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

CHAPTER 13

Love and Gratitude

Anxiety is not appropriate for a grateful mind. On the contrary, all worry should be dispelled through deep self-confidence and an awareness of true love.

—Seneca, On Benefits 6.42.1

STOIC LOVE AND AFFECTION

As we’ve seen, the stereotype of Stoics being cold and unfeeling just isn’t true. The Stoics, in fact, took love and affection to be the primary human emotion. They put love, as an emotion, in a category all by itself. In Seneca’s view, the Stoics had more love for humanity than any other philosophical school. Love and affection, they maintained, form the very basis of human society. They realized that parents instinctively love their children. They also thought that this kind of primary affection could be extended outward to encompass all of humanity. That is why Seneca wrote, “Society can only remain healthy through the mutual protection and love of its parts.”1 Because of this, it’s no exaggeration to say that Stoic ethics is ultimately based on love. The fact that people love one another is an aspect of natural law, which provides a natural basis for human community and society.

As the most humane of the Stoic writers, Seneca frequently mentions the importance of love, affection, and gratitude. But in Seneca’s writings, we learn the most about the importance of love through how he speaks about others in his life with kindness and affection. As the classical scholar Anna Lydia Motto noted, “Seneca learned much about love, kindness, and generosity from members of his own family.” In his writings, “one detects a deep understanding of the true feeling of love in its different aspects—love for one’s family, for one’s friends, for one’s spouse, for one’s fellow men, for one’s country.”2

We all can relate to love as an emotion, but the Roman Stoics stressed a specific kind of love, philostorgia. This term could be translated as “family love” or “human affection.” This is the kind of love the Stoics applied to humanity as a whole, which is also a form of philanthropy or love for all mankind. Marcus Aurelius mentions this kind of love repeatedly. As he reminds himself often, we are born to love others and humanity itself. “Love those people with whom destiny has surrounded you,” he wrote, “but love them truly.”3

Marcus also wrote to express his gratitude to his various teachers. But in a comment Marcus made about one teacher, the philosopher Sextus, he seemed to sum up the entire Stoic attitude toward love and the emotions. Marcus tells us Sextus never showed the slightest sign of anger or any other negative emotion. Instead, “he was totally free of passion (pathos) and full of human affection.”4 This, indeed, is the Stoic ideal: to be full of love for others and totally free of violent, negative emotions.

Finally, the Stoics felt that a person should love freely and with generosity, without expecting something in return. In the words of philosopher William O. Stephens, “One can love another without making that love conditional upon its always, or ever, being reciprocated. This is the conviction that love is to be given freely in pure joy with no admixture of sorrow.”5

STOIC GRATITUDE, ANCIENT AND MODERN

Another Stoic emotion that has been almost entirely overlooked is the natural feeling of gratitude. Gratitude was especially important in Roman culture, and Seneca and the other Roman Stoics stressed the importance of gratitude consistently. Cicero said that “gratitude is not only the greatest virtue, it is the mother of all the rest.”6 Seneca, for his part, wrote that “among our many and great vices, ingratitude is the most common.”7 Seneca wrote a lengthy book, On Benefits, which has been called “the first (and, for many centuries, the only) great treatise on gratitude in Western thought.”8 In part, this writing is about the art of giving, appreciating, and returning “benefits” or “favors.”

In Seneca’s time and before, wealthy Roman patrons had “clients” who would greet them in the morning for benefits or favors—financial, social, or political. They would then walk together through the Forum in Rome. The benefits would often be paid back or returned in some way, so there was an entire social code and cycle that involved giving, receiving with thanks, and returning benefits.9 This was a kind of glue that held society together, especially among the elite citizens of Rome, but it was not the primary focus of Seneca’s writings on gratitude. In fact, in the entire philosophy of gratitude, there was no one who was “as revolutionary and radical as Seneca.” That is because, as philosopher Ashraf Rushdy explains, Seneca transformed the way the entire topic of gratitude would be considered by later thinkers. As Rushdy emphasizes, Seneca discussed all the kinds of gratitude that would occupy the minds of thinkers following him, including sacred gratitude, cosmic gratitude, secular gratitude, personal gratitude, and more.10

As we will see, there are three main types of gratitude, which people have felt for thousands of years. Yet strangely, despite the crucial importance of gratitude in Roman Stoicism, the topic of gratitude in Stoicism has been almost totally ignored.11

