170 Stoic Advice

TWELVE

Grief On Vanquishing Tears with Reason

Most parents,
on learning of the death of a child, will be
emotionally devastated. They will weep, perhaps for days
on end, and they will be unable to go about their daily
routine for a time. Long after the death, they might
experience grief fl ashbacks; their eyes might well up, for
example, on seeing a picture of their child. And how will a
Stoic respond to the death of a child? One might imagine
that he will respond with no response at all, that he will
suppress whatever feelings he might be having or, better
still, that he will have trained himself not to grieve.
The belief that Stoics never grieve, although widely
held, is mistaken. Emotions such as grief, the Stoics
understood, are to some extent refl exive. In much the same
way that we cannot help being startled when we hear a
loud, unexpected noise— it is a physical refl ex—we
cannot help feeling grief-stricken when we learn of the
unexpected loss of a loved one—it is an emotional refl ex.
Thus, in his consolation to Polybius, who was grieving the
death of his brother, Seneca writes, “Nature requires from
us some sorrow, while more than this is the result of vanity.
But never will I demand of you that you should not grieve
at all.”1
How much should a Stoic grieve? In proper grief,
Seneca tells Polybius, our reason “will maintain a mean
which will copy neither indifference nor madness, and will
keep us in the state that is the mark of an affectionate, and
not an unbalanced, mind.” Consequently, he advises
Polybius to “let your tears fl ow, but let them also cease, let
deepest sighs be drawn from your breast, but let them also
fi nd an end.”2
Although it might not be possible to eliminate grief from
our life, it is possible, Seneca thinks, to take steps to
minimize the amount of grief we experience over the
course of a lifetime. And given that such steps exist, we
ought to take them. We live, after all, in a world in which
there is potentially much for us to grieve. Consequently,
says Seneca, we ought to be parsimonious with our tears,
since “nothing must be husbanded more carefully than that
of which there is such frequent need.”3 It was with these
thoughts in mind that Seneca and the other Stoics
developed strategies by which we can prevent ourselves
from experiencing excessive grief and overcome quickly
whatever grief we might fi nd ourselves experiencing.

The Stoics’ primary

grief-prevention strategy was to engage
in negative visualization. By contemplating the deaths of
those we love, we will remove some of the shock we
experience if they die; we will in a sense have seen it
coming. Furthermore, if we contemplate the deaths of those
we love, we will likely take full advantage of our
relationships with them and therefore won’t, if they die, fi
nd ourselves fi lled with regrets about all the things we
could and should have done with and for them.
172 Stoic Advice
155
Grief

Besides being used to prevent grief, negative

visualization can be used to extinguish it. Consider, for
example, the advice Seneca gives to Marcia, a woman who,
three years after the death of her son, was as grief-stricken
as on the day she buried him. Rather than spending her
days thinking bitterly about the happiness she has been
deprived of by the death of her son, Marcia should, says
Seneca, think about how much worse off she would be
today if she had never been able to enjoy his company. In
other words, rather than mourning the end of his life, she
should be thankful that he lived at all.4
This is what might be called retrospective negative
visualization. In normal, prospective negative visualization,
we imagine losing something we currently possess; in
retrospective negative visualization, we imagine never
having had something that we have lost. By engaging in
retrospective negative visualization, Seneca thinks, we can
replace our feelings of regret at having lost something with
feelings of thanks for once having had it.

