Stoicism, Covid-19 and Fortitude

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.

Passive Aggression

In this posting I want to investigate the harm caused by passive aggression. However there can also be some benefits of passive aggression and these benefits must be weighed against any harm. In a previous posting I argued that rudeness is harmful because it damages civil discourse. I will attempt to show here that passive aggression is a form of rudeness and as a result damages discourse. I will conclude that in most circumstance any benefits of passive aggression are outweighed by the damage it does to civil discourse. Before commencing my investigation I will examine what is meant by passive aggression and the sort of circumstances in which it might be useful and why.

What is meant by passive aggression? According to Rebecca Roach passive aggression “is an expression of hostility, resentment, contempt, etc, that are indirect.” Hostility, resentment and contempt are all related to anger but it is important to note that acting with passive aggression is not the same as expressing anger. Perhaps passive aggression is a means of expressing repressed anger. Someone’s expression of anger sometimes is also an attempt to elicit a response from those who have angered him. Anger is connected to conflict. Passive aggression tries to avoid conflict by limiting action. Pure anger is an emotion requiring no reflection whilst the passive aggressor has to reflect on how he is going to react. Of course passive aggression might be a manifestation of anger which is an emotion but passive aggression remains a response to an emotion rather than the emotion itself. Roach defines passive aggression as an expression of hostility, resentment and contempt. It might then be argued that because hostility, resentment and contempt are emotions that passive aggression is really a second order emotion and that I am wrong to suggest otherwise. I would reject this argument by suggesting even if hostility, resentment and contempt are emotion passive aggression remains a reaction to these emotions rather than a higher order emotion. Someone can be unemotional when reacting with passive aggression. Lastly I will assume that passive aggression must be verbal because otherwise sullenness could be regarded as a form of passive aggression. Some might disagree with the last point but I won’t pursue it further here.

In what sort of circumstances is passive aggression usually employed? I would suggest that these circumstances fall into two broad sets. Firstly passive aggression is often employed when there is an asymmetry of power making the expression of anger difficult.  For instance an office worker might employ passive aggression towards his tyrannical boss. In these circumstances passive aggression is used because civil discourse appears to be impossible. Secondly passive aggression might be employed by someone who wishes to limit the damage full scale confrontation might do to relationships but also wishes to register his displeasure about someone else’s behaviour. These relationships are usually close relationships. For instance Andrew’s partner Bernice fails to attend Andrew’s sister Clair’s wedding due to some prior commitment. At a later date Clair says he can’t attend the christening of Andrew and Bernice’s baby due to another prior engagement. However had Bernice attended Clair’s wedding then Clair would have been pleased to attend the christening. Clair wishes to register him displeasure whilst at the same time avoiding a family row.

What harm does passive aggression cause? I will now argue that passive aggression harms us in three ways. Firstly I have suggested above that passive aggression is connected to hostility, resentment and contempt. These are harmful emotions. By seeking to avoid conflict passive aggression doesn’t address the issues underlying these emotions resulting in these issues remaining unresolved and the associated harmful emotions retained to some degree. It follows that passive aggression is harmful. Secondly it might be argued that expressing anger sends a message to someone that something is wrong. Repressed anger muddles the message. Expressing anger also focusses our attention on addressing the wrong. Repressed would seem to be less effective in doing so. However when there is an asymmetry of power even the expression controlled anger is difficult. It might then be argued that in these circumstance even if we can’t overtly express our anger that passive aggression enables us to do so covertly. It follows that if passive aggression is the covert expression of our underlying anger that expressing it might be of some limited benefit to us by permitting some limited venting of our feelings. Thirdly it might be argued that passive aggression might harm some people by causing a sense of a loss of agency because they are unable to directly express themselves. In response I would suggest that an asymmetry of power might causes someone feel a loss of a sense of agency and that passive aggression might benefit someone by restoring a limited sense of agency. Some sense of agency, even a limited one, might benefit us more than simply adopting a sullen attitude.

I have argued that passive aggression harms us because it fails to address underlying issues which means we retain harmful emotions, it fails to fully address the perceived wrong and damages agency. I then suggested that the harm of passive aggression might be counterbalanced by allowing us to covertly vent our anger leading to a reduction in the harmful emotions we are experiencing and restore a limited sense of agency. It follows that on balance passive aggression might benefit us. I now want to argue that passive aggression harms us in another way by damaging civil discourse. First I will argue that passive aggression is an indirect form of rudeness. Secondly I will argue that rudeness damages discourse which causes harm.

What do we mean by rudeness? In a previous posting I defined rudeness as someone knowingly not considering the needs, views and wishes of another and at the time of this inconsideration the other being aware of this inconsideration, see wooler.scottus . If we adopt this definition then it isn’t immediately obvious than passive aggression is a form of rudeness. After all passive aggression is triggered by the views and wishes of others. However even if passive aggression is triggered by the views and wishes of others it isn’t concerned with their needs. Passive aggression is only concerned the views and wishes of others in a limited way, it is only concerned with the perceived wrongness of these views. It follows that someone expressing passive aggression fails to properly consider the needs, views and wishes of the person the aggression is directed at. Must someone at whom the aggression is aimed at be aware of the aggression? It might be suggested that passive aggression is an indirect way of expressing hostility, resentment and contempt those who the aggression is aimed need not be aware of it. If this is so then passive aggression is simply a private venting of feelings. I would reject the above suggestion as passive aggression is only indirect aggression because the person expressing the aggression is aware that the person at whom the aggression is aimed is aware of it. Passive aggression is a way of making someone aware of your dissatisfaction with his behaviour whilst at the same time trying to limit the damage done to your relationship with him. In light of the above passive aggression seems to be a form of rudeness.

I now want to briefly argue that rudeness harms someone by damaging civil discourse. It might be argued that rudeness benefits the rude person by enabling him to freely express his true feelings free from the fetters of politeness. It might even be suggested that the free expression of feelings means rudeness is connected to honesty, I would reject this second suggestion because the focus of the rude person is partial and by knowingly ignoring the views of others he might deprive himself of further knowledge of the situation and increase the possibility of self-deception. However let us accept that rudeness can benefit the rude person by simply allowing the unfettered expression of his feelings. Unfortunately rudeness also involves an inattention to the views of others and as a result damages discussion by shifting the focus of our attention from the issues involved to the tone of the discourse. Rudeness means we talk at each other rather than engage in a meaningful civil discussion and fail to address the underlying long term issues. Let us accept that civil discourse promotes the meaningful discussion of difficult issues which benefits individuals. The pleasure of rudeness is short lived whilst the resolution of difficult issues matters in the long term. Issues that aren’t fully addressed can cause long term harm. It follows that the short term pleasure of rudeness is outweighed by the long term damage it does to individuals by a failure to address difficult issues. It further follows that if passive aggression is a form of rudeness it harms us by damaging discourse

It might be objected that in some circumstances civil discourse isn’t possible. For instance if someone has a tyrannical employer then he might be unable to engage in civil discourse about his grievances. In other circumstances someone’s extreme sensitivity might make it difficult for others to engage in meaningful discourse with him. In circumstances like these the pleasure of passive aggression cannot be outweighed by the harm done to civil discourse because civil discourse isn’t possible. Whilst being passively aggressive makes no sense to the powerful it makes perfect sense to the powerless. It follows that passive aggression might benefit some people in some circumstances.

The above conclusion depends on the premise that in some circumstances meaningful civil discourse is impossible. Let us accept this premise. However even if we accept the premise if the above conclusion is to be useful we must define these circumstance more rigidly. I argued above these circumstances in which passive aggression might be useful fall into two broad groups. Let us consider the first of these groups in which there is an asymmetry of power. In a totalitarian regime such as Stalinist Russia discourse about the regime’s policies is impossible and passive aggression might be justified. Jokes at the regime’s expense might be regarded as a form of passive aggression. However I would suggest that in most circumstances where there is an asymmetry of power civil discourse isn’t impossible but merely difficult. I would further suggest that just because civil discourse is difficult we shouldn’t abandon it and fall back on passive aggression to relieve our negative feelings. If we simply use passive aggression then we might be accused of taking the easy option, mental laziness or being lacking in courage. We might also be accused of failing to address the underlying issues which are the cause our passive aggression. How might we engage in civil discourse when there is an asymmetry of power? I would argue that this can be done in two ways. Firstly we should ask those we are aggrieved with simply to confirm what we are aggrieved about. This allows us to be sure our grievance is justified and may also alert those who aggrieve us to the fact that we are aggrieved in a non-confrontational way. Secondly we should ask those who aggrieve us why they are acting this way. We ask them to justify their actions again in a non-confrontational way. This might make those who aggrieve us reflect on their actions. It might also give us reason to question our negative feelings. I have argued elsewhere that such questioning can be repeated, see civil discourse . However all conversations come to an end and if the underlying issues cannot be resolved we should end the conversation by asking the person who has aggrieved us does he really ‘mean that’. It follows in most cases when there is an asymmetry of power civil discourse is possible even it is difficult. It further follows that because passive aggression damages civil discourse that we should try to avoid acting this way. Let us now consider the second group of circumstances in which passive aggression is often employed. These are when someone who wishes to limit the damage full scale confrontation does to close relationships whilst at the same time registering him displeasure. In these circumstances someone tries to limit the damage by avoiding the full expression of his anger. However repressing anger doesn’t eliminate it and it might manifest itself latter. I now want to argue that if when we are aggrieved if we adopt the strategy outlined above of asking for confirmation and then for further explanation then we shouldn’t do any greater harm to relationships than we would by the use of passive aggression. Firstly by simply asking someone to confirm something that aggrieves us might be slightly annoying but doesn’t seem to be confrontational. Secondly asking someone for an explanation might be confrontational to some degree but no more so than employing passive aggression. It would appear that asking for confirmation and explanation is no more confrontational than passive aggression but has the additional benefit of addressing the underlying issues rather than postponing discussion of them.

I have argued that passive aggression damages civil discourse. I also argued that except in exceptional circumstances discourse is possible when conducted carefully. I further argued that even if discourse is difficult it is better to try and engage in meaningful discourse rather than react with passive aggression because discourse helps resolve contentious issues whilst passively aggressive merely postpones addressing them. Lastly I argued that the use of passive aggression is a lazy way of dealing with contentious issues. It follows that except in very limited circumstances we should avoid the use of passive aggression.