Loving with reason

Having read the previous entries in this discussion, authored by Massimo, Greg, and Tony, I think we share a common experience of finding other people being definitely put off when encountering the advice Epictetus provides in chapter 3 of the Enchiridion. I’m largely in agreement with them on useful ways to interpret that passage, as well as on matters such as whether Stoics can feel, exhibit, and act upon grief in rational and appropriate ways. So to this conversation, what I’ll add will mainly be the way I generally respond to worries or even repugnance people do express to me when they read that passage.

Before I do that, I’ll point out that a common theme in Epictetus’ works, and indeed in Stoic philosophy more broadly, is identifying where one characteristically goes wrong in reasoning about matters, often following out thought processes that otherwise remain unexamined, implicit, even automatic. Just in the Enchiridion for instance, we see him in chapter 12 suggesting we set aside flawed reasonings (epilogosmous) if we want to make progress. Likewise, in chapter 24, we shouldn’t allow others’ reasonings (dialogismoi) to distress us. There he identifies, examines, and critically assesses those mistaken lines of thinking at considerable length.

In chapter 16, which deals directly with the absence of a loved one another person experiences, he advises us not to be “carried away by the appearance” (phantasia sunarpasēi), and to maintain a correct interpretation of the situation, namely that the person’s judgment or opinion (dogma) is what distresses them. He goes on and says it is fine to sympathize, or more literally, to bear-together (sumperipheresthai) with the other as far as words go, and even to groan with them, just so long as we’re not groaning internally.

Chapter 44 again references logoi, statements or assertions, which do not follow from each other (asunaktoi), but which many people do erroneously connect together in inferences. One prime example is “I am richer than you, so I am superior to you.” Epictetus points out that the proper inference one can draw from “I am richer than you” is just “my property is superior to yours.”  It is this kind of mistake that I think many people fall into when they read Enchiridion 3.

Epictetus says there: “With everything that entertains you, is useful to you, or towards which you feel affection (stergomenōn), remember to say to yourself what kind of thing it is (hopoion estin). … When you kiss (or caress, kataphilēis) your child or wife, that they are a human being that you kiss. Then when they die, you will not be troubled.” I agree with Tony that “being upset” or even “troubled” are too-weak renderings of the term Epictetus uses in this passage, and I also find very plausible Greg’s suggestion that it might be interpreted in terms of refraining from excessive outward behavior.

Where is the mistaken inference here? It’s not spelled out by Epictetus explicitly, but when I identify it in conversation with people bothered (or should we say “upset” and “troubled”?) by the passage, nearly all of them admit they have this in mind. It is the connection between loving or caring about a person, and being troubled (or to use the stronger term Tony suggested, “shattered”) by their death. Many people assume that there is a correlation between the love or affection one has for another person and the feeling of grief one experiences, as well as the outward behavior expressive of that grief one displays. If you don’t feel bad, in fact very bad, when someone dies, this line of reasoning goes, then you didn’t really care about or love them. Likewise if you don’t display genuine grief (or perhaps ostentatiously keep it bottled up inside), then you never really had any affection for them.

Epictetus isn’t saying or assuming anything remotely like that. In fact, he explicitly uses language of love or affection in the passage, both in terms of emotion (feeling affection) and behavior (kissing or caressing). He takes it for granted that the person he gives this advice to does love or feel affection, and wants to display it to others who they are close to. That’s not in question at all for him. So the inference that not being “troubled” means that one detached oneself from that person, chose not to care for them, turned off the affection a humane person would feel, that’s one that is clearly incorrect.

What is definitely being assumed by Epictetus is that one can love another person rightly, reasonably, and deeply without that love, coupled with the loss of them in death, troubling or shattering the one who loves who is now bereft. And we can add that from a Stoic perspective, this would be the better approach to living out one’s life within the fabric of meaningful relationships with others.

To bring this to a close, I will mention that these sorts of mistaken inferences about grief and grieving do come in for discussion from a broadly Stoic perspective in several texts prior to Epictetus’ writings. One of them is book 3 of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, where not only does he critically examine connections people erroneously draw between loving a person and grieving for them inwardly or outwardly, but he also mentions a much earlier philosopher who does precisely what Epictetus counsels. Anaxagoras, hearing of his son’s death, says “I knew I had begotten a mortal” (3.14). The other are Seneca’s letters, both those of consolation that Greg references in his contribution here, and numbers 63 and 99, where he advises keeping the memories of our friends alive within us, not to feel sorrow, but as sources of joy and objects of affection.