Love and gratitude go together because they both involve appreciation. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to love someone without appreciating him or her. Gratitude, too, is a form of appreciation. The Stoic writer Donald Robertson once gave a talk on “Stoicism and Love,” in which he suggested, “It is possible to see Stoicism fundamentally as a philosophy of love.”12 Similarly, we might say, “Appreciation and gratitude frame how a Stoic sees the world.” Even though we, and everyone around us, are mortal beings, a Stoic can still relate to them with love, appreciation, and gratitude.13 While there is nothing mysterious about that, there is another dimension of Stoic gratitude that some readers may find puzzling at first. This “different kind of gratitude” has been called “cosmic” or “nonpersonal” gratitude, and by many other names, because it’s not directed toward a specific person.14

WHEN I STARTED EXPERIMENTING with Stoic philosophical exercises or meditations, I was surprised to discover that they resulted in feelings of gratitude and appreciation, and have noted some of these instances earlier in this book. For example, when I practiced the “premeditation of future adversity” and imagined my house being destroyed by fire or by an earthquake (chapter 6), it made me feel grateful, once again, for a home that I had become bored with through familiarity. Marcus Aurelius even mentioned this kind of gratitude as a goal of Stoic practice. Rather than seeking out something new, he explained how we could experience happiness by appreciating the things we already have. As he reminded himself, “Don’t dream of what you don’t already possess. Instead, think about the great blessings you do have, for which you feel grateful—and remind yourself of how much they’d be missed if they weren’t already yours.”15

My next experience of gratitude came while practicing memento mori: the Stoic meditation of remembering my own death and the fact that my loved ones are mortal too (chapter 11). Walking down the street with my small son during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, both wearing facemasks, feeling the warmth of his hand in my own, I remembered that we are both mortal, and at some point we will be separated for good. But that made me feel a profound sense of gratitude—not just for that very moment of being alive with him, but for whatever remaining time we will have together in the future. By reflecting on our mortality, not only do we treasure life more deeply: it can greatly intensify our feeling of being alive in the present moment.

Another example of Stoic gratitude involved replacing the grief I felt from losing my father with gratitude. I hadn’t started reading Seneca yet, but in a natural process over time, my grief evaporated and was replaced by happy memories. I came to feel grateful for the good times we spent together (chapter 12). Seneca recommends this practice to help people overcome grief. In retrospect, if I had consciously focused on gratitude for his life, rather than just letting time do its work, the pain would likely have diminished more quickly.

A further Stoic idea about gratitude is that as we are dying we should be grateful for the life and all the experiences the universe has given us. We’ll explore this idea at the end of this chapter.

UNDERSTANDING GRATITUDE

We should make every effort to be as grateful as possible.

—Seneca, Letters 81.19

What makes gratitude interesting is that it’s both an emotion and a virtue. Yet, in the words of philosopher Robert Solomon, it’s “one of the most neglected emotions and one of the most underestimated of the virtues.”16 Significantly, as he notes, gratitude deals with the way we relate to other people, so it “lies at the very heart of ethics.” From a Stoic perspective, this is another way that love and gratitude come together as forms of appreciation: they both make a functioning, ethical society possible. In terms of ethical development, we would not see people who lack either love or gratitude as being virtuous. We would see them as possessing a significant defect in their character. Put another way, without love and gratitude, it’s simply impossible to live well. Or as Seneca might have described it, without love and appreciation, it’s impossible to live “the happy life.”

Throughout the history of modern psychology, psychologists have focused on trying to understand human misery and pathology, even though most people are happy most of the time. In a study from the year 2000, in which people were tested at random, 89 percent were experiencing a state of happiness, while a much smaller percentage was experiencing a state of sadness. The most frequently experienced negative emotion was anxiety.17 Not surprisingly, according to a 2007 study, happy people live about 14 percent longer than unhappy people.18

In recent years, the study of “positive psychology,” including the study of gratitude, has emerged as a new field of research. Psychologists like P. C. Watkins have discovered that gratitude is not just “an important facet of emotional well-being.” Instead, gratitude “actually causes increases in happiness.”19 After years of study, Watkins concluded that “Gratitude enhances well-being because psychologically it amplifies the good in one’s life.” That’s “because it clearly identifies who and what is good for individuals.”20 Obviously, the Stoics (and the world’s religious traditions) were onto something important by emphasizing the importance of gratitude in daily life. Thousands of years later, psychologists are beginning to catch up by studying gratitude and other positive emotions scientifically.

