La proliferación de modelos de gestión ante la falta de

We have already seen (at the end of section 2.3.1) how it is possible that one might experience something which feels like one of the passions but is not actually so, because the criterion of intentional judgement is absent. Even before the Stoics came on the scene, there was discussion about the relationship between spontaneous

physiological reactions and thought. Aristotle, for example, observed that involuntary movements such as changes in heart rate and sexual arousal responded merely to impressions.232 This connection was later also made in a fragment of Chrysippus, preserved by Galen, in which he records his observations concerning involuntary weeping and cessations of weeping.233 _{The Stoic founders seem also to have devised}

specific terms like “biting” (δῆγµα) and “troubling” (συνθροήσις) to designate certain types of affective responses which did not have the status of genuine emotions because they did not meet the assent criterion.234

The fullest account of feelings that occur in the absence of assent is provided by Seneca in Book 2 of On Anger. He gives a succinct presentation of what he takes to be the Stoic view of the causation of anger: for him, it is a response that requires both impression of injury and assent to that impression. Most interestingly, Seneca also refers explicitly to the presence of an involuntary psychological event, a “single mental process” (simplex) that “follows immediately upon the impression and springs up without assistance from the mind.”235 This prior event—which occurs without the mind’s volition—is not the same as anger, which Seneca understands to be a complex process that requires the forming of an impression of injury and the thought that one ought not to have been wronged and therefore should be avenged.236

What then is this simplex event? Quite clearly, it is not an impulse, since there is no assent. However, this is not to say that one’s cognitive faculties are not involved. The event requires some conceptualization of the experience of injury—which draws on

232 _{Aristotle, De an. 3.9.432b26–433a1 and Mot. an. 11.703b–11.} 233 _{Galen, PHP 4.7.16–17.}

234 _{See Plutarch, Virt. mor. 449a: here Zeno and Chrysippus are in all probability implicated as those}

who claim that “tremblings and changes of colour” need not be indications of fear but of a “troubling,” and that tears are not evidence of grief but only of a “biting.” In Tusc. 3.82–83, Cicero, following Chrysippus, explains that the wise person is not susceptible to grief, but allows that a lesser response which he terms “the sting and certain minor symptoms of shrinking” (morsus tamen et contractiunculae quaedam) is natural to the wise, and can occur with regularity.

235 _{Seneca, Ira 2.1.3–5.} 236 _{Seneca, Ira 2.1.4–5.}

a sophisticated array of concepts such as personhood, intention, and fairness.237 That Seneca conceives of this prior event in rational terms is further confirmed by the extensive listing of examples of such events that he furnishes, to demonstrate how fully articulate thoughts can come about without meeting the condition of voluntariness.238 However, such prior events are not passions:

None of these things which move the mind through the agency of chance should be called passions (adfectus); the mind suffers them, rather than causes them. Passion, consequently, does not consist in being moved by the impressions that are

presented to the mind, but in surrendering to these and following up such chance prompting. (Ira 2.3.1–2)

For Seneca, anger has not occurred unless the person judges that a certain response is appropriate for oneself, and chooses to act upon this response:

Anger must not only be aroused but must rush forth, for it is an active impulse; but an active impulse never comes without the consent of the will, for it is impossible for a man to aim at revenge and punishment without the cognizance of the mind. A man thinks himself injured, wishes to take vengeance, but dissuaded by some consideration immediately calms down. This I do not call anger, this prompting of the mind which is submissive to reason; anger is that which overleaps reason and sweeps it away. Therefore that primary disturbance of the mind which is excited by the impression of injury is no more anger than the impression of injury is itself anger; the active impulse consequent upon it, which has not only admitted the impression of injury but also approved it, is really anger—the tumult of a mind proceeding to revenge by choice and determination. (Ira 2.3.4–5)

Clearly, Seneca does not regard the unassented feelings of which he speaks as

passions.239 As such, these feelings are not only non-culpable experiences, but perfectly normal—and indeed, expected—ones in even the wise person.240

Seneca’s discussion coheres substantially with what Stoic-influenced authors in Alexandria wrote about propatheiai or “pre-passions”: involuntary feelings that were not to be seen as passions because assent did not accompany the relevant impression. The Alexandrian propatheiai tradition appears quite early, in the commentaries of Philo, and finds fuller expression later in the exegetical writings of Origen and others.241 The

237 _{Graver, Stoicism, 94–95.}

238 _{Seneca, Ira 2.2.1–2.3.3. Here he gives twenty-six highly varied scenarios which range from what}

would seem to be crude reflex actions (e.g. recoiling from certain types of touch) to responses that require more complex mental processing (e.g. boiling up when others are fighting, or having certain feelings when reading of past events, such as Sulla’s proscriptions or Hannibal’s siege after the battle of Cannae).

