Dear Fellow Proficientes,
In my experience, a number of people are positively turned off when they come across this sort of passage from Epictetus:
“When faced with anything you find attractive, useful, or lovable, remember to tell yourself what kind of thing it is. Start with the least important things. If it’s a jug you like, say, ‘I like a jug,’ because then you won’t be upset if it gets broken. If you kiss a child of yours or your wife, tell yourself that you’re kissing a human being, because then you won’t be upset if they die.” (Enchiridion, 3)
Critics point to this and other places in both the Discourses and the Enchiridion to conclude that Stoicism is an unnatural philosophy that counsels the suppression of emotions and the cultivation of an unfeeling attitude (despite Epictetus himself explicitly rejecting the latter, in Discourses 3.2.4).
Modern defenders of Stoicism typically put forth the following explanations (or are they excuses?):
(i) It was common, at the time, for children, or people in general, to die, so Epictetus is telling people to get mentally ready for something that is likely to happen in the course of their life.
(ii) What Epictetus is saying stems logically from the Stoic notion of providence, which in turn derives from their conception of the cosmos as a living organism endowed with the logos. If fate is providential, then amor fati.
I find (i) untenable, as it simply doesn’t follow that just because X is common we ought therefore to cultivate an unfeeling attitude about X.
By contrast, I think (ii) is the right answer, as shown, for instance, by Epictetus’s use of the “foot in the mud” metaphor (Discourses 2.5.24), where he says that we are like a foot who may need to step into the mud. If we think of it just from the point of view of the foot, we recoil because the mud is disgusting and unpleasant. But if we remember that we are part of a body, and that it is the whole point of being a foot to be able to help the body cross the path, whether muddy or not, then not only we will accept our fate, we will embrace it.
The problem is that, so far as I can tell as a 21st century scientist, the cosmos is not a living organism endowed with reason, which means we are not its functional parts (although we are “parts” of a sort). Which in turn means no providence. So it makes no sense for me to embrace the fact that a loved one died.
What still does make sense, though, is for me to both accept and endure such a loss, on the grounds that death is a natural and inevitable thing for living beings, and that it is reasonable to prepare oneself mentally for what is inevitable.
Vale,
Massimo
