The story of the pale Stoic in the storm
Stoicism and fear, from the lost Fifth Book of Epictetus
Fear is a basic human emotion. Or is it? It depends on what you mean by “fear.” Modern cognitive science recognizes two different forms of most basic emotions: a pre-cognitive and a cognitive one. In the case of fear, for instance, the pre-cognitive form consists in the feeling you get when an autonomic physiological response is initiated by situations your brain subconsciously recognizes as potentially dangerous. It’s that rush of adrenaline that poises you to act on the fight-or-flight response triggered by your sympathetic nervous system. We share such response with a lot of other animals, and it likely evolved by natural selection.
The cognitive version of fear either follows the fight-or-flight response, once you have had time to think things over, or is an independent, long-term psychological condition. An example of the first kind might be a fight-or-flight condition triggered, say, by suddenly seeing a snake in front of you. After a moment or two the cognitive component starts weaving stories in your conscious brain: “Oh my god, this thing is likely poisonous. It’s going to kill me!” But you have the option of articulating a different story: “Ah, I have read about snakes in this area, and they are usually not poisonous. Besides, the ranger at the entrance of the park has given me instructions on what to do in exactly this situation.” The first story is going to turn your autonomic fight-or-flight response into cognitive fear; the second story will counter it and allow you to deal rationally with the situation.
Long-term psychological fears also have a cognitive component, but they do not originate from a fight-or-flight situation. They result from persistent narratives you tell yourself as a result of other people’s influences, what you read, what you watch on television, and what you see on social media. For instance, you may be afraid of a terrorist attack, even though in most places in the world the chances of this actually occurring are minuscule.
The Stoics drew a distinction between pre-cognitive and cognitive emotions, for instance Seneca, in On Anger, refers to pre-cognitive emotions as “the first movement” that may, or may not—depending on how we act—lead to the full fledged version. He counts blushing as another example of pre-cognitive emotion. Epictetus calls our first reaction an “impression,” to which—if we take our time—we may or may not give “assent,” thus allowing the pre-emotion to proceed to cognitive emotion.
Yet another way of thinking about this is in terms of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, who in his best-selling Thinking, Fast and Slow, talks about two gears for our brain: System I, which is subconscious, fast, but approximate; and System II, conscious, reliable, but slow. Although there are situations that unfold so quickly that our only choice is to rely on System I, Epictetus’s advice is to, whenever possible, pause and allow System II to come on, so that we can properly question our first impression and see whether we do wish to act on it or not.
I’m telling you all of this because the other day, in the middle of an online discussion for a course I’m teaching on Seneca’s Letters, one of my students brought up a classic instance of the difference between impressions and assent in the Stoic literature, a story told by Aulus Gellius (125-180) in his Attic Nights (specifically, at 19.1). I’m going to transcribe the full (fairly long, sorry!) passage and intersperse a bit of commentary, as needed. It begins thus:
“We were sailing from Cassiopa to Brundisium over the Ionian sea, violent, vast and storm-tossed. During almost the whole of the night which followed our first day a fierce side-wind blew, which had filled our ship with water. Then afterwards, while we were all still lamenting, and working hard at the pumps, day at last dawned. But there was no less danger and no slackening of the violence of the wind; on the contrary, more frequent whirlwinds, a black sky, masses of fog, and a kind of fearful cloud-forms, which they called typhones, or ‘typhoons,’ seemed to hang over and threaten us, ready to overwhelm the ship.”
Cassiopa was a town in the north-eastern part of Corcyra, modern Corfu, near the northwestern border of Greece. Aulus is setting the dramatic scene here, letting us feel the senario: a powerful storm is battering the ship at night, and it does not abate the following day.
Notice the use of the word “typhoon” to describe the storm. Typhon was a gigantic monster in the form of a serpent, and one of the most deadly creatures in all of Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, he was the son of Gaia (the personification of Mother Earth) and Tartarus (the deep abyss where the Titans and wicked souls are imprisoned and tortured). Aulus continues:
“In our company was an eminent philosopher of the Stoic sect, whom I had known at Athens as a man of no slight importance, holding the young men who were his pupils under very good control. In the midst of the great dangers of that time and that tumult of sea and sky I looked for him, desiring to know in what state of mind he was and whether he was unterrified and courageous. And then I beheld the man frightened and ghastly pale, not indeed uttering any lamentations, as all the rest were doing, nor any outcries of that kind, but in his loss of color and distracted expression not differing much from the others.”
