Revolt Against Stoicism

Why vitality is preferable

The benefits of Stoicism dominate the modern mental health industry. It is not just Daily Stoic that has gained significant traction on social media, but we see how this mindset has permeated more recent behavioral therapies, like CBT and REBT. Even more so, the modern psychiatric industry is predicated on the idea that negative emotions need to be suppressed through medications that make us more passive but at least our lives more manageable. The message is simple: The problem isn’t with your environment but how you perceive it. Change your perspective, and the environment will change with it. In essence, our emotions are the problem, not what generates them. To quote Marcus Aurelius:

Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.

Stoicism, as it is widely understood, was developed by ancient Greek and Roman philosophers like Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, who explored the benefits of a life predicated on radical acceptance. Stoicism teaches that the ebbs and flows of life should be observed from a metaphysical distance. But the roots of Stoicism are far more ancient, finding expression in Buddhism, which preaches non-attachment to anything outside our consciousness. Buddha said, “Attachment is the root of all suffering.” Stoicism is a Westernised version of this fundamental belief.

Paradoxically, such a philosophy gained popularity among elite classes in ancient Greece and Rome—societies that were anything but Stoic. Ancient Greece was characterized by heroic tragedies, and Rome by aggressive imperialism. Perhaps Stoicism was born because it aimed at offsetting these dramatic and austere ways of life and satisfying the emotional needs of some philosophers and leaders to achieve a harmonic balance that was so alien to the society they inhabited.

Epictetus said:

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things... For freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by proving the desire to be a wrong one.

The Stoics believed that desires were vices and that acquiring virtue meant resistance or dissolution of such desires. The Stoic notion of virtue was specific; it centered around control over one’s emotions—not just control, but, more importantly, non-reaction to our emotions. This philosophy has some value. For instance, when we cannot change our circumstances, radical acceptance allows us to tolerate them more easily. It isn’t hard to see why Stoicism seems attractive on the surface, especially in contemporary society, where we struggle with economic crises, social upheaval, and foreign warfare. Detaching from these turbulent events can offer us a sense of comfort and security.

For this reason, Stoicism is viewed as self-empowering. It can sometimes help us tolerate the intolerable by simply accepting it. However, the opposite could also be argued: it is a philosophy that preaches us to accept the unacceptable while facing life’s challenges passively. Should a slave embrace his condition by changing his view of slavery? By faulting ourselves for negative emotions as nothing more than a poor view of our surroundings, we accept a life that those negative emotions would allow us to overcome if we chose to listen to them. Believe your pain, as the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky once said.

The psychoanalyst Carl Jung was known for critiquing the mass diagnosis of depression as a pathology that needed to be treated. Rather, he saw pain as instrumental to consciousness. He argued,

Depression is not necessarily pathological. It often foreshadows a renewal of the personality or a burst of creative energy.

While Stoicism can be helpful in some temporarily irredeemable circumstances, it is dangerous when applied as an all-encompassing life philosophy that denies the virtue of reaction and action. Reacting and, even better, being proactive to an external condition that fails to elevate our spirit is virtuous. It is the defining characteristic of courage, the zeal to forge one’s destiny. Stoicism fails to value our emotions as guides to life, just like our bodily sensations to certain illnesses or injuries. The poet Virgil said on Aeneas’ heroic journey,

Fortunate is he whose mind has the power to probe the causes of things and trample underfoot all terrors and inexorable fate.

This spirit of overcoming, what the German mathematician and historian Oswald Spengler defined as the Faustian spirit in a restless thrust towards the infinite, is central to the philosophy that has defined the nature of the West. It values the individual’s unique destiny. Such a philosophy requires a conception of life that drives us to shape, rather than to be shaped by our surroundings.

If we open ourselves to the possibility of feeling positive emotions, such as joy, excitement, and love, we become simultaneously vulnerable to their counterparts. The only harmony in the apparent chaos of our feelings is precisely one where we realize they have a purpose.

But this is a risk Stoics believe we should avoid altogether, lest we lose the balance that allows us to live in psychological stability. Some historians claim Stoics practiced “swapping” their wives with other men to avoid forming an attachment to them. Friendships are encouraged in Stoicism but not in a manner that may cause us discomfort. Attachments in love, whether of a romantic or friendly nature, relationships that can make us feel a profound sense of joy, can also make us sacrifice our well-being to stand by those who need us, feel pain should we lose them, or open ourselves to the possibility of betrayal or abandonment. The Stoics preferred to shield their hearts with a philosophy of control rather than embrace the risk of suffering by experiencing attachments with all their inherent virtues and vices.

Epictetus lived a life of solitude with meagre possessions, deciding not to marry. He nobly adopted a child at an older age. A life of asceticism can be reserved for the great minds who elevate society with their creations: artistic or literary geniuses. However, this is a meaningful form of solitude, which requires external peace to unleash the internal chaos of creation. It is not detached solitude. Creativity carries an emotional burden. Artists, for example, are intimately attached to their creations. Because of this, many creative geniuses decide to subtract themselves from societal relationships, which they consider too much to bear. For example, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio were known to have overly complex and unmanageable personalities. They chose solitude because they opposed the mediocrity of crowds or having to justify their decisions to those around them. Instead, they decided to gift their inventions to the benefit of mankind. This life of struggle allows society to reach the zenith of greatness. It is not a life predicated on passive acceptance but the spirit of prevailing.