239 _{Seneca’s term for them is principia proludentia adfectibus (“beginnings preliminary to passion”).} 240 _{Seneca, Ira 2.2.1–3. Elsewhere, Seneca discusses various types of involuntary affects that arise in}

the wise; for him these unassented feelings are “natural” and reflect nature’s intentions for human psychology (see Ep. 11.1–2; 57.4–5; 71.29). In Marc. 7 Seneca pursues this idea of “natural” affect and argues that it is natural to miss a family member not only in bereavement but in separation; for him it is “inevitable” that such partings bring about “a biting and a contraction of even the stoutest minds.”

241 _{The term is used by Origen, Jerome, and other Christian writers; see M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa:}

Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, 2 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1947), 1.307–308; 2.154.

correspondences in the views of the authors in Rome and in Alexandria concerning unassented feelings suggest clearly the influence of a common source: authoritative material from the early Stoics, whose precise formulations had been lost. The points of similarity include the involuntary nature of such feelings, their dependence on rational impression, and their continued occurrence in the wise.242

Though their theological commitments were markedly different, the writers at Alexandria shared with the Stoics a strong interest in providing a description of the perfection of human nature. For Philo and the Christian writers, Abraham and the incarnate Christ respectively were the prime exemplars of virtue; however, as the passions were thought to arise from an irrational valuation of external objects, passages of Scripture that seemed to attribute such emotions to these exemplar figures were of particular concern. The concept of the propatheiai was sometimes pressed into service to help resolve this difficulty.243 One clear instance occurs in Philo’s comments on his quotation of Gen. 23.2 (“Abraham came to bewail Sarah and to mourn”); here Philo opines that Scripture, which informs the reader that Abraham came to mourn Sarah, does not represent him as finally doing so.

But excellently and carefully does [Scripture] show that the virtuous man did not resort to wailing or mourning but only came there for some such thing. For things that unexpectedly and against his will strike the pusillanimous man weaken, crush and overthrow him, whereas everywhere they merely bow down the man of constancy when they direct their blows against him, and not in such a way as to bring [their work] to completion, since they are strongly repelled by the guiding reason, and retreat. (Philo, QG 4.73)

To be sure, Abraham is “struck” by “things,” namely, impressions that represent his circumstances as evil; however, the equanimity that ensues from his “constancy” and state of rationality means that he does not give in to grief, but is only “bowed down” for the moment. For Philo, though Abraham experiences involuntary feelings akin to grief, his virtuous state is not compromised by the appearance of any passion.244

To summarize: the concept of the propatheiai allowed the Stoics and those influenced by them to accommodate within their overall theoretical framework for human psychology those affective reactions that were beyond the voluntary control of the agent, and therefore not to be construed as passions.245 According to Seneca, these “first movements” (primi motus) cannot be overcome by reason, “although perchance

242 _{See Graver, Stoicism, 102.} 243 _{Graver, Stoicism, 102–108.}

244 _{See also Margaret R. Graver, “Philo of Alexandria and the Origins of the Stoic Προπάθειαι,”}

Phronesis 44 (1999): 306–307.

practice and constant watchfulness will weaken them.”246 The Roman anthologist Aulus Gellius tells the story of an impending shipwreck that some people were facing. In such a terrifying situation, it was entirely natural for even the wise person to be beset by uncontrollable feelings and physical sensations—“certain swift and unconsidered

motions which forestall the action of the intellect and reason.” However, by withholding assent from any occurrent impressions, he “rejects and repudiates them, and sees in them nothing to cause him fear.” Though “his colour and expression have changed for a brief moment,” he “keeps the even tenor and strength of the opinion which he has always had about mental impressions of this kind.”247