Reempowering Ourselves: Wisdom of Epictetus - Part 2

See Part 1

By Denise Breton and Christopher Largent

Section 24

“The temptation here is to wonder what good we’ll be to anyone.  What power will we wield?  Will we acquire any position in the state?  Will anyone know of us enough even to ask us to parties?

 “But what power or position are we talking about?  We’ll always be able to do what’s in our power, and that’s where we can achieve the most.

 “Then we’re tempted to think, ‘But will I be of any use to my friends?’

 “What use?  We can’t provide complete financial support to our friends or turn them into model citizens.  These things aren’t in our power, and anyway they’re our friends’ business.  We can’t provide what isn’t ours to provide.

 “But, we think, ‘We’ve seen people make a lot of money and help others; why can’t we do that?’

 “We can; nothing says we can’t.  The condition, though, is that in doing so, we not lose our self-respect, honor, and dedication to our highest aims.  If, however, getting money means losing these things, we should stop.  We’d rather have our own dignity and a poor but honorable friend.  So real helping is to help ourselves build the best character we can.

 “Then a voice whispers to us, ‘But what good will this character be to the state?  The state needs roads and bridges and baths and buildings.’

 “Suppose we’re not in a position to provide those things?  So what?  A shoemaker doesn’t provide plowshares, nor does a blacksmith provide shoes.  What the state really needs is for each of us to do what’s in our nature to do.  And if all we supply is ourselves as good citizens, then that’s useful.

 “And what position will we have in the state?

“That’s an easy question to answer: whatever position we can have that allows us to keep our self-respect and honor intact.  In fact, if we lose these qualities, what service will we ever be able to do for our country?”

 Section 25

“Then comes the last temptation:  what about people who get ahead of us, who receive favors that we don’t, or who get positions that we don’t?

 “First, if these things are good, we should be happy for the people who received them.  If they’re not good, we should be happy that we didn’t get them.

 “Second, we need to remember that everything has its price.  If we want to get outward things, we have to play that game.  If we want the favor of some rich person, we’ll have to kowtow to that person, flatter him or her, and hang around waiting to be noticed.  If we’re not willing to pay this price, there’s no reason to expect the favors.

 “What’s the price of lettuce?  A dollar?  If another person pays a dollar and gets lettuce, while we don’t pay and don’t get lettuce, we don’t think the other person has gotten ahead of us.  True, that person’s got lettuce.  But we’ve got our dollar.

 “The same principle applies in getting ahead or not.  If we’re not invited to some prestigious event, it’s because we haven’t paid the price demanded.  The price is that we flatter and kowtow.  If we want to get invited, we have to pay this price.  If we don’t pay the price, we can’t complain about not being invited.

 “But, we think, the other person gets the invitation—gets ahead—while we’re left empty-handed.  We feel like nobody.

 “In fact, we’re not empty-handed.  We have what we didn’t pay out; we didn’t flatter and kowtow when we didn’t want to, and we won’t have to put up with those who stoop to this behavior.  Our real ‘somebodiness’ stays intact.  We haven’t lost it—spent it—for superficial reasons.”

 Section 26

“But doesn’t it seem unfair that the others should get ahead?  Doesn’t it even seem evil?

 “We need to get back to our rule.  It’s in our power to learn from things that are a given—to accept happenings that we’d all take for granted and assume to be an inevitable part of life.  For instance, if our neighbor breaks a cup, we’ll likely say, ‘Accidents will happen.’  That’s how we should react when we break a cup.

 “But this also applies to more serious incidents—even more serious than not getting ahead.  If someone’s child or spouse dies, we feel sorry for them, but ultimately we regard this as something that happens.  Similarly, if our child or spouse should die, we’ll feel miserable, but we’ll know that in the grand scheme of things, such things happen.”

 Section 27

“Therefore, when we reflect on evil, we should recall that just as a target is not set up for archers to miss, there is nothing intrinsically evil in the world.”

