The problem of how courage is related to the idea of God is asked and answered by the Stoics. But it is answered in such a way that the answer creates more questions than it answers, a fact which shows the existential seriousness of the Stoic doctrine of courage. Seneca makes three statements about the relationship of the courage of wisdom to religion. The first statement is: “Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods.” In this sentence the gods stands for fate. They are the powers that determine fate and represent the threat of fate. The courage that conquers the anxiety of fate also conquers anxiety about the gods. The wise man by affirming his participation in universal reason transcends the realm of the gods. The courage to be transcends the polytheistic power of fate. The second assertion is that the soul of the wise man is similar to God. The God who is indicated here is the divine Logos in unity with whom the courage of wisdom conquers fate and transcends the gods. It is the “God above god.”
The third statement illustrates the difference of the idea of cosmic resignation from the idea of cosmic salvation in theistic terms. Seneca says that while God is beyond suffering the true Stoic is above it. Suffering, this implies, contradicts the nature of God. It is impossible for him to suffer, he is beyond it. The Stoic as a human being is able to suffer. But he need not let suffering conquer the center of his rational being. He can keep himself above it because it is a consequence of that which is not his essential being but is accidental in him. The distinction between “beyond” and “above” implies a value judgment. The wise man who courageously conquers desire, suffering, and anxiety “surpasses God himself.” He is above the God who by his natural perfection and blessedness is beyond all this. On the basis of such a valuation the courage of wisdom and resignation could be replaced by the courage of faith in salvation, that is by faith in a God who paradoxically participates in human suffering. But Stoicism itself can never make this step. Stoicism reaches its limits wherever the question is asked: How is the courage of wisdom possible?
Although the Stoics emphasized that all human beings are equal, in that they participate in the universal Logos, they could not deny the fact that wisdom is the possession of only an infinitely small elite. The masses of the people, they acknowledged, are “fools,” in the bondage of desires and fears. While participating in the divine Logos with their essential or rational nature, most human beings are in a state of actual conflict with their own rationality and therefore unable to affirm their essential being courageously. It was impossible for the Stoics to explain this situation which they could not deny. And it was not only the predominance of the “fools” among the masses that they could not explain. Something in the wise men themselves also faced them with a difficult problem. Seneca says that no courage is so great as that which is born of utter desperation. But, one must ask, has the Stoic as a Stoic reached the state of “utter desperation”? Can he reach it in the frame of his philosophy? Or is there something absent in his despair and consequently in his courage? The Stoic as a Stoic does not experience the despair of personal guilt. Epictetus quotes as an example Socrates’ words in Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates: “I have maintained that which is under my control” and “I have never done anything that was wrong in my private or in my public life.” And Epictetus himself asserts that he has learned not to care for anything that is outside the realm of his moral purpose. But more revealing than such statements is the general attitude of superiority and complacency which characterizes the Stoic diatribai, their moral orations and public accusations. The Stoic cannot say, as Hamlet does, that “conscience” makes cowards of us all. He does not see the universal fall from essential rationality to existential foolishness as a matter of responsibility and as a problem of guilt. The courage to be for him is the courage to affirm oneself in spite of fate and death, but it is not the courage to affirm oneself in spite of sin and guilt. It could not have been different: for the courage to face one’s own guilt leads to the question of salvation instead of renunciation.
