The Emotional Life of the Wise
Published Mar 1, 2005 · J. M. Cooper
Southern Journal of Philosophy
14
Citations
1
Influential Citations
Abstract
I The ancient Stoics notoriously argued, with thoroughness and force, that all ordinary " emotions " (passions, mental affections: in Greek, pãyh) are thoroughly bad states of mind, not to be indulged in by anyone, under the history of Stoicism, however, apparently in order to avoid the objection that human nature itself demands and indeed justifies—under certain circumstances at any rate—emotional attachments to or aversions from, and reactions to, some persons, things, and happenings, they introduced a theory of what came to be called eÈpãyeiai, good and acceptable ways of feeling or being affected. For short I will render these in English by " good feelings. " 1 They divided these into three generic kinds, which they dubbed " joy " (xarã), " wish " (boÊlhsiw) and " caution " (eÈlãbeia). They ranged these alongside, and set them in sharp contrast to, three of the four highest genera into which they divided the normal human emotions: " pleasure " (≤donAE), i.e., being pleased about something, 2 " appetitive desire " (§piyuµ€a), and " fear " (fÒbow), respectively. The Stoics maintained that, though ordinary, familiar human emotions such as these last-named ones were always bad, the three sorts of " good feeling, " and their more specific variations (since these three are only the basic genera into which lots of other good ways of feeling will fall), were not merely free from the grounds of criticism on which ordinary emotions were rejected , and so were perfectly acceptable. The fully perfected human being (the " wise person ") would indeed regularly be subject to them. 3 Their theory of the perfect human life did not, then, they could claim, require any outrageously unnatural demand, presumably unrealizable in any case, for a life completely without all feelings of involvement in the sweep and flow of life. It would not be a life of total detachment from people, things, and events, with no feelings about things in prospect, or events, or oneself 2 or other people. Only p` ãyh—the symptoms of moral and mental disease—were to be eliminated. Feelings such as being pleased about something you've accomplished, or grieving over someone's death, and the rest of the pãyh, are bad because in experiencing them one is wrongly thinking of their objects or causes as good or bad things to have happened (or in prospect). Since, for the Stoics, no such things can be …