Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living

CHAPTER 4

The Problem with Anger

A TEMPORARY INSANITY

I hate to admit it, but, like Seneca, I’m not a perfect person. One of my character failings is that I’ve had a bad temper at times in the past. It’s not as though I was always angry, by any means, but every now and then, something would set me off.

The good news is that I rarely get angry now, which I attribute to my study of Stoicism, and especially to Seneca, who wrote about anger in depth.

For the Stoics, anger (by which they meant rage) was the worst and most toxic of the extreme negative emotions, which they called “passions” (pathē).

In fact, in one of Seneca’s more memorable descriptions, he called anger “a temporary form of insanity.”1

Why is it that anger is so terrible and destructive, and how does it come into being? More importantly, how can we stop anger from taking root in the first place?

In answering these questions, Seneca is an almost perfect guide. He took the issue of anger so seriously that he wrote a lengthy book, On Anger, divided into three parts. It’s the most in-depth work of Stoic psychology that has come down to us from the ancient world, and the advice that Seneca offers about anger management is totally up to date. In fact, as the modern Stoic philosopher Massimo Pigliucci points out, if you read the American Psychological Association (APA) web page on how to manage anger, most of it matches the advice you find in Seneca’s book on anger.2 Some things, it seems, just never change.

When Seneca said that extreme “anger is a temporary form of insanity,” he wasn’t being metaphorical. In fact, he wants to impress upon the reader just how out of their minds humans act, like crazy people, when they’re under the spell of anger.

At the beginning of On Anger, he writes, “You only need to see the symptoms of those seized by anger to know they are insane.” He then launches into a vivid and compelling description to prove his point:

As the marks of a madman are clear—a bold and threatening expression, a scowling brow, a wild-looking face, quickened steps, restless hands, a changed complexion, quick and violent breathing—the appearance of an angry person is the same: his eyes blaze and flash, his whole face turns red with blood boiling up from deep within his heart, his lips quiver and teeth clench, his hairs bristle and stand on end, his breathing is harsh and noisy, his joints snap from writhing, he groans and bellows, his speech is broken and unclear, he claps his hands and stomps his feet, and his entire body becomes frenzied as he acts out his angry threats. It is such an ugly and horrible display that, when someone is distorted and swollen with anger, you can’t say whether this vice is more revolting or more disfiguring.3

The outcome of great anger is madness, Seneca writes, and we should avoid it to maintain our sanity. Elsewhere, he points out that if a furious person’s outward expression is so terrible, what must their mind look like on the inside?

Seneca reports that some people who experience extreme anger never regain their sanity. He refers to anger as “the greatest evil,” and “one that surpasses all other vices.”4 While other vices like fear, greed, and envy merely “provoke” the mind, anger “topples” it.5 While the other vices rebel against reason, anger undermines sanity itself. While other character defects “approach gently and increase unnoticed, our minds plunge headlong into anger.”6

A HOSTILE FLAME: THE DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF ANGER

Anger is bad enough for the poor person who falls under its spell but can be even worse for those on its receiving end. Seneca invites us to consider anger’s destructive outcomes:

If you wish to view its harmful effects, no plague has cost the human race more. You’ll see massacres and poisonings, the vileness of rivals battling in court, the loss of cities, and the destruction of entire nations. You’ll see leading citizens sold into slavery at public auctions. You’ll see houses torched, the blaze overtaking city walls, causing vast regions of the country to burn with a hostile flame.7

Nor is that all. Anger causes some parents to threaten their children with death, or vice versa. It destroys households, plunges some into poverty, and encourages people to turn their friends into enemies. Anger is the worst vice, because it surpasses all others. What Seneca means by this is that in the same way that anger overturns the mind, it overpowers the other vices too. When someone is truly under the spell of extreme anger, anger reigns supreme.8

Anger arises from a mental judgment that “I’ve been harmed” or “I’ve been wronged,” and once that opinion has been fully accepted, anger seeks out revenge or retribution, as a way to “pay back” the injustice. “That it should find a place in the peaceful heart of a human being,” Seneca writes, “is at odds with our nature. For human life is founded on kindness and harmony, and is bound together into agreement and common aid not by terror, but by mutual love.”9

For Seneca, anger is the absolute worst human emotion. But why?

“The problem with anger,” Seneca writes, “is that it refuses to be controlled. It rages against truth itself, if truth seems to contradict its wrath. With shouting, frenzy, and the whole body shaking, it bears down on its targets, with abuses and curses thrown in.”10

When someone gets angry, he asks, what’s the point of flipping a table over or smashing a glass? Even stranger is how people sometimes express rage at inanimate objects. When a tool doesn’t work properly, what’s the point of throwing it to the ground and cursing at it, if it can’t even sense one’s anger?

