A brief account of the Stoic view of the passions from Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire
Part I: The Stoic soul, the passions, and arguments for their removal
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Stoicism: A Philosophy of Life
Stoicism is fundamentally a self-cultivation philosophy. It requires that its adherents believe in a certain set of truths about the world, the self, and about how the self ought to interact with the world (it espouses a normative ethical theory).
The defining feature of self-cultivation philosophies is the notion that, the lives which are lived without the aid of this specific philosophy are, somehow, incomplete. This fundamental lack can be abetted by a sort of therapy, which is administered through the acceptance of, and adherence to, its particular teaching. This is fitting, given how these philosophies are often described, as being analogous to medicine and medical practice.
For the Stoics, therapy begins in the acceptance of two fundamental propositions:
(1) that virtue is the only good (though virtue in Stoicism is immensely complex, suffice it to say something like, “the proper use of one’s reason in accordance with prescriptive values and descriptive facts about the world.”I take this in the sense meaning moral, that virtue is the only moral good), and that
(2) to obtain virtue and tranquility one must excise from the soul of what are called passions (what we would refer to in contemporary language as the emotions).
The cognitive element of the passions: Emotions are Thoughts
The Stoics adhered to a monopartite view of the soul, as developed by the Stoic Chrysippus, recognizing only the rational part, and so any irrational entities (i.e. that which is not reason, such as the passions), were characterized as elements of this part.
The irrational elements in the soul, such as the passions, fell under the jurisdiction of the same part which produces practical reasoning, the part which discerns and makes judgements concerning the world.
Passions, then, as portrayed by the Stoic Chrysippus, are, fundamentally, evaluative judgements about the world, e.g., “X is good.” / “Y is bad.”
They are manifest as psycho-physiological states, such as joy or anxiety, being jointly, thejudgements which colour situation (i.e. the thought, “this thing is good or bad.”), the comprehensions (i.e. complete assent to a situation; latching onto the thought and “running with it”, so to speak) which inform these states, and the physical states themselves (the physical sensation associated with them, ). Necessary to understanding their nature, however, is this notion of complete assent.
A template for the passions: Grief
The passion of grief, for example, which is associated with the loss of such highly-prized externals such as friends and family, is a good template for how passion is to be understood.
Nussbaum uses the death of a lover as an example.
The death is first heard of, but not entirely comprehended, or,assented to. There is, momentarily, a lapse between the news being heard and being understood, where the news is being processed without having been fully realized.
At the moment of realization, once the news (the impression) is assented to (once one says, “He/she is dead, and I’ve lost them”), the passion comes into being, manifest as a physical sensation (a total physical upheaval) and mental contortion (a total mental upheaval).
In this way, the passions are defined by their inherently cognitive nature, in being and affecting everything of a cognitive nature; in this case, the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and memories associated with a lover. To be in the grips of passion is to be so, in the Stoic conception, entirely, or with the entirety of one’s being.
Additionally, passions are not only momentary experiences, but can also be entrenched dispositions, or long-standing thought processes, which are likewise based on value systems – such as thinking that money is extremely important, or passionate love.
Three arguments for why we should extirpate the passions
To admit that they should be, admits that they can be, and this is indicated by the fact that the passions are “beliefs, and not organic parts of our innate constitution”. All one need do is change one’s beliefs. The question, then, is why this is necessary, and this necessity lies at the crux of three arguments:
(i) that the passions are based on false beliefs,
(ii) that virtue (and not passion) is sufficient for action, and that
(iii) the passions are harmful.
The firstargument is based on Stoic value theory, which posits that only virtue possesses intrinsic (moral) worth, and thus everything else, being external to virtue (and oneself), is indifferent.
The secondargument follows from the first, in that it claims that virtue and its accompanying moral impetus is enough to stimulate the sage to action, the opposing claim being that, without passion, one is without drive to be virtuous.
The third, being the most intuitive of the three, is that the passions are harmful, in that they are able to totally uproot one, and are felt as “violent pains and upheavals of the organism“.
This healing of the self, the removal of the passions, is achieved through a process of argument(through teaching), meditationand self-scrutiny, whereby one changes one’s views through re-orienting them (i.e. re-focusing on what is within one’s control, virtue).
Apatheia and the “good passions”
Once the passions have been extirpated from one’s soul, which is accomplished through this aforementioned self-restructuring, one will be apathes, or devoid of passion.
This, however, is somewhat untrue, as the self will retain some residue of the passions, the “shadows”, or the “scars” – the more automatic responses of the human body (e.g .pain).One, however, will not be totally unresponsive, in that one will still have three responsive states ( eupatheiai) : joy, rational wish, and prudent caution.
Joy is characterized by rational uplift, which can be described as a certain pleasant levity which comes with feeling in control; rational wish is proper desire with respect to future events (as opposed to anxiety); prudent cautionis proper action in accordance with future negative things (as opposed to fear).
Though the sage is qualified by these states, it must be recalled that the extirpation of the passions leaves one, so to speak, an entirely different person, both in personality and in action.
This radical change is in itself a kind of upheaval. The passions, though extirpated, remain as shadows or scars, and these states, as mildly pleasant as they are, take their place.
References
- Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).