Transformation through subtraction
Practicing via negativa
The project of self-improvement is often framed as one of addition. Adding habits, virtues.The metaphor of building character suggests laying one brick on another.
The other nearby metaphor is of getting on the right path, sticking to it. Taking one step after another.
These are useful and enlightening frames on our life, but another useful one is via negativa. Becoming who you’re meant to be through subtraction. Removing bad habits: the things that waste your time, the unnecessary cruft of ordinary life.
A beautiful line from the philosopher Plotinus:
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
In other words, virtue is already there. We just need to find it. One of my favorite lines from Confucius on this:
Is goodness really so far away? If I simply desire goodness, I will find that it is already here.
The Stoics believe that we are all rational and, as such, have within us already the tools for living a good life. Which, for them, meant thinking well, desiring what is up to us, and embracing what is not.
So play with both of these frames and perhaps take on the frame of via negativa – transformation through subtraction. Look at all the superfluous parts of your life and see if you can remove them. That’s a good way to start.
The teaching, perhaps, is even deeper than that. Think of the case of marble and the sculptor. Uncover the intelligence you already have. You’ve done it before. All the Stoics ask is that you do it again and again. Cut away everything else.