Practice like a Stoic: 3, Take an outside view
We react differently whether the same thing happens to us or someone else
[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 15-19 of the paperback edition.]
"It is in our power to discover the will of nature from those matters on which we have no difference of opinion. For example, when another man’s slave has broken the wine cup, we are very ready to say at once, ‘Such things must happen.’ Know then that when your own cup is broken, you ought to behave in the same way as when your neighbor’s was broken. Apply the same principle to higher matters. Is another’s child or wife dead? Not one of us but would say, ‘Such is the lot of man’; but when one’s own dies, straightaway one cries, ‘Alas! miserable am I.’ But we ought to remember what our feelings are when we hear it of another.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion, 26)
This is Epictetus at his most frank. It would appear that the Stoic philosopher is encouraging us to adopt a purposely callous attitude toward our own bad luck by viewing it as though it had happened to someone else. From a modern perspective, this isn’t easy advice to swallow as we strive to cultivate empathy toward other people’s situations. In fact, the Stoics, including Epictetus, aren’t that callous—they were very clear that the goal of Stoic practice is not to turn us into lumbering robots incapable of emotional responses, because that would strip us of our humanity. As the Stoic philosopher Seneca writes to his friend Lucilius: “The first thing which philosophy undertakes to give is fellow-feeling with all men; in other words, sympathy and sociability.” If the Stoics promote this sense of shared feeling, what, then, is Epictetus trying to say?
To begin with, let’s talk about the difference between sympathy and empathy. Both words entered our vocabulary much later than the times of Epictetus: in 1579 and 1850, respectively. Interestingly, they both carry the Greek root pathos, meaning “emotion,” but they modify it in different directions. To have sympathy with another’s distress, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is to care for and feel sorry about another’s grief or misfortune. To empathize, by contrast, means that—to the extent possible—you share another’s experiences on an emotional level.
The Stoics suggest that we should cultivate sympathy more than empathy. Both modern psychology and philosophy provide some backing for this ancient insight. Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom and City University of New York philosopher Jesse Prinz have made compelling cases that empathy is ethically problematic because, as with all highly emotional responses, it is easy for others to manipulate. Empathy also tends to be disproportionate to the situation (we feel more empathy for people we know or see directly), and does not scale up (it is impossible to feel empathy for anonymous thousands or even millions of people, regardless of how deserving they are). By contrast, sympathy is informed by reason and is therefore more wide ranging. We can sympathize even with people we do not know, or whose specific situation we have never experienced, because we are able to recognize that similar situations would be distressing for us, and that it would be unjust both for us and for anyone else to have to suffer through them.
In a sense, then, what Epictetus is observing is that in the normal course of events we tend to self-empathize (“Alas! Miserable am I.”) while we sympathize with others (“Such is the lot of man.”). The difference stems from our capability for more balanced judgment when the event does not touch us directly. Attempting to rectify this imbalance does not make us callous; it simply makes us more reasonable.
Reminding ourselves that difficult things happen—and not just to us—is comforting. We can start developing equanimity with respect to the things we don’t fully control. Likewise, we can be grateful when things go our way but not become too attached to them, as they can just as easily be taken away. And when tough things happen, we are able to find the courage to face them in the best way possible, because such is the human condition.
Thank you again dear Massimo for your lesson. My experience (I’m a physician, specialty emergency medicine) is that empathy (which is taught and encouraged primarily by hospital admin) is wrong. Compassion is right. With empathy, it degrades into “I know how you feel” etc with the emphatic on “me, me, me”. Compassion allows for sympathy and for a plan of action to relieve suffering.
While Epictetus was writing during a time where death and illness took lives more often than what most of us experience, and so uses that example, I also see this passage as providing a way for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives to cultivate our own neutrality to everyday losses, like the little disappointments that come with aging. Indeed, as Epictetus says, “Such things must happen.” I know I can’t fight gravity or time, but women especially are encouraged to believe they might with all of those ads for products and procedures. We could practice "sympathy and sociability" with everyone on this matter and yet we often end up feeling (as in the passage from Epictetus), “Woe is me!” Or, "how can this be happening?" Or, maybe if I buy X, I really will look better. Or, I’m too young to need another hearing test.
It would be so much easier, more frugal, and even enjoyable if we could find more ways to share sympathetic laughter over this process we share with everyone in our lives.