Desiring and Pursuing Externals

A reader offers a bold challenge to my previous post, citing chapter and verse, in favor of his view that Epictetus does not counsel neglect of externals. His arguments merit a considered, if necessarily brief, response.

He alludes first of all to the distinction that the older Stoa drew amongst externals. Some externals, though not good, have some worth and are to be preferred in selecting among externals. Indeed. We addressed this distinction in a previous post in terms of the difference between “selecting” and “choosing” , and wondered whether it was preserved in Epictetus. Not systematically.

Here’s the problem with “selecting” preferred externals like a health and fitness. If we are confronted with a choice between a healthy diet and a poor one, we should prefer and select the healthy one. But (eating) a healthy diet is not something in my control and not a good. Therefore not something I should desire and pursue because my pursuit is all too likely to be frustrated. Unfortunately, a healthy diet is not something that befalls me by chance and luck. I need to design a diet and motivate and discipline myself to pursue it. That is desire and pursue of an external, nothing less.

My reader cites a passage at the end of Discourses I. 4 where Epictetus says he does not neglect [ ouk amelo ] his body or his property. Indeed, he says that. And another passage at Discourses II.5 where he cautions that he must be careless [ amelos] with externals. He also says that. But set these two declarations alongside the argument we examined last tine at the beginning of Discourses I. 4. There, and at many other places in the Discourses, tells us that we must abandon desire for externals and forswear action in pursue of them. I won’t cite that passage yet again, but reread it if you have any doubt about Epictetus is saying. I assume that Epictetus thinks these statements are compatible.

Epictetus seems to think he can say that he does not “neglect” his health and fitness if, when confronted with a choice between unhealthy and healthy, he will select the healthy. But as we started to discuss about above, this is not the way you can acquire and maintain health and fitness ( and any other externals you care to mention). Externals must be objects of desire and deliberate pursuit, not casual selection.

So I say: Epictetus’ claim that he does not "neglect" externals is not credible. He will select them if & when they are offered, but that is just a recipe for neglect and disaster.

Quit the gym, cancel your health insurance, and don’t worry if you can’t walk to the mailbox: advice from the Stoa

A reader objects that Epictetus does not counsel the neglect of externals that I have characterized as extreme and dangerous.

I want to revisit an early chapter of the Discourses to show, first, that progress for Epictetus is nothing but progress in ceasing to desire and pursue externals misperceived as goods, and in ceasing to be averse to and flee externals misperceived as evils. Ceasing to pursue and avoid externals, we spurn and disvalue and neglect them, as we shall see in detail in a minute. I also wish to show that Epictetus’ condemnation of externals rests on a double fallacy concerning failure and unhappiness.

Let’s return to the beginning of Discourses I. 4 “On Progress.”
[ Ti ouv prokoptei ; ]
That man is making progess who has learned from the philosophers that desire is for things good and aversion for things evil, and who has learned that peace of mind and serenity can only be achieved by a man if he attains what he desires and avoids what he does not want to fall into. Such a man has rid himself completely of desire or put it off to another time, and feels aversion only toward things in the sphere of choice. For if he should act to avoid anything outside the sphere of choice, he knows he will fall into it sometimes despite his aversion and be unhappy.

Let us remind ourselves of some things NOT in the sphere of choice. Such externals include disability and ill-health, poverty, persecution, exile, and bad reputation. Epictetus is telling us that the man who is “making progress” has rid himself of any aversion to these conditions and has ceased to act to avoid them. Think about that! The man who is making progess doesn’t care about ( has no aversion to ) becoming disabled and indigent and persecuted and held in opprobrium. And he does nothing to prevent these things from happening to him, because sometimes these things will befall him anyway and he will be disappointed at his failure and unhappy. He will not pursue fitness. He will not seek good medical care. He will not pursue a livelihood that will keep him out of poverty. He will do nothing to secure and preserve a good reputation. This is why I call Epictetus’ position on externals extreme and dangerous.

