Stoicism on Judgmentalism

From RRW

 

Somebody is hasty about bathing; do not say that he bathes badly, but that he is hasty about bathing. Somebody drinks a good deal of wine; do not say that he drinks badly, but that he drinks a good deal. For until you have decided what judgement prompts him, how do you know that what he is doing is bad? And thus the final result will not be that you receive convincing sense-impressions of some things, but give your assent to others.

Comment

We should learn to suspend these sort of value judgements and just describe events to ourselves in the form of an "objective representation" (phantasia kataleptike). Stick to the facts without, unnecessarily, adding judgements or strong emotions. Don't criticize people by condemning their behaviour as wrong or bad. Just remain with the facts, describe what happened, and make a decision based on that.

Cognitive therapists call it "mind reading" when people jump to conclusions about what others are thinking. You can see that happening every day between people arguing on the Internet! Epictetus says that it's impossible for us to know whether someone's behaviour is "bad" in the moral sense unless we understand their motives. And if we understood that they were misguided then we probably wouldn't feel angry with them anyway. We should therefore generally suspend judgement. His final sentence makes a technical point: that we should base our thinking on the objective details of the situation and not our assumptions, inferences, and value judgements, which go beyond what we can know for certain.