Classical World

“The emotions aroused by death are not … culturally specific. The fear of death and the grief of bereavement, however they are displayed, are universal experiences.” So writes Gail Holst-Warhaft, in her sensitive and moving study, The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses.¹ There is certainly an elemental truth to this view, and yet recent studies of emotions indicate that our beliefs are not simply incidental to emotion but are part and parcel of the feeling itself, and determine its specific nature.² The psychologists who recognize the importance of appraisal in emotion are in this respect in accord with ancient theories, as expounded by Aristotle and the Stoics.³ Anger, for example, which Aristotle and Seneca define as a desire for revenge, is a response to an intentional offense; the evaluation of the other person’s motive is inseparable from the emotion. This is why Seneca can affirm that animals are incapable of experiencing anger: “Animals have violence, rabidity, ferocity, aggression, but do not have anger any more than they have licentiousness.… Dumb animals lack [End Page 3] human emotions, but they do have certain impulses that are similar to emotions” (De ira 1.3).⁴

Seneca does allow that animals experience a kind of grief or, more precisely, a sense of loss or missing (desideria) a fellow creature; indeed, they do so intensely, but only for a brief time. As Seneca puts it, “no animal has a lengthy sorrow for its offspring except man, who adheres to his grief and is stirred not to the extent that he feels it but to the extent that he has decided to be” (Consolatio ad Marciam 7.2). For the Stoics, decision or judgment was an essential aspect of emotion, which is why animals that lack reason do not experience quite the same kind of sentiment as human beings. Seneca appears to be distinguishing here between human emotions and those “impulses that are similar to emotions,” as he describes them in connection with anger. In the 99th epistle to Lucilius (99.18), Seneca again notes that the sense of loss in animals is relatively transient; birds and wild animals love their young with a fierce passion, he avers, but it is quickly extinguished when they have died (99.24). Human beings too react intensely to the death of a dear one: “When the first news of a bitter death strikes us, when we hold the body that is about to pass from our embrace into the fire, a natural necessity forces out our tears.” In this regard, we are not unlike other animals, and our tears are shed independently of our will or decision (99.19). Human beings, however, remember the deceased; to forget loved ones and bury memory of them along with their bodies is inhuman, Seneca writes, and he concludes that a sensible person will continue to remember the dead, but will cease to grieve (lugere) for them.

Seneca is concerned, both in the epistle and the consolation to Marcia, with mourning that is prolonged to excess. He does not censure the initial response to bereavement; as he says, when our dear ones have passed away, it is natural to miss them (desiderium suorum): quis negat? he asks, provided that the passion is moderate. Even the strongest intellects feel a sting simply when friends are absent, not to mention when [End Page 4] they have died (Cons. Marc. 7.1). This sentiment is analogous to the unreasoning feeling of loss that animals too experience; it is independent of judgment, and so does not count as an emotion (adfectus, pathos) in the strict sense of the term. Near the beginning of the second book of his treatise, De ira, Seneca describes a set of responses that, he insists, are not emotions (adfectus) in the full sense of the term but rather “the initial preliminaries to emotions” (principia proludentia adfectibus, 2.2.6). These are defined as “motions that do not arise through our will,” and are therefore irresistible and do not yield to reason. As Seneca states, “we are investigating whether anger follows immediately upon the impression itself and...