As the passage above makes quite clear, Epictetus’ injunction to avoid externals rests on these premises:
(1) happiness is essentially an inner tranquility undisturbed by what happens in the world.
(2) Tranquility cannot survive in the face of failure to achieve what you desire and avoid what you are averse to.
(3) Our lack of control over externals guarantees ( or virtually guarantees) that we will fail in our desires and aversions if we desire and are averse to externals.
I have (1) discussed in several previous posts and will content myself with some remarks on (2) and (3).

I call (3) the assumption that we will fail. This kind of pessimism is certainly understandable in people whose experience of the world has been one of failure and subjugation -- see some very insightful comments by Oldfather on page xvi of his introduction to the Loeb edition—but we must not credit this as the universal and general experience of mankind. Some men pursue externals like wealth and fame and celebrity and succeed admirably. Their lives are rich and rewarding, despite hollow Stoic protests. The recipe for failure seems to be overreaching, and not reaching for externals. Men of modest ability and timorous natures should very definitely not pursue fame and wealth, but those who are able may do so. As a point of fact, the failure to achieve the externals we desire is a possibility, not a (virtual) certainty.

Premise (2), I think, misunderstand human psychology and the pursuit of success in the world. We often must fail to succeed, and all success is partial and qualified. Yet if we are able and confident, we persevere and endure and eventually achieve a level of success we are satisfied with. Almost always. On the hand, failing to pursue the externals that we need and desire is a certain guarantee of a life we despise and don’t want. The Stoic counsel is not to try because we may or almost certainly will fail, but not to try is an absolute guarantee of failure. Tranquility and happiness are not dividends of neglecting our health and circumstances and the success we desire in the world.

Philosophobia, or blinded by theory [ Gorgias 484b ff. ]

A reader accuses me of closet philosophobia, abusing not just the Stoics, but all of their “philo” confreres/rivals, who alike speculate freely on the nature of happiness and virtue. Though I like the sound of that epithet being thrown at me, “Phil the Philo(so)phob”, I must plead against the charge. Here for the sake of comparison is a true specimen of philophobia. I have edited out most of the sex and violence to keep my G rating:

“These things are true, as you may determine, if you will leave philosophy behind and go on to more important things. For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an attractive accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life.”

Can philosophy be the ruination of a man’s life? Callicles has much more to say.

“If a man, even if he is a good man, carries philosophy into his mature years, he becomes necessarily ignorant of all those things a gentleman and an honorable man should know. He is without experience in matters of law. He knows not how to speak to other men in his dealings, public or private. He knows nothing of pleasures and desires and human character in general. And should he try his hand at politics or business, his performance is ridiculous…”

The man who persists with philosophy becomes useless and incompetent on the stage of practical affairs. Is that it?

“He also becomes effeminate. He flees from the places of business and the marketplace where men distinguish themselves. He creeps into a corner for the rest of his life and talks in whispers with yhree or four admiring youths, but never speaks out like a citizen in any satisfactory way.”

The study of philosophy is a good thing in the education of the youth, but then, when one becomes a man and turns to important things, it becomes a ridiculous and unmanly to persist in such games to the neglect of real affairs. Men devoted to philosophy, Callicles concludes, have no power to help themselves or others, especially in times of real need. What good are these unmanly men?

What more could we add to Callicles' denunciation? It is, I think, a masterful potrait of a man and a mind set that regards a devotion to philosophy, as personified in Socrates, as a shameful wrong-turning. Socratic elenchus so outrages him that he confesses that it makes him want to slap Socrates. Callicles is not-in-the-closet philosophob. At our peril we fail to understand him and the mindset of many others like him.

Externals and Happiness

It is very difficult to decide how we should go about actually confirming or disconfirming a philosopher's eudaemonic speculations. Testing human beings in some of the obvious ways is certainly ruled out. It seems we can do no better than look at the experiences of some people who have been fortunate and unfortunate in their pursuit of virtue and happiness. A philosopher can of course dismiss such ”anecdotal” evidence and say these people know nothing of virtue and happiness, but then I think we rightly begin to lose interest in the untestable ramblings of the philosopher. Why DO we assume the philosopher knows anything about happiness?

