How Cicero Tamed Himself

Now we arrive at the good stuff.

Not that taming fear of death, reducing physical pain, and bearing up under grief — the subjects of books I-III — aren’t important. They’re critical.

But in terms of daily impact on my life, Book IV is more relevant and interesting. I suspect it’s similar for many people. This section deals with a subset of pathē (emotional disturbances), which includes anger, fear, excessive desire, and even some we might be tempted to look favorably on, like excessive joy.

If you experience fear of missing out (FOMO), annoyance, anxiety, and you always chase the newest shiny thing or get whiplash from your inconstancy, there’s a lot in here — and in philosophy generally — that’s useful.

The Stoics thought emotional disturbances stem from a failure to reason correctly, but that reason can quell pathē. Part of the failure is misjudging what’s good and what's evil.

Cicero says, “A well-balanced body exists when all the things that determine health are congruent with each other. And so it may be said of a well-balanced mind, when its judgements and beliefs are in concord with each other. This harmony of the mind is virtue.”

And here we get at the crux — the only truly good thing is virtue. What’s truly evil is virtue’s opposite — vice. All else falls short of those definitions, and if we think unpleasant things generally are evil, we’re likely to go astray. But if you believe that virtue is good and vice is evil, you can deflate pathē and feel calm. It’s a great relief.

Cicero agrees with the Stoic position, and suggests that the “moderate pathē are fine,” argument from the Peripatetic school makes no sense. Being moderately angry, moderately greedy, or moderately anything that’s excessive and harmful is a contradiction.

Cicero insists we shouldn’t settle for merely keeping pathē within certain bounds, but need to tear them out root and branch if we can.

And how do we do that?

Logic to the Rescue

When in the heat of pathē, we deploy the logical arguments we’ve already agreed are correct and persuasive.

For instance, Cicero argues here, and Seneca more thoroughly in his great essay “On Anger,” that anger is a vice that makes us stupid and mistake-prone.

Personally, I find the idea of angry idiots sobering because I’ve known a number of them in my life. And I acknowledge— buttressed by Seneca’s great examples and my own observations — that I become stupid when I become angry and prone to making a mess of things. This is why boxers taunt their opponents. Anger them enough and they’ll probably make exploitable mistakes.

Merely running through this sequence of thought and reminding myself that I’m turning myself into a fool tends to quickly deflate my anger and return me to sanity.

Numerous exercises bring logic to bear on other emotional disturbances in a way that feels more visceral.

• Do you want things that don’t line up with virtue? Do you experience FOMO because others get things you want? You should learn from the poet-philosopher Horace, who practiced what I call Horace’s Wedge better than anyone.

• Still can’t shake a desire that you know is problematic? The Decomposition exercise demonstrated by Marcus Aurelius is fantastic.

• Do you have anxiety about future things that are not evil by the definition you agree with? Look on the dark side for a change.

I use these exercises and perspectives to find peace multiple times a week.

We’re mistaken when we treat emotions like the weather — a phenomenon we must endure. We aren’t victims of emotion, but its cause.

I’m no sage. I’ll never conquer pathē completely. But I’ve slowly boxed them in over the years and gradually become more stable and grounded emotionally.

Cicero’s call to tear out all our pathē roots is a high bar. But every time we deploy logic against a flare-up of FOMO or a surge of anger, we’re harmonizing with what we want to be. We aren’t just feeling better, but getting better.

Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.

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