Short answer: "If you find the Stoic outlook more fitting to your own beliefs and experiences than the Epicurean," go for it. But if you're reluctant to view the emotions that we associate with pleasure and enjoyment--excitement, passion, hope, triumph, compassion...--as "diseases of the soul," you might want further to explore the Epicurean way.
"To stifle emotions is to lose awareness of the world and engagement with it," and while stoic stifling has been exaggerated in the Spock-like caricature of Vulcanic detachment ("my people consider emotion a kind of madness"..."there is no pain"...etc.), it is true that Stoics tend to be more buttoned-down and guarded, less prone to expressive display and thus less likely to embrace ranges of enjoyment the Epicurean thinks make life worth living.
"The true Stoic" is a fatalistic determinist (excepting one's internal state of acceptance/resignation) who "does not grieve over any death... the laws of nature make it inevitable that some children die of leukemia," that lunatics with guns will kill, and so on. The Epicurean, contrarily, is a liberal free willist who grieves for tragic death, which is always tragic when it comes too soon. But the Epicurean does not fear the death in due course which awaits us all.
A useful chart (p.265) marks the broad differences between Stoics and Epicureans, in various categories like ontology, causality, orientation, family, suicide, education... Bottom line: Stoic happiness is freedom from all emotional disturbances, while for the Epicurean it's freedom from anxiety and fear. This is more than a matter of tone and framing, I think. It highlights a fundamental difference of emphasis reflected in the latter's more open and receptive zest for living.
"Zest" is one of William James's favorite words, and Bertrand Russell's: two modern Epicureans, in a loose non-card carrying sense of the word (and in contrast to the hyper-aestheticized "epicure").
Russell, in chapter eleven of The Conquest of Happiness (1930), says zest is "the most universal and distinctive mark of happy men." If you've got it, you really enjoy your lunch and don't merely endure it for the sake of your health and survival. "What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life." Enjoying lunch is one of the things that make life worth living.
In "Is Life Worth Living?" (1896) James says "sufferings and hardships do not abate the love of life, they seem on the contrary to give it a keener zest." And,
"These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."I can think of no better last words for a course called The Philosophy of Happiness, and no better destination for today than a garden in the sun-unless it's a green field of the mind. (Giamatti)
Love your thoughts on this, although I personally don't take stoicism so literally. Please feel free to correct me, but I always understood it as freedom from the "weight" of our emotions. For example, if I were to be informed of a family members condition as "near death", it is my understanding that a stotic reaction would be to not let it run your life and mind. One would feel the pain and lost but they would choose to feel the love and gratitude as well of ever even having that person. Because both are real and its our choice. To recognize our feelings as reactions rather than the way things are, Stoics are free to experience the world without being ruled by rumination and actually continue with the life ahead. I must agree, I do sometimes find it sometimes insensitive or self protecting but as some one who spent most of their life ruled by feelings, the idea of letting hard emotions come upon me as easily and as certain as the thing which caused those emotions, is the only way to know life. However, I've never even heard of Epicurean philosophy so i gotta check it out. Class 6
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting perspective of stoicism. Perhaps there is a time for both philosophies.
DeleteLove your thoughts on this, although I personally don't take stoicism so literally. Please feel free to correct me, but I always understood it as freedom from the "weight" of our emotions. For example, if I were to be informed of a family members condition as "near death", it is my understanding that a stotic reaction would be to not let it run your life and mind. One would feel the pain and lost but they would choose to feel the love and gratitude as well of ever even having that person. Because both are real and its our choice. To recognize our feelings as reactions rather than the way things are, Stoics are free to experience the world without being ruled by rumination and actually continue with the life ahead. I must agree, I do sometimes find it sometimes insensitive or self protecting but as some one who spent most of their life ruled by feelings, the idea of letting hard emotions come upon me as easily and as certain as the thing which caused those emotions, is the only way to know life. However, I've never even heard of Epicurean philosophy so i gotta check it out. Class 6
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that a stoic philosophy on life can be used as a means of protecting ourselves from the otherwise traumatizing experiences. The choice between the two philosophies can be a means of survival.
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A true Stoic in my opinion is not such a bad person. I believe the name is coming off more negative than anything, which is far from the truth. Everyone has different ways of dealing with things and we as a society should respect their ways. Instead we call true stoics "heartless" and things of that nature. We have to accept people for who they are and continue on with our daily activities everyone is different...
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