Aulus turns to look at the unnamed Stoic onboard because he is curious whether the Stoics’ reputation for courage and control of their emotions is true. At least initially, he is disappointed, because the philosopher in question is pale and appears frightened. However, notice that the Stoic is not given to outcries of fear, as many of the others are. This will become significant a bit later.
“But when the sky cleared, the sea grew calm, and the heat of danger cooled, then the Stoic was approached by a rich Greek from Asia, a man of elegant apparel, as we saw, and with an abundance of baggage and many attendants, while he himself showed signs of a luxurious person and disposition. This man, in a bantering tone, said: ‘What does this mean, Sir philosopher, that when we were in danger you were afraid and turned pale, while I neither feared nor changed color?’ And the philosopher, after hesitating for a moment about the propriety of answering him, said: ‘If in such a terrible storm I did show a little fear, you are not worthy to be told the reason for it. But, if you please, the famous Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates, shall answer for me, who on being asked on a similar occasion by a man much like you why he feared, though a philosopher, while his questioner on the contrary had no fear, replied that they had not the same motives, for his questioner need not be very anxious about the life of a worthless coxcomb, but he himself feared for the life of an Aristippus.’”
Ouch! Aristippus was not only a student of Socrates, as Aulus reminds us, but also the founder of the hedonistic sect of the Cyrenaics. Both Aristippus’s and the unnamed Stoic’s response may appear more than a bit rude, but the key here is the description of the respective questioners as “coxcombs,” i.e., conceited dandies, fops. Evidently, it was the custom of the time for philosophers to put such overbearing people in their place. But the story continues:
“With these words then the Stoic rid himself of the rich Asiatic. But later, when we were approaching Brundisium and sea and sky were calm, I asked him what the reason for his fear was, which he had refused to reveal to the man who had improperly addressed him. And he quietly and courteously replied: ‘Since you are desirous of knowing, hear what our forefathers, the founders of the Stoic sect, thought about that brief but inevitable and natural fear, or rather,’ said he, ‘read it, for if you read it, you will be the more ready to believe it and you will remember it better.’ Thereupon before my eyes he drew from his little bag the fifth book of the Discourses of the philosopher Epictetus, which, as arranged by Arrian, undoubtedly agree with the writings of Zeno and Chrysippus.”
Wait, what? The fifth book of Epictetus’s Discourses? But there are only four of them! In fact, Arrian of Nicomedia, the student of Epictetus who wrote both the Discourses and the Enchiridion, compiled eight volumes of the first, of which only four survive. We know of the other four precisely because of fragments reported by a scatter of later author, including Aulus Gellius and Marcus Aurelius.
Notice that the unnamed Stoic is perfectly willing now to talk about what happened during the storm, but then catches himself and suggests that instead of hearing an explanation, Aulus may profit from reading it. As the Romans said, verba volant, scripta manent, words fly, writings stays. (Which is why I prefer to write essays and books rather that produce podcasts, though I do a little bit of the latter as well.) What did Aulus find in Epictetus’s lost book?
“In that book I read this statement, which of course was written in Greek ‘The mental visions, which the philosophers call phantasies, by which the mind of man on the very first appearance of an object is impelled to the perception of the object, are neither voluntary nor controlled by the will, but through a certain power of their own they force their recognition upon men; but the expressions of assent, by which these visions are recognized, are voluntary and subject to man’s will. Therefore when some terrifying sound, either from heaven or from a falling building or as a sudden announcement of some danger, or anything else of that kind occurs, even the mind of a wise man must necessarily be disturbed, must shrink and feel alarm, not from a preconceived idea of any danger, but from certain swift and unexpected attacks which forestall the power of the mind and of reason. Presently, however, the wise man does not approve such phantasies, that is to say, such terrifying mental visions (to quote the Greek, he does not consent to them nor confirm them), but he rejects and scorns them, nor does he see in them anything that ought to excite fear. And they say that there is this difference between the mind of a foolish man and that of a wise man, that the foolish man thinks that such visions are in fact as dreadful and terrifying as they appear at the original impact of them on his mind, and by his assent he approves of such ideas as if they were rightly to be feared, and confirms them. But the wise man, after being affected for a short time and slightly in his color and expression, does not assent, but retains the steadfastness and strength of the opinion which he has always had about visions of this kind, namely that they are in no wise to be feared but excite terror by a false appearance and vain alarms.’”