Most people, because they’ve never really thought about it, assume that anger is a natural kind of emotion, and unavoidable in some way. Because of that, Seneca writes, some people believe that showing their anger in public is good because it shows how they are “open” and authentic, not trying to hide any part of their personality.

The Stoics, though, took an entirely different view of things. They believed that extreme anger could be avoided and never allowed to develop in the first place. Because intense anger is based on bad mental judgments, a wise person could avoid making those bad judgments through training and practice.

“FEELINGS” VS. “PASSIONS”: THE STOIC THEORY OF EMOTIONS

How is it that anger, or any other extreme emotion, arises in the first place?

According to the Stoics, if we could learn the answer to that question, it would be possible to eliminate negative emotions before they even develop. Of course, no one said this would be easy. It might take long periods of education and training, and would require the development of considerable self-awareness. But even learning about the Stoic theory of emotions, in my experience, can significantly help reduce anger and other negative emotions and improve a person’s overall mood.

In fact, shortly after first reading Seneca’s book On Anger a few years ago, I found myself in a situation where I could have become very angry and felt the early signs of anger coming on. But before the anger had a chance to develop fully, I recalled what Seneca had written and was able to deconstruct the emotion before it ever took hold.

As we’ve seen, one common misconception about Stoics is that they don’t experience feelings, or they suppress their emotions. That is untrue. Seneca consistently pointed out that even a Stoic sage will experience normal human feelings. Like other people, a sage doesn’t resemble “some kind of rock.” He or she will experience pain, grief, and other feelings.11 Similarly, Epictetus said, a Stoic should not be “unfeeling like a statue.”12 Marcus Aurelius frequently wrote about love and even wept in public. The Stoics, as a school, were known for their love for humanity. As Seneca noted, writing about the Stoics, “No school is more kindly and gentle, none more full of love for mankind and more concerned for the common good.”13

For the Stoics, the most primary human feeling is affection and love for others. Parents naturally feel love for their children, and human affection binds people and communities together. But to understand how anger comes into being, and how to defeat it, we must understand the three different kinds of emotions that the Stoics defined clearly, in addition to love:

1.​Feelings. The first kind of emotions, known as “first feelings” or “protopassions” (propatheiai in Greek), are experienced by everyone, and include spontaneous, instinctual responses. These include things like blushing, sexual arousal, being startled if someone sneaks up behind you, having stage fright, changing your expression at a sad event, and so on. In this book, we’ll refer to these as feelings or natural human feelings, which everyone experiences, including a Stoic sage. It is important to note that these feelings are involuntary and come and go on their own. Also, these feelings are morally indifferent. Since they are beyond our control, they have no positive or negative impact on our character.

2.​Negative emotions. The next group of emotions, which these earlier feelings can help give rise to, are known as “passions” (pathē). These are negative emotions like anger, fear, greed, envy, and so on. In this book, I refer to them as negative emotions, extreme negative emotions, or unhealthy emotions. These negative emotions arise from mental judgments, but judgments that are mistaken or false. Because they are based on false beliefs, these negative emotions are harmful to our character. In other words, they are vices.

3.​Good emotions. The third and final group of emotions are “good passions” (eupatheiai in Greek). In this book, we will refer to them as good emotions, healthy emotions, or positive emotions. These include joy, cheerfulness, sociability, goodwill, and forms of friendship and love. Just like negative emotions, positive emotions are based on mental judgments. But good emotions are based on rational and accurate judgments, while negative emotions are based on false judgments. And as you might imagine, good emotions are not indifferent or bad, but good for our personality and character.

And that’s that: For the Stoics, feelings are just feelings, neither good nor bad, and everyone experiences them. Healthy emotions are good, and based on sound, accurate judgments. For the Stoics, the real enemies are the extreme negative emotions or passions, which are based on false opinions and harmful to one’s inner character. Seneca pretty much summed up the Stoic view about negative emotions when he wrote, “Anyone enslaved to a passion is living under a tyrant.”14

If you live under a negative emotion’s tyranny, you will never experience peace of mind because your mind is not under your own control. It’s under the control of something else: a false judgment or opinion, which will cause you to act in harmful and self-destructive ways. When Seneca said that “anger is a temporary form of madness,” it’s something that applies to all of the passions or extreme negative emotions. In the words of Stoic scholar John Sellars, they are like “little mental illnesses” that take over our minds. It’s just that anger is the most powerful.15

What does it mean that a passion is based on a judgment? Take the example of greed. For a Stoic, someone who suffers from greed agrees with the judgment that having a lot of money is not just a possible advantage but essential for human happiness. Ultimately, this is based on a widespread social belief, like many other false opinions, that are “deeply ingrained errors about the value of external objects.”16 Significantly, the Stoics were among the first thinkers to deeply explore the adverse effects that social conditioning can have on our inner development.

