“It is the doctrine of you Stoics, then,” they reply, “that a brave man will expose himself to dangers.”
By no means; he will merely not fear them, though he will avoid them. It is proper for him to be careful, but not to be fearful.
“What then? Is he not to fear death, imprisonment, burning, and all the other missiles of Fortune?”
Not at all; for he knows that they are not evils, but only seem to be. He reckons all these things as the bugbears of man’s existence.Paint him a picture of slavery, lashes, chains, want, mutilation by disease or by torture—or anything else you may care to mention; he will count all such things as terrors caused by the derangement of the mind. These things are only to be feared by those who are fearful. Or do you regard as an evil that to which some day we may be compelled to resort of our own free will?
What then, you ask, is an evil? It is the yielding to those things which are called evils; it is the surrendering of one’s liberty into their control, when really we ought to suffer all things in order to preserve this liberty.
Liberty is lost unless we despise those things which put the yoke upon our necks. If men knew what bravery was, they would have no doubts as to what a brave man’s conduct should be.
For bravery is not thoughtless rashness, or love of danger, or the courting of fear-inspiring objects; it is the knowledge which enables us to distinguish between that which is evil and that which is not. Bravery takes the greatest care of itself, and likewise endures with the greatest patience all things which have a false appearance of being evils.
By no means; he will merely not fear them, though he will avoid them. It is proper for him to be careful, but not to be fearful.
“What then? Is he not to fear death, imprisonment, burning, and all the other missiles of Fortune?”
Not at all; for he knows that they are not evils, but only seem to be. He reckons all these things as the bugbears of man’s existence.Paint him a picture of slavery, lashes, chains, want, mutilation by disease or by torture—or anything else you may care to mention; he will count all such things as terrors caused by the derangement of the mind. These things are only to be feared by those who are fearful. Or do you regard as an evil that to which some day we may be compelled to resort of our own free will?
What then, you ask, is an evil? It is the yielding to those things which are called evils; it is the surrendering of one’s liberty into their control, when really we ought to suffer all things in order to preserve this liberty.
Liberty is lost unless we despise those things which put the yoke upon our necks. If men knew what bravery was, they would have no doubts as to what a brave man’s conduct should be.
For bravery is not thoughtless rashness, or love of danger, or the courting of fear-inspiring objects; it is the knowledge which enables us to distinguish between that which is evil and that which is not. Bravery takes the greatest care of itself, and likewise endures with the greatest patience all things which have a false appearance of being evils.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 85
While we could argue about the best words until the cows come home, it is good for me to embrace the feeling of caution, and it is bad for me to succumb to the feeling of fear. If something can do me genuine harm, it is wise to avoid it, and yet if something is merely alarming, I should not be intimidated by the impression.
All too often, we let the passions push us about, while the stable emotions are always grounded in a sound understanding.
Before I am gripped by terror, wouldn’t it be best to consider the true measure of what will either help or hurt my nature? My most crippling mistakes started when I let my desires rush ahead of my awareness, and they could so easily have been avoided by first knowing what I should want to get and what I should want to avoid.
Over the years, I have been frantically warned about countless dangers, and yet it turns out that so very few of them were really perilous at all.
Yes, the Stoic will make some shocking claims, including the one about no circumstance ever being an evil. We are appalled by this, however, because we haven’t started at the beginning, because we are constantly assuming the conclusions without establishing the premises. This also why we bicker about taxes, and guns, and abortion, while never reasoning from first principles about our human good.
If we swept away the clutter of the passions, we would see that man is a creature of reason and of will, made to know and to love, and the rest is window dressing. Virtue is his only good, and vice is his only evil. He should not fear poverty, or torture, or death, since they need not hinder the act of living well. Indeed, he should not fear anything at all, since it always remains within his power to do what is right, whatever fortune might happen to throw his way.
Will there be pain? Most certainly, and sometimes we will deceive ourselves into believing that the pains are the pleasures. The trick is in employing the hardship as an opportunity to express an excellence of the soul, at which point there is no need for running away from the pain or for chasing after the pleasure—there will be the simplicity of joy.
When I can master myself in this way, with no demands for ruling anyone or anything else, I will have attained a total freedom for myself. It sounds poetic to proclaim that fear is a form of slavery, but it is philosophical to explain why fear is a surrender to the things beyond our control, and therefore we ironically make indifferent things evil by giving them an authority over us.
A brave man no longer fears death, because he cares first and foremost for the integrity of his character, and what once felt so big now feels rather small. It is the same with the prudent man, who knows he can conquer his own ignorance, and the temperate man, who knows he can moderate his own appetites, and the just man, who knows he can gladly give what he owes without expecting any further reward.
—Reflection written in 1/2014
IMAGE: Briton Riviere, Daniel in the Lion's Den (1872)
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