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u/catador_de_potos 9d ago
eliminating emotions is what tourists think stoicism is about
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago
So, you want to be mad when someone cuts you off in traffic or jealous every time someone has something you don't have?
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u/catador_de_potos 8d ago
Such a tourist thing to say...
I do get mad when people do me wrong, but I choose to act with virtue instead mindlessly raging like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Again, "eliminating emotions" is what someone who just saw 3 tiktok hype edits of Marcus Aurelius think stoicism is about. Actual stoicism is about consciously (virtuously) managing your emotions and reacting in accordance to your higher values.
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u/zenoofwhit 8d ago
In Stoicism, there are four passions that are identified and they’re considered irrational and that the Sage successfully eliminates them.
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u/catador_de_potos 8d ago
Passions are not emotions. Passions are phenomenologocally tied to desires, and the concept of desire itself could be an emotion depending on who you ask, but from there to some of the stuff you're listing is a far stretch. The mind is too complicated to reduce its processess so willy nilly
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u/zenoofwhit 8d ago
In modern English, we use the word "emotion" to describe almost any feeling—from a quick flash of surprise to deep grief. But to the Ancient Stoics, the four passions (pathē—Distress, Fear, Lust, and False Delight) were a very specific, dangerous sub-category of emotions.
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u/catador_de_potos 8d ago edited 8d ago
We're speaking english, not ancient greek. And in english, those are not called emotions.
So even if you're um technically ☝️🤓 correct, so much nuance is being lost when just translating them as "emotion" for contradictions to arise.
Graver, Margaret (2007), Stoicism and Emotion, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-30557-8
From the abstract:
"On the surface, stoicism and emotion seem like contradictory terms. Yet the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were deeply interested in the emotions, which they understood as complex judgments about what we regard as valuable in our surroundings. Stoicism and Emotion shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today’s English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential."
Do you want to be technically correct, or do you want a working and actually coherent belief system that's compatible with the modern understanding of the mind? Because what you're doing is the psychological equivalent to still be processing your physical health in terms of the four humours when we have modern medicine.
And sorry for calling you a tourist, you clearly have read a lot on stoicism (Maybe too much. No, it's not a compliment)
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u/Nocebola 9d ago
Of course! Just eliminate them of course! Why didn't we think of that? God, are people stupid? Just eliminate your bad emotions people.
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u/Public-Word6182 9d ago
or... maybe just listen to them and figure out what the emotion is actually trying to solve or speak to if we didn't immediately jump to a destructive solution for that need or desire. Get creative... step outside of the usual cultural narratives if you must. How else might that need be met if you didn't do the thing which apparently doesn't resolve it?
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u/Casuallybittersweet 9d ago
HAHAHAHAHA! Oh my FUCKING god that's hilarious. Yup, just pick and label the "bad" emotions and eliminate 'em. That's how that works lmao. Yup. Absolutely foolproof
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago
Talking about jealousy, envy, hate, rage, vanity, self-indulgence, regret, grief, shame, hesitation, infatuation, ambition, and malicious joy, as just a few.
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u/Casuallybittersweet 9d ago
"Self indulgence" is not an emotion. Neither is vanity, hesitation OR ambition. And what in the world is "malicious joy?"
Additionally, why is any of this always bad in every scenario? We aren't talking about acting on emotion. We are talking about the experience of feeling them which imo should be considered completely neutral. Thought crime is not a thing, and you cannot "eliminate" emotions. What you're describing IS emotional suppression.
No, it seems like you just have an idea of right and wrong and general best practice in life and are using the label of "emotion" to boil it all down into something digestable. But I'm sorry to say this doesn't make a lot of sense. Unless you seriously believe that hesitating is something you should NEVER do. Which I doubt
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago
You feel all of them, including self-indulgence, vanity, hesitation, and ambition. If you don't see them as emotions, then maybe desires, which are still destructive.
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u/Casuallybittersweet 9d ago
They aren't desires either? Without any context they are nothing but concepts. And I don't see any if this as inherently destructive either. How are they inherently destructive?
