A Guide to the Good Life

by William Braxton Irvine

  Suppose that even though we follow the above advice, someone succeeds in annoying us. In such cases, Marcus says, we should remind ourselves that “this mortal life endures but a moment,” meaning that we soon will be dead.11 Putting annoying incidents into their cosmic context, he thinks, will make their triviality apparent and will therefore alleviate our annoyance.

  According to Marcus, the biggest risk to us in our dealings with annoying people is that they will make us hate them, a hatred that will be injurious to us. Therefore, we need to work to make sure men do not succeed in destroying our charitable feelings toward them. (Indeed, if a man is good, Marcus says, the gods will never see him harbor a grudge toward someone.) Thus, when men behave inhumanely, we should not feel toward them as they feel toward others. He adds that if we detect anger and hatred within us and wish to seek revenge, one of the best forms of revenge on another person is to refuse to be like him.12

  Some of our most important relationships are with members of the opposite sex, and the Stoics had much to say regarding such relationships. A wise man, Musonius says, will not have sex outside of marriage and within marriage will have it only for the purpose of begetting children; to have sex in other circumstances suggests a lack of self-control.13 Epictetus agrees that we should avoid having sex before marriage, but adds that if we succeed in doing this, we shouldn’t boast about our chastity and belittle those who aren’t likewise chaste.14

  Marcus has even more misg ivings about sex than Musonius and Epictetus did. In the Meditations, he provides us with a technique for discovering the true value of things: If we analyze something into the elements that compose it, we will see the thing for what it really is and thereby value it appropriately. Fine wine, thus analyzed, turns out to be nothing more than fermented grape juice, and the purple robes that Romans valued so highly turn out to be nothing more than the wool of a sheep stained with gore from a shellfish. When Marcus applies this analytical technique to sex, he discovers that it is nothing more than “friction of the members and an ejaculatory discharge.”15 We would therefore be foolish to place a high value on sexual relations and more foolish still to disrupt our life in order to experience such relations.

  As it so happens, Buddhists recommend the use of this same analytic technique. When, for example, a man finds himself lusting after a woman, Buddhists might advise him to think not about her as a whole, but about the things that compose her, including her lungs, excrement, phlegm, pus, and spittle. Doing this, Buddhists claim, will help the man extinguish his lustful feelings. If this doesn’t do the trick, Buddhists might advise him to imagine her body in the various stages of decomposition.16

  The Stoics’ advocacy of sexual reserve will sound prudish to modern readers, but they had a point. We live in an age of sexual indulgence, and for many people the consequences of this indulgence have been catastrophic in terms of their peace of mind. Think, for example, about the young woman who, because she could not resist sexual temptation, is now faced with the hardship that generally accompanies single parenthood, or the young man who, because he could not resist temptation, is now burdened with responsibilities (or at least child-support payments) that prevent him from pursuing the dreams he once had for himself. It is easy these days to find people who will agree that their life would have gone better if they had shown more sexual reserve; it is hard to find people who think their life would have gone better if they had shown less.

  The Stoics, we should note, were not alone among the ancients in pointing to the destructive power of sex. Epicurus may have been the philosophical rival of the Stoics, but he shared their misgivings about sex: “Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him.”17

  But having said all this, I should add that despite their misgivings about sex, the Stoics were big advocates of marriage. A wise man, Musonius says, will marry, and having married, he and his wife will work hard to keep each other happy. Indeed, in a good marriage, two people will join in a loving union and will try to outdo each other in the care they show for each other.18 Such a marriage, one imagines, will be very happy.

  And having married, a wise man will bring children into the world. No religious procession, Musonius says, is as beautiful as a group of children guiding their parents through the city, leading them by the hand and taking care of them.19 Few people, Musonius would have us believe, are happier than the person who has both a loving spouse and devoted children.

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  E L E V E N

  Insults

  On Putting Up with Put-Downs

  S o m e w i l l t h i n k it strange that the Roman Stoics would spend time talking about insults and how best to deal with them. “Is this the proper function of a philosopher?” they will ask. It is, if we think, as the Stoics did, that the proper role of philosophy is to develop a philosophy of life.

  The Stoics, as we have seen, counsel us to pursue tranquility. They realized, however, that one thing that prevents people from attaining and maintaining tranquility is the insults of others. As part of the strategy-for-living component of their philosophy of life, the Stoics therefore spent time developing techniques people could use to prevent the insults of others from upsetting them. In this chapter, I examine some of these techniques.

  In what follows, I use the word insult in a very broad sense, to include not just verbal abuse, such as calling someone a name, but also “insults by omission,” such as slighting or snub-bing someone, and physical insults, such as slapping someone.