 In both Greek and Hebrew, ‘sin’ means ‘missing the mark.’  We’re learning to shoot, we aimed rightly, but we missed the target—that’s the original meaning of sin.  It’s not absolute evil, as if we’re infected with badness.  It’s just a mistake we made along the way as we learn and evolve.

 Section 28

“Even with an issue such as evil—especially with an issue such as evil—we shouldn’t let other people’s ideas, opinions, or responses throw us off.

 “After all, if people started abusing our bodies with their bodies, we’d be furious.  Similarly, we shouldn’t let someone else’s ideas about evil confuse and thus abuse us.  Nor should we let someone else’s judgments of their position or ours disturb us.  Just as we’re not happy about someone abusing our bodies, we shouldn’t let them abuse our minds by taking on their views as our own.”

 Section 29

“In fact, in approaching anything—in deciding upon any course of action—we don’t want to be confused.  We don’t want to be thrown off course.  So, when we approach any activity, we should carefully consider primary issues as well as any concerns that follow from these.  Otherwise, we may jump into something and have to drop out later, to our own detriment.

 “Do we, for instance, want to win the Olympics?  This is a perfectly legitimate goal.  But we need to consider what the initial demands are and what is required of us in the long run—hours of training, a special diet, years of exercise under a trainer—and all with the possibility that we may lose and even get injured in the process.  If we’re willing to give ourselves completely to the athletic regimen, then we can undertake to win the Olympics.

 “If, though, we just want to play athlete—the way we played roles as children—then we’d better reconsider.  We’ll end up being an athlete one day, a politician the next day, a philosopher the next day—but nothing wholeheartedly.  Like some clever chimpanzee, we’ll imitate this vocation or that, abandoning each one as we get bored with it.  We’ll fall into a habit of doing everything half-heartedly, so we’ll never get to experience anything fully.  We’ll be like those people who, hearing Euphrates [a highly respected Syrian philosopher] speak, want to become like him—but instantly.

 “In all things, then, we need to consider first what’s required and second whether we’re capable of meeting those requirements.  If we want to wrestle, we have to ask whether our arms, legs, and back can handle that activity.  After all, different physiques are built for different activities.

 “Being a philosopher—seeking wisdom and freedom—is even more demanding.  We can’t assume that we can just go about business as usual—pursuing whatever desires cross our minds and giving in to whatever emotions seize us.  No, we must be prepared to spend hours in contemplation, to develop habits of self-awareness and self-discipline, to abandon whatever pursuits and friends hinder our philosophical development, to be ridiculed by people, and to be refused honors, positions, and even ordinary justice.

 “Are we willing to pay these prices for the fruits of philosophy—peace of mind, equanimity, and inner freedom?

 “If not, we’d better stay away from the discipline.  We can’t return to our childhoods and be a philosopher one minute, a politician the next, one of Caesar’s officials the next.  We have to develop real integrity.  We have to be one person, good or bad.  We must develop either our own reason—our own governing principle—or scramble after outward things.  In short, we must be either a lover of wisdom and freedom or someone who chases everyone else’s notions of success.”

 Section 30

“How does a true philosopher behave?  What does it mean to seek wisdom, freedom, and inner peace?  We need to consider three general areas.  The first area is everyday relations.

 “If we have a relation with a parent, for instance, this implies mutual care, respect, and even tolerance of some bad behavior.  If the parent is a bad parent, we still have to consider what’s involved in the relationship.  What are its genuine demands?  What aren’t?

 “Father, mother, brother, sister, friend, whatever—a philosopher always strives to understand what is a right relationship.  This means keeping in mind that no one can abuse us without our permission.  If we carefully examine all our relationships—to neighbors, other world citizens, those in government—we can determine what are legitimate duties and what aren’t.”

 

Sometimes we let our sense of duty—something the Stoics knew about and were famous for—subject us to abuse from family members, colleagues, friends, and even ourselves.  Here, in a variation of what’s in our power and what’s not, Epictetus asks us what’s our duty and what’s not.  If something is indeed our duty, then it’s also in our power.  In such cases, we can exercise our freedom and responsibility.