This is a pretty good, if a bit convoluted, summary of Stoic psychology. The standard sequence is:
phantasiai > impression > pause > assent / no assent
The phantasia (plural of phantasiai) are “mental visions,” in the words of Aulus, i.e., they are perceptions typically triggered by the external world through the intermediacy of our senses. I say typically because phantasia (from which the English word “ghost” comes from) can also be internally generated. An example of external phantasiai would be seeing the storm battering the ship; an example of an internal phantasiai might be the feeling of being thirsty.
These visions, or ghosts, trigger an immediate, subconscious or barely conscious judgment, based on preconceptions we have about that sort of thing: the impression. For instance, the phantasiai of a storm generates the impression that this is bad because it could destroy the ship and we all die. The phantasiai of thirst may generate the impression that I should grab a beer from my refrigerator because that will quench my thirst. And so on.
The sequence up to now, that is, phantasiai > impression, is what most people do, and those are referred to by Epictetus fools. Why? Because they react like non-rational animals: stimulus > response, without availing themselves of the faculty that distinguishes the human animal from the others: reason.
The wise person, by contrast, proceeds with the next two steps. First, they pause, refraining from the otherwise natural propensity to react immediately. Second, the pause allows them to engage Kahneman’s System II and proceed to question the impression. Is it true, as it pretends to be? Maybe not!
For example, the storm may not be bad because, for a Stoic, life itself is a preferred indifferent, that is, it’s not the highest good (that would be virtue). So while the Stoic prefers to live, other things being equal, death is not inherently bad, and therefore we shouldn’t be afraid of it. As Epictetus puts it: “People are troubled not by things but by their judgments about things. Death, for example, isn’t frightening, or else Socrates would have thought it so.” (Enchiridion, 5a)
The point is that it is at lest debatable whether a given thing, say death, is or is not frightening. This isn’t a matter of empirical fact, it’s an opinion. And people, for instance Socrates, demonstrably have different opinions about it. Perhaps our own opinion is questionable, or downright incorrect.
Another, less dramatic example, regarding my internal phantasiai of thirst: sure, a beer would quench it, but right now I’m writing an essay for Figs in Winter, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to cloud my thinking with alcohol. Perhaps I’ll drink some water instead. (Carbonated, of course, what we Italians call “frizzante.”)
So if we want to make progress toward wisdom, according to Epictetus, we need to train ourselves not to assent automatically to a given impression triggered by a phantasiai. Instead we want to pause and question the impression, see if it withstands scrutiny. Contra the famous commercial, don’t just do it; instead stop and think about it, then see if you really wish to do it. Aulus concludes his story with a general consideration arching back to the pale Stoic in the storm, exempting him from the charge of experiencing (cognitive) fear:
“That these were the opinions and utterances of Epictetus the philosopher in accordance with the beliefs of the Stoics I read in that book which I have mentioned, and I thought that they ought to be recorded for this reason, that when things of the kind which I have named chance to occur, we may not think that to fear for a time and, as it were, turn white is the mark of a foolish and weak man, but in that brief but natural impulse we yield rather to human weakness than because we believe that those things are what they seem.”
“For instance, you may be afraid of a terrorist attack, even though in most places in the world the chances of this actually occurring are minuscule.”
When I was spending time with my 6 year old daughter in the playground, the missile alarm started. The tone and volume of the alarm is designed so that we don't miss it. It is so engraved in the brain, that it causes a dramatic increase in heart rate. As soon as the alarm sounded, I took my daughter in my hand's and ran. (in a Premeditatio Malorum I kept a very close distance to her due to the situation) and began to calculate where the nearest protected area is because in the city where I live, we have a minute and a half to reach a missile protected area. The second thought that crossed my mind was, how do I respond to the situation without causing more trauma to the girl? How do I keep my cool? I knew that my reaction would affect her reaction, when the sound of the alarm had already been enacted and burned into her as a very frightening experience. Fortunately, I was able to moderate the experience for the girl . I am no sage but Epictetus sure did changed my life. If anyone meets him, tell him that I owe him a lot... :-)
I was, when quite young and naive (about 20), in the middle of a typhoon (a monster of a storm but not a serpent) in the middle of the Indian Ocean--enroute to India with 23,500 tons of millet. (This was a summer job, not one where I had any important responsibilities.) Experienced seaman seemed quite anxious, even fearful, but I--stupidly?--found it thrilling and exciting, not daunting. I was not stoic, not rationally accepting whatever fate was about to befall us, but actually pleased with all the powerful displays of nature. I'm pretty sure that if such happened to me now, I'd be scared silly, though with obviously much fewer years to lose (entering my 79th year soon). What to make of my response then? I don't really know.