overcoming sorrow

How does philosophy help us overcome sorrows?

When I was sixteen, I had an exceptional teacher of Dutch language who ignored the standard curriculum and instead taught us his favourite works of literature and philosophy. As we struggled through demanding texts, students complained they could not see the point of reading them. My teacher explained that with patience, these texts might offer us new worlds of meaning that we might roam through for years to come. Philosophy, in this sense, offers perspectives we might draw upon in moments of sorrow or doubt. In this essay, I honour his insight, specifically exploring how philosophy helps us understand and respond to sorrow. Following my teacher’s advice, I engage with a specific text, namely al-Kindī’s (d.873) On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, which presents a striking example of philosophy as a guide through life.

The text is structured as an epistle addressed to al-Kindī’s brother. al-Kindī, often hailed as the father of Arabic philosophy, sets out to describe the roots of sorrow, in order to find means of dispelling it. Sorrow, he argues, is not inevitable, but rather the result of a failure in the rational governance of the soul. When we use our reason, we will understand sorrow and hence be able to prevent it. While I disagree with the aim of dispelling all sorrow, I argue philosophical texts like that of al-Kindī provide insight into sorrow, so that we may relate to this emotion in a more conscious way. 

al-Kindī argues all beings are provided with the means for happy lives. For example, animals are happy as long as they stay away from what is harmful. They neither desire more than what they need for a good life, nor feel sorrow over what they cannot control. Humans, by contrast, possess intellect and moral capacity, even to govern over animals. However, paradoxically, we are ignorant in the governance of our own souls. We experience sorrow, pains of the soul caused by either losing what we love or failing to obtain what we desire. 

Our attachment to worldly things inevitably leads to sorrow. Since all things arise and cease, forever changing, attempting to grasp them as lasting objects of our desire is doomed to end in misery. Safety from calamity is an unrealistic, irrational expectation. Wishing for there to be no misfortune is the same as wishing to not exist at all, since misfortune is inevitable in a world of arising and ceasing (verse 14). Especially clinging to external possessions is doomed to make us unhappy. 

For al-Kindī, all that we truly own is our intellect, our spiritual growth. He states that “we should look to the world of the intellect and make what we love, own, and desire [come] from it” (verse 3). The objects of our intellect cannot be taken away from us, hence it is fruitful to desire them. The crucial skill is thus to learn how to discern between what we can and cannot control. We cannot control the misfortunes that may occur to us, for example the sudden loss of prized possessions in a fire. But our intellect, our ability to reason, is within our control. In this way, philosophy, as a love of wisdom and reason, is presented by al-Kindī as the remedy for sorrow. 

al-Kindī’s argument takes a provocative turn when he states that the unnecessary pain and sorrow that we carry with us is evil and should cause us shame, for it is a sign that we are “devoid of intellect, because the intellect puts things in their rightful places” (verse 30). This world is ephemeral, our life on earth a gift from God: what he takes from us, we must accept as a loss, or else we are full of ingratitude. For me, here al-Kindī is being excessively severe, for example in his boat analogy. 

In this parable, passengers disembark from a boat onto a beautiful island. Some admire it but do not become attached, returning on time to the boat for the best seats. Others become captivated by the island’s beautiful stones and flowers, some returning late to the boat, getting the worst seats. Others are so distracted they get left behind altogether. The island represents our material world and the boat represents the soul’s journey, to the inevitable end of death. This end is not evil, but rather the perfection of our fundamentally mortal nature. 

Striking about this parable is al-Kindī’s dismissal of the enjoyment of the island. Those who linger will return late, getting bad seats or none at all. However, might we not reasonably question whether the only purpose of existence is to return to the ship “without dallying” (verse 21)? Or, might it also be found in our engagement with the material world, even when this exposes us to sorrow? al-Kindī’s own poetic description of the island invites sympathy for those who linger:

to see the meadows blooming with all kinds of flowers; to smell all the different kinds of scents of those flowering meadows and the stands of trim trees bearing wondrous kinds of fruit; to hear the pleasant songs of the hidden birds; to pick out, in the earth of that land, different colored stones and pretty shells with strange shapes and wondrous markings (verse 22)

For me, this parable raises the question of how strict we must be in dispelling sorrow. Must we withdraw from the material world completely, into the world of the soul, refusing to smell the flowers? Or does a happy life lie in accepting the sorrows that come from enjoying flowers that will inevitably wilt? 

Returning to the words of my teacher, philosophy can provide new worlds of meaning. In the case of al-Kindī, when I engage with his attempt at making the experience of sorrow more intelligible, I feel a human connection across centuries. He leaves me with the insight that we can prevent sorrow from consuming us. We always have some measure of control over our sorrow, as long as we use our reason and gain insight into the transient nature of things. As long as we realise that the island is a temporary stopping place, we might consciously decide how far we want to explore, how much sorrow and pain we are willing to endure. 

Work cited: al-Kindī. “On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows.” Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources, edited by Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman, Hackett Publishing Company, 2007, pp. 23–35.

Essay written for Dr. Bdaiwi's class on Arabic Philosophy, Leiden