 If, however, some act is not our duty, then it’s out of our realm.  If we try to perform the act, we’ll most likely be “harmed” or “hindered,” as he talks about this sort of thing.

 In fact, doing something that’s not ours to do opens us up to abuse.  It makes us natural victims for addictive systems—and they will use a false sense of duty as a control-device.  So doing a duty that’s not our duty is really not duty but self-abuse.

 Section 31

“The second area is our relation to the ultimate.  What this means is that we follow the metaphysical path:

 “(1)  We form right opinions about ultimate principles and how they govern the universe.

 “(2)  Once we comprehend this governing, we set our intention in line with it. That is, we intend in all actions to conform to it—of our own free will and according to our own highest understanding.

 “(3)  Then we properly name whatever happens to us—that when we’re victimized, it’s not because the principles have ceased working, but because we may have failed to do understand or follow them.

 “(4)  As we strive to understand and follow these principles, we adhere to our original rule:  to apply our notions of good or evil only to those things that are in our power, not being tricked into making judgments about what is not in our power.

 “(5)  The result is that we enjoy what we should and admire whom we should.  The keynote here is taking joy in what we do and who’s around us—a point more important than it may appear.

 “If we apply our notions of good and evil to things not in our power, we’ll likely be harmed and then hate the things or people that harmed us.  But this is what gets people into trouble.

 “For example, children may hate their parents for not giving the children what they expected.  But the children’s expectation is at fault; they desired things that were not in their power, things that only their parents had the power to give or withhold.

 “In the same way, parents rail at the gods when their children die.  But though parents will naturally grieve, railing at the gods accomplishes nothing.  The death of children is not in the parents’ power, and hating the gods will only make the parents feel worse.

 “So, we need to take care not to hate things and people pointlessly, or we’ll destroy the happiness of our own lives with regard to ultimate concerns. We need to keep in mind that our metaphysics follows our interests.

 “(6)  To remain steadfast on the path of philosophy, we aim at what we think is true and right, avoiding what we think is not.  In other words, our relation to the ultimate will be in balance—giving us a sure foundation for our own metaphysical positions—when we rightly direct our will.  To be specific, our relation is healthy when we know what to desire and what to avoid.”

 Ill-founded desires don’t lure us into the trap of blaming God for everything that’s wrong in the world or that happens to us.  But how do we know what to desire and avoid?  From what is in our power and what is not.  Recall that Epictetus set up the relation between our desires and what’s in our power in Sections 1, 2, and 3.

 “(7)  Finally, we should perform whatever community rituals are proper—as everyone should—with the right balance of concern and generosity.  In this way, we honor our community’s sense of religion or shared spirituality.”

 Section 32

“The third area is our relation to prophecy, divination, and counsel.  Here again, our rule applies.  While we don’t know what the outcome will be, we do know that, as seekers of wisdom, we have no expectations, either for good or evil, concerning what’s not in our power.  So, since we approach the counselor with neither desire nor aversion, we’re not afraid of the outcome.

 “On the contrary, we’re utterly objective.  If the event-to-come involves what’s in our power, we can turn it to the good, and no one can prevent this—since it’s in our power.  If the event involves what’s beyond our power, then we maintain our equanimity and don’t waste time worrying.

 “With this strategy, we confidently approach human or divine counselors, weighing their advice and being clear about whether we should take it or not.  Socrates used to say that we should seek divine counsel (from an oracle, for instance) only when our whole mind is focused on a serious issue and when human reason has taken us as far as it can.

 “For instance, there’s no point in seeking divine counsel about whether it’s our duty to risk our lives for our friends or our country.  We know what our duty is here, and even if the oracle said we were in danger, we’d do our duty.  In that case, we always obey the highest counsel—our own inner, divine voice that knows that we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t help friends in need.”

 Section 33

“Based on these three areas, we can specify what our conduct as seekers of wisdom should be—the philosopher’s style, so to speak—when we’re alone or with others.

