A Response to Seneca’s Position on Emotions and Human Attachment
Seneca was a stoic who believed that emotions were irrational and needed to be ruled through the will. While many said that emotions could be moderated through reason and reflection Seneca did not agree. One example given was someone who sees a parent murdered. Seneca says that it might be argued that the person shouldn’t act out of rage or revenge but after could refection express rational anger, or moderate levels of anger. However, he went on to say the idea of moderate anger or a moderate level of any emotion was impossible likening it to being moderately insane. Emotions by their nature, according to Seneca, irrational and therefore cannot be moderated. He believed we should work to replace emotions with moral and ethical thoughts and actions. Thus, while someone should defend others or act kindly toward a spouse this should be done out of duty not out of rage or love. This implies that normal human attachments should occur but not out an emotional bond instead out of a bond based on respecting others as equals.
I don’t agree with Seneca’s viewpoint. While sometimes everyone has emotions that aren’t rational and may be negative leading to an over-reaction such as grief or depression over the loss of a loved one, or an overriding sense of extreme joy when falling in love, these emotions are part of the normal human makeup. While some might argue it would be better to avoid any of the negative emotions and just keep the positive ones the negative emotions are just as important in my view. If you don’t feel grief over the loss of someone you love who is no longer in your life, then I would question how attached you could really have been to them.
Real human attachment provides a sense of happiness, satisfaction, trust and a whole host of other positive emotions. When you connect with someone and love them either as a friend, spouse, parent, sibling etc. then their loss hurts and that hurt is translated into painful emotions which signify exactly how important that person was to them and the strength of their attachment and bond. While no one believes grief, sadness, anger or other negative emotions are pleasant, in order to be able to truly experience the positive emotions at the highest level I think you have to be willing to risk experiencing the negative emotions also.
Although rage or jealously or the like that is out of control and could lead to harm in some way should be worked on and moderated most people can put such extreme manifestations of these types of emotions into perspective such that they can control them. I am willing to go through the pain of having some negative emotions sometimes in order to be fully able to experience the full range of positive emotions.
