Even Stoic Warriors Show Feelings

Human experience stripped of emotions would be unrecognizable, a zombie-like existence, and at best, a pathology. At all ages and in almost all walks of life, we understand the world, in part, through the lenses of our emotions. We are sensitive to threats through the warning system of fear. We recognize the loss of loved ones through sorrow and grief. We attach to others through love and friendship. We care for others through bonds of camaraderie, empathy, and trust. We achieve our goals through desire and in the case of team work, a commitment to shared ends and a collaborative spirit in bringing them about. We work toward a lasting peace with hope and trust in our partners.  

In all this, emotions engage us with others and the tasks at hand. Emotions aren’t blind impulses, but modes of perception, often quite fine-tuned. They are sensitivities, which in conjunction with what we see and hear and know through other modes of experience, enable us to discern the particulars of complex situations and make choices in light of those assessments. To function well, emotions need to be cultivated and constrained by a sense of what is morally decent and right. Anger that is little more than wild vengeance or hope that is pollyannish do little good in guiding wise or prudent choice. Emotions that serve us well are responsive to reason and the needs of ourselves and others. They are part of the fabric of good character.

The training of emotions is crucial in the training of a responsible and competent military corps. It is not an optional part of military education. And yet, emotions often get a bad press in the military. Or if not maligned, only some are viewed as part of military bearing. A warrior’s anger may be encouraged by commanders, and from Homeric times on, anger is often viewed as a way to whet a soldier’s appetite for war. But a warrior’s grief, in contrast, is often seen as showing weakness and a lack of toughness or resolve. Some commanders think grief should be suppressed or part of a private moment. “Suck it up and truck on,” is a mantra I’ve heard over and over again at the military academies where I’ve taught. The more polite phrase is: “Be stoic.”  But that’s an extreme brand of Stoicism, and a deeply flawed one that can be harmful and leave lasting psychological and moral injuries.

It’s also a misreading of core teachings in ancient Stoicism, and a misunderstanding of the Stoic account of the emotions. It may be a popularized meaning of “stoicism” with a little “s,” but it distorts the broader lessons of ancient Stoicism. It also distorts other prominent views in the ancient Greco-Roman tradition, and in particular, Aristotle’s nuanced conception of emotions and how we educate and habituate them in character training. We do military men and women a grave disservice if we celebrate these ancient traditions, but fail to draw the right lessons from them. We don’t just do them a disservice. We put at risk their mental health and well-being. Urging soldiers routinely to suppress their emotions or indefinitely defer expression of painful experiences of grief or loss, becomes a recipe for emotional numbing in life. It also forces boiling inner rage to seek other outlets, at times in violent action once home and stateside. For some, self-medication through alcohol or drugs becomes a way to appease inner anguish.  Too often, mental health care is stigmatized in the military, and in public life, in general. For those in the military seeking psychological help, whether through chaplaincies or medical corps, is often viewed as a career killer. But avoiding mental health care is the real killer. It can be a recipe for allowing deep soul wounds to fester.  

If we are to understand the role of emotions in well-being, then it’s important to understand what emotions are. The Greco-Roman account of emotions is rich and recognized by many contemporary research and clinical psychologists as profoundly prescient. We can begin with the account of Aristotle (384−322 BCE) whose view served as a backdrop for later Stoic positions. 

Aristotle on Emotions

Aristotle argues that emotions are, in part, cognitive. They are not just desires or feelings of pleasure and pain. They have those elements, but at their core is a belief, perception, or judgment about something in one’s environment. In the case of anger, it is a perception or judgment that you’ve been unjustly offended or wronged. The judgment is charged, infused with feelings of pain or distress focused on that belief. The apparent unjust offense may stir up a desire to respond and react. In keeping with the archaic Homeric tradition, Aristotle says that the reaction is often a desire for revenge. But we can respond to transgressions through means other than revenge. We may want to reach out to an offender and open a discussion about the transgression or seek interventions through the law or higher authorities. An eye for an eye is not the only way to respond to offenses.

