Classic Stoics on Grief and Grieving (part 7)
looking at remedies for the emotion of grief that Stoics advocated
In part six of this series, we examined Cicero’s discussions of various approaches to consolation of grieving people in book 3 of his work, the Tusculan Disputations. After working through what the Cyrenaic, Epicurean, and Aristotelian schools provided by way of analysis and advice bearing on the emotion of grief, I promised to turn to his summaries of what Stoics had to say about consolation, and then to look at Cicero’s own views on the matter.
Two Key Commitments On Cicero’s Part
We should note before diving into Cicero’s more specific discussions about Stoic authors discussing grief, grieving, and consolation is that early on in book 3, Cicero makes two of his own commitments quite clear. As we’ve noted in previous parts of this series, Cicero is not himself a Stoic as such, but rather an eclectic who deliberately draws upon multiple schools or traditions of philosophy, brings them into comparative and critical discussion with each other, and then selects and incorporates the parts of their philosophy he thinks best into his own position.
He does like quite a few things that Aristotelians bring to the table. He even calls them “friends of ours [familiares]. . . and unequalled in resourcefulness, in learning, and earnestness” (3.10). But one of their central ethical ideas that he does reject, as do the Stoics, is the notion of “mean or moderate states [mediocritates] either of disturbances [perturbationum] or of diseases [morborum] of the soul.
This represents a rejection of a significant part of the famous doctrine of virtue as a mean, which many (including later middle Platonists, like Plutarch) will take to be a major contribution Aristotle makes to moral theory. The Stoics and Cicero do not entirely reject that conception of a mean, but they are unwilling to apply it to emotional states, and Cicero’s reasoning here is echoed by later Stoics like Seneca:
For every evil, even a moderate one [etiam mediocre] , is en evil. But what we are driving at [agimus] is that there should be no evil at all in the wise person. For just as the body, even if moderately ailing , is not healthy, so in the soul the so called mean or moderate state is without health. (3.10)
The second main commitment in this book even more explicitly lines Cicero up with the Stoics. He endorses, and very helpfully for us (since so many earlier Stoic sources have been lost) sets out the Stoic theory of the emotions. The Stoics classified emotions into four main groups, distinguishing them based on the general kinds of judgements involved in them. You can find a somewhat longer discussion of this in part 1 of this series, so here it suffices to say that they are:
Desire: involving the judgement that something is not present and is good
Fear: involving the judgement that something is not present and is bad
Pleasure: involving the judgement that something is present and is good
Pain: involving the judgement that something is present and is bad
Emotions aren’t just judgements for Stoics. There are affective and action-focused aspects to each of these categories of emotion as well, but they do involve judgements.
For three of these general classes of emotions, namely desire, fear, and pleasure, there are not only bad emotional states but also good emotional states, the latter of which are called eupatheiai in Greek and constantiae in Cicero’s Latin. There isn’t any corresponding good emotional state, according to the Stoics, for the category of pain or distress.
What determines whether an emotional state or response is good or bad is partly the truth or falsity of the judgement involved, but also whether or not the emotion itself is aligned with our rationality. Cicero tells us
[D]isturbance [perturbatio] is a movement of the soul either destitute of [expers] reason, or contemptuous of [aspernans] reason, or disobedient to [non obediens] reason.
This aligns with discussions about Stoics’ view on the nature of bad emotions (or “passions”, pathē, passiones), found in overviews of Stoic ethics in Arius Didymus and Diogenes Laertes, but interestingly goes a little further. Since this is a topic to explore more elsewhere, I’ll just note that I don’t think that Cicero’s three overlapping characterizations of the problematic relationship between bad emotions and rationality is simply a rhetorical flourish. These seem to be three distinct ways of going against reason.
So although Cicero doesn’t entirely endorse the views of the Stoics on virtue, the nature of the emotions, and the category of pain or distress, he signals to us readers early on in book 3 that he is far closer to them than any other school of philosophy.
Stoics On Grieving
The Stoic perspectives Cicero writes about in Tusculan Disputations are primarily those of Cleanthes and Chrysippus, unsurprisingly, given that these are the second and third scholarchs of the school, and that Chrysippus was reputed to be particularly central in centralizing, explaining, and defending positions held by the Stoics.