I take an interest in the Stoic claim that virtue and happiness do not depend upon externals. We concede to the Stoic that the superfluous adornments of high-income living don’t matter, but that is not the challenge at issue. I wish to consider the effects of catastrophic losses of externals upon happiness or flourishing. One obvious place to go for testimonials is people who have suddenly become prisoners or POW’s or political exiles. My admittedly limited experience with such people is absolutely unanimous and consistent in describing their circumstances as a loss of happiness and flourishing. One of the first things they tell me is that many of their compatriots soon choose to die rather live under such conditions. That is a fairly definitive sign that one’s life has taken a serious turn for the worse. Those who endure years of captivity universally tell me that it is the prospect of recovering their former life and its “externals” ( family, occupation, home) that inspires their will to endure. Some of these people have actually written about how reflecting upon Stoic maxims helped then endure, but that was as a recipe for survival, not happiness!

You can say “Those people weren’t Stoics, so of course they suffered”, but they were men of strength and character and they endured years of terrible hardships. It is interesting that were, before the fact, no Stoics in their number. You can say in absence of any evidence that someone who professes a Stoics faith would react differently, but frankly I see no reason at all to credit this claim. I think everyone who experiences such a catastrophic loss of the externals in his life will confess that it effectively devastates his life, at least pro tempore. I would be astonished if ONE MAN can back from seven years in the gulag and said, “I was happy there, and I’m happy to be back, but really it’s all the same.”

I worry when someone preaches to young inexperienced mind that virtue and happiness are invulnerable and don’t depend upon the external circumstances of our life. This dangerous gospel runs contrary to the universal human experience as I understand, including the experience of people of actual, not theoretical, virtue. I worry that such advise comes recklessly from the pens and mouths of people who have no experience with what they are talking about. "Live your talk, philosopher, and come back from the camps and tell me about flourishing there, and I will repent my criticism of you."

Do not attempt many things

Stobaeus has saved for us a passage from the 5th century BCE philosopher Democritus of Abdera:

The man who is going to be tranquil [euthumeisthai ] must not be busy with many things, either in public or private life, and whatever he does, he must not aspire to something beyond his powers and nature. [ Anth. IV. 39. 25]

It is interesting, and somewhat surprising, to find the ambitious Roman Emperor and Stoic Marcus Aurelius alluding to this passage and offering his own positive gloss on it. This is from Meditations IV. 24.

Do only a few things, he says, if you are going to be tranquil. Is it not always better to do the things that are necessary and the things that the reason of a creature born for a social life demands and as it demands? For what brings tranquility is not just doing a few things but doing them well. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary. If a man will strip off these things, he will enjoy more leisure and be less troubled. Therefore, do not forget to ask yourself on every occasion: is this one of the necessary things? We must strip off not only actions that are unnecessary but also thoughts. Only then will superfluous actions cease to follow.

Necessary things for Marcus are the things that our bodies require ( nutrition, rest, shelter, etc ) and the things we must do because we are social creatures. We have families and friends and neighbors and compatriots. All of these relationships generate duties.

So the recommendation that Marcus is extracting from Democritus is to do only the things that our bodies and communal life require, and these things are few, not many. The question of whether these things are in our power [dunamis], raised by Democritus, is discreetly passed over by Marcus.

I shall pass discreetly over the ad hominem question of whether it was necessary to defend the empire with almost 20 years of continual warfare—I think Marcus believed it was, but then consider about how stretched the concept of necessities has become—and ask a much smaller question about what is necessary. Is it necessary for us to do creative work in the arts and sciences and mathematics and philosophy? Do our physical and social natures demand it?

If they do, it is possible to envision one kind of simplification of one’s life that is not an impoverishment of it. But if not, and I do not see a reassuring argument that they do, then the simplification recommended is perhaps a fatal impoverishment of our life, removing not the means to survive, but any compelling reason to do. Do I live to eat and sleep and take carry of my relatives?