What’s key in Aristotle’s account is that anger can be fitting and appropriate. It can be apt, or as Aristotle famously says, it can “hit the mean.” “The person who gets angry about the things one should, and further, in the way one should, and further, in the way one should and both when and for as long as he should is praised.” Anger that hits the mean is a feeling of proper distress at being wronged and an appropriate responsiveness to it. He tells us that those who are fully calm in the face of the worst transgressions may simply be senseless or numb. That kind of indifference is a defect of character as much as boiling rage is. It may also be a sign of servility, a surrendering of one’s own will. But significantly, retribution doesn’t have to be the response to justified anger. Feelings of moral outrage may be critical in recognizing harmful injustices, but outrage doesn’t license retribution. If it is state actors who commit injustices, taking up arms may not be the only solution to fighting back.^[1]

The Stoics on Emotions

The first and second century Roman Stoics, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius take direct aim at Aristotle’s position. Anger is a vice, they argue. It doesn’t assist virtue in its work, nor is its assistance ever required to motivate appropriate action. Seneca (around 4 BCE−65 CE) is unequivocal on the point. “Anger has nothing useful about it and doesn’t stir the mind to warlike deeds.” It’s a vice in all of its forms, and virtue should never resort to it. He underscores the point through an analogy with the skillful use of weaponry: When there is need for aggressive action, true virtue doesn’t well up with anger, but becomes calm, “just as missiles launched by catapults are in the control of the artillerymen who calibrate the catapults’ torque.”^[2]

Seneca’s metaphor relies on how a catapult works: you need the right tension in a stretched band or torque in a rope so that once the tension or torque is relaxed, the stored-up energy is released and moves the catapult arm forward, launching the projectile. Virtue, too, has its own tension and stored energy that can be properly modulated and impel action. It is self-sufficient as a driver of action. It doesn’t require, as Seneca says here, any “assist” from the impulse of anger. Virtue can do its work on its own. And far better than if it has to quell inflamed tempers or out-of-control rage.

In short, anger resists modulation. The earlier Greek Stoic, Chrysippus, compares anger with the movements of a fast runner − once in stride a runner can’t easily stop. The point is similar to Seneca’s: anger is like a missile launched by an artillery operator who has lost control or never had it in the first place.

Anger may be a runaway impulse, but like all ordinary emotions, its more fundamental flaw, on the Stoic view, is that it is misinformed. It is based on an error of judgment. As with Aristotle, the Stoics conceive of ordinary emotions as, at their core, kinds of beliefs or judgements. But on the Stoic view, they are false beliefs about what is really good or bad in the world. They mislead us through and through. In the case of anger, insults and offenses, abuses and assaults, violations and transgressions, are mistakenly believed to be real harms. Therefore, what the Stoics try to teach is that they are, in fact, things that shouldn’t matter to us. They are “indifferents.”We can’t easily control the harms that affect us from outside, just as we can’t control strokes of bad luck or the vicissitudes of fortune. What we can control, though, is our own goodness, our virtue. And that is what we need to focus on. “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us,”  is how Epictetus opens the Enchiridion or Handbook. We need to recalibrate values and learn new emotional and behavioral attitudes toward things outside our control if we are to make our way calmly and with equanimity in the world.^[3]

Education of the emotions, and not suppression is part of the Stoics’ broader and more enlightened modern mandate

Is that a recipe for suppressing emotions? Are Stoics, in general, urging calm even in the face of the gravest violations of personal dignity or, in the case of states, violations of sovereignty or human rights? I’d argue no. Granted, the Stoics don’t take up these issues. But given their sophisticated view of the cognitive content of emotions and our need, as they urge, routinely to assess the judgments and beliefs at the core of our emotional responses, then it would seem likely that they have ample resources to guide us in these matters. Education of the emotions, and not suppression is part of their broader and more enlightened modern mandate. As we read the ancient Stoics, we need to remember that a writer like Epictetus was an enslaved person during the time of Nero. He found freedom through inner control and equanimity. It was the only liberation he could find in the face of severe deprivations. The situations some of us find ourselves in aren’t necessary his. But what remains the same is the need to educate emotions with wisdom and full respect for the humanity of individuals. That is something a general Stoic education in the emotions can teach.