As a side-note, it is interesting that Cicero doesn’t mention any of the other main Stoic figures who he does in other works, including scholarchs like Diogenes, Antipater, and Panaetius, or other important Stoic thinkers he was on familiar terms with, like Posidonius and Cato the Younger. Should we draw an inference from this lack of discussion, that these later Stoic thinkers didn’t contribute many additional ideas to understanding grief, grieving, and consolation? That might be going too far.
Cicero begins discussing Stoic views on distress and grief about midway through the book, noting that the academic skeptic Carneades criticized Chrysippus for endorsing a passage from Euripides which runs:
No mortal is there but pain finds him out
And sickness; many must their children bury
And sow fresh issue; death is end for all
In vain do these things vex the race of men
Earth must go back to earth; then life by all
Like crops is reaped. So bids Necessity (3.25)
Carneades seemingly took Euripides as providing some manner of consolation to people. How? “[F]rom the recital of the evils of others” (3.25). So presumably Chrysippus thought that being conscious of what other people, indeed the entire human race, has to face could play a role in heading off or alleviating the emotions of distress or pain, including that of grief at the loss of loved ones.
Cicero adds his own point of view on the matter before coming back to Chrysippus:
The thought that the lot of men must be endured prevents us from contending, as it were, against God and also warns us that we are human. And this reflection is a great relief to sorrow [luctum], and the detailed instances cited are not given to delight the mind of the ill-natured [animum malevolorum], but to lead the mourner [qui maeret] to think that he must bear the burdens that he sees many people have borne in a spirit of quiet restraint [moderate et tranquile]. (3.25)
He then comes back to Chrysippus and tells us that he thought that distress gets called lupē in Greek because it involves a dissolution [solutionem, in Greek lusis] of the entire person. More to the point, he adds that Chrysippus thought that this emotion “could be entirely rooted out when we have disentangled [explicata] its cause” (3.25). That cause is “nothing else than the idea [opinio] and the conviction [judicium] of an instant and pressing great evil [magni praesentis atque urguientis mali]” (3.25).
A good bit later in the work, right before examining different approaches to consoling the grieving, Cicero mentions one additional bit of information about Stoic views on grief. There, he brings up Zeno, who adds to the definition of the general class of emotions of pain or distress, that there is a judgement that something bad is present, a further qualification. The presumed bad is something that is “fresh” (recens), which is why it is then felt strongly. He goes on to say:
This term, however, his followers interpret to mean that not only , according to their view, is that “fresh” which has taken place a short time previously, but that so long as the imagined evil [opiniato malo] preserves a certain power of being vigorous [vis quaedam insit], and retaining so to speak its “greenness”, it is termed “fresh” (3.31)
For a given person, if they are reminded of the object of their grief regularly or frequently, they can remain in that mourning long past the actual loss. What is typically needed is for the emotion to lessen over the course of time. So what we focus our minds on in the course of grieving could extend the experience of that emotion for a considerable amount of time.
Several Stoics On Consolation
Before providing Cleanthes’ and Chrysippus’ views on what form consolation of mourners ought to take, he sets out more generally what the “duties of comforters” [officia consolantium] are, namely the following five:
to take away [tollere] distress entirely [funditus]
to allay [sedare] distress
to diminish it [detrahere] as much as possible
to stop its progress [supprimere] and not allow it to extend further
or, to divert it elsewhere [alia traducere]
The question then is whether the Stoic approaches will in fact succeed in these functions. And as it turns out, in Cicero’s view, the answer to this will be negative. He tells us first that:
There are some who think it the sole duty of a comforter to insist that evil has no existence at all, as is the view of Cleanthes. . . . Chrysippus on the other hand considers that the main thing in giving comfort is to remove from the mind of the mourner the belief already described, in case he should think he is discharging a regular duty which is obligatory. (3.31)
The duty mentioned there is one of grieving as a way of doing something for the dead person who has been lost, discussed in an earlier installment of this series.
Cicero criticizes Cleanthes for providing a means of consolation that will not be effective with most people who mourn and grieve.
