment of the passions,[1] I spoke of each passion in connection with an intellectual mistake to which I thought it was wont to lead, and ended the post by describing some mistakes which I thought arose from them in combination. It was at that time that I noticed that all mistakes arise from passion, and I was trying to trace them all to their source. Were we unburdened by flesh, we should never err.

Of course, without the body, we should never judge at all about apparent things. If we understand anything through appearances, this is partly because appearances are not all wrong. But all mistakes arise from them, and no truth comes truly from them, but rather from the forms, which are understood rather than sensed. It happens that most appearances are in accordance with understanding; but no reasoning being is authorized, by the natural law, to follow them. “Do not believe the Devil, even when he speaks the truth.”[2]

Most particularly, when Thomas Aquinas spoke of the passions in the narrow sense, he defended the conclusion that they are not all morally evil on these exact grounds. I quote at length:

On this question the opinion of the Stoics differed from that of the Peripatetics: for the Stoics held that all passions are evil, while the Peripatetics maintained that moderate passions are good. This difference, although it appears great in words, is nevertheless, in reality, none at all, or but little, if we consider the intent of either school. For the Stoics did not discern between sense and intellect; and consequently neither between the intellectual and sensitive appetite. Hence they did not discriminate the passions of the soul from the movements of the will, in so far as the passions of the soul are in the sensitive appetite, while the simple movements of the will are in the intellectual appetite: but every rational movement of the appetitive part they call will, while they called passion, a movement that exceeds the limits of reason. Wherefore Cicero, following their opinion, calls all passions “diseases of the soul”: whence he argues that “those who are diseased are unsound; and those who are unsound are wanting in sense.” Hence we speak of those who are wanting in sense of being “unsound.”

On the other hand, the Peripatetics give the name of “passions” to all the movements of the sensitive appetite. Wherefore they esteem them good, when they are controlled by reason; and evil when they are not controlled by reason. Hence it is evident that Cicero was wrong in disapproving of the Peripatetic theory of a mean in the passions, when he says that “every evil, though moderate, should be shunned; for, just as a body, though it be moderately ailing, is not sound; so, this mean in the diseases or passions of the soul, is not sound.” For passions are not called “diseases” or “disturbances” of the soul, save when they are not controlled by reason.

As Thomas notes, both schools had the same fundamental opinion, which is that sensitive movements are only good when controlled by reason. And as a matter of philosophical distinctions, I follow Thomas’s divisions and wordings on this point; passions may sometimes be controlled by reason, and in that case, they are not morally evil. There are good passions, and strictly speaking, you may have passion with reason. I have spoken in these same terms in my own post on moral psychology. They are the clearest, when speaking technically.

The Stoic terminology, however, is more closely in accordance with a common way of speech. For we do not say that an action was moved by passion, except when it produces apparent movements in the actor which may be ascribed, by an observer, to passion. But if such movements were in accordance with reason, they could not be so ascribed.

Passion is only in accordance with reason when it has been examined by reason and is strictly in accordance with it, and therefore, leads to an action which is exactly the same as that to which reason would lead, by itself, in the first place. Insofar as a man is visibly passionate, he sinks into his animal nature, and acts irrationally. Just as no display of emotion is admissible in philosophical speech, no display of emotion is admissible in rational action, generally. A man that visibly acts from emotion is following an unexamined sensitive desire, which is immoral.

I say all of this without departing one inch from the doctrine that I quoted from Thomas, that passions are not immoral in themselves, but may be controlled by reason and so be good. It is only a clearer and more qualified way to say it. And it is more clearly expressed, to the common man, by using the Stoic terminology: you either have passion or reason. Which all understand, correctly, to mean: insofar as you show emotion, you are irrational, and therefore immoral.

Using Thomas’s wording to the common man obscures this. People start thinking that showing emotion is moral and right, as long as the emotion is, to some extent, in accordance with its object. And yes, it is definitely and undeniably better to act from sensitive desire for good things, and hatred for evil things, than from the reverse inclinations, which would be disordered. But if you act from those passions, rather than from the reason which sanctions them, and if therefore you are visibly passionate, you have done wrong by your nature, and to that extent, steered away from God.

There are other ways in which I find the Stoic school attractive. Since national and ethnic affiliation seems to me to be a mere passion, Stoic “cosmopolitanism” makes a lot of sense to me. I have also written on my enjoyment of “paradoxes”, which I share with the school. And I am more inclined than average to take seriously such libertarian theses as, “a coerced man is deprived of the opportunity to act morally”,[3] and, “incitement is not a real crime”, which I believe come from a fundamentally Stoic understanding of morality.

Also, I just tend to find the Stoics themselves very enjoyable to read. I have read Seneca’s Letters, and they are awesome; so are Epictetus’s Discourses, insofar as I have read them – only some sections, admittedly. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations are also alright, though they seem overrated nowadays.

Notes

[1] In the beginning of this blog post, I speak of passions in the broad sense, including all bodily movements of which we are aware, and therefore including also the senses, as I did in my old blog post. After quoting Thomas Aquinas, who spoke of them in the narrow sense, I follow that usage. It is only in the narrow sense, of course, that passions can cause actions, at any rate – but even in the broad sense, they can affect judgments.

[2] This saying is said by various Christian writers in relation to the literal Devil, and demons in general. See, for instance, Athanasius’s Life of St. Anthony, §25–26 and §33; the second section of this discourse by John Chrysostom; and Erasmus’s Paraphrase on Mark regarding Mark 1:25 – a footnote to this edition of which attributes similar sayings to the Greek fathers Theophylact, Lyra, and Euthymius.

[3] I have given an answer to this thesis, to some extent, in my post on virtue. It was defended by various authors, and I believe it to be the core premise of the fundamental argument for liberalism – as I had said, rather obliquely, in my old post about my political opinion.

While that old post still shows many similarities with my current opinions on a broad level, I have elected to retract it. It is worth noting, though, that in that post, I had said that “I delight in how unintuitive my opinions are” – much as the SEP, in its article about Stoicism, which I had not read at the time, said that “it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense”. My similarities of personality with the Stoic school run deep, and so it is no wonder that another of my old posts, which is also retracted, was written about what I saw as an Epicurean kind of personality – and which I think I had thought of as opposed to my own, much as the Epicurean school was opposed to the Stoic.

I do not, any longer, find much delight in speaking “paradoxically,” by the way. Back then, I did it mostly so that my opinions would catch people’s attentions, and I could start conversations with them. But not only did that not work very well – since it turns out, disappointingly, that you can often “get away with” saying a lot, and people often only take exception to what you don’t expect them to –, I am also no longer interested in starting conversations with most people. I suppose it is fitting that, while I was new to philosophy, I was eager to argue with everyone, much like Socrates; and I am glad that I did this, since such arguments, when I had them, were often delightful, and a genuine help to my growth as a person and the development of my thoughts. Your mileage may vary, of course.