Classic Stoics On Grief And Grieving (part 6)

Cicero's analysis of approaches to consolation drawn from rival schools to the Stoics

One of the important topics Cicero examines and provides advice about in book 3 of his Tusculan Disputations is consolation or comforting (consolatio) for people who are feeling grief after the loss of a loved one. In fact, in the course of that discussion he references his own work titled Consolation, unfortunately lost to us. We can draw one useful lesson from that work at the very start, however, even though we do not possess it.

Consolation certainly is a type of thoughtful and compassionate action which we can exercise towards other people who are grieving. It is helpful to have guidelines, based in not just experience and practice, but also in moral psychology, that allow us to better understand what we are doing in providing consolation. But if we consider when and why Cicero authored that work, we realize that that sort of well-founded advice has a wider scope. It was his own dear daughter Tullia dying, and his dissatisfaction with the already existing philosophical works on grief and grieving, that motivated him to write it.

The advice and analysis he gave was not just intended to help others, but also to heal his own wounded soul. Arguably, anyone who would provide consolation to others ought to be able to apply that consolation to their own self, when they experience a great loss. So Cicero’s discussions of consolation and comfort don’t simply tell us how we ought to go about helping others in a time of emotional need, but also provide us with outlines for a dialogue we can hold with our own selves when suffering grief.

In Tusculan Disputations book 3, Cicero examines and evaluate what advice and analysis different philosophical schools, and in the case of the Stoics different members of those schools, provide when it comes to grief, mourning, and consolation. In this installation, we will look at the non-Stoic approaches he discusses and what limited effectiveness he ascribes to them.

The Epicurean Approach: Focus On Pleasures

Epicurus and his school were hedonists of a rather sophisticated sort, quite distinct from the sort of “lose yourself in pleasures” or “live for today” pleasure seekers that some confuse them with (and did so in ancient times as well). Cicero is sometimes a bit unfair to them in his works, but also (since the vast majority of Epicurean texts have been lost) winds up being an important source for Epicurean philosophical doctrines.

When it comes to understanding and dealing with grief, both of these would seem to be the case. He spends a portion of his discussion criticizing what one suspects is a strawmanned misinterpretation of Epicurus’ teachings about the nature of pleasure, making the same sorts of criticisms he does elsewhere, for instance in On The Ends book 2. We can set that aside for the time being, since what we’re really interested in is what Epicureans make of, and advise doing to deal with, the emotion of grief.

He starts by noting:

Epicurus holds that the distress (aegritudinem) which the idea of evil produces is a natural effect, in the sense that anyone who contemplates some considerable evil at once feels distress, should he imagine it has befallen him. (3.13)

A bit later, he will expand the characterization of this process:

Epicurus supposes that all people must necessarily feel distress, if they think themselves encompassed by evils (se in malis esse), whether previously foreseen and anticipated or long established (inveteraverint, 3.15)

As a side-note, it is interesting to see both “natural” and “necessary” mentioned here. An important distinction within Epicurean ethics, usually applied (again in the few texts we possess) to the pleasant objects of desires is between the natural and necessary, the natural but not necessary, and the neither natural nor necessary. It would seem that the Epicureans considered the emotion of grief to be a both natural and necessary response of a human being to encountering evils, namely that of loss of another person through death.

So what does an Epicurean propose for dealing with this sort of pain or distress? One general answer is that:

Alleviation of distress, however, Epicurus finds in two directions, namely in calling the soul away from reflection on vexation (avocatione a cogitanda molestia), and in a recall to the consideration of pleasures (revocatione ad contemplandas voluptates 3.15)

This is a volitional, cognitive, and arguably habit-based approach. One should cease or minimize thinking about what is painful and instead direct the mind to thinking about what is pleasant. We should direct all of our mind (tota mente) towards a variety of pleasures, considering both pleasures past through memory and possible pleasures future through hope (spe).

Cicero is rather skeptical of this “recall” proposed as a remedy, arguing that:

under the sting of circumstances which we regard as evil, concealment or forgetfulness (disimulatio vel oblivio) is not within our control (in nostra potestate). . . . You, Epicurus, tell me to “forget”, but to forget is contrary to nature, while you wrest from my grip the aid which nature has supplied for relief of long-standing pain. (3.16)

It is indeed quite difficult to forget, or even sometimes to distract ourselves from, the loss that we have experienced when we are struggling with grief. It also seems a bit odd, even callous, to suggest that when we have lost someone close to us to death, we should avoid thinking about that loss (since it is a bad thing, and liable to pain us) and instead, as we say, think happy thoughts. And not happy thoughts like the platitude “they’re in a better place” but rather about pleasures.

