It Is Our Judgments, Not Things
This week you are learning about one of the most foundational ideas in all of Stoic philosophy: that it is your judgments, not the things themselves, that disturb you. The Stoics called these judgments "hēgemonikon" (the ruling faculty of the mind) at the technical level, but the everyday name for the idea is simply this: your mental verdicts about events, not the events themselves, are the source of fear, grief, and craving. Once you see this clearly, facing fear stops being a matter of courage alone and becomes a matter of looking honestly at what your own mind is doing.
Passage
But however I have named the judgments and opinions of perturbations, their meaning is, not that merely the perturbations consist in them, but that the effects likewise of these perturbations do so; as grief occasions a kind of painful pricking, and fear engenders a recoil or sudden abandonment of the mind; joy gives rise to a profuse mirth, while lust is the parent of an unbridled habit of coveting. But that imagination, which I have included in all the above definitions, they would have to consist in assenting without warrantable grounds.
— Cicero, Tusculans 4.15
Reflection
Cicero goes further and describes the effects of perturbations: grief produces a painful pricking, fear produces a recoil, a sudden abandonment of the mind. These are not metaphors; they describe real bodily and mental experiences. The important word Cicero uses is 'assenting without warrantable grounds.' To assent means to say yes to a judgment, to let it into your mind as true. Fear, on this account, is not just a feeling; it is an act of assent, something closer to a choice than a reflex. That is both sobering and liberating: if fear involves your assent, you have more say in it than you may have thought.
Go deeper
Recall the last time fear made you recoil or freeze: if that recoil involved an act of inner assent to a judgment, what exactly were you saying yes to?
Practice
Catch the Assent
Think of a fear-producing scenario you are likely to face this week, something at work, in a relationship, or around your health. Write out the scenario in one sentence. Then write the judgment you typically assent to when it arises. Finally, write a single counter-sentence: what would you say if you withheld that assent? Do not force yourself to believe the counter-sentence; just notice that it is a live option.