Stoicism on Emotions
(A dialogue about quotes from How to Think Like a Roman Emperor):
Adam (A): So Gellius expected the stoic to be totally calm during the storm, or at least significantly calmer than the other passengers (in a manner beyond just remaining silent instead of crying and lamenting).
Bob (B): Yes. Continuing the quote:
A: This makes some sense but I don’t think I agree with all of it. I think the way that animals deal with situations is through some kind of programming (e.g. maybe their programming tells them to flee if there is a sufficiently loud noise or big physical vibration or something) and that that is fundamentally different than how humans form impressions of situations. A human’s immediate reaction is always connected to some kind of value judgment, though it’s a very automated judgment that one hasn’t necessarily thought through very well. But like, with the example of hearing thunder, one could imagine a positive reaction from a scientist who has been waiting many days to conduct an experiment which requires lightning, or from a farmer who takes the thunder to indicate a coming rain and the end of a drought. On the other hand, one could imagine people having joyous reactions to horrific events, like the 9/11 attack or their child becoming a suicide bomber and murdering people, and I’ve seen examples of that sort of thing in real life.
B: Those are good examples, and I agree that the way people form and have even their immediate emotional reactions is different than what happens with an animal. Nonetheless, I think there is wisdom here. I think that we can draw a distinction between the level of control one has over an immediate emotional reaction and over a more sustained emotional reaction over time. The control you have over your immediate emotional reactions is very indirect. They are the result of the ideas you’ve picked up in the culture, and you can change them, but such change may require introspecting and changing a bunch of your ideas in a thorough way over a long period of time. So it is possible to do, but it is something that I think most people would find a challenge. However, I think the point of the Stoic analysis here is to distinguish the first stage of emotional reactions from the second stage. I’ll let the book lay out a bit more of that analysis before commenting further:
In the second stage of our response, the Stoics say, we typically add voluntary judgments of “assent” (sunkatatheseis) to these automatic impressions. Here the Stoic wise man’s response differs from that of the majority of people. He does not go along with the initial emotional reactions to a situation that have invaded his mind. Epictetus says the Stoic should neither assent to nor confirm these emerging impressions, such as anxiety in the face of danger. Rather, he rejects them as misleading, views them with studied indifference, and lets go of them. By contrast, the unwise are carried away by their initial impression of external events—including those that are terrible and to be feared—and continue to worry, ruminate, and even complain aloud about a perceived threat.
A: So it sounds like the stoic wise person questions and rejects the initial impressions. Does he necessarily reject them? Maybe they make sense. Like if you see 9/11 happening, and your reaction is, wow that’s horrible — well, isn’t it actually horrible?
B: I think the thing to focus on here is the behavior and attitude one takes to the situation. I think it will help to keep in mind that there is a distinction between one’s evaluation or judgment about a situation and one’s emotional reaction. So maybe focusing on that point will help with understanding. So, consider an extreme case like 9/11. You initially see it happening. You, understandably, have a horrified emotional reaction. Okay. So then the question is: now what? Are you going to stay focused on that emotional reaction? Or is there something you can do? What you can do might vary tremendously based on your situation, but there might be some actual action that you can take to try to help the people dealing with this tragedy. You won’t take whatever action that might be, however, if you are in agony because of getting carried away with your initial emotional reaction. Note that I’m not saying you should repress your understandable emotional reaction. But, don’t wallow in it. Feel it, but don’t become it. Take a moment — or 5 — but then move on.
Because people experience a judgment of something (e.g. thinking “X is bad”) and an emotional reaction to it (e.g. feeling bad about X) roughly simultaneously, I think that they get the two confused. But they are not the same. Putting a negative emotional reaction aside so that you can take some action does not mean that you judge what happened to be fine or okay. Your judgment and your emotional reaction are two separate things. They are related, but they are separate. Viewing your emotional reaction with “studied indifference” does not mean viewing the morality of things happening in the world with studied indifference.
A: But why then does the book say:
Epictetus says the Stoic should neither assent to nor confirm these emerging impressions, such as anxiety in the face of danger. Rather, he rejects them as misleading, views them with studied indifference, and lets go of them.”
Saying that the emotional reaction is misleading seems to be saying that the emotional reaction is wrong.
B: I think the example there matters a lot. Suppose you see a bear in the woods. You become anxious. Does that anxiety help you? If you are feeling afraid and don’t move because of the fear, you might be killed like a deer in the headlights. If you use your emotional reaction as a guide to action, you might freeze and get mauled to death. So that is a sense in which the emotional reaction is misleading — it is misleading as a guide for what you should do. It is not misleading in the sense of being some sort of indicator that bears are a potential problem for you — that part is obviously correct.
Imagine if the two stages of reaction to something were represented by two different people within you. The first person will represent the initial emotional reaction. So that first person is very emotional, and says something like:
“There is a BEAR here! A BEAR! A BIG SCARY BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS GOING TO EAT US AAAAHHHHH A BEAR!”
For a non-stoic, they will often let their second-stage person go along with the reaction of the first person. So then you have TWO people shouting “OMG A BEAR A BEAR!” And that’s not very productive.
But in the case of a Stoic, you get a different reaction from the second “person”. The Stoic hears out the initial emotional reaction from the first person, gets what information it can from it, and then says “noted” and tries to proceed in a rational manner. So the Stoic’s second “person” basically acts as a circuit breaker for what could have been a cascade of negative emotional reactions.
A: Interesting.
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B: I wanted to say something regarding this bit: “In the second stage of our response, the Stoics say, we typically add voluntary judgments of “assent” (sunkatatheseis) to these automatic impressions.” Building on what I said eariler, I don’t think that the initial judgments are totally automatic in the same way that an animals “judgments” are totally automatic. However, I do think that your more considered/thoughtful reaction is more voluntary. You have more control over that. You might imagine a spectrum. Your automatic, immediate reactions are theoretically possible to control, but they are the hardest to change; however, the more time passes from the initial incident that caused your initial reaction, the more control you have over your emotional state, and the more responsibility you have for what you feel. It’s understandable that you might have some immediate emotional reaction in the moment. If you’re still bothered by something 3 days later, though, then that’s much more of a choice that’s on you. Emotions don’t sustain themselves — you need to keep them going, like a fire. This is empowering, because it means that if you’ve been agitated by something, you can just choose to stop feeding that particular fire.