A bit later on, he quips: “if you find any of your relatives broken down by grief (adflictum maerore), will you give him a sturgeon rather than a Socratic book?” The idea here is that pleasures like eating a tasty dish, or looking at pretty flowers, smelling pleasant incense, while indeed pleasant, are not really going to work as effectively as thinking about one’s condition of grief, why one is grieving, and whether one’s grief really makes sense, aided by the thoughts of philosophers.

Later on in the book, Cicero once again summarizes the Epicurean approach to consolation as “withdrawal of attention from evil to good” (abducant a malis ad bona 3.31). He does admit that, when he wrote his own Consolation, he tossed in the Epicurean approach along with the other philosophical approaches he discusses, since “my soul was in a feverish state, and I attempted every means of curing its condition” (3.31). But Cicero frankly considers the Epicurean approach to consolation a misguided one.

The Cyrenaic Approach: Premeditation and “No Surprise”

A student and friend of Socrates, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school long before Epicurus came to Athens and founded the Garden. The Cyrenaics were also hedonists, but of a different sort than the Epicureans, and based on what we know of them (none of their texts have survived), they were much more oriented towards physical than mental pleasures, and their “school” seemed considerably looser, less dogmatically following the views of their founder. Cicero does write of them as a group in this work, not distinguishing between individual member’s views.

What is the Cyrenaic approach then? He tells us there’s a significant difference in their views on what causes distress from their fellow hedonists, the Epicureans:

The Cyrenaics consider that distress is not caused by every evil, but by an unlooked for and unexpected evil (insperato et necopinato malo). That, it is true, has no ordinary effect in heightening distress (ad aegritudinem augendam), for all sudden visitations seem more serious than others. (3.13)

This distinction, namely that it is encountering bad things we don’t anticipate and don’t judge likely to happen, rather than just experiencing any bad thing whatsoever, opens up one potential remedy. We can reduce our vulnerability to the unexpected precisely by removing that “un-”, that is, by considering possibilities. This is the famous technique or practice, more often associated with Stoicism, of (to use Cicero’s own words) praemeditatio futorum malorum (3.13), which can help lighten or soften (lenit) the approach of what one has long foreseen.

Cicero will admit that:

In confronting the changes and chances of life I indeed accept from the Cyrenaics such weapons as they provide to enable me, with the help of long previous consideration (praemeditatione), to break the coming of life’s assaults (3.15).

So it seems that Cicero quite likely derives the premeditatio malorum practice from the Cyrenaics rather than from the Stoics, and is perfectly happy to employ it as a useful practice regardless of its provenance. He does add an interesting clarification:

I judge the evil we speak of to lie in belief (opinionis) and not in nature, for if it were in the thing itself (in re) how could anticipation (provisa) lighten it? (3.15)

That last point seems to target the Epicureans, not the Cyrenaics. He comes back to discussion of Cyrenaic view later on in the book, and compares their position on the unexpectedness of something producing or heightening the distress to that of the Stoic Chrysippus. Then he explores the reasons (causas) why the unexpectedness has this effect of making something “greater” (maiora):

First, because no scope is given for weighing (considerandi) the magnitude of the occurrences; secondly, because where it seems previous precautions could have been taken if foresight had been shown, the evil incurred, as implying blame (quasi culpa), makes the distress keener (acriorem, 3.22)

So what sort of consolation would the Cyrenaic approach provide? One that Cicero seems to think is quite common, even among non-philosophers. He writes: “We have ready the words ‘nothing should see unexpected’” (3.23).

But does this really work? Cicero points out that one might question its effectiveness.

But how will the burden of loss be more endurable for the person who has recognized that something of this sort must happen to a human being? For this way of speaking takes nothing from the actual sum of evil; all it does is suggest that nothing has taken place which should not have been expected (3.23)

Notice what he says next though:

Such a mode of speaking is not without effect in imparting comfort (in consolando); I should be inclined to think it has quite a bit (plurimum)

He does point out that the distress cannot be attributed entirely to the unexpectedness.