 “We should, for instance, be quiet rather than over-talkative, saying only what’s necessary in as few words as possible.

 “When we do converse with others, we should avoid talking about superficial things or engaging in gossip.  We shouldn’t indulge in the too-frequent habit of judging others, wasting our breath and thoughts making comparisons between people or complaining about them.  If we can raise the level of the conversation, then we should, but if we find ourselves among nonphilosophers, it’s better to remain silent.

 “Though there’s nothing wrong with fun, we shouldn’t laugh too loudly or at inappropriate moments.  Too often, it’s not genuine, just show.

 “We should stay away from whatever entertains nonphilosophical people, especially when these entertainments are crude.  If we find ourselves in the middle of such things, we should take care that we don’t become crude as well.  And we’ll need to take care.  Regardless of how developed our character is, it can be dragged down if we participate too much in entertainments designed to produce a lesser character.”

 Today, we only need think of subliminals (exposed by Vance Packard and then Wilson Bryan Key)—messages of fear and hate beamed at us from the media, trying to get us to consume obsessively as a way to offset the fear and hate.  Media critics agree with Epictetus; as long as it aims such character-harming messages at us, it’s better to turn off the television set or close the magazine.

 “As far as physical concerns go, we should be moderate in everything.  We should eat and drink only what we need, clothe and house ourselves modestly, and avoid excess and extravagance.

 “We should avoid licentiousness in sexual relationships.  If we engage in such relationships, we should see that they are legal.  At the same time, we shouldn’t be judgmental toward those who are less circumspect than we are.  Nor should we brag about our own chastity or self-restraint.”

 Here, especially, the famous Stoic moderation is important—not because chastity is so wonderful, but because sexuality can cut two ways.  Making too much of it can get us in trouble, but making too little of it can, too.  More than one historian (after Freud and Reich) has noted that systems can control people by repressing their sexuality—and then channeling all that energy where the system wants.  Repressed sexual energy, some psychologists say, has provided the force for wars of the twentieth century.

 “If someone says to us, ‘So-and-so is saying unkind things about you,’ we shouldn’t get defensive.  We should just reply, ‘So-and-so doesn’t know my other faults, or he wouldn’t have mentioned only the ones he did.’

 “We shouldn’t go running to public sporting events, but if we do, we should behave as our rule tells us.  That is, we should expect to happen what will happen, with the best team winning—so that nothing occurs that is out of our power.  In this way, we avoid the violent emotions that disturb our equanimity.  When we return home, we shouldn’t get all worked up talking about the game, because this won’t help us or anyone else.

 “By the same token, we shouldn’t go running to every lecture or public talk.  If we do attend, we should maintain our equanimity as well as our dignity, avoiding arguing with the speaker or anyone else present.

 “When we have a private meeting with anyone, especially someone who is famous or in a powerful position, we shouldn’t be intimidated.  Instead, we should just consider how Socrates or Zeno might behave.  With their higher sense of what’s right, we should then prepare ourselves for the visit by imagining the worst—that the person may not show up, that he or she may ignore us, or that we may get the door slammed in our faces.

 “If we can handle all of these possibilities, then we’re ready to go.  If we can’t, we shouldn’t make lame excuses or dismiss the opportunity as unimportant; that just shows that we can’t maintain our consistency and courage when some outward factor seems challenging.

 “In meeting with anyone, we shouldn’t brag or constantly remind people of our accomplishments.  We should keep in mind that it’s more interesting for us to recall our own adventures than it is for others to listen to them.

 “However, we shouldn’t invite people to belittle us and even laugh at us too much.  Though self-deprecation may seem endearing, it can be overdone, so that we lose the respect of others.

 “By the same argument, we should take care about how often we use foul language or vulgarities.  If the conversation begins to sink to this level, we should either try to correct it or by our silence show that we don’t intend to go along with it.”

 Section 34

“Anytime we’re about to engage in some pleasurable activity, we should maintain our equanimity.  This means that, if we’re getting too excited, we should take ourselves in hand, pause, and reflect.  We should weigh how much we’ll enjoy the pleasure against whether we’ll rebuke ourselves for any part of it afterward.