Let’s also imagine, as a thought experiment, that my friend Mike was walking through the city one day and noticed a gorgeous woman on the other side of the street. Mike might think, “Oh, she’s beautiful!” Perhaps he felt his heart was beginning to melt a bit, but he kept walking and quickly forgot about her. For the Stoics, this would just be a normal feeling, and nothing more. But if Mike saw the beautiful woman and became obsessed with her, thinking, “I could never be happy living without her!” that would be the beginning of a full-blown passion, or negative emotion, because it would no longer be based on just a feeling, but a false and potentially harmful judgment.

THIS BRINGS US TO the point where we can now understand how anger and other negative emotions come into being.

Seneca was not by any means the first Stoic to write about this process, but he is our single most important source, because the earlier writings have been lost.17

Anger itself, as Seneca tells us, is always based on two mental judgments. The first judgment is “I’ve been harmed” or “someone has treated me unjustly.” The second judgment is “If I’ve been harmed, I should seek payback through retribution or vengeance.” Should these two judgments be combined, the outcome is likely to be a manifestation of extreme anger.

Seneca explains in some detail how extreme anger comes into existence, following a three-step process. This mirrors the ABC Theory of Emotion, discussed earlier, in chapter 3:

A.​In the first step or “movement,” there is an involuntary motion, or a natural, instinctual feeling. This natural feeling is a protopassion and a kind of warning that something worse might be coming. Seneca calls this raw feeling a “jolt,” an “agitation,” and “a first movement.” This is not a passion but an impression or feeling that could turn into a passion. In the case of anger, the two involuntary impressions that first come to mind are “I feel harmed” and “I feel like I should take vengeance.”

B.​In the second step or movement, the mental judgment appears, “I have been harmed, and I deserve to seek vengeance.”

C.​In the third step or movement, someone has given approval to the judgment, and all hell breaks loose, because reason has been overturned and overpowered: anger flares forth and takes command, and vengeance is sought. At that point, it’s just too late to pull back from anger, because the mind has already “gone over the cliff” and is out of control. The temporary insanity has begun.18

HOW TO CURE ANGER

If we look at the three-step process through which anger comes into being, it becomes clear that the only way to stop anger is during the first two stages. By the time the third stage is reached, it’s too late. What makes anger management difficult is that these three movements can take place so quickly—sometimes in a flash. If you carefully study Seneca’s explanation of the three steps and compare it with your own experiences of getting angry, I think you’ll see that he’s correct about the process. But in terms of real-life experience, the three steps happen so quickly it often feels like a blur.

Thus, the most important thing we can do is slow down the process when there is the first, initial sense that anger may be coming on. The first movements of anger, Seneca explains, cannot be controlled by reason because they are instinctual feelings. However, “practice and constant watchfulness will weaken them.”19

Once the second step is reached, judgment or deliberation is in effect, which is rationality at work; as Seneca notes, only the power of rationality, or a good judgment, can erase a bad judgment.

Time and again, Seneca states that the most powerful tool for defeating anger is delay, to slow down the entire three-step process. That gives us time to intervene and rationally analyze any bad judgments:

The greatest cure for anger is delay. Ask this from anger at the start, not so it will forgive, but so it will evaluate. While its first assaults are heavy, it will retreat if forced to wait. But don’t try to destroy it all at once. If picked away at bit by bit, it will be defeated.20

He also puts it like this:

Anger arises from a belief that you have been wronged, which one should not accept lightly, at face value. You should postpone judgment even if it seems clear and evident, because some false things appear to be true. We must always allow for some time to pass: a period of time reveals the truth.21

From the earliest days of the school, the Stoics emphasized how important it is to analyze the “impressions” presented to our minds. Like Seneca did in the quotation above, they warned us not to make snap judgments because impressions can be deceiving. In fact, Epictetus said that “testing impressions is the philosopher’s single most important task, and no impression should be accepted unless it has been carefully tested.”22

How a Stoic can stop anger from developing into a full-blown negative emotion is beautifully summed up in the remark attributed to the psychologist Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

While Viktor Frankl never actually said that, and the quote appears to be based on a passage from psychologist Rollo May, the Stoics would have endorsed both statements, whoever said them. This is the original passage from Rollo May:

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.23

That is why Seneca says that the greatest cure for anger is delay. Put into Stoic terms, a “stimulus” is an “impression.” We need to pause, carefully test impressions, and decide or “choose” whether they should be accepted.

