Is there something called "Stoic compassion?"

If we want to be sticklers about the matter, when the idea of “Stoic compassion” gets proposed, we might say: strictly speaking, there’s no such thing. There are decent reasons for such a response, many of which have to do with what we actually find, or don’t find, in classic Stoic texts. While you might find in certain translations the term “compassion” coming up, when you look at older English translations you won’t see that vocabulary. One reason for that is the fact that the Greek and Latin classical Stoic authors wrote in didn’t actually have a term neatly corresponding to “compassion”.

There are, to be sure, some words that if we want to, we can choose to translate that way, for example the Greek term eleos, which you’ll very often find rendered in English consistently as “pity”, and occasionally as “mercy” or “compassion”, depending on the text and translator. There’s a Latin cognate verb compati, which literally means to “suffer with”, from which the English word ultimately derives, but you won’t find Latin Stoic authors using it.

Extending Stoic models to compassion

That lack of reference in classic Stoic texts of course need not prove binding upon those of us in the 21st century. Willingness to innovate, to incorporate, to stretch Stoicism rationally to encompass what past authors didn’t quite get to is something some of our canonical Stoic authors provide us excellent models of, particularly Seneca and Epictetus. So given the prevalence of talking about compassion as a good trait, something we ought to display and cultivate in our contemporary society, perhaps we should just say that any real Stoic should be compassionate. Maybe we even want to number it among the virtues, not as one of the four cardinal virtues, but included among the many the Stoics called the subordinate virtues.

I would advise a bit of caution in doing so, however, if you want to keep your understanding and practice of Stoicism consistent. Considering those two terms I mentioned just earlier will be helpful. Consider eleos, generally translated as “pity”, a word that in the present we tend not to view as positively as “compassion”. The Stoics viewed it as one of the passions, specifically as a type of pain or distress (lupń), felt in relation to someone who appears to suffer something bad undeservedly (Arius Didymus, Epitome, 10c). As a passion, not one of the good emotional states (eupatheia), pity is for the Stoics something bad.

As Epictetus will point out in his discussions of anger, if you do have to feel something towards someone, it’s better to feel pity towards them than anger, but it’s best not to be moved by either. Consider that Latin term as well, compati, which you could render as “to suffer with” or “to feel with”. From a Stoic perspective, if you’re feeling something with another person that’s not a good emotional state, for instance, deep grief over a loss, that isn’t really good, and one shouldn’t be promoting that sort of emotional contagion as a positive ideal.

Understanding the other person's condition

Does that mean that Stoics should be heartless, ignoring suffering of other people? Not at all! But as they remind us at many points, we don’t need to feel something another person is feeling, or even to feel something provoked by seeing their condition, in order to do the right thing motivated by reason, to exhibit and practice virtue towards them, to fulfill one of our roles in appropriate action. Epictetus will advise that when our neighbour is grieving, we go to them and grieve with them, but also that we don’t groan inwardly (Enchiridion, 16).

If “compassion” is taken to mean something less about “feeling-with” another person and much more about our actions and attitudes towards them, then Stoic compassion actually straddles a number of already recognized Stoic subordinate virtues.

Endorsing and practicing compassion

It might even be useful to imaginatively, but not affectively, put ourselves in another’s place. We don’t have to feel the bitter sting of humiliation, the loss of social status, technically a preferred indifferent for Stoics, to empathize with how that experience feels to someone who has no intention of being a Stoic, and to realize that this does matter to them. That is another sense of “compassion” we see Marcus often advising or admonishing himself to exhibit towards his fellow human beings in his Meditations. So we have at least two ways of making sense of “Stoic compassion” as something we ought to endorse and practice.

Greg Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a member of the Modern Stoicism Team, an APPA- certified philosophical counselor, and teaches at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

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