Cleanthes comforts the “wise person” who does not need comfort. For if you succeed in convincing the mourner [lugenti] that nothing is evil provided it is not disgraceful [turpe], you will succeed in removing his foolishness [stultitiam] not his sorrow [luctum]. (3.32)
There is seemingly nothing wrong with Cleanthes’ approach to consolation in one respect. It would provide comfort to the grieving to understand that nothing truly bad has happened in their loss. But the person who will understand this, the wise person, already should understand this, so the consolation seems superfluous. And the person who isn’t wise, isn’t likely to become so by being consoled at the time they are already grieving, so Cleanthes’ consolation misses its target in that type of case. Cicero raises another issue
And yet it seems to me Cleanthes has not quite seen that the feeling of distress can sometimes arise from the very thing that he admits to be the worst evil of all.(3.32)
What is that? A person’s realization of their own foolishness. They could feel distress, and perhaps even fall into grief, not over the loss of a loved one, but the realization how badly off they themselves are in their own development and character. Cicero uses Alcibiades as an example of this, who learned from his interactions with Socrates that despite enjoying a number of seemingly good things in his life, he was morally a mess.
What about Cleanthes’ successor, Chrysippus?
The comfort suggested by Chrysippus, regarded in the abstract [ad vertitatem] is the most reliable [firmissima], but difficult for a time of distress [ad tempus aegritudinis]. It is a hard matter to prove to a mourner that he is mourning of his own choice [sui judicio] and because he thinks he ought to. (3.33)
This is a different line of criticism raised against Chrysippus than against Cleanthes. It isn’t that the consolation is off-target with the non-wise, who are subject to the emotion of grief. It is rather that the consolation is likely to be ineffective precisely when one would want it to be most effective.
Still, Cicero doesn’t rule out trying these Stoic lines of approach. He seems to include them in a potential repertoire of modes of consolation, making an analogy to how he approaches cases as an advocate.
[I]n the conduct of cases in court, we do not always take up the same position . . . but we adapt the line we take to the occasion [ad tempus], to the character of the dispute [ad controversiae naturam], to the personality of the litigant [ad personam]. We act similarly in the alleviation [leniandum] of distress, for we have to consider what method of treatment can be received in each particular case. (3.33)
Another Possible Remedy
We have already noted in an earlier post in this series that Cicero discusses and endorses one practice that isn’t strictly speaking a matter of consolation, since that happens as or after grief begins, but rather quite literally a matter of premeditation, of deliberately considering in advance. This practice of praemeditatio malorum, interestingly, while used by and often associated with the Stoics, according to Cicero antedates the founding of their school, and can be found in the approach of the Cyrenaic school, which antedates not only the Stoics but also the Epicureans.
Shortly after discussing and defending that practice, Cicero provides another useful set of exhortations, which we might regard as a philosophical practice. It isn’t so much consolation either, if we take that in the sense of trying to get the grieving to see that things aren’t as bad as they think. Instead, it is a more robust approach of deliberately drawing upon the four cardinal virtues. Cicero suggests that his advice would be given by Pythagoras, Socrates, or Plato, but we could well imagine any of the Stoics giving this advice (not least since the later Stoics like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius do say things along these lines).
The basic idea is this: “There is a mighty power in the virtues; rouse [excita] them, if maybe they slumber [dormiunt]”. Cicero goes on to explain how each of the four virtues can assist us.
At once, you will have the foremost of all, I mean fortitude, who will compel you to assume a spirit that will make you despise and count as nothing all that can fall to the lot of men.
Next will come temperance, who is also self-control [moderatio], and called by me a little while ago “frugality”, and will not suffer you to do anything that is disgraceful and vile [turpiter et nequiter]
Justice will not even suffer you to act in such a way; there seems but little need for her in this case. But yet her plea will be that you are doubly unjust, since. . . you are longing for what is not your own.
What answer moreover will you make to prudence when she tells you that, for her, virtue is self-sufficient for leading a good life as well as a happy one? (3.17)
The ways in which Cicero portrays these virtues, and his remark about the self-sufficiency of virtue, do sound rather Stoic. So perhaps we would want to view this as an additional Stoic practice or approach for addressing the emotion of grief.
We will close here by noting one potential problem with this suggested remedy for grief. Perhaps the very criticisms Cicero made against Cleanthes and Chrysippus can be turned on this “rouse the virtues” practice.
What if a person doesn’t have those virtues developed, either at all, or to an adequate extent? This seems like advice that is only useful for someone who is virtuous.
And even if they do have these virtues somehow slumbering in them, when caught up in the emotion of grief and the process of grieving, will they have the presence of mind to realize that they ought to call up these virtues while they are in such a state?
Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.