In his consolation
to Polybius, Seneca offers advice on how
to overcome whatever grief we happen to be experiencing.
Reason is our best weapon against grief, he maintains,
because “unless reason puts an end to our tears, fortune
will not do so.” More generally, Seneca thinks that
although reason might not be able to extinguish our grief, it
has the power to remove from it “whatever is excessive and
superfl uous.”5
Seneca then sets about using rational persuasion to cure
Polybius of his excessive grief. For example, he argues that
the brother whose death Polybius is grieving either would
or wouldn’t want Polybius to be tortured with tears. If he
would want Polybius to suffer, then he isn’t worthy of
tears, so Polybius should stop crying; if he wouldn’t want
Polybius to suffer, then it is incumbent on Polybius, if he
loves and respects his brother, to stop crying. In another
argument, Seneca points out that Polybius’s brother,
because he is dead, is no longer capable of grief and that
this is a good thing; it is therefore madness for Polybius to
go on grieving.6
Another of Seneca’s consolations is addressed to Helvia,
Seneca’s mother. Whereas Polybius had been grieving the
death of a loved one, Helvia was grieving the exile of
Seneca. In his advice to Helvia, Seneca takes the argument
he offered Polybius—that the person whose death Polybius
is grieving wouldn’t want him to grieve—one step further:
Because it is Seneca’s circumstances that Helvia is
grieving, he argues that inasmuch as he, being a Stoic,
doesn’t grieve his circumstances, Helvia shouldn’t either.
(His consolation to Helvia, he observes, is unique:
Although he read every consolation he could fi nd, in not
one of them did the author console people who were
bemoaning the author himself.)7
174 Stoic Advice
In some cases, such appeals to reason will doubtless help
alleviate, if only for a time, the grief someone is
experiencing. In cases of extreme grief, though, such
appeals are unlikely to succeed for the simple reason that
the grieving person’s emotions are ruling his intellect. But
even in these cases, our attempts to reason with him might
be useful, inasmuch as such attempts can make him
understand the extent to which his intellect has capitulated
to his emotions and thereby induce him, perhaps, to take
steps to restore his intellect to its rightful role.
157
Grief

Epictetus also offers

advice on grief management. He
advises us, in particular, to take care not to “catch” the
grief of others. Suppose, for example, we encounter a
griefstricken woman. We should, says Epictetus,
sympathize with her and maybe even accompany her
moaning with moaning of our own. But in doing so, we
should be careful not to “moan inwardly.”8 In other words,
we should display signs of grief without allowing ourselves
to experience grief.
Some will be offended by this advice. When others are
grieving, they will assert, we shouldn’t just pretend as if we
sympathize with them; we should actually feel their losses
and actually grieve ourselves. Epictetus might respond to
this criticism by pointing out that the advice that we
respond to the grief of friends by grieving ourselves is as
foolish as the advice that we help someone who has been
poisoned by taking poison ourselves or help someone who
has the fl u by intentionally catching it from him. Grief is a
negative emotion and therefore one that we should, to the
extent possible, avoid experiencing. If a friend is grieving,
our goal should be to help her overcome her grief (or
rather, if we properly internalize our goals, it should be to
do our best to help her overcome her grief). If we can
accomplish this by moaning insincerely, then let us do so.
For us to “catch” her grief, after all, won’t help her but will
hurt us.
Some readers will at this point become skeptical about
the wisdom and effi cacy of Stoic techniques for dealing
with negative emotions. We live in an age in which the
consensus view, held by health professionals and
laypersons alike, is that our emotional health requires us to
be in touch with our emotions, to share them with others,
and to vent them without reservation. The Stoics, on the
other hand, advocate that we sometimes feign emotions and
that we sometimes take steps to extinguish the genuine
emotions we find within us. Some might therefore
conclude that it is dangerous to follow Stoic advice
regarding our emotions, and because such advice lies at the
heart of Stoicism, they might go on to reject Stoicism as a
philosophy of life.
Rest assured that in chapter 20 I will respond to this
criticism of Stoicism. I will do so, to the amazement of
some, by questioning consensus views on what we should
do to maintain our emotional health. It is doubtless true that
176 Stoic Advice
some individuals—those experiencing intense grief, for
example—can benefi t from psychological counseling. I
also think, though, that many people can enjoy robust
emotional health without resorting to such counseling. In
particular, I think the practice of Stoicism can help us avoid
many of the emotional crises that affl ict people. I also
think that if we do fi nd ourselves in the grip of a negative
emotion, following Stoic advice will, in many cases, allow
us single-handedly to subdue that emotion.