Men say to us: "You are mistaken if you maintain that nothing is a good except that which is honorable; a defense like this will not make you safe from Fortune and free from her assaults.
“For you maintain that dutiful children, and a well-governed country, and good parents, are to be reckoned as goods; but you cannot see these dear objects in danger and be yourself at ease.
“Your calm will be disturbed by a siege conducted against your country, by the death of your children, or by the enslaving of your parents."
I will first state what we Stoics usually reply to these objectors, and then will add what additional answer should, in my opinion, be given.
The situation is entirely different in the case of goods whose loss entails some hardship substituted in their place; for example, when good health is impaired, there is a change to ill-health; when the eye is put out, we are visited with blindness; we not only lose our speed when our leg muscles are cut, but infirmity takes the place of speed.
But no such danger is involved in the case of the goods to which we referred a moment ago. And why? If I have lost a good friend, I have no false friend whom I must endure in his place; nor if I have buried a dutiful son, must I face in exchange unfilial conduct.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 74
The critic is still confused, since he still hasn’t distinguished between the absolute and the relative goods Seneca described earlier. Who am I to throw stones, a fellow who has often hastily tossed all seeming benefits into the same bag, treating them as if they were identical in value, even as Nature calls on me to discern with far greater care?
The Stoic Turn is elegantly simple yet brutally demanding, a fundamental shift from relying upon circumstances to thriving in virtue, and it will take some time to accept that any possession is only as good or as bad as the character standing behind it. Having known great worldly losses, I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of those who take a beating from Fortune: the solution is never to dismiss the pain, but to understand it.
Whenever I suffer any sort of privation, the harm is perceived from the absence of what I believe should be present. But what if I modify my judgements about the things I claim to need? When the critic insists that I must be miserable without my family or my country, he fails to give me any credit for the capacity to shape my own happiness.
On the level of the body, losing an eye will make me blind, and a disease will injure my health, though on the level of the soul I am not so subject to merely receiving benefit or harm. My son is now gone, or my nation has now abandoned me, and yet nothing “evil” must enter into my thoughts or desires, unless I so choose.
As much as I would prefer to be near to someone I love, the advantage to an “indifferent” condition depends upon my estimation and use of it. Having the indifferent removed can just as readily become an advantage, leaving my integrity intact.
The critic is still confused, since he still hasn’t distinguished between the absolute and the relative goods Seneca described earlier. Who am I to throw stones, a fellow who has often hastily tossed all seeming benefits into the same bag, treating them as if they were identical in value, even as Nature calls on me to discern with far greater care?
The Stoic Turn is elegantly simple yet brutally demanding, a fundamental shift from relying upon circumstances to thriving in virtue, and it will take some time to accept that any possession is only as good or as bad as the character standing behind it. Having known great worldly losses, I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of those who take a beating from Fortune: the solution is never to dismiss the pain, but to understand it.
Whenever I suffer any sort of privation, the harm is perceived from the absence of what I believe should be present. But what if I modify my judgements about the things I claim to need? When the critic insists that I must be miserable without my family or my country, he fails to give me any credit for the capacity to shape my own happiness.
On the level of the body, losing an eye will make me blind, and a disease will injure my health, though on the level of the soul I am not so subject to merely receiving benefit or harm. My son is now gone, or my nation has now abandoned me, and yet nothing “evil” must enter into my thoughts or desires, unless I so choose.
As much as I would prefer to be near to someone I love, the advantage to an “indifferent” condition depends upon my estimation and use of it. Having the indifferent removed can just as readily become an advantage, leaving my integrity intact.
All other things being equal, I will choose what is easier and more gratifying, while remaining fully aware of how it must never define my moral worth. If it must pass away for me to act with excellence, there has been no true loss. The eye may be plucked out, but the mind can always hold to the good. The friend may be ripped from my side, but the will can continue to offer love.
—Reflection written in 10/2013
IMAGE: Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child (1903)
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