_far-seeker_ t1_iza6iyv wrote on December 7, 2022 at 4:48 PM

Reply to comment by Enfants in Philosopher José Antonio Marina: 'The fact that happiness has become fashionable is catastrophic' by FDuquesne

>However, if say relationships arent working out for me, or I cant seem to make friends and feel lonely, and if I have to tell myself "This is ok. This is a natural part of life. I should be content", etc I find that very damaging as it is really just a lie. I feel sad, angry, lonely etc on the inside as much as I tell myself that I am not, I just become far removed from understanding myself.

In this particular case, stoicism would tend to motivate you to change the situation for an entirely different reason. The fundamental definition of a human being to nearly all stoic philosophers was along the lines of "a rational animal that exists/thrives in a society". So stoicism developed to be innately pro-social, to a certain extent, and the basic stoic concept "living the good life" includes having meaningful relationships with other people. In otherwords, to a stoic philosopher persistent isolation and loneliness for a human being would be fundamentally unnatural conditions that need to be rectified just as much as the inability to control one's own anger.

However, beyond that I think you still aren't quite understanding what the stoic perspective on emotions. To them emotion *is not intrinsically wrong, as feeling emotion is a part of human life. What they did believe was wrong is when emotions control one's thoughts and actions. Yet, even that doesn't mean emotions cannot serve as prompts to rational decisions. For example, it would be entirely acceptable to a stoic for someone to use the feelings of disappointment, frustration, etc... of not achieving an end as an impetus to rethink how one is trying achieve that end and/or reconsider if that end is worthwhile. They would probably would view it as similar to a situation like somone's aching muscles while carrying heavy things from one side of a warehouse to another causing them to decide to use a cart or wheelbarrow. In both cases even though the irrational feeling starts a chain of events, there is a rational decision that governs it. That is what they mean by "reason over emotion".

Enfants t1_izaahd0 wrote on December 7, 2022 at 5:14 PM

Yes, however what I am saying is that constantly persuing to put "reason over emotion" leads to a dulled sense of yourself and emotions to the point that you may not even realize/understand what youre feeling.

Imagine for example that you did have many friends. But over time one by one, you lost those friendships. And at every time, you said "This is ok, it happens." And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, It happens. I can do everything alone!" And so on. You wouldnt immediately feel this deep sense of loneliness, youd have adapted at each point to be reasonable about the outcomes. See the reasonable thing is to always be ok with something. So imagine you were a perfect Stoic from birth, would you be any different from a robot?

You have to be in tune with your emotions to recognize and change them, but I find that hard to do if I always put reason first.

_far-seeker_ t1_izaazxd wrote on December 7, 2022 at 5:17 PM

>Imagine for example that you did have many friends. But over time one by one, you lost those friendships. And at every time, you said "This is ok, it happens." And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, I can do everything alone!" And so on.

I would think the rational response eventually would be to question "why do I keep losing friends?" regardless of if there is acceptance of each individual loss of a friend. If anything, stoicism should promotes Intellectual examination of one's life instead of such apathy.

Edit: >And when you had no friends and had trouble making them you said "this is ok, I can do everything alone!" And so on.

I already explained why this conclusion doesn't really fit well with the foundations of stoicism, to them humans are social animals.

Enfants t1_izaga15 wrote on December 7, 2022 at 5:51 PM

>I already explained why this conclusion doesn't really fit well with the foundations of stoicism, to them humans are social animals.

So is the principle to put "reason over emotion" or to follow the original stoics?

Regardless, substitute lonlineness for another situation outside of humans being social animals and we arrive at the same thing

_far-seeker_ t1_izai317 wrote on December 7, 2022 at 6:03 PM

>So is the principle to put "reason over emotion" or to follow the original stoics?

Why in this case would there be tension between the two? The original stoic philosophers came to the conclusion about humans being social animals through a rational argument.

>Regardless, substitute lonlineness for another situation outside of humans being social animals and we arrive at the same thing

You are missing what I stated about emotion being a valid impetus for rational analysis. So the eventual questioning and self-examination should happen for any such hypothetical, regardless of the specific situation one has to repeatedly experience. In stoicism acceptance and reason over emotion are just tools; means to an end, not the end itself. The end is "living the good life".