The pandemic caused by the covid-19 virus raises many
ethical concerns. In this posting I won’t consider these concerns directly but
instead examine the sort of attitude that we should cultivate in the face of
the pandemic. Of course the attitude adopted has some ethical implications. In
particular I want to examine whether we should cultivate a stoical attitude. At
the outset I would make it plain whilst I have a lot of sympathy for some stoic
ideas I am at best only a partial stoic. The virus causes health problems for many
and for a few death. At present there is no effective treatment available or
vaccine available to treat covid-19. An excellent simple explanation of the
effects of covid-19 and some of the ethical implications is provided by
Massimo Pigliucci in Medium
.
Why should we adopt a stoical attitude to the coronavirus
outbreak? A stoic might argue that should adopt such an attitude because fear
prevents us from thinking rationally and as a result also prevents us from
living as well as we might in the face of the outbreak. A stoic tries to rule herself by reason rather than
her emotions. To stoics many emotions are illogical. Anger is pointless because
anger can’t change the past and fear of the inevitable is also pointless
because someone's fate cannot be changed. Let us accept that being fearful means being in
an unpleasant state. It follows if a stoic becomes infected by the virus that she
should accept this and only concern herself with the things she can change because
her fear serves no useful purpose and is harmful. The things she can change
include her attitude to the difficulties she faces and anything she can do to
mitigate these difficulties. A stoical attitude similar to acceptance and commitment therapy
(ACT) in which the client is encouraged to accept her state and commit to
changing that which can be changed. The situation is slightly different in the
case of a stoic who hasn’t already become infected by the virus. Of course she must
accept the fact that she might become infected and not deceive herself by
thinking that this is unlikely to happen to her. In this situation is her fear
also pointless and should she seek to eliminate it? To say someone might become
infected by covid-19 is really to say that there is a probability that she
will become infected. Someone might change the probability of contracting
cancer by giving up smoking. Similarly someone might change the probability of
becoming infected by covid-19 by measures such as effective handwashing,
social distancing or self-isolation. If someone becomes paralysed by fear which
stops her from taking these measures then she should seek to eliminate her fear. However it might be argued that if fear sometimes helps someone to take
these sensible measures then fear is useful and she shouldn’t eliminate it. Fear of lung cancer might help someone give up smoking more effectively than reason alone. Perhaps fear might act as a catalyst. In response a stoic might argue if we
eliminate fear rationality alone can give us reason to take these measures.
Let us accept that the stoic is correct in her assertion
that being afraid of the inevitable is both harmful and serves no useful
purpose. A perfectly rational being shouldn’t fear the inevitable. She might of
course consider how she would react to it.
However human beings aren’t perfectly rational creatures. Because of
this it might be suggested that a stoic should cultivate courage in order to control her
fear. Perhaps, but I will argue that it would be better to cultivate fortitude in
response to covid-19 outbreak. Both courage and fortitude are concerned with
strength of character. This strength is the ability to face up to dangerous and
in some cases difficult situations without becom ing paralysed by fear. However the
two aren’t identical. For instance courage is useful to people like soldiers,
mountaineers and whistle blowers. Courage is concerned with our actions and is
proactive. Fortitude is useful to people facing illness or financial ruin.
Fortitude helps people face misfortune and is a reactive rather than a proactive
attitude. Someone may also be courageous intermittently but someone can’t be
said to have fortitude intermittently. It follows that fortitude is more
closely linked to character than courage. How does fortitude help people facing
misfortune? If certainly doesn’t simply mean accepting our fate. Exhibiting
fatalism isn’t expressing fortitude. Simply accepting our fate is completely
compatible with abandoning our values and giving in to sapping self-pity which
destroys character. Fortitude is connected to character by helping us hold on
to those things we can hold on to and is important in maintaining character.
Fortitude helps us to maintain our values, things we can control, and in doing
so helps us to maintain value in life. A father who struggles to maintain his
family after becoming redundant rather than becoming apathetic would be an
example of fortitude. Similarly a mother who continues to care for her family
as best she can after becoming infected by covid-19 requires fortitude.
Fortitude requires that we keep calm and carry on. Fortitude requires patience and patience might be particularly useful when coming out of lockdown. Easing lockdown too quickly would be imprudent. Fortitude is has
similarities to grit a term used by the authentic happiness movement. Grit is
described as the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very
long-standing goals and is often connected to self-control, see authentichappiness.sas.upenn
.
Let us accept that fortitude is a useful virtue to
cultivate in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly speaking a stoic
seeks to accept the things she can’t change and only concerns herself with the
things she can such as her attitude to external events. A stoic seeks to limit
her vulnerability. A stoical attitude like one based on fortitude is a reactive
attitude rather than proactive one. Moreover I have argued that fortitude is
connected to character and we talk of a stoic character. It might appear that a
stoic should be able to cultivate the virtue of fortitude with some ease.
However it is important to be clear that even if a stoical person
shares some things in common with a fortitudinous person that the two aren’t
identical. Central to stoic ideas is accepting our those things we can't change and by doing so limiting our vulnerability. However it is important to be clear accepting our fate isn't the same as as accepting our vulnerability. The stoic ideal is a sage who is impervious to the emotions. This isn’t true of fortitude. A fortitudinous person might see herself as
vulnerable but her main drive isn’t to limit to her vulnerability but to accept it whilst moving on. Fortitude is
essentially forward looking in helping us maintain our values. It might be
objected to the above that stoicism is also forward looking in that a stoic
seeks to remain virtuous. I am prepared to accept my objectors point to a
certain degree. However I would suggest that whilst a fortitudinous person
might look forward to some future event with hope a stoic seeks to avoid hope
because by hoping she increases her vulnerability. A stoic seeks to adopt a
purely rational approach to future events based on realistic probabilities
rather than hopeful ones. However it might be questioned whether a stoic can
even value probabilistic outcomes. For a stoic difficulties in assigning values
to probabilistic outcomes arise because if she tries to do so she would have to
care about some outcomes more than others making herself vulnerable to less
favoured outcomes. If we accept that to ‘care about’ is a primitive form of
love then a stoic’s reluctance to assign values to probabilistic outcomes
damages her capacity to love. Of course Panglossian optimism is harmful but the
capacity to hope realistically is needed for the capacity to love and is part
of what makes us human, see what
do we mean by hope . During the course of the coronavirus pandemic
it is inevitable that some of us will feel grief. However to a stoic such as
Seneca we should battle grief even if we can’t totally eliminate it. However
even for a stoic battling grief is hard. On the death of his brother Cato the
younger was overcome by grief and spared no expense on his funeral. I would
suggest that when confronted by grief we should seek to control rather than
battle it. If we fight or seek to eliminate our grief we are seeking to make
ourselves less vulnerable. Unfortunately we become less vulnerable by caring
less about the deceased whereby damaging our capacity to love, see grief .
Adopting a purely rational attitude, if that is even possible for human beings,
damages our capacity to love, to be truly human.
In conclusion I have argued that facing the dangers posed
by the covid-19 with fortitude is preferable to facing them stoically. I also
suggested that fortitude is connected to character and for that reason is
neither quickly nor easily obtained. It follows that if someone doesn’t already
possess fortitude it might benefit him to act stoically in the face of the
outbreak. However acting stoically is also not easy and carries some dangers
outlined above. Some acting stoically must be careful not to become too hard hearted as this will damage his humanity.