We should furthermore assess the virtues of Stoicism in managing our relationships. While Stoicism can help us control reckless behaviors that may be detrimental to those around us, its requirement of being essentially untouched by the vicissitudes of other humans carries its own pitfalls. Even though it is preached as the antidote to conflict and disagreement, it could produce the opposite.

The greatest Stoic emperor in ancient Rome, Marcus Aurelius, considered one of Rome’s last good leaders, was said to have a wife who had an extra-marital affair with a Roman general, even though he thanked her for being “submissive” at the beginning of his book, Meditations. Did she feel neglected? He also left the empire in the hands of his son Commodus, who arguably led to its decline. Commodus, it is claimed, was a hedonist with a fragile ego who was often cruel to his subjects. Seneca, another Stoic thinker, was a mentor to Nero, one of the most tyrannical emperors in the history of Rome. Seneca also died tragically by suicide under threat. Adopting Stoicism may lead to a more peaceful life, but this lack of emotional attachment inevitably harms those closest to us who need our affection to feel grounded.

It is perhaps no surprise that those who were speculated to possess the most sensitive and emotional personalities often make for the most devout, loving parents adored by their children. Paradoxically, these personalities make children grow up as well-rounded and stable adults. Unconditional love offers them invaluable strength they can carry during their darkest hours. The desire to be loved is the most basic human need, which Stoicism does not account for.

Ironically, the northern European societies today, characterized as more Stoic than their southern European counterparts, were the epitome of anti-Stoicism during the Viking age. While they thrived during that period, today they are experiencing pronounced societal decay. Nordic men used to be ruthless warriors, known by their Roman enemies as barbarians precisely because they were unmanageable. For the Greeks and Romans, Norsemen did not belong to civilized society. To some extent, they were correct.

Seneca shared this view, first denouncing in De Ira (On Anger) those living in “the frozen North”:

All those nations which are free because they are wild, like lions or wolves, cannot command any more than they can obey: for the strength of their intellect is not civilized, but fierce and unmanageable: now, no one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled… Those who dwell near the frozen north have an uncivilized temper.

He was correct in arguing that anger has the potential to wreak havoc. But he was mistaken in arguing that being ruled is a prerequisite to becoming a ruler. Anger causes us discomfort and risks harming those around us, including those we care for and being destructive to ourselves. However, anger is still an emotion with a higher frequency compared to emotions like shame and guilt, because anger is a reactive force. It carries vital energy. It signals that one does not accept being ruled if it does not serve their purpose and wellbeing. Anger has the potential to do good as much as it has the potential to cause harm. The key, however, is that it has potential.

Seneca curiously recognizes the potential of anger, backtracking on his original claim and arguing that rage is found in the best characters and the strongest dispositions:

Stout and daring intellects are liable to anger before they are tamed by discipline; for some passions engraft themselves upon the better class of dispositions only, just as good land, even when waste, grows strong brushwood, and the trees are tall which stand upon a fertile soil. In like manner, dispositions which are naturally bold produce irritability, and, being hot and fiery, have no mean or trivial qualities, but their energy is misdirected, as happens with all those who without training come to the front by their natural advantages alone, whose minds, unless they be brought under control, degenerate from a courageous temper into habits of rashness and reckless daring.

Our anger is a source of power, it should be managed, but not in a way that rejects it, for repression of one’s nature does not satisfy, it merely compresses and leads to unpleasant and unhealthy outbursts in the future. More importantly, it is a waste of potential. Instead, anger should be used and channeled into inner strength to create or protect what is truly good and noble.

The Italian philosopher and Dominican friar Saint Thomas Aquinas praises righteous anger in Christianity as an emotion that is ethical and moral in the face of injustice:

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.

On the other hand, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a vociferous critic of Stoicism, rejected the Christian idea of an ethical form of rage, of good or bad impulses, but viewed them as either empowerment or mortification of life. In other words, emotions should be listened to and used as a tool. His most poignant criticism of Stoicism was that it was a philosophy of death; a denial of life’s passionate, dynamic nature, which should be embraced. Indeed, Stoicism seems to reject the idea that the cyclical nature of life should be lived from within; every emotion felt through this cycle should be used to reach greater heights rather than merely observed as an impartial spectator from the outside.

The more one is filled with life, the more joy, love, passion, and rage one feels. Of course, a life filled with these emotions alone would be impossibly exhausting. Therefore, we need emotions such as peace, stability, bliss and serenity to counterbalance. However, Stoicism fails to grasp that each of these feelings has something to teach us; they all open the possibility for their opposite, and the only real, emotionless life is one of apathy. Our minds speak to us through the expression of emotions. They are an intangible language that defines what it means to be alive. While the Stoics are correct in arguing that emotions should be controlled in conditions that cannot be immediately changed, Stoicism ultimately represses their nature and fails to listen to their true potential to fulfill our aspirations. In our age, we do not need the debilitating nature of reason but the beating pulse of passion and the innate wisdom of our instinct.

Alessandra Bocchi is the founder of Alata Magazine and Rivista Alata.

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