But what is gratitude, really? At its most basic, gratitude has been described as “the positive recognition of benefits received.”21 It’s a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation for receiving something of value, a good or a gift. Many people imagine that you must be thankful to someone or to a person in order to experience gratitude. And while that’s true for some kinds of gratitude, it’s not true for all kinds of gratitude.

In essence, people experience three main types of gratitude, which I’ve summarized in figure 8.

1.​The first type of gratitude I call personal or civic gratitude because it’s directed at another person. It’s the kind of gratitude we experience in a social or civic setting when someone does something nice for us or offers us a gift.

Types of Gratitude

Objects

Personal or Civic

Another Person

Theistic

God or gods

Cosmic, Existential, or Nonpersonal

Nature, the Cosmos, or Existence

Fig 8: Three types of gratitude.

2.​The second type of gratitude I call theistic gratitude because it is directed at God (or the gods, if you are a polytheist). If you are a religious person—especially if you are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—this kind of theistic gratitude is very similar to personal gratitude, because those religions view God as a person. They also see God as the ultimate giver.

3.​The third type of gratitude I call cosmic, existential, or nonpersonal gratitude. It is different from the first two types of gratitude because it’s not directed at a person (like a human or God). Instead, it’s directed at nature, the cosmos, or existence itself. Or sometimes it’s not directed at anything, but a recognition of blessings received. In a sense, this is a spiritual sense of gratitude, and it was a kind of gratitude the Stoics felt. But it’s not directed at a creator God who stands outside the universe. In other words, it’s distinct from both personal and theistic gratitude.

Sometimes these different kinds of gratitude can intermingle with one another. For example, every morning, my wife brings a cup of black tea with milk to my bedside table, which I then drink while waking up. (If she doesn’t bring me a cup of tea, it means she’s upset with me, which always sends an important message!) Of course, when she brings me a cup of tea, I’m very grateful to her as a person, and I always thank her. But then, as I sip the tea, I usually feel other kinds of gratitude, too, which is a perfect way to start the day. Sometimes I feel grateful for the tea and caffeine itself, as my consciousness begins to come into focus. Sometimes I feel thankful for the pleasurable feeling of sitting in such a warm, comfortable bed, and having a solid roof over my head, especially since some people are homeless and forced to sleep outside. Sometimes, I feel grateful for having clean air to breathe. Sometimes I feel grateful for being able to write while drinking my tea. And sometimes, I feel grateful for all of those things in a very short period. Besides being grateful to my wife, though, these other kinds of gratitude are not directed at a person. How, then, do we explain these other kinds of gratitude?

If you’re a religious person, I hope you won’t be upset at me for saying this, but I don’t direct my gratitude toward a personal God when drinking my tea. But does that mean I’m an atheist? The answer would be “No.” That said, it doesn’t mean that I’m a theist either. Personally, I hate being pigeonholed into these kinds of categories. But if I were forced to imprison myself in one of these conceptual boxes, I would probably say: “I’m more of a pantheist, like the Stoics were, like Spinoza and Einstein were—and even popular luminaries like Carl Sagan.”22

Pantheists believe that there is no God “outside” the universe. Instead, they believe that the entire universe is God, including the laws and principles that shape it. Of course, atheism, theism, and pantheism are not scientifically testable concepts. But like Carl Sagan, I find pantheism to be a much more useful metaphor than the idea of God as a person who exists outside the cosmos, as someone who drew up a plan for the universe.23 Certainly, none of the ancient Greek philosophers thought of God in that kind of way.24 That said, regardless of people’s religious beliefs (or lack of beliefs), I can happily get along with anyone, especially if they recognize the importance of love and gratitude. Those are character traits and fundamental human values that should bind all people together, regardless of faith or belief.

A DIFFERENT SENSE OF GRATITUDE

Some people—mainly analytical philosophers (who focus on language) or theologians (who believe in a personal God)—have claimed that it only makes sense for someone to be grateful to a person: that is, to another human being or to God. In other words, they believe that cosmic or nonpersonal gratitude is not possible. In my view, this is a bit of dubious thinking, which discriminates against people who don’t think exactly the same way that the deniers do. It implies that you need to have special, limited beliefs to experience gratitude. It also suggests that certain types of gratitude, which people have experienced for thousands of years, are not intellectually credible but “off-limits.”

