Chryssipus on Handling Emotions

     From Margaret R. Graver's Stoicism and Emotion:

"For emotions are `irrational': while they are going on, we find ourselves `blinded,' unable to prevent ourselves from doing things our calmer selves would not approve. It is, he says, "as if we had become different people from those who were previously conversing."

 At the same time, in what seems a startling contradiction, Chrysippus also holds that emotions are in our power. His view of the causes of emotion is that of Zeno as reported by Cicero in the Posterior Academics; it is the standard Stoic position:

Whereas the ancients held that these emotions are natural and devoid of reason and placed desire in one part of the mind, reason in another, Zeno ... did not agree; he thought that the emotions are volitional and are experienced through a judgment of opinion.'


The language is that of moral responsibility: emotions are voluntarii or volitional; they are, as other sources put it, `up to us.' This language is not offered out of perversity or in ignorance of the recalcitrant nature of emotional experience. Chrysippus is actually quite pessimistic about the possibility of simply restraining oneself, for he holds that emotions tend to be unstoppable once they have begun. Nonetheless, he is prepared to assert that the recalcitrance of emotions can be explained satisfactorily within a moral psychology that counts affective responses as instances of voluntary action.
The position is in fact a coherent one. Chrysippus is able to make these bold claims because he has a clearly defined notion of what is required for something to be `up to us' or voluntary and a strong case for why the core instances of emotion satisfy that requirement. His explanation of moral responsibility is developed in the first instance without reference to those special or "hot" impulses which count as pathe: it is a matter of very broad philosophical significance, meant to supply a basis for praise and blame which does not violate the principle of universal causal determinism. But Chrysippus and other Stoics were also prepared to apply that explanation to emotional outbursts and their moral significance, taking due note of those features of emotional impulses which differentiate them from one's other conscious actions. The result is a sophisticated affective volitionalism which manages to combine intellectual seriousness, devoid of magical or mysterious elements, with sensitivity to the phenomena of our mental life. There are, to be sure, certain fairly obvious objections, based, as in similar modern discussions, on the nonsufficiency and/or nonnecessity of belief causes. But the Chrysippan analysis is able to resolve these objections without major modification.

The admission that morally significant responses can evade our control leaves us, as agents, in a difficult spot. We cannot prevent ourselves from doing certain things when we become upset, but all the same we cannot allege the strength of our emotions in order to excuse ourselves. This is a hard doctrine, yet if I read the evidence correctly, the Stoic founders were not inclined to soften it; rather, they issued it as a challenge. For helplessness is not the inevitable human condition, nor is it our natural condition; it is only the condition of persons who are not yet fully mature. To assume the full stature of our humanity would also be to enter a different realm of affective experience, one where strength of feeling does not have to mean loss of control. Although emotions as we presently experience them are not tame or easily managed, the affects of the wise carry them exactly where they wish to go. This is one reason why the attainment of wisdom is felt as liberation."

Margaret R. Graver. Stoicism and Emotion (p. 62). Kindle Edition.

Emotional Control (from "Stoicism and Emotion")

     Today's reading is on the concept of controlling one's emotions, from Margaret R. Graver's Stoicism and Emotion. Stoicism purports to offer control over one's emotions, but we often feel that emotions "hit" us out of nowhere, and can be impossible to control because you do not know they are coming. I would agree that while it is possible to surprise and startle even a very accomplished Stoic, nevertheless Stoicism has value in such situations, since after the initial impact the emotions just slide away, like a cloth that washes clean without letting a stain set in . . .

"There is a sense in which emotions have us under their control. Aristotle says-and it is hard not to agree with him-that a good person is one who not only acts rightly but feels rightly. Yet for ourselves it often seems as if we have no choice how to feel. A sense of passivity is expressed in the very word that became standard for emotion in Greek usage, for pathos is simply the noun form of paschein, to suffer or undergo. Nor is it only the reflex-like `startle' and `fight-or-flight' responses that seem to occur without our consent. It is, much more crucially, the core instances of emotion, responses that we not only feel but also express in our behavior. And emotional behavior is sometimes terrifying in its extremity. A mother finds herself driven to destroy the life of her innocent child, a child whom she loves and in calmer moments would not wish to harm. One does not have to condone her action to recognize that she was at that moment helpless in the grip of some very powerful feeling. Even our legal system admits emotion as a mitigating factor in some cases."

Margaret R. Graver. Stoicism and Emotion (p. 61). Kindle Edition.

A Note on Stoic Joy

     I apologize for the long absence since my last post to this blog; let it suffice to say that several conditions and events conspired to keep me from my usual schedule, and I did not sufficiently strive to prevent this from happening. Anyway, today's thought is from Margaret R. Graver's Stoicism and Emotion:

"Joy is `well-reasoned elevation,' corresponding on a feeling level to the happy excitement the ordinary person experiences on winning a raffle or leaving on vacation. But joy differs from those feelings in being directed at genuine goods: a generous action, for instance, would be an occasion for joy, and the proper object of the feeling would be the generosity itself, as exercised on that occasion. Hence the person of perfect understanding, whose every action is an exercise of virtue, has reason to be joyful at every moment of the day. And this is a condition to which anyone may aspire."

Margaret R. Graver. Stoicism and Emotion (pp. 52-53). Kindle Edition.