The shock they cause is perhaps heavier (gravius), but they do not make the occurrences seem more serious (maiora); they seem more serious because they are still fresh (recentia), not because of their suddenness (repentina, 3.23)

So while the Cyrenaic perspective offers more than the Epicurean one, it still isn’t entirely right in Cicero’s view. Their remedy in consolation is confined to “showing (ostendere) that nothing unexpected has taken place” (3.31). That can prove helpful for some who are mourning, but doesn’t always work for everyone stricken by grief.

A Few (Non-Stoic) Alternate Approaches

Cicero does briefly engage the Aristotelian or Peripatetic school, one of the great rivals to the Stoics in matters of ethics, and in particular about their theory of emotions. The Aristotelians (and some Platonists as well) advocated for “mean” or “middle” states (what the Greeks called mediopatheiai, and Cicero calls mediocritates, 3.31) of emotions as being virtuous, an idea that the Stoics and Cicero both rejected. To be fair, there’s a lot more involved in the Aristotelian conception of virtue than just a middle or mean amount of something, but we’ll set that aside here.

If you’re particularly interested in Cicero’s criticism of the Aristotelian approach to emotions, you might jump ahead to book 4, where he writes:

The reasoning and discourse of the Peripatetics should be considered soft (mollis) and weak (ennervata), when they say that souls are necessarily subject to perturbations, but fix a certain limit beyond which perturbations should not pass (4.17)

What does Cicero tell us about the Aristotelians and grief in book 3? Before we go to the discussions bearing directly on consolation of the grieving, there is a rather curious digression to note. According to Cicero, Aristotle and his friend and successor Theophrastus differed on an important matter, whether or not philosophers were close to having all the important matters figured out or not.

Aristotle in criticizing earlier philosophers for thinking, according to him, that thanks to their genius philosophy had reached its fulfillment, says that the had been either very stupid or boastful; but he adds that as a consequence of the great progress made in a few years, philosophy would be complete

Theophrastus, on the other hand, while dying, is said to have criticized nature for having given a long life to stags and crows, creatures to whom such a gift made no difference, whereas to humans, to whom it made the greatest difference, it gave such a short amount of time. If humans’ lives had been prolonged, all arts would have been perfected and human life would have been enriched with all learning. (3.28)

Why does this matter, you might ask? Cicero plays around with the idea that those philosophers who are aware at their lack of wisdom, the blind spots of their knowledge, could experience great distress (aegritudine), that is, grieve their condition. In point of fact, as he admits though, they don’t!

In his discussion about duties of consolers and the effectiveness of strategies of consolation, he briefly mentions a later Peripatetic, the scholarch Lyco, suggesting what may perhaps have been an Aristotelian approach to consoling the grieving:

What is the meaning of Lyco’s words? By way of lessening distress he says that it is caused by small matters, inconveniences (incommoda) of fortune and body, not by evils of the soul. (3.32)

In the context Cicero makes this remark, the golden-boy screwup Alcibiades realizing his own viciousness and moral failings, it seems that the distress he feels is precisely due to evils of the soul. If we apply this specifically to grief, while an argument can be made that the loss of the loved person is not an evil of one’s soul but something that pertains to bodies or fortunes, that doesn’t seem like something that will prove particularly effective in consoling mourners.

There is one interesting and promising approach to grief that seems less like consolation as such, and more like exhortation, which Cicero suggestss that Pythagoras, Socrates, or Plato might say:

Why are you prostrated, why do you mourn (maeres), why do you yield tamely to fortune? . . . There is a mighty power in the virtues: rouse them if they perchance slumber. At once you will have the principal one of them, courage, which will compel you to adopt a spirit that will make you despise and count as nothing all that can fall to the lot of human beings (3.17).

There is scope for the other three cardinal virtues here as well, namely temperance, justice, and prudence.

There is, of course, a reasonable response to this exhortation that comes to mind, a saying some readers might be familiar with: “Good work if you can get it.” The problem is that for many mourners, this call to bring the virtues out of themselves might founder on the fact that the mourners don’t have these virtues developed within themselves, ready to assume their proper functions in a time of emotional crisis. So even this approach, which Cicero seems to endorse, is likely not generally useful.

In our next installation in this series, we’ll look at Cicero’s critical examination of several Stoic approaches to consoling mourners, and at his own largely-Stoic suggestions about the matter.