Importantly, for Seneca and the Stoics, an extreme, negative emotion cannot come into being without the mind first agreeing to an impression and then accepting a false mental judgment. By pausing, it’s possible to question the impressions. It’s also possible to challenge a mental judgment or belief before it’s accepted. In terms of Stoic psychology, this is the best way to stop anger, because, as Seneca notes, anger “only acts with the mind’s approval.”24 In the end, anger can arise only when we decide it is justified.

Fortunately, the first feelings of anger are clear warning signs of impending danger, in the same way that symptoms appear before a disease, and as signs of rain appear before a storm. As Seneca advises,

The best approach is to reject the first provocations of anger at the outset, to resist its smallest beginnings, and to make every effort not to fall into it. For if it starts to lead us off course, the path back to safety is steep, since reason evaporates once anger has been let in and we’ve decided to give it any authority. It will then do whatever it wants—not what we allow it to do. The enemy, I say, must be kept away from the entrance to the city gates from the very beginning: for once it has stormed inside, it ignores every plea for restraint from those taken captive.25

As he notes in a letter, “Every negative emotion is weak at first. But it rouses itself and increases its strength as it advances. It’s more easily shut out in the beginning than driven out later.”26 If we stay strictly within the Stoic theory of the emotions, two fundamental anger management techniques stand out:

1. Take a Step Back. The best way to stop anger, in the very beginning, would be to notice the first feelings or impressions that “I have been wronged,” and to pause, take a time out, give them time to subside, and not consent to them. The American Psychological Association (APA) also recommends this technique. Psychologists today call this cognitive distancing, which can take many different forms.

Long ago, I had a girlfriend who used this technique, and it’s a good thing she did, because she was a well-trained athlete who held a fifth-degree black belt in karate. Though she was short in stature, she was extraordinarily muscular and fierce as a martial artist. Without exaggeration, she literally could have killed anyone with her bare hands.

One day we were together at my home, and I can’t recall what I said, but she felt some anger coming on because of it. At that moment she explained to me, calmly and without emotion, “I’m sorry, David, but I need to leave for a couple of hours and cool down, because if I lost my temper, you would be in extreme physical danger, and I could possibly kill you.” Like a true professional, she had trained for this moment and delivered her line without a single trace of anger, even though she felt something simmering.

Of course, I was thankful that she possessed this incredible self-awareness, and grateful she didn’t kill me. When she returned, everything was fine. She was her usual calm self. This was the only time something like that happened between us, perhaps because it put me on warning!

2. Restructure Your Beliefs. If the growing sense of anger has moved past the stage of just being a “first feeling,” it’s time to question your judgments and beliefs before concluding that revenge is justified. This is another way to take a step back before a final judgment has formed. Again, the APA recommends this technique, and I’ve even stolen the phrase “Restructure Your Beliefs” from their website, just to show how Seneca’s psychological insights are timeless.

As we’ve seen, the final step before real anger flares forth is making the judgment that “I’ve been wronged, so vengeance is justified.” So you clearly want to apply some critical thinking before allowing this judgment to take hold, and to destroy the false belief if possible. Under the heading “Cognitive Restructuring,” the APA tells us,

Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is “not out to get you,” you’re just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you get a more balanced perspective. Angry people tend to demand things: fairness, appreciation, agreement, willingness to do things their way. Everyone wants these things, and we are all hurt and disappointed when we don’t get them, but angry people demand them, and when their demands aren’t met, their disappointment becomes anger.27

Good work, APA—spoken like a real Stoic! Except for the suggestion that anger can sometimes be “justified,” which Seneca argued against vigorously. In fact, Seneca and the other Stoics argued that a wise person could never be harmed by anything trivial. In the words of Epictetus, “No one will harm you without your consent; you will only be harmed when you think you are harmed.”28 Or as Marcus Aurelius put it, “Discard the judgment and you’ll be saved. Who, then, is stopping you from discarding it?”29 Both of those quotations are helpful in terms of overcoming a belief that you have been harmed.