  People tend to be exquisitely sensitive to insults. As Musonius points out, under some circumstances a mere glance can be construed as an insult.1 Furthermore, even when they are nonphysical, insults can be quite painful. If someone in a position of authority, a boss or teacher, for example, upbraids you in public, your feelings of anger and humiliation will likely be intense. Not only that, but insults are capable of causing you pain long after they have been delivered. A decade after the upbraiding just described, you might, in an idle moment, recall the incident, and despite the passage of time, you might find yourself again convulsed with anger.

  To appreciate the power of insults to upset our tranquility, we need only take a look at the things that upset us in daily living. High on the list will be the insulting behavior of other people, including, most prominently, our friends, relatives, and coworkers. Sometimes these individuals openly and directly insult us: “You are a fool.” More commonly, though, their insults are subtle or indirect. They might make us the butt of a joke: “Could you please put on a hat? The sunlight reflecting off the top of your head is blinding me.” Or, after congratulating us for some success, they might feel compelled to remind us, for the hundredth time, of some past failure. Or they might offer us backhanded compliments: “That outfit hides your bulges.” Or they might slight us by taking us for granted or by failing to give us the respect we feel we deserve. Or they might make a disparaging remark about us to someone else, who subsequently reports the remark to us. Any of these things can, if we let them, ruin our day.

  It isn’t only in modern times that people have been sensitive to insults. By way of illustration, consider the kinds of things that, according to Seneca, would have counted as insults in ancient Rome: “ ‘So-and-so did not give me an audience to-day, though he gave it to others’; ‘he haughtily repulsed or openly laughed at my conversation’; ‘he did not give me the seat of honour, but placed me at the foot of the table.’ ”2 If any of these things happened today, they would certainly be perceived as insults.

  Wh e n i n s u lt e d, people typically become angry. Because anger is a negative emotion that can upset our tranquility, the Stoics thought it worthwhile to develop strategies to prevent insults from angering us—strategies for removing, as it were, the sting of an insult. One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset.

  Suppose, for example, that someone m
ocks us for being bald when we in fact are bald: “Why is it an insult,” Seneca asks, “to be told what is self-evident?”3

  Another sting-elimination strategy, suggested by Epictetus, is to pause to consider how well-informed the insulter is. He might be saying something bad about us not because he wants to hurt our feelings but because he sincerely believes what he is saying, or, at any rate, he might simply be reporting how things seem to him.4 Rather than getting angry at this person for his honesty, we should calmly set him straight.

  One particularly powerful sting-elimination strategy is to consider the source of an insult. If I respect the source, if I value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn’t upset me. Suppose, for example, that I am learning to play the banjo and that the person who is criticizing my playing is the skilled musician I have hired as my teacher. In this case, I am paying the person to criticize me. It would be utterly foolish, under these circumstances, for me to respond to his criticisms with hurt feelings. To the contrary, if I am serious about learning the banjo, I should thank him for criticizing me.

  Suppose, however, that I don’t respect the source of an insult; indeed, suppose that I take him to be a thoroughly contemptible individual. Under such circumstances, rather than feeling hurt by his insults, I should feel relieved: If he disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is doubtless the right thing to do. What should worry me is if this contemptible person approved of what I am doing. If I say anything at all in response to his insults, the most appropriate comment would be, “I’m relieved that you feel that way about me.” When we consider the sources of insults, says Seneca, we will often find that those who insult us can best be described as overgrown children.5 In the same way that a mother would be foolish to let the “insults” of her toddler upset her, we would be foolish to let the insults of these childish adults upset us.

  In other cases, we will find that those insulting us have deeply flawed characters. Such people, says Marcus, rather than deserving our anger, deserve our pity.6

  As we make progress in our practice of Stoicism, we will become increasingly indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. We will not go through our life with the goal of gaining their approval or avoiding their disapproval, and because we are indifferent to their opinions, we will feel no sting when they insult us. Indeed, a Stoic sage, were one to exist, would probably take the insults of his fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog. When a dog barks, we might make a mental note that the dog in question appears to dislike us, but we would be utter fools to allow ourselves to become upset by this fact, to go through the rest of the day thinking, “Oh, dear! That dog doesn’t like me!”

  O n e ot h e r impor tant sting-elimination strateg y, say the Stoics, is to keep in mind, when insulted, that we ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult.

  “Remember,” says Epictetus, “that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting.” As a result, he says, “another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”7 From this it follows that if we can convince ourselves that a person has done us no harm by insulting us, his insult will carry no sting.

  This last advice is really just an application of the broader Stoic belief that, as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”8

  To better understand this claim, suppose someone deprives me of my property. He has done me harm only if it is my opinion that my property had real value. Suppose, by way of illustration, that someone steals a concrete birdbath from my back yard. If I treasured this birdbath, I will be quite upset by the theft. (And my neighbors, seeing how upset I am, might be puzzled: “Why is he getting all worked up over a stupid birdbath?” they will ask.) If I am indifferent to the birdbath, however, I will not be upset by its loss. To the contrary, I will be philosophical—more precisely, I will be Stoical—about the incident: “There is no point in getting all worked up over a stupid birdbath,” I will tell myself. My tranquility will not be disrupted. Suppose, finally, that I abhor the birdbath: I keep it only because it was a gift from a relative who will be upset if I don’t display it in my back yard. Under these circumstances, I might be delighted by its disappearance.

