There’s an ancient story about the tears of Alcibiades.
A rebellious pupil of Socrates and fascinating figure in his own right, Alcibiades’ realization of the extent of his imperfection turned the young man to weeping.
Unable to look at his teacher, Alcibiades slumps forward and rests his forehead on Socrates’ lap. Weeping, he begs for assistance in amending his life.
Regret and remorse – the suffering that results from thinking that you should have done something – or never should have made that mistake – can lead to uncontrollable passion. Alcibiades’ realization about his past mistakes reveal vices at the core of his character. And it hurts.
According to the Stoics what harms us is our beliefs about the world. Not the world itself. Most of our beliefs that harm us are false. It’s our ignorance and illusions that cause us pain.
Often self-reproach is like this. We experience anguish over an event everyone else has forgotten. We ruminate on a memory over and over again even though we had little control over the situation. Pointless rumination is not what Stoicism calls for. So many instances of regret and remorse, perhaps most of them, are passions that we would do best not to experience at all.
And yet there can be truth in these emotions. Alcibiades tears are real – he realizes the meaning of his imperfection.
All of us engage in self-condemnation that is justified.
The Stoic reframing of regret and remorse is to think about them from the standpoint of self-transformation. The ancient philosophers urge us to be the best you can be. Do your best in every moment. That requires acknowledging reality – including when you do wrong and fail to do what is right. This is why Margaret Graver says:
Seneca, Epictetus, and certain Stoics known to Plutarch…seek to make use of their pupils’ remorse and shame as promising developments in a course of ethical therapy.
Stoicism and Emotion
Alcibiades’ sorrow is worthwhile if he can use the emotional force towards self-improvement. Epictetus says that philosophy shouldn’t feel good. It is like going to the hospital. Recognizing your errors and shaping your character is uncomfortable.
Self-reproach serves its purpose when it is grounded in reality. If we recognize vices in ourselves, we are propelled to address them. That’s the Stoic view. It’s a subtle point, but an important one. When regret and remorse don’t lead to self-improvement that indicates that there’s ignorance somewhere. You may be identifying a disease but using the wrong tools to address it. Alternatively, you may not be thinking clearly enough and not locating the true vice. Some people take a kind of sick pleasure in their mistakes. Still others use thoughts about the past to distract from the present.
These emotions fail to serve their purpose when they are the result of ignorant judgments. Some signs that regret and remorse are purely negative passions:
Rumination that doesn’t lead to action
Blowing things out of proportion
Permanent beliefs such as thoughts like “because I did this I will never make it”
Absolute thinking “because I didn’t do this I am a failure”
Remorse or regret that leads to wallowing in sorrow, extreme passion, and thinking less clearly
A progressing Stoic is able to use self-condemnation as positive fuel in the following ways:
By immediately converting it into action
Reflecting on the fact that you are no longer that person and would not make that mistake again
Recognizing that you made a mistake without blowing things out of proportion and seeing things in a measured way
Understanding a mistake is nothing more and nothing less than a bad choice
Finding energy in the discomfort that you made a mistake and moving to change.
If we use the metaphor of sickness, any practitioner of philosophy must recognize that they are sick and that their sickness infects their thoughts, actions, and character. This realization may be painful, but it is the beginning of philosophy.
Epictetus described the ideal response to error in his Discourses:
To begin with, decide against what has been going on. Next, having done that, don’t despair of yourself or be like the feeble people who, once they have given in, completely give up on themselves and are swept off, by the current as it were. Instead, learn from the sports trainers. The boy falls down.
Get up (he says); wrestle again until you have made yourself strong.
That’s the sort of attitude you should have. For you can be sure that there is nothing more susceptible to influence than the human mind. You need only will something, and it happens; the correction is made.
Discourses, 4.9
Unfortunately, perhaps, Alcibiades’ tears did not lead to self-transformation. The outburst of emotion passed and he resumed his previous anti-philosophical life. Don’t follow in his footsteps. Let your vices die before you do.