Another way to restructure the belief that you’ve been harmed is through the use of humor. Since many of the things that make people angry are entirely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, there’s no harm in laughing off something trivial, or making it into a joke. One day when Socrates was walking down the street, someone hit him in the head. This remark was his only response: “It’s too bad, these days, that you don’t know when you need a helmet when going out for a walk.”

IN ADDITION TO THOSE two central techniques, Seneca mentions many other approaches for avoiding anger. If you’re interested in learning more about these, I highly recommend reading his book On Anger. I will mention a few here, which he writes about in depth:

•​Realize that people often have no idea about what they’re doing, and do things in error, so don’t take their actions too seriously.

•​Be magnanimous: with a lofty mind, be above feeling injured by trivial things. Look down on them as being unworthy of your attention.

•​Look carefully at the extreme ugliness of anger, and also at its danger. This will provide a strong deterrence to becoming angry. (That’s why Seneca provided the graphic descriptions of how anger is so ugly.)

•​Associate with good-natured people who are unlikely to make you angry and unlikely to put up with your own anger. People with character defects are much more likely to upset you and negatively influence you.

•​Don’t allow yourself to become mentally or physically exhausted, which encourages irritation and anger.

•​If feeling stress, consider doing something relaxing to calm the mind, like playing music.

•​Since everyone is different, understand yourself and know what tends to make you angry. Once you understand your own weak spots, don’t expose them to things likely to upset you.

•​There’s no need to hear and see everything that happens. You can avoid many annoying things simply by not taking them in. (This is especially valuable advice in the Internet age!)

•​Don’t entertain false suspicions or exaggerate trivial matters.

•​Forgive others, and even all of humanity, because you are not perfect either: the faults we find in others also exist within ourselves.

•​Remember that if someone starts to make you angry, you can just wait a little: death will make us all equal eventually. So, rather than being angry, it’s better to focus your mind on more important things.

JUSTICE WITHOUT ANGER

In our time, in which it’s fashionable for people to vent their every outrage on social media platforms, some people might find it shocking that Seneca believed extreme anger was never justified, because nothing good ever comes from it.

Aristotle thought that a moderate amount of anger was desirable, if controlled, because of the way anger encourages soldiers to fight, and the way it can energize human action. But Seneca skillfully demolished this view by pointing out that real anger, or rage, is a vice that can never be moderated. Moreover, anger undermines our rationality, and thus our ability to function as authentic human beings. But Seneca’s ultimate takedown of the idea that anger could enhance the performance of soldiers came in the form of a question: If anger can help soldiers to fight more effectively, he asked, why don’t we also get them drunk, so they will swing their weapons around more fiercely? Case closed, at least in my opinion.

Seneca fully realized that our world is full of terrible injustices and inhumane events that take place daily. But in one respect, we are somewhat less fortunate today than Seneca was because of the time in which we live. Today, the global news media have made it a lucrative industry to bring every possible outrage into our homes and minds each time we turn on a screen or open a newspaper.

Since bad behavior is plentiful and inevitable, Seneca took the reasonable view that a wise person should never get angry at any of the events we are assaulted with or hear about on a daily basis. Seneca thought the world to be good overall, due to human kindness and generosity, and human reason. But, as he noted, so many bad things happen that, if every bad behavior made us angry, we would need to be angry each moment of every day. That, of course, would be unlivable.

For Seneca, the alternative approach was to be reasonable and practical. Realistically, he said, we must expect the world to be full of people with terrible character traits. But the way to improve the world is not through the harmful energy of anger, but through the use of reason. For a Stoic, the proper way to look at the world would be like a doctor, expecting to meet a host of diseased patients every day. As Seneca writes,

A wise person is mentally calm and balanced when facing error, and not an enemy of wrongdoers, but one who helps others to heal. Each day, he leaves his home with this thought in mind: “Today I will meet many addicted to wine, many overcome by lust, many who lack gratitude, many enslaved by greed, and many bewitched by the false promises of ambition.” But all these conditions he will treat with kindness, as a doctor treats his own patients.30

The other way to look at the world is from the rational and level-headed perspective of a judge presiding over a court of law, who is sometimes forced to punish those who have done wrong. Seneca stresses that a judge should never punish a wrongdoer out of anger, but out of hope that the punishment will encourage the offender to become a better person in the future. A judge who punishes someone out of anger would be as dangerous, and just as undesirable, as an armed soldier swaggering while drunk.

Even though we live two thousand years after Seneca, he provides us with a good, realistic model for social change, because he shows how we can improve the world by relying upon reason alone. Extreme anger will not increase justice or make the world a better place; it will only make the world more miserable, and more out of control. Anger, in the Stoic view, can only increase human suffering.