  Do the things that happen to me help or harm me? It all depends, say the Stoics, on my values. They would go on to remind me that my values are things over which I have complete control. Therefore, if something external harms me, it is my own fault: I should have adopted different values.

  Even if we succeed in removing the sting of an insult, we are left with the question of how best to respond to it. Most people think that the best response is a counterinsult, preferably one that is clever. The Stoics, however, reject this advice. And how are we to respond to an insult, if not with a counterinsult? One wonderful way, say the Stoics, is with humor.

  Thus, Seneca points approvingly to Cato’s use of humor to deflect a particularly grievous insult. Cato was pleading a case when an adversary named Lentulus spit in his face. Rather than getting angry or returning the insult, Cato calmly wiped off the spit and said, “I will swear to anyone, Lentulus, that people are wrong to say that you cannot use your mouth!”9 Seneca also approves of Socrates’ response to an even more abusive insult.

  Someone once came up to Socrates and, without warning, boxed his ears. Rather than getting angry, Socrates made a joke about what a nuisance it is, when we go out, that we can never be sure whether or not to wear a helmet.10

  Of the kinds of humor we might use in response to an insult, self-deprecating humor can be particularly effective. Along these lines, Seneca describes a man, Vatinius, whose neck was covered with wens and whose feet were diseased, who joked about his own deformities so much that others had nothing to add.11

  Epictetus also advocates the use of self-deprecating humor.

  Suppose, for example, you find out that someone has been saying bad things about you. Epictetus advises you to respond not by behaving defensively but by questioning his competence as an insulter; for example, you can comment that if the insulter knew you well enough to criticize you competently, he wouldn’t have pointed to the particular failings that he did but would instead have mentioned other, much worse failings.12

  By laughing off an insult, we are implying that we don’t take the insulter and his insults seriously. To imply this, of course, is to insult the insulter without directly doing so. It is therefore a response that is likely to deeply frustrate the insulter. For this reason, a humorous reply to an insult can be far more effective than a counterinsult would be.

  The problem with replying to insults with humor is that doing so requires both wit and presence of mind. Many of us lack these traits. When insulted, we stand there dumbfounded: We know we have been insulted but don’t know what to do next. If a clever response comes to us, it comes hours later, when it is of little use to us. Nothing is more pathetic, after all, than a person who, a day after being insulted, walks up to the person who insulted him, reminds him of what the insult was, and then gives his reply to it.

  The Stoics realized this and as a result advocated a second way to respond to insults: with no response at all. Instead of reacting to an insult, says Musonius, we should “calmly and quietly bear what has happened.” This is, he reminds us,

  “appropriate behavior for a person who wants to be magnani-mous.”13 The advantage of a nonresponse, of simply carrying on as if the insulter hadn’t even spoken, is that it requires no thought on our part. Indeed, even the most slow-witted person on the planet can respond to insults in this manner.

  Along these lines, Seneca approvingly points to the response of Cato when someone who did not know who he was struck him at the public baths. When the person subsequently realized who Cato was and apologized to him, Cato, rather than getting angry at the man or punishing him, simply replied,

  �
��I don’t remember being struck.”14 Cato, says Seneca, showed a finer spirit by not acknowledging the blow than he would have by pardoning it.15

  Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible. For one thing, as Seneca points out, our nonresponse can be quite disconcerting to the insulter, who will wonder whether or not we understood his insult. Furthermore, we are robbing him of the pleasure of having upset us, and he is likely to be upset as a result.16

  Notice, too, that by not responding to an insulter, we are showing him and anyone who is watching that we simply don’t have time for the childish behavior of this person. If a humorous response to an insult shows that we don’t take the insulter seriously, a nonresponse to an insult makes it look as if we are indifferent to the existence of the insulter: Not only don’t we take him seriously, but we don’t take him at all! No one wants to be ignored, though, and the insulter is likely to feel humiliated by our failure to respond to him—not with a counterinsult, not even with humor!

  The above discussion makes it sound as if the Stoics are complete pacifists with respect to insults, as if they will never respond to an insult with a counterinsult or by punishing the insulter. This is not the case, though. According to Seneca, there are times when it is appropriate for us to respond vigorously to an insult.

  The danger in responding to insults with humor or with no response at all is that some insulters are sufficiently slow-witted that they won’t realize that by refusing to respond to their insults with counterinsults, we are displaying disdain for what they think of us. Rather than being humiliated by our response, they might be encouraged by our jokes or silence, and they might start bombarding us with an endless stream of insults. This can be particularly awkward if the person doing the insulting was, in the ancient world, one’s slave or if he is, in the modern world, one’s employee, student, or child.