 “We should also ask ourselves whether we’ll actually feel better about ourselves if we don’t engage in the activity.  If then we feel that we should go through with it, we should do so with clarity and dignity and not give in to any lower allurements that may be associated with the action.”

 Section 35

“Similarly, whenever we decide to engage in some activity that we believe is right, we should do it, no matter what.  We should especially not be put off by feeling that the public will misunderstand, ridicule, or even condemn us.  If what we’re doing is wrong—the only relevant issue—we shouldn’t do the thing.  If what we’re doing is right, we need not be concerned about what the public thinks; propriety and public opinion often don’t go together.”

 Section 36

“In fact, it’s well known that some things go together and some don’t—and some are as different as night and day.  If, for instance, we’re invited to a banquet, we should recall that gluttony and self-respect don’t go together.  So, rather than taking huge portions just to stuff ourselves, we should value what is put before us and not be greedy for more.  In this way, we keep our self-respect.”

 Section 37

“Again, we can see that this is an application of our rule:  if we try to get or do something that is not in our power, we’ll lose our self-respect, while at the same time failing to get or do something that we could have done successfully.”

 Section 38

“As a result, just as when we walk we take care not to step on a nail or twist our ankles, so when we act we should take care not to harm our rule, which is our standard for determining what to do.  If we’re careful in this way, we’ll have a secure basis for action.”

Section 39

“The same rule holds for possessions.  Following this, we can use our bodies as a standard for what we should own—just as our foot is the standard for what kind of footwear we buy.  If we use the needs of our bodies to determine what we should own, we’ll have the right amount of possessions.  If, however, we go beyond the body’s needs, our possessions might snowball and turn into an avalanche that takes us with it—just as if we bought a pair of shoes, then encased them in gold, added jewels and diamonds, purple cloth, embroidery, and on and on.  Once we exceed our own proper limit of possessions, there’s no stopping.”

 Section 40

“Why do people exceed their limits?  They lack the proper sense of who they are.  For instance, women over the age of fourteen begin to be attractive to and flattered by men.  But if they begin to believe that all they’re good for is to attract men, then they’ll dress themselves just to get a mate—and they’ll likely overdo things.  If however, they realize that their true beauty lies in their own self-worth, they’ll dress to honor that.”

 Section 41

“The same holds true for anyone—man or woman—who goes overboard about his or her physique, exercising too much, or on the other hand, eating and drinking too much.  We should take care of our bodies according to the limits of common sense, saving our energy for higher pursuits.”

 Section 42

“At the same time, we should be wary of reading anything from outward appearances.  For instance, if someone says unkind things about us, we know that the person does so according to his or her impressions of us.  Such a person can’t know our inner selves—only we have access to that.

 “So, the person actually judges us from outward appearances, and he or she is the one harmed by this judgment.  After all, judging from outward appearances harms only the person making the judgment, inasmuch as the person is deceived.  That’s why, when we hear false judgments about ourselves, we just say, ‘That’s simply the way I seem to that person; it’s not the totality of who I am.’”

 Section 43

“This example, in fact, suggests an important method for dealing with any wrong done to us: there are two ways to handle any situation—one way that we can deal with, and one way we can’t.  To be more graphic, every wrong done to us has two handles—one by which it can be borne and one by which it can’t.

 “That is, if someone wrongs us, we can’t approach the situation as righting the wrong; the wrong is already done, and it’s not in our power to make it undone.  So, we handle it the best way we can, asking what our long-term relationship is to the person and what we can do about what has happened: what is our next step? what’s in our power to do?”

 Section 44

“The same holds true if we seem to be richer than someone or cleverer or more articulate.  If we feel that any of these criteria make us superior to someone else, we’re not seeing things clearly.  Having more possessions than someone else doesn’t mean we’re better than the other person; it just means we have more possessions.  People are more than their possessions.”