Seneca believed that human beings should be grateful to both “God” and “Nature.” But since the Stoics were pantheists, Seneca carefully pointed out that the terms “God” and “Nature” are interchangeable.25 Pantheism is not atheism, but it isn’t theism either. While the idea of God doesn’t bother me in the least, I know that religion and the idea of God make some people uncomfortable. So if you’re reading through an ancient Stoic text and come across the term “God,” you’re entirely free to replace that term with the word “Nature” in your mind. No Stoic would fault you for doing so.

Gratitude is a response to generosity, especially to a gift that is freely given. The Persian poet Rumi (1207–1273) found the sun to be a perfect symbol of generosity since, in his words, “its only property is to give and bestow.” He wrote, “The sun makes the earth green and fresh and produces various fruits on the trees. Its only function is to give and bestow; it doesn’t take anything.”26 Seneca, who wrote around 1,200 years before Rumi, would have agreed with this beautiful metaphor. In fact, Seneca, somewhat amazingly, used it himself. For Seneca and the Stoics, Nature, or the universe, is generous. In one passage, Seneca suggested that the ultimate model of freely given generosity was the work of “the gods,” by which he seemed to mean the sun and celestial bodies:

It is our aim to live according to Nature and to follow the example of the gods. . . . See the great efforts they make every day, the generous gifts they bestow; see the wealth of crops with which they fill the lands! . . . They do all these things without any reward, without any advantage for themselves.27

Being philosophers, the Stoics did not believe in the traditional gods of the Greeks and Romans. Instead, the Stoics saw the gods as symbolic personifications of nature’s elements and life-giving powers—for example, the sea, life-giving rain, and the fertility present in nature.28 At other times, Stoics used the phrase “the gods” to denote the sun and other celestial bodies. The movements of the sun and the planets trace out ordered, rational, and predictable mathematical patterns over time, which underscored the Stoic belief in a rational universe, subject to natural law.

As pantheists, the Stoics did not believe in a personal God who stood outside of the universe, like the God of theism and Christianity.29 But they weren’t atheists either. Instead, they believed in a deep, unifying force, present in nature and the cosmos, which we could describe as rational, “divine,” resplendent, the source of order and beauty in nature, and something worthy of admiration. As Seneca clearly summed up the Stoic view, “What else is Nature, except God and the divine reason that permeates the entire world and all its parts?”30 We must also remember that, for the Stoics, God was not supernatural, but material—like a breath or life-force permeating the cosmos.

We can be sure that the Stoics, as philosophers interested in logic and science, thought quite differently about ideas like God than most of their neighbors. For example, they didn’t take stories and myths about the gods literally. Rather, they gave them symbolic or allegorical interpretations in harmony with reason. At the same time, though, they didn’t shun the religious practices of their time. Like love and gratitude, the Stoics saw reverence and piety as important virtues that held society together.

For the Roman Stoics and for many people today, gratitude can be more than just an interpersonal or social emotion. There are many ways that we can experience and be grateful for gifts and blessings that don’t come from other people. For example, Seneca stressed all of the incredible gifts we receive from Nature. In one passage, he lists some of them. He mentions “so many virtues . . . so many skills . . . our mind, from which nothing is hidden,” which “is swifter than the heavenly bodies.” We have been given “so much food, so much wealth, so many blessings heaped on top of each other.” Nature has given us so many gifts, he says, it would be absurd not to feel gratitude. As he concludes, “Any correct evaluation of nature’s generosity will force you to admit that you have been her sweetheart.”31

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was an avowed atheist who proclaimed “the death of God.” Some have seen him as a prophet of nihilism. But toward the end of his career, Nietzsche experienced a “perfect day” and a spontaneous feeling of deep gratitude. On that day, not only were the grapes ripening under the autumn sun, but, as he described it, “a ray of sunshine had fallen on my life.” As he wrote, “I looked behind me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so many good things at once.” Then Nietzsche asked, “How could I fail to be grateful to my entire life?”32

Similarly, Richard Dawkins, the most famous and outspoken atheist of our time, was asked if he ever had a religious experience. While Dawkins said, “I would not call it a religious experience,” he did say that he has felt a profound sense of gratitude for his own existence. He explained some of these experiences in a deeply moving tone of voice:

When I lie on my back and look up at the Milky Way on a clear night and see the vast distances of space and reflect that these are also vast differences of time as well, when I look at the Grand Canyon and see the strata going down, down, down, through periods of time which the human mind can’t comprehend: I am overwhelmingly filled with a sense of almost worship. It is not worshipping anything personal, any more than Einstein would have worshipped anything personal. It’s a feeling of sort of abstract gratitude that I am alive to appreciate these wonders. When I look down a microscope, it’s the same feeling. I am grateful to be alive to appreciate these wonders.33

Obviously, as atheists, neither Nietzsche nor Dawkins was expressing gratitude for their existence to God. Like my experience of waking up and sipping tea in the morning, many feelings of gratitude are not directed toward anyone. I also believe these experiences of cosmic, nonpersonal, or existential gratitude are quite common. They occur to many people and increase their sense of well-being. They can even occur to atheists. But how can we explain them?

As philosopher Robert Solomon pointed out, we should not always think of gratitude in terms of a personal relationship. Instead, “Gratitude is a philosophical emotion [emphasis added]. It is, in a phrase, seeing the bigger picture.”34 In this sense, cosmic gratitude originates from experiencing life in the context of a greater whole. Being grateful for your entire life, for the very existence of a loved one, or for the sublime beauty of nature is not a “grateful to whom?” kind of question. Rather, as Solomon explains, it’s being aware of these things in a greater context that inspires deep appreciation. As he puts it, “Like many moods, gratitude expands beyond the focus on a particular object to take in the world as a whole.”35 This kind of gratitude is much more than just being a response to a social transaction. As such, it certainly deserves our attention.

STOIC APPRECIATION

In some cases, gratitude can be a form of love. If you tell another person, “I am grateful for your existence,” it’s equivalent to expressing a kind of love. Sometimes, as a way of expressing love, I will simply say, “I appreciate you.”

Central to Stoicism, as a philosophical way of life, is a deep sense of appreciation, from which both love and gratitude emerge. We can deeply appreciate the beauty of a sunset even though it’s changing every moment and will soon disappear. Its transience adds to its unique beauty. Similarly, a Stoic can understand that everything in nature is changing, transient, and impermanent, including our own lives, without reducing his or her depth of appreciation.

Stoics don’t seek out external things in order to be happy because happiness comes from within. (Happiness also comes from how we decide to perceive the world, based on our inner judgments.) But a Stoic can find a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude in life’s simplest gifts: a sunset, holding the hand of a loved one, or even the most basic meal. While our real goods lie within, we can still feel a deep sense of gratitude for every gift the universe offers to us. At the same time, we can come to see, through the eyes of appreciation, that the finest gifts from the universe are often free, or freely given. Because of that, we can take pleasure in simple things, like a cup of tea on a sunny morning. We can also experience profound happiness and satisfaction without seeking out an endless flow of expensive luxuries. As Seneca pointed out, someone who has enough is already rich. When we view the world with a sense of appreciation, even the most simple experiences have value.

For Seneca, someone who has found happiness or well-being will be able to look back on life with gratitude for everything the universe has given, as he or she is facing death. Similarly, Epictetus repeatedly described life, and the world, as resembling a festival. In his view, when we reach the end of life, we should be grateful for the time we were alive, thankful for the chance we had to participate in the festival. He also said a philosopher should be full of gratitude for the opportunity he had to behold the wonders of the universe and investigate nature’s underlying order. He told his students, “May I be thinking, writing, and reading such thoughts when death overtakes me!”36

Marcus Aurelius left us with an even more graphic image of the kind of gratitude a Stoic might feel at the end of life. As he reminded himself in his Meditations,

Pass through this short moment of time living in accord with nature, and make your end cheerful, just as a ripe olive might fall, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.37

For Marcus, the fact that we will one day die is part of nature’s providential order, which we should accept without complaint but with gratitude. The Stoics realized that our lives are tiny, and in some ways insignificant, in relation to the immensity of the entire cosmos. But the very fact that we have been given a chance to participate in such a remarkable universe, and in human society, should be seen as both a gift and an honor.

In the end, we experience gratitude for something good or beautiful we receive—either from a person or from nature, which continually delivers such gifts. Like the light given off by the sun, this generosity is unearned by us, but it’s freely given to everyone. The sun, while giving everyone the gift of life, greens the meadows of the earth. But it demands nothing in return. Perhaps in this way, as the Stoics suggested, nature, life, and every gift we receive, all reflect a radiance of generosity, given freely by the universe itself.