Admiral James B. Stockdale and Epictetus

A career naval officer I came to know found solace in Epictetus’s teachings. He saw Epictetus’s situation as like his own. In a remarkably prescient moment, James B. Stockdale, then a senior U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam, muttered to himself on September 9, 1965 as he parachuted into enemy hands, “Five years down there at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.” Epictetus’s Enchiridion had been Stockdale’s bedtime reading in the many carrier wardrooms he occupied as he cruised the waters off Vietnam in the mid-1960’s. He committed much of Epictetus’s slim book to memory. Stoic tonics would hold the key to his survival for seven and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. It was a philosophy that met the challenges of POW life when dignity and nearly all nourishments of the body and soul were deprived. Survival in POW camp was an extreme experiment in carving out control in the face of unspeakable deprivations.

But even for Stockdale, living as a Stoic did not mean stamping out emotions or the desire for attachment and connection. He wrote to his wife Sybil longingly through secret codes and invisible ink. He stayed connected with troops in his chain of command in the prison cells. He longed for their company, even if it had to be expressed only in taps of morse code on a prison wall or in the coded swish of a brush in a bucket the prisoners used to relieve themselves. He never lost hope and it was kindled by knowing his wife Sybil was fighting hard in Washington D.C. for the release of the American POW’s, even if it would take seven years. What Stoicism taught him was not emotional flatness or the suppression of desire and affect, but the wiliness to survive and to seek control where he could find it. He faced near impossible challenges: 2 and ½ years in solitary confinement, often in leg irons. Torture to reveal state secrets. A broken leg, suffered when he was pummeled by a street gang when his parachute hit ground. The break never healed and caused him endless pain during his incarceration and long after. Stoicism involved “toughing it out.” But it did not wipe out his hope, his love, his attachment to his family, troops, and country. He stayed connected and emotionally alive. That emotional spirit was crucial in how he led his troops, even in captivity. And how he survived.^[4]

Marcus Aurelius: We are connected

Another more celebrated military leader also turned to Stoicism for inner strength. But again, it was a Stoicism infused heavily with emotions and social connection. That leader was Marcus Aurelius, the supreme Roman military commander and emperor during the second century (121−180 CE). Writing at nightfall during the Germanic campaigns along the Danube, battlefield images weighed upon him and reminded him of the importance of sustaining human connection. Picture a dismembered hand and head lying apart from the rest of the human trunk, he reflected. That’s what “man makes of himself… when he cuts himself off” from “the world” of which he is a part. Visceral images of intimate killing and dismemberment of body parts may have haunted him. But he harnessed the image to remind himself not just of the integrity of the intact body, but the integrity of a fellowship of humanity united by a common purpose. 

Marcus’s notes to himself were meant to be private. But over time, they became public, widely read and known to us as The Meditations. They were the meditations of a commander seeking inner strength as he faced the onslaught of the enemy and too, the Antonine pandemic-level plague that was gripping both him and his troops. But they were also the meditations of a leader insisting on the connection and cooperation of humans as part of greater fellowship of humanity. As rational and reasonable beings, we are “constituted for one fellowship of cooperation.” You should say to yourself regularly: “I am a member of a system made of rational beings.”^[5] The idea would influence the European Rational Enlightenment, and in particular, the work of Immanuel Kant. He, too, would urge a realm of rational human beings, connected through the moral law but also through the emotion of respect (Achtung) for the reason embodied in each person as a moral agent. He was urging the cooperative endeavors that Marcus insisted were crucial to a fighting force, and its esprit de corps. But more critically, each was urging the cooperative spirit and sense of connection necessary for living in a shared world of law and reason.

Moral Injury

Emotions connect us with others. But they also connect us with ourselves. To acknowledge our emotions, recognize them, name them, manage them when they are wayward, and educate them when they need direction is all part of self-knowledge. We know ourselves, in part, through the testimony of our emotions.

