Patience and Virtuous Passivity

Patience appears to involve a form of self-restraint in which one maintains equanimity in the face of frustrations. Insofar as this requires self-control—actively resisting the temptation to escape frustration by using the limited time available for other purposes—it’s hard to see how patience is a genuine virtue. This chapter considers the view that patience is a shift away from willful agency altogether—and consequently from the frustrations of thwarted striving. Patience is instead understood as loving openness to and acceptance of existence, whatever comes. A helpful model for understanding this renunciation of willful self-assertion can be found in Heidegger’s idea of Gelassenheit (“letting be”), which involves humbly accepting the unfolding of the world rather than imposing a framework of meaning governed by norms of efficiency and control. Heidegger emphasizes a kind of passivity that is not (obviously) attributable to one’s agency but rather throws it into question, calling upon the patient person to submit to the goodness of the world in respectful hope and trust. Such a view leaves us with questions about the value of such a stance—questions we will briefly consider through the lens of a discussion of passive resistance to conditions of political oppression.