Stoicism: The Unfulfilled Life?

Today’s readings and discussions were rather challenging for me, as evidenced by my not so eloquent, slightly confused rant at the very end of class. I’ve studied Epicureanism and Stoicism since Search freshman year, but time has not made then any less frustrating to me. I’m going to use this blog post to attempt to explain my issues with these philosophies, and the kind of life that adherence to these philosophies requires. Although I understand the ways in which Stoicism tries to achieve eudaimonia/happiness, I still think that they prescribe a lifestyle that is unfulfilling and seems almost in contradiction to their goals.

In today’s reading by Epictetus, we learned that Stoicism dictates that freedom from passion (through Reason) is the way to happiness. “Reason” is defined by understanding the process of Nature, and that happiness comes from habituating and according oneself to that order and predictability of Nature. The idea of happiness/eudiamonia as being free from the passions we suffer and that happen to us is connected to the peace of mind that comes from apatheia. However, it’s when Stoicism is put into practice that I believe its viability and attractiveness fail. Epictetus says that a person must be “on guard against himself as an enemy lying in wait,” and that he must not make emotional connections to other people or things, since it is only our judgments that give them value (69). As with Dr. J’s example in class, a Stoic should treat his wife dying as if a pot (not even his favorite one, mind you, because he can’t have a favorite) had broken. A Stoic must treat himself as an enemy, and give no value to anything else in this world other than Reason, and therefore thinking about the order of Nature. What kind of life is this, when you cannot even be at peace with yourself? What good is thinking/having knowledge about the world, when you refuse to participate in or interact with it? I know that we said an Stoic would simply go through life, accepting his fate and doing nothing to challenge it or be pathetically motivated at all. But I think this is fundamentally against the nature of humanity – which I realize, could be argued as just my pathetic value being placed on humanity, but…it’s not. I feel as though the life of an ideal, observant Stoic would be unfulfilling, and seemingly worthless. What type of life would people live if they couldn’t even be inspired to believe anything, even in themselves?