 By the same argument, people are more than their clever thoughts or clever words.

 Section 45

“Gradually, then, we learn to perceive things differently—more accurately.  For instance, if someone washes in a way that seems too fast to us, we shouldn’t say that person washes badly but only quickly.  If someone drinks quarts and quarts of beverages, we shouldn’t think that the person has some problem with drinking, only that he or she drinks a great deal.

 “How can we know what motivates someone else’s actions, so how can we judge them?  We need to be careful about how we perceive, and the conclusions we draw from our perceptions.  Our judgments of others are necessarily imperfect, so we do best to avoid judgments.”

 Section 46

“In short, if we’re going to be seekers of wisdom, we need to think and act like seekers of wisdom.  This means that we ought not to boast that we are philosophers nor parade our philosophical knowledge before nonphilosophers.  This isn’t proper action.  Similarly, when we’re in public, we shouldn’t tell people how to act; we should just act properly ourselves.

 “In this we’re following Socrates, who so abandoned self-aggrandizement that when philosopher-groupies came to him asking to meet ‘famous philosopher So-and-so,’ Socrates just took them to meet So-and-so.  Though the wisest person alive, Socrates never called attention to his own wisdom.  He just lived what he believed to be the good life.

 “So, if some philosophical discussion arises among nonphilosophers, we should just quietly observe it.  After all, we know enough about philosophy to realize that we may slip and run off at the mouth—we may end up saying things we haven’t thought through yet.  If someone criticizes us for our silence, we shouldn’t be disturbed.  It’s the proper strategy, and no criticism can take our own strategies out of our power.

 “If we’re annoyed by the criticism, we can remind ourselves that sheep don’t go running to the shepherd to throw up grass just to show how much they’ve eaten.  Instead they demonstrate what they’ve digested by producing genuinely useful products—wool and milk.  With nonphilosophers, we too should not toss out undigested thoughts.  Instead, we should digest any issue, see how it conforms to our principles, and then act accordingly.  The action is demonstration enough.”

 Section 47

“At the same time, we shouldn’t pride ourselves on our philosophical lifestyle.  For instance, if we drink water (rather than popular but less healthful beverages), we shouldn’t tell everyone we meet that “we drink only water.”  Not only do we sound pompous and self-important, but we also overlook the fact that there’s always someone who’s even more ascetic about water than we are.

 “So neither should we make a big deal about our water drinking, nor should we try to justify our self-importance by drinking less water than anyone else in the world.  This is just trying to be superhuman for the sake of a superhuman reputation—which, after all, isn’t in our power and accomplishes nothing.  Are we really thirsty?  We should just take a sip of water and then keep our mouths shut.”

 Section 48

“After all, if we’re always chasing outward things—such as being wealthy or a celebrity—we’re no different from nonphilosophers.  They always look to outward things—such as having a good or bad reputation—thinking that this can help or harm them.

“We know by now that we should look to ourselves and what’s in our power for help or harm.  Philosophers don’t worry about what others think.  We don’t blame, praise, accuse, or complain about other people—they’re not in our power—nor do we call other people’s attention to our accomplishments.  What’s more, if someone praises us, we smile politely but don’t make anything of it.  If someone complains about us, we don’t get defensive.

 “Granted, we may not yet have mastered all these philosophical skills.  But that’s all the more reason to move cautiously in the world, as if we’re recovering from some injury and taking physical therapy.  We know we’re on the road to recovery, but we’re not yet secure.  We may have developed beyond grasping and the will to get (as we set out to do in Section 2 above), but we need to carefully apply our rule, so that we stay away from what’s not in our power.  In this way, we gradually strengthen our will and learn how to act in a modest yet dignified manner.

 “If someone else thinks we’re stupid or naive, that’s not our problem.  Our problem is to approach our own recovery with care and to act in the world with caution—as if we were protecting ourselves from some enemy ambush.”