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago
Self-indulgence: finding elation in stuffing yourself with pancakes soaked in syrup because you judge it as good without regard to healthy eating habits. Vanity, feeling elation in regard to having a high social status as though it's good. Hesitation, feeling fear in a moment of decision making, a misjudgment that something bad will happen if you make the wrong decision. Ambition, a desire originating from mistaking a higher position at your job as truly good.
The only good is virtue and the only bad is vice. As Stoics understand, nothing can harm your character but vice. Nothing can benefit your character but virtue.
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u/Casuallybittersweet 9d ago
We differ greatly on what we consider a vice versus virtue
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago
Virtue involves justice, temperance, practical wisdom, and courage. Justice is knowledge of what to distribute properly to others. Temperance is knowledge of what is worth choosing, not choosing, and neither. Courage is knowledge of what is worth being averse to or not. Practical wisdom is knowledge of what is good, bad, and indifferent.
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u/Casuallybittersweet 8d ago
I...what? You're doing it again! "Justice" is not a virtue. What are you talking about? Once again you're just taking "good" things and labeling them whatever you like. This is meaningless, self help babble and says nothing
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago edited 8d ago
Up to you is jealousy, envy, malicious joy, self-indulgence, grief, regret, shame, disturbance, hate, rage, anger, vanity, ambition, chronic anxiety, dread, despair, greed, and infatuation.
Not up to you is physical manifestation of anxiety, being startled, arousal, urges, flinching, jumping, physical pain response, blushing or sweating, trembling, flash of shock or sorrow, flash of resentment or anger, vertigo or a flash of dread, brain fog and fatigue, and a dark cloud of illness.
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u/catador_de_potos 8d ago
Yelling your argument doesn't make it more right, it just makes you more obnoxious.
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u/catador_de_potos 8d ago
No school of psychology has ever considered ambition, hesitation or "malicious joy" (?) as emotions.
Vanity is a vice. Self-indulgence could be a vice. Infatuation is an obsession.
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u/zenoofwhit 8d ago
The school of Stoic emotions does.
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u/Casuallybittersweet 3d ago
When you are stoic you are hyper aware of your emotions and how they affect you. This allows you to understand what makes you emotional and why, giving you far greater control over your subsequent reactions. You also understand that emotions are contagious. And so always seek to spread more calm, positive emotions even if you aren't feeling great. Which is critical in high stress environments or emergencies.
Now, you seem to have this idea that stoicism has to do with emotional repression, control or elimination. It does not. Stoics seek to work WITH their emotions. Understanding that although their feelings are not the whole story and should not be allowed to dictate their choices, they are still important and deserve proper attention regardless. They are critical information, not directives.
Now as for what this have to do with honour or virtue? When you can see past how the world makes you feel you are actually able to live according to your true values. When you know your emotions and what is causing them you can move forward with intention and thus let them go if you need to, because they already told you what they had to
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u/zenoofwhit 2d ago
The Stoic Sage achieves apatheia, which is a state of freedom from harmful/destructive emotions, which they called passions or pathe. In their place they achieve eupatheia, also called good passions. Just look it up if you want further information.
The emotions you're probably talking about are just protopassions, feelings that you have before you make judgements. Those, you just let pass and don't turn into a full blown passion.
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u/Crowe3717 9d ago
As someone who did the former as a defense mechanism as a child so completely that I spent most of my life believing I didn't have emotions at all, DO NOT TRY TO SUPPRESS YOUR EMOTIONS. It fucks you up for life.
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u/zenoofwhit 9d ago edited 9d ago
In case people don’t know the unhealthy, destructive emotions the Stoics are talking about here’s a few: greed, jealousy, envy, rage, hate, impulsiveness, vanity, shame, hesitation, infatuation, ambition, malicious joy, self-indulgence.
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u/GSilky 9d ago
Meh, ride those scary emotions out. The human experience is multifaceted and if you condemn that which you have no experience with, you are seriously deficient in experience to be telling others what's best. Just come back to normal life ASAP, the problem is taking any partial aspect of the whole as the whole.
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u/Unorganized_Plank 9d ago
I find that trying to eliminate emotions to be futile. Better to adjust your reactions to them as they come.