Another popular misconception today is that Stoics are unemotional. The ancient Stoics themselves consistently denied this, saying that their ideal was not to be like a man of iron or to have a heart of stone. In fact, they distinguished between three types of emotion: good, bad, and indifferent. They had names for many different types of good passion (eupatheiai), a term encompassing both desires and emotions, which they grouped under three broad headings:
1. A profound sense of joy or gladness and peace of mind, which comes from living with wisdom and virtue
2. A healthy feeling of aversion to vice, like a sense of conscience, honor, dignity, or integrity
3. The desire to help both ourselves and others, through friendship, kindness, and goodwill
They also believed that we have many irrational desires and emotions, like fear, anger, craving, and certain forms of pleasure that are bad for us. Stoics did not believe that unhealthy emotions should be suppressed; rather, they should be replaced by healthy ones. However, these healthy emotions aren’t entirely under our control, and we’re not always guaranteed to experience them, so we shouldn’t confuse them with virtue, the goal of life. For Stoics, they’re like an added bonus.
They also taught that our initial automatic feelings are to be viewed as natural and indifferent. These include things like being startled or irritated, blushing, turning pale, tensing up, shaking, sweating, or stammering. They are natural reflex reactions, our first reactions before we escalate them into full-blown passions. We share these primitive precursors to emotion with some non-human animals, and so the Stoics view them with indifference, as neither good nor bad. Indeed, Seneca, as we’ll see, noted the paradox that before we can exhibit the virtues of courage and moderation, we need to have at least some trace of fear and desire to overcome.
Even the Stoic wise man, therefore, may tremble in the face of danger. What matters is what he does next. He exhibits courage and self-control precisely by accepting these feelings, rising above them, and asserting his capacity for reason. He’s not entranced by the siren song of pleasure or afraid of the sting of pain. Some pains have the potential to make us stronger, and some pleasures to harm us. What matters is the use we make of these experiences, and for that we need wisdom. The wise man will endure pain and discomfort, such as undergoing surgery or engaging in strenuous physical exercise, if it’s healthy for his body and, more important, if it’s healthy for his character. He’ll likewise forgo pleasures like eating junk food, indulging in drugs or alcohol, or oversleeping if they are unhealthy for his body or bad for his character. Everything comes back to the exercise of reason and the goal of living wisely.
By now you’ll appreciate how much confusion is caused by people mixing up “Stoicism” (capital S) with “stoicism” (lowercase s). Lowercase stoicism is just a personality trait: it’s mental toughness or the ability to endure pain and adversity without complaining. Uppercase Stoicism is a whole school of Greek philosophy. Being emotionally tough or resilient is just one small part of that philosophy, and lowercase stoicism neglects the entire social dimension of Stoic virtue, which has to do with justice, fairness, and kindness to others. Also, when people talk about being stoic or having a stiff upper lip, they often mean just suppressing their feelings, which is actually known to be quite unhealthy. So it’s important to be very clear that’s not what Marcus Aurelius and other Stoics recommended. Stoic philosophy teaches us instead to transform unhealthy emotions into healthy ones. We do so by using reason to challenge the value judgments and other beliefs on which they’re based, much as we do in modern rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
In the following chapters you’ll learn about the different ways in which Stoicism can be applied to life in order to overcome specific types of psychological problems, including pain, worry, anger, and loss. Stories about the life of Marcus Aurelius provide a human face for the philosophy and will furnish us with practical examples of Stoic strategies and techniques. We’ll start by looking at Marcus’s early life and education because that gets right to the heart of the matter by introducing the Stoic use of language.
2. THE MOST TRUTHFUL CHILD IN ROME
Marcus was born on April 26, 121 AD, and was “reared under the eye of Hadrian.”1 He took the name Aurelius later; throughout his childhood, he was known as Marcus Annius Verus, after his father and his grandfathers. The family lived in the small town of Ucubi in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in modern-day Spain) before moving to Rome. When he was about three years old, his father died—we don’t know the circumstances. Marcus barely knew him but later wrote about his manliness and humility, drawing from what he learned of his father by reputation and what little he remembered.
Marcus was brought up by his mother and paternal grandfather, a highly distinguished senator who had served three times as consul. He was a close friend of the Emperor Hadrian and was the brother-in-law of Hadrian’s wife, the Empress Sabina, Marcus’s great-aunt. As a member of a wealthy patrician family with ties to the emperor, Marcus was naturally part of his grandfather’s social circle, and though we’re told he was loved by all, something about Marcus especially caught Hadrian’s eye. The emperor heaped honors on him from an early age, enrolling him in the equestrian order when he was six years old, making him what’s sometimes described as a Roman knight. When Marcus was eight, Hadrian appointed him to the College of the Salii, or leaping priests, whose main duty involved performing elaborate ritual dances in honor of Mars, the god of war, while dressed in ancient armor and bearing ceremonial swords and shields.
Hadrian nicknamed the boy Verissimus, meaning “truest” or “most truthful,” a play on his family name of Verus, which means “true.” It’s as if he found Marcus, a mere child, to be the most plainspoken individual at court. Indeed, Marcus’s family, though wealthy and influential, was notable for cherishing honesty and simplicity. Marcus’s tendency toward plain speaking gave him a natural affinity for Stoic philosophy, which he would discover later. However, it set him at odds with the intellectual culture prevailing at Hadrian’s court during the height of the Second Sophistic, a cultural movement celebrating formal rhetoric and oratory. By Hadrian’s time, Greek art and literature had become highly fashionable. Greek intellectuals, particularly orators, were highly esteemed and became tutors to the Roman elite, allowing Greek culture to flourish in the heart of the Roman Empire.