Don’t ask for things to happen as you would like them to, but wish them to happen as they actually do, and you will be all right. (Ench 8)
This passage, and several other similar passages within the Stoic texts, present a huge, sometimes insurmountable, stumbling block for many people when they begin to study and practice Stoicism. As Simplicius notes in his commentary on this passage:
But perhaps this injunction to ‘wish for it to happen as it happens’ will seem to some people to be harsh and impossible. What right thinking human being wishes for the occurrence of the widespread bad effects resulting from the universe – for instance, earthquakes, deluges, conflagrations, plagues, famine and the destruction of all sorts of animals and crops? Or the impious deeds performed by some human beings on others – the sacking of cities, taking prisoners of war, unjust killings, piracy, kidnapping, licentiousness, and tyranni cal force, culminating in compelled acts of impiety? …These things and others of this sort – of which there has been an excess in our own lifetime – who would want to hear of them, let alone see them, take part in them or ‘wish them to happen as they happen’, except a malevolent person and a hater of all that is fine?[1]
Within the last month, I responded to emails from two Stoicism on Fire listeners who expressed concern about this concept in Stoicism. I will keep the identity of those listeners anonymous. However, I’m going to use the content of those emails to help express a concern that is likely shared by others. The first is from a man who wrote:
I am hoping you may be able to help me with something which has been a source of some vexation to me. I have been studying philosophy for most of my adult life and Stoicism is something I came to in the last 5-years or so. The problem I have is to do with the discipline of assent.
It seems that what the Stoic wants is to dispense with the value judgement part of the impression. The idea seems to be that whatever is not in my control is to be expunged by simply not assenting to it. Now, I can perfectly see the argument that when a driver cuts me up or someone says something insulting to me, I may want to remove my value judgements to preserve my equanimity. All perfectly obvious. But what you seem to be saying is that any value judgement based on something not in my control, should be “deleted” from the impression, in order to preserve my equanimity. I’m afraid I find this absurd.
Suppose you find yourself in a situation where one of your children has been taken hostage by a terrorist and is being threatened with a knife. There is a high probability that something terrible will happen, but according to the discipline of assent, you will need to delete the value judgement (which any normal father would have) that my child is in danger!!. Having thus deleted the value judgement, you can observe events unfolding from your “Inner Citadel” completely unperturbed.
The second email was from a woman, who wrote:
I have been reading the Stoics for many years. They have served as my substitute for religion, my preferred cognitive therapy. However my major reservation is that Stoicism does not provide an adequate answer or comfort in times of personal or global tragedy or suffering. When something horrible happens to someone, how can we respond by saying we will things as they are, we will things to happen as they have? Stoicism does not provide a good answer to the natural human emotional response to personal tragedy. It does not appear to accept that it is ok to feel the natural emotional anguish that comes with personal tragedy. I have always seen this as the major weakness.
A show on this could be helpful, i.e., how does Stoicism dictate that the practitioner should react to a personal tragedy in their life, and does this make sense? Is it rational to expect sentient human beings to react to tragedy by saying, yes, I will things to happen as they have?
Well, here’s the episode you asked for; I hope it helps you with this challenging question about Stoic practice.
First, I will say: I fully understand the sentiments of both listeners; I had similar thoughts about this concept when I first approached Stoicism. I suspect most of my listeners reacted similarly to passages like Encheiridion 8 when they first encountered them. Moreover, I’m sure some of you are still struggling with the idea that you should not judge tragedy as “bad” but wish for things to happen as they do instead. Many people will find this mindset wholly unacceptable and abandon Stoicism entirely or ignore this aspect of Stoic practice.
For many people, this aspect of Stoicism is counterintuitive because they are judging it, consciously or unconsciously, from the perspective of a worldview that is not compatible with Stoicism. As A. A. Long and other scholars of Stoicism have pointed out, several aspects of Stoicism are counterintuitive apart from the theological worldview the Stoics relied on to create their philosophical way of life.
For that reason, I think it will be helpful to consider this difficult aspect of Stoicism using the concerns expressed by these two listeners. I want to make it clear I am not criticizing these listeners. Quite the opposite, I hope to help them, and many others like them, to navigate this difficult aspect of Stoicism. To that extent, I want to thank them for expressing their concern to me and allowing me to address it for the benefit of others who may be concerned about the same thing.
The first letter juxtaposes two scenarios. The first includes two relatively trivial incidents: a driver who cuts him off in traffic and someone who offers a personal insult. The second scenario involves a terrorist who is holding his daughter hostage at knifepoint. Obviously, to any rational person, there is a considerable difference in the degree of perceived loss between these scenarios. Only our ego is in play in the first case, and we will likely forget about the incident within minutes or hours. In the second, the life of a beloved daughter is at risk, and her loss could affect the loving father for the remainder of his life.
Therefore, a reasonable response to these threats should be proportional to the potential loss. To that end, most people would consider it reasonable to use deadly force to stop the terrorist from harming the woman. Alternatively, it would be unreasonable and irrational to run the bad driver off the road for cutting you off. Likewise, punching, stabbing, or shooting someone who offended you with a personal insult would be a disproportionate and unreasonable response. Our laws are typically codified to prevent the later extreme reaction. On the other hand, laws typically protect those who use deadly force to save their own life or the life of another from an imminent threat of death.
The second listener’s email expresses a similar concern more generically. She asks if it is rational for “sentient human beings to react to tragedy by saying, yes, I will things to happen as they have?”
As we’ve seen from the commentary by Simplicius, these sentiments represent a common concern about Stoicism. So, if this is a common concern, how does Stoicism resolve it? How is it reasonable for the Stoics to tell us we should wish for what happens even when what happens is an apparent tragedy?
I think there are two principles of Stoic doctrine at play here. The first is the difference between what is up to us and, therefore, truly “good” and “bad” for us as practicing Stoics. The second principle entails trust in a providentially ordered cosmos.
The Well-Being Balance Scale
For every event that occurs in our lives, even those we commonly consider tragic, we must begin with Encheiridion 1 and remind ourselves what is up to us and what is not up to us. Any event that is not up to us is an indifferent. No matter how tragic the event may appear, it does not affect our moral character (virtue) because it is external to our proairesis—our rational faculty, which is up to us and allows us to judge the event as good or bad.
Remember, Stoicism teaches us our good character (arete, virtue) is necessary and sufficient for our well-being. Nothing but virtue is needed, and nothing else contributes to or detracts from our well-being. If we lose sight of this fundamental principle of Stoicism, nothing else in our practice will work, and we will not be alright. Therefore, the most common and typically the first mistake we make when apparent tragedy occurs is placing indifferents on the wrong side of the well-being balance scale.
For this to make sense, I need you to visualize one of those old-fashioned balance scales. The ones where you put a known, calibrated weight on one side and the substance you want to weigh on the other side. The scale balances when the weights are the same. I will call this a well-being scale because we will imagine using it to weigh things of value to our well-being. I used this imagery in Episode 6 on the topic of what is up to us.
The common conception of happiness would have us stack as many preferred indifferents, like wealth, good health, a good reputation, a great job, excellent life partner, etc., on one side of the scale and hope they outweigh any of the dispreferred indifferents, like poverty, illness, etc., that come into our life. The Stoics argue this approach to life can never create well-being. Why? Because it makes our well-being dependent upon externals that are not up to us.
That is why the Stoics took a different approach to well-being. The Stoics argue the virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, are the only things entirely up to us; therefore, our well-being should depend on virtue alone. As a result, the Stoic practitioner must use the well-being scale differently.