But war unleashes painful emotions often hard to bear and that rack the souls of soldiers. Sometimes they are of shame or guilt for accidents that occur on one’s watch but that are beyond one’s control. Sometimes for carrying out operations that one knows to be unjust or in violation of rules of engagement, though ordered by a commander. Sometimes for participating in a war whose cause one once thought was just, but now has come to believe is unjust or futile. Sometimes for being the cause of collateral killings that should have been minimized. Sometimes for having one’s hands tied as one watches one’s buddies killed by insurgents posing as noncombatants.

If posttraumatic stress is, most fundamentally, a fear reaction to life threats, moral injury is a response to moral threats

War has no shortage of stressors that can shatter one’s sense of having a good soul or a reliable compass that can steer one to do what is right and fully avoid what is wrong. If posttraumatic stress is, most fundamentally, a fear reaction to life threats, moral injury is a response to moral threats. It is a reaction to what one takes to be grievous moral transgressions that can overwhelm one’s sense of goodness and humanity. It can corrode the belief that one still has a good soul. A soldier can feel she herself did something grievously wrong, such as killing a child in a car that rammed through a checkpoint she was securing and that was critical for protecting a military base. Or accidentally killing a buddy, as one soldier I knew who suffered from the horrific luck of a turret gun misfiring while he was in command and taking the life of one of his own privates. Or being ordered by a commander to give consolation money to the civilian survivors of an accidental killing, but the money being a mere pittance of what the family suffered. In that case, there was the added indignity of being unable to produce the bodies of the family members for a timely burial, and so the corpses rotted, exposed in the hot Iraqi sun for months. When they were finally retrieved, the Iraqi officials labeled the victims “enemy combatants,” though they were nothing of the sort.^[6]

These are the kinds of incidents that can erode a soldier’s sense of goodness. They eat away at the sense that in war a soldier can still be a good person. What kind of person will they be when they come home? Will these wounds haunt forever? And yet, if a soldier were numb to the intense human suffering and detritus of war, we would think them wanton, hardened, and lacking in moral conscience. We want service members to develop adequate psychological armor. But we don’t want them to be inured to the moral and emotional reactions that are part of the impact of killing and bearing arms.

No single moral injury fits all. For the individual soldier, acknowledging moral injury often requires coming to feel the fine grain of the emotions. It is a moral accounting through the emotions and an understanding of them, their roots and ways to begin to heal the wounds. Individual soldiers must take responsibility for their actions. But so too must political leaders for the wars to which they send their citizen soldiers. It is not soldiers who declare war. But elected political leaders. And the voters who elect them. Still, it is soldiers who can both suffer moral wounds and incur them. Civilians in war zones, too, suffer horrific grievous injuries and fatalities, as we see daily around the world.

Not acknowledged enough are the wounds military women suffer at the hands of their own comrades. I once interviewed an Air Force woman, whom I will here call “Sally,” who was twenty-two when she deployed to Iraq. Walking into the chow hall every day became a brutal reminder of her perilous state as a woman in a predominantly male and sexist military. “I would walk in and everybody would stare at me.” “I felt like a deer in hunting season.” It wasn’t just her peers. It was officers too, the very people she was supposed to be able to turn to for support. But it wasn’t just the daily ogling at meals that was stressful and made her worry about whether she could trust her battle mates in combat. But in addition, she noticed that when she did her laundry and then came back to fold her belongings, she would regularly be missing her undergarments. Her bras and panties were stolen, as part of a prank, she suspected, by hostile males. She felt exposed and worried as to how she would explain to her mother why she regularly needed several new care packages, not of goodies, but of underwear. Given the ogling of her commanders, she had no confidence that she could turn to them for help. She didn’t think she could trust them. And so, she endured on her own. In the case of other women, some have told medical military colleagues that there were no receptacles near outhouses on bases to deposit dirty tampons and little concern for women’s needs for healthy feminine care. They were mocked for being women with menstrual cycles.