 Section 49

“Though this may sound harsh, pride often waits to trip us up. For instance, we may pride ourselves on being able to understand some deep philosophical issue or some difficult writer such as Chrysippus [the second-century BCE Greek philosopher considered, along with Zeno, a founder of Stoicism—and its principal systematizer].  But, after all, if Chrysippus hadn’t written in a difficult style, we’d have no reason to feel proud.

 “We need to ask ourselves, ‘what’s really going on with philosophical pursuits?  In the first place, we engage in philosophy because we want to understand the true nature of reality and act in harmony with that.  To this end, we want to read writers who wrestle with such issues, and we hear that Chryippus is such a writer.

 “Then, we discover that we can’t understand Chrysippus, so we either must develop our philosophical skills further or find someone who does in fact grasp Chrysippus’s writings.  If the latter, this person then advises us about what Chrysippus means to say.  So far, there’s nothing for us to congratulate ourselves about.

 “Finally, we must do something with what we’ve discovered about Chrysippus’s teachings.  We must digest them and act on what we’ve digested.  In that, there’s reason to be pleased.

 “This alone should be the source of pride.  If we admire someone else’s or our own ability to expound on a teaching, we’re just admiring the skill of expounding.  In other words, we’re merely admiring grammar or text interpretation rather than philosophy, even if the interpreted text is that of Chrysippus rather than, for instance, Homer.  It’s not philosophy; it’s text interpretation.

 “So, if someone says, ‘Tell me about the writings of Chrysippus,’ and we can’t show how we conduct ourselves in line with Chrysippus’s writings, we should be embarrassed rather than proud. Making a good speech about philosophy isn’t the same as living philosophy and being a philosopher.”

 Section 50

“Whatever principles we digest, then, we should live as if they were laws we couldn’t possibly break.  Whatever anyone may say to dissuade or criticize us is of no consequence, since their opinions and criticisms are not in our power.

  ‘We can put this even more strongly.  Since we already know the highest principles and since we have a rule to live by, we need not hesitate to put these into action now.  We don’t need to wait for some expert to tell us that we know what we know.”

 This shows the flaws in our reward systems and how abusive they are.  In education, for instance, we have degree systems to tell us whether we’re real seekers of wisdom—the highest degree is still called in most disciplines a “Doctor of Philosophy” or “Ph.D.”  But the degree can be conferred on anyone who’s willing to submit to the system’s abuses long enough, and it doesn’t make that person a seeker of wisdom.

 By the same token, we don’t need degrees to tell us whether we’re seekers of wisdom or not, whether we’re living by our principles or not.  If, in fact, we’ve reached the point at which we don’t need the experts to tell us what to do, then we’ve graduated, in a sense.  Here’s where we see that Epictetus intends this “manual” as an ordered exercise.  At the beginning, he told us the first steps we needed to take.  Now, as we’ve worked through—actually lived through all these sections—he concludes:

 “We’re not in our philosophical youth any longer; we’re mature now.  We shouldn’t procrastinate, putting off the changes we need to make  We should make them—and not just the little day-to-day adjustments but the big life-changes that will enable us to keep progressing in the quest for wisdom.

 “We don’t want to be dull, ignorant, and shallow.  Each moment, we need to claim ourselves as mature philosophers, proficient in following the higher laws we’ve laid down for ourselves.

 “Of course, we’ll have struggles and problems, but we should treat these as the Olympics themselves; the contest has now begun, and we’re in the thick of it.  That’s the time when we can see most clearly where we are in our philosophical evolution—how far we’ve come and what we’ve really accomplished.

 “This is, after all, how Socrates perfected himself—letting everything improve his character everyday, following his own principles as if they were laws.  We may not be Socrates yet, but we can certainly strive to live as if we are a Socrates.”

 Section 51

“In summary, then, what constitutes philosophical striving?

 “(1)  Philosophical striving begins with the practical application of principles—such as “We shouldn’t tell a lie.”  This is the starting point, the basis.

 “(2)  Philosophical striving goes on to explore proofs or arguments—why we shouldn’t lie.

