Stoic Perspective: When Bad Things Happen To Other People
Is saying “that’s nothing to me” really the Stoic response?
Earlier this year, I agreed to lead the second event in a new series called “Conversations with Modern Stoicism”. The topic that I decided upon is one that I see many people getting confused about. Some even get quite worked up, argumentative, and angry over it, I’ve found. It’s this: “When bad things happen to other people, should Stoics care?” When we see other people mistreated, reduced to poverty, suffering illness or pain, feeling grief or loneliness, insulted or injured, exploited or abused, should this matter to us?
Some people would respond immediately as if this is a “no-brainer,” that is, a matter one needn’t think about at all. “No, of course Stoics shouldn’t care!” And if you ask them why, they will likely give one of several responses. They might respond that a Stoic shouldn’t care about anything that falls outside the scope of their own mind, character, or faculty of choice. Those are all externals, indifferents, matters outside one’s control, and that includes other people and what happens to them.
Alternately, they might place the focus not on themselves, but on the other person and depending on what the “bad” thing happens to be, deny that anything bad has happened to that person. After all, virtue is the only good and vice the only evil. That’s one assertion we see made at times in classic and contemporary Stoic texts, isn’t it?
You can find passages in Stoic writing that some people do marshal in order to justify, even demand, such an attitude of indifference to the experiences and the plights of other people. The Stoics say an awful lot of things, though, and anyone who intends to develop and practice the virtue of wisdom so central to Stoicism should strive to study, mull over, and bring together not just a few passages but the whole of Stoic doctrine as we have it. Stoicism is a complex system of philosophical concepts and claims, arguments and analogies, precepts and practices. It’s not a bunch of isolated memes, quips, or sound-bites.
It certainly is true that classical Stoics thought and taught that many people are mistaken about what is genuinely good or bad for human beings, and what matters strictly speaking fall into the range of the “indifferents” (and might be “preferred” or “rejected”). But that doesn’t mean that the Stoic attitude in every case, when dealing with people who within that mistaken viewpoint believe that they have been harmed or experienced something bad, would be to say: “Too bad for them. Nothing really bad has happened to them or taken place”.
That person’s pain or fear, grief or anger might be an emotional response that is from a Stoic perspective rooted in mistaken assumptions, erroneous lines of reasoning, poorly shaped habits. But that doesn’t mean that experiencing those emotions isn’t something bad that person experiences, or that the Stoic can’t or shouldn’t sympathize with that unfortunate person. Epictetus tells us that we can behave empathetically towards a person who has experienced a death in their family, and even “groan outwardly”. He just suggests to us that we don’t “groan inwardly”.
Caring about and being concerned for our fellow human beings is an integral part of what the Stoics assert to be our rational and therefore social nature. That’s not something to be rooted out, discouraged, or set aside. It’s something to be guided and grown, developed and deployed in accordance with our better, rational human nature. It’s not only possible but desirable to care about and care for our fellow human beings who, precisely because they aren’t Stoics, are even more vulnerable to being wounded by the world they inhabit, or perhaps even suffer the consequences of their own misguided decisions.
I’ll close by noting that this isn’t just a matter the virtue of wisdom bears upon, but also and perhaps even more one that falls into the scope of justice, an equally important virtue. There are consistently Stoic ways to care whether people get what they deserve, whether commitments are followed through, whether wrongs are remedied. It’s not a question of whether or not Stoics can or should care about others. Instead, it’s a matter of HOW.
This piece first appeared in the July 2023 issue of the online magazine The Stoic. If this piece has you now interested in Stoicism, and you would like to know what to read next, this might be helpful for you.
Gregory Sadler is the founder 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.
I think Stoics do care deeply about others--Is not that the reason Seneca wrote his exhortations and letters to Lucillius ?
"Perhaps one day even the memories of these sorrows will be pleasant " Seneca Letters
"My dear Lucillius Make this your business in life, you must learn how to feel Joy, not a coated on Joy, but one that issues from deep within" Senecas Letters
"The man who can overcome evils by which others have been crushed, and raises himself to face raging misfortunes, wears his very disasters as a Halo " Seneca Letters
Thanks Dr. Sadler
I see it maybe a bit simplistic. That is our nature to care, for we need that as social beings to survive. Our concern oscillates outwards from ourselves to those close to us and far beyond. So it might not be reason or virtue. Maybe caring is an indifferent, but even if it is, that very nature that gives us the basis to be able to use reason and, if well used, virtue. If this is the case it most certainly is preferred, as in a way it sustains human life. But I would probably go a little further and say although our nature and maybe an indifferent, we prefer reason used well, which allows us to correct it to virtue and more specifically justice. I do not think that caring is necessarily moral in itself.