Another woman I know, now a senior military officer and fighter pilot, and recipient of many distinguished military and academic awards, began her career when an officer to whom she reported told her that her very presence on base would be disruptive to the “status quo” and tear down “heritage and tradition.” Her initial way of breaking into the “bro network” was to “outbro the bros,” singing raunchier songs, repeat sexist remarks, outdrink the men at bars. As she later recognized, the strategy was itself undermining her own dignity. Her healing came through the healthy mentorship of a senior military officer who saw her talent, knew her academic brilliance, and supported her career.^[7]  

Not all women service members can find those mentors. And in the United States at the present moment, opportunities for senior women in the military are becoming more and more tenuous. More grievous military moral injuries, incurred by leadership itself, may soon be on the rise. It is a way of depleting investment in a nation’s skill and talent. It is a self-inflicted wound and a terrible and tragic depletion of a fighting force.

Moral Healing

How do you heal the wounds of war? How do you return home to family and friends who may have not served or do not know first-hand the stresses of war? Here, again, recognizing the role of emotions is crucial. In this case, the emotions of trust and hope are key.

The ancient Greek tradition once again offers lessons. The great tragedian Sophocles was himself a military general. His generation had witnessed decades of non-stop war. He created what we can call homecoming plays for soldiers and non-soldiers alike. One such play was Philoctetes, about a wounded Greek warrior abandoned by Odysseus on the way to Troy.

Philoctetes had become a liability to his fellow sailors. A wound he contracted from a serpent’s bite left him wailing in pain. The stench of the open wound and his cries of agony became unbearable to his fellow sailors. And so he was marooned by his own crew, left to fend for himself for ten years on a desolate island in the Peloponnese. That is, until Philoctetes’ sacred bow, a gift from the demigod Heracles, which was his salvation in hunting down food for himself on the barren island, was now deemed by the Greeks’ to be their last hope for defeating the Trojans. And so, Odysseus returned to rescue Philoctetes (and specifically, his bow). The wily Odysseus dared not show his face, since he was in part responsible for abandoning his own sailor. But he coached a younger and pliant fighter, one Neoptolemus, on how to build rapport with Philoctetes in order to secure the bow.

The twist in the play is that real trust is cultivated in a bond that grows between the young Neoptolemus (whose name actually means “young warrior”) and the forlorn and older Philoctetes (whose name connotes friendship or friendly feeling). Through that new friendship, Philoctetes begins to heal. He regains trust in his fellow sailors and a renewed sense of hope in himself and his worth. He can return home, the moral healing already begun. Bonds of trust and rapport with others who understand his travails help heal his wounds of war.

Sophocles tells this tale before an audience of some 15,000 in the great amphitheater in Athens. Veterans would fill the audience with their families. And, too, in the front rows, political and military leaders would take their seats, eager to hear and see the great tragedian’s tale. They understood its lessons for resilience. They also understood that they, as the homecoming community, were critical in the healing of their soldiers. Many had themselves gone to war. But even if they hadn’t, they knew the hardship of endless wars and wanted to be there for those who finally returned. Sophocles, as a general, knew that, too. He was helping his country heal from decades of war. He was helping soldiers return home and recommit to civic life.

It is a lesson for all of us. We send soldiers to war, but often are not there to help them return home or find safety, housing, adequate medical care, and trust once home. We often shy away from hearing their stories, thinking we won’t understand or won’t know what to say. So we sometimes just say “thank you for your service.” It’s a pat response that leaves many soldiers I know cold and alienated. They feel isolated. Part of my work in the university and in communities at large has been listening to soldiers and telling their stories, as they tell them to me. That itself is a way to build trust and to bring soldiers back home into the community. 

We are still fighting protracted wars, in Ukraine, Gaza, North Africa, Yemen and more. Service members of all stripes need the support of their home countries, and too, of the international community. Civilians in war zones are starving and numbers of fatalities are horrific. Taking care of the psychological and moral wounds of war is a collective task and not just a soldier’s private burden.

DOI: 10.48701/opus4-832