 “(3)  Finally, philosophical striving examines the reasoning processes that underlie the first two.  It explores the sort of things we find in logic: proofs, the relation between antecedents and consequents, contradictions and fallacies, the criteria for truth and falsehood, and so on.  What makes a proof hold up, and what makes an argument fall through?

 “We need the third area—logic—to examine the second—the proofs—while the second activity flows naturally from the first.  The most important, of course, is the first, since it’s the ground of action—living.

 “We often, however, allot our philosophical time in exactly the reverse order.  We play the game of logic endlessly, forgetting that philosophy should be first and foremost practical.  This is crazy; while we lie and tolerate lying throughout our society, we offer sophisticated proofs showing why we shouldn’t lie.

 “Instead of playing mind-games, we should be living and acting at all times and under all circumstances according to the highest principles we have.  To guide us in this practical application of principles and to strengthen our resolve, we can turn to words such as these:

 

Guide my steps, divine force of destiny,

Wherever my path is decreed to go,

I’ll follow willingly, but if I fail,

I’ll follow nonetheless if that’s your will.

            [Cleanthes, quoted in Seneca’s Letter 107]

 

Whoever follows Fate, willingly and wise,

Is not just a citizen of earth but also a citizen of
Heaven.

                              [Euripides, Fragments]

 

Well, Crito, if this is the divine will, then so be it.

                              [Socrates in Plato’s Crito, 43d]

 

Anytus and Meletus may be able to put me to death,

but they do not have the power to harm me.”

                              [Socrates in Plato’s Apology, 30c]

 

 An endnote or two:

 Epictetus, the author

             Epictetus was a Stoic philosopher in Rome until he was expelled with all other philosophers (around 90 CE) by the Emperor Domitian, who was apparently no lover of wisdom.  As far as anyone knows, Epictetus was born between 50 and 60 CE in Hieropolis in Phrygia.  A slave, he belonged to Nero’s secretary until his master freed him.  He taught in Nicopolis in Epirus, where students came from Athens and Rome to learn from him.  Epictetus, like Socrates, wrote nothing, but his teachings were recorded by his student, Flavius Arrian [who took notes in Koine (common, colloquial) Greek, though Epictetus taught in Attic (formal, literary) Greek].  He died around 135.

 Existing translations

             Most scholarly translations of Epictetus’s brief work,The Enchiridion, or Manual—which we have here adapted into contemporary English—follow Arrian’s Greek closely, which is appropriate for scholarship.  Most readers today, however, find the translations a bit too Greek.  Even those entranced with Epictetus’s ideas wonder why they can’t be put in plainer language.

 Our recreation

1. Simple yet engaging presentation of Stoic ideas.
            But there is need for an adaptation for more philosophically pressing reasons.  Epictetus was a teacher, indeed a teacher so talented that without any particular socioeconomic or pedagogical status, he attracted students from all over the Greek and Roman worlds.  So his works should reflect that attraction.  No contemporary translation of The Enchiridion, however, holds this charm (at least, not any that we know about).

 2. The ordered flow of the ideas
            More seriously, the paragraphs of The Enchiridion seem disjointed, reflecting probably the state of Arrian’s notes.  Most sections seem unrelated to the others, and many seem to wander from Epictetus’s main theme—how to mature in philosophy.  This is where contemporary translations fail.  They present the work as if it were a few random thoughts on how to live well and be a philosopher.

             As we discovered while working on the following adaptation, The Enchiridion is in fact an ordered presentation, each paragraph following from the one that precedes it, all based on the criterion or rule presented in Section 1.  With a few transitions and paraphrases added—which would, of course, occur in any good lecture—the order of the text becomes obvious.

             We’re sorry to say that—to date at least—we haven’t found another scholar who recognizes the inner structure of The Enchiridion and has translated the text accordingly.  So we offer this adaptation, which we feel reflects the spirit of Epictetus’s actual teaching and so makes The Enchiridion  what it is meant to be—a clear, useful, well ordered “philosopher’s manual,” leading the young lover of wisdom to philosophical maturity.

ContinuedSee Part 1