There is, you see, another kind of simplification of my life that gives me the leisure and focus to do the creative work that I love. That simplification targets my social and community life, and aims to “strip off” precisely those roles and duties that Marcus is recommending, as many of them as possible.

Do fewer things, then, and do them better. But are we are talking about a dispiriting focus on necessities or on our creativity?

Factis procul, verbis tenus.

Favorinus once told me, says Aulus Gellius [ A.N. xvii.19], that Epictetus used to say that most of those who seemed to be doing philosophy were all talk, no action. They were philosophers aneu tou prattein, mechri tou legein, or in Latin, factis procul, verbis tenus.

So Epictetus thought hypocrisy a fair charge to level at his contemporaries. A risky move, that. One would think that the Stoics in particular were wise to avoid that issue. I can hear the shouts of “tu quoque” even at this distance.

Bertrand Russell once offered an apology for several of the bad choices that marred his personal life. He said made these mistakes not wilfully but “blinded by theory.” ( The educational experiments he inflicted upon his children went disastrous wrong. )

One can’t but wonder whether we are dealing with something of the same sort when Epictetus continues to recommend to us a theory of virtue and happiness that only “sages” can manage to live. And there are no sages.

A recent comment on this site pointed that some people have reported that Stoicism helped them cope with their years of confinement as prisoners and POW’s. No doubt! People who find themselves in situations in which they have almost no control over the external conditions of their life are not unnaturally attracted to a theory of virtue and happiness that says externals don’t matter. But most of us, I assume, are not prisoners or slaves or completely disempowered people. We have some fundamental choices to make about how we want to live in the world—career, family, companions—and we believe our happiness is not unrelated to whether we are wise and successful in these choices. If we fail in our career and our marriage, if we fall into a live of poverty and hardship, we shall likely not claim a virtuous or happy life.

You can of course SAY that these externals don’t matter, but it is another thing to ACT and live as though they weren't important. You can SAY, don't value and desire and pursue these externals, but who could really manage or even want to live that way? Where are the happy Stoics offering their testimonials to Epictetean Stoicism?

The Indestructibility of Virtue and Happiness

A reader of this site worries that by recommending that we improve the external circumstances of our life, I misunderstand the good life the Stoics are recommending. That is a good life is a life in which arete and eudaimonia, once attained, are permanent and indestructible.

This view, the permanence of virtue and happiness, is indeed a well-attested dogma of the old Stoa, though Epictetus does not emphasize it. See, for example, DL. VII. 128.

The reader is correct is that I do not believe virtue or happiness can ever be counted as an enduring, much less indestructible, state. My grounds are shallowly empirical, not apriori. Many of us, I think, have watched virtue and happiness erode and fail. Name any virtue you wish—courage, temperance, piety, justice, prudence—and we can tell unhappy stories of war and disease and old age destroying these qualities in exemplary human beings. These were not of course the ideal Stoic sages, but I am speaking now of real men and real lives. Nothing about virtue and happiness seems permanent.

The Stoic summum bonum is the inner tranquility of a life that flows smoothly and naturally. Ataraxia is not an indestructible state. I have known people who have retreated to Trappist monasteries and Buddhist temples in search of it. This was not an unwise move because our externals have a great deal to do with how enduring our calm and tranquil life can be. Tranquility, however, is not the special preserve of the monastics. In fact, the most tranquil people I have known were people with successful marriages and careers who were doing professionally what they loved to do. The monastics, by contrast, were, at least in my experience, on the whole a much less tranquil and happy lot.

I am not challenging the Stoic view of the summum bonum. I am suggesting that externals are vital to protecting the fragility of our flourishing. Please do not quote Stoic dogma to me about flourishing under any conditions. Zeno and Chrysippus and Epictetus did not grow up in an Nazi death camps. I have spoken to people who did ( vide R Vrba’s Ich Kann Nicht Vergessen ). You can survive under such conditions, you do not flourish.

The idea that you can attain and sustain a inner calm by neglecting your externals is a very dangerous hypothesis. No recipe is surer to provoke and secure an unhappy and unvirtuous life than neglecting your externals. None of the Stoic philosophers did so, it seems, though they seemed to have felt free to preach a gossip they did not themselves live.

I do not offer this view of externals as dogma, but as my experience of the world and how we must live in it. If you can attest a very different experience of the world, I should be very pleased to hear about it.

Another test: Is he a hypocrite?

We have spoken before about testing the ethical and eudaemonic speculations of philosophers. Philosophers want us to believe the views they put forward about virtue and happiness, and belief in this area is not divorced from action. Pursuing a bogus notion of happiness, as with ingesting a phony medicine, may have serious implications for your health and well-being. So we must test. One fair test, I think, is to inquire whether the philosopher himself believes what he wishes us to believe. Believes, not in the empty sense of mouthing some words, but in the real sense of trying to live in accordance with those words.

So, when a philosopher tells me something remarkable like “only virtue is good and vice bad”, and “virtue suffices happiness”, it occurs to me, not unnaturally I think, to question whether that philosopher has actually tried to live the good life he is recommending to all of us. At least try to walk your talk, philosopher, before you lead others astray with your speculations.

So far as we can tell, some ancient philosophers seem to have managed to live the life approximating the good life they recommended. Epicurus is first name made comes to mind and his life of tranquil hedonism. Aristotle’s life, I think, conforms broadly to the scheme of human flourishing found in the Eudemians. Socrates, for better or worse, seems to have lived his mission. And there were others

When we come to the Stoics and their remarkable eudamonism, however, the record is not as encouraging. We have of course one spectacular failure. The spectacle of Seneca scribbling his little essays disvaluing wealth and power whilst he labored day and night to become one of Neronian Rome’s wealthiest and most powerful men is too much for my stomach. We shall have no discussion of Seneca Hypocrites in these pages.

Zeno and Chrysippus are too shadowy in their biographies for us to say much about them , but we know considerably more the two most famous Stoics of antiquity, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius’ Stoicism is significantly different Epictetus’, and we shall have to leave a discussion of it to another time. I want to confine myself here to the question of whether Epictetus seriously tried to live the life his Stoic dogmas recommend.

Perhaps instead of dogmatizing on that subject myself, I should be content to raise the question with you and let you form your own judgments. The key issue, I will say, is Epictetus’ chronic disvaluing and abuse of externals. We are constantly told that no externals are goods and none of them has anything to do with happiness. Cease to value and desire and pursue them, he says, and look only to the virtues of your inner life. Only virtue is good and virtue suffices for happiness. Do the facts of Epictetus' life give us a man earnestly trying to live this gospel?

A final comment about hypocrites. I do not call a man a hypocrite who says “I believed that happiness lie in pursuing x, and I tried to pursue it, but I have found that a life of pursuing x is beyond me and leads instead to misery. Maybe others can do better with it than I did.” That man is not a hypocrite, I say, but he has confessed that his eudaemonic speculations are in one conspicuous case at least a proven failure. Speculate as you wish, philosopher, but then I demand from you the honesty of telling me whether you have tried and managed to live the good life you recommend. Is that an unfair test?

Virtue alone saves us from going wrong

Here is another selection from our friend Musonius, admittedly sounding more Stoical than Cynical in this excerpt. I have referred to this essay in a previous post under the rubric of Stoic optimism.

From Musonius' [ That man is born with a disposition to virtue]
[ This selection is untitled in the manuscripts. The editors have supplied the title above based on lines 18 and 19 of the text. It is plausible. Equally plausible, or perhaps a little more plausible, is the caption THAT EVERY MAN CAN LIVE FREE FROM ERROR AND VIRTUOUSLY. Stobaeus’ selection has omitted the standard first line of the essay, which I assume must have gone something like this: “Once when someone asked him whether all men or only some were born with a chance to live a life that is free of error and virtuous, he answered emphatically in this fashion.” ]

All of us, he said, are formed by nature in such a way that we can live without error and virtuously. Not some of us and not others, but all of us.
One important indication of this is that lawgivers make laws that apply to everyone equally, prescribing what should be done and proscribing what may not be done. