Relation to oneself· Adversitynamed middle
Stoic indifference
Axis: The meaning of suffering — Can suffering have value, or should we strive to eliminate it as much as possible?
Suffering is neither a trial that ennobles or redeems, nor a sheer evil to be abolished at any cost. It belongs among the indifferents, in itself neither good nor bad: it is not suffering that decides our happiness, but the judgment we pass on it and the steadiness with which we endure it.
Movements 1
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Taoisminferable
Taoism opposes to suffering neither crusade nor valuing: it invites one to welcome the alternation of fortune without judging it, like the old man in the parable who does not know whether the loss of his horse is bad or good. Pain arises above all from resistance and desire; attuning oneself to the course of things through wu-wei defuses its torment, a position close to equanimity.
Zhuangzi · Huainanzi (the old man of the frontier)
Philosophers 2
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Kantinferable
Kant does not make the absence of suffering the end of morality: what has unconditional worth is the good will, independent of pleasure and pain. Suffering is thus morally indifferent as to the worth of the person, and ordeal can even display moral firmness. But this detachment is bordered by a duty of beneficence that commands relieving the suffering of others.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, I-II · Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Virtue
Pyrrhoinferable
Pyrrho grants suffering neither a fruitfulness that would forge the soul, nor the status of an absolute evil to be abolished: either would be to judge it by nature twice over. The greater part of the torment, he holds, comes from the added opinion that what happens to us is an evil; to withdraw that judgment lightens it accordingly, and only the forced pain of the body remains. The position is thus close to the median indifference, a suffering defused by the suspension of the value judgment rather than magnified or fought on principle.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, IX, 66-68 · Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V (on the imperturbability of the sage)
- PrescriptiveExistentialHoping beyond suffering
To pass through pain while hoping for an after, a healing, a salvation: is that the truest response to misfortune, or an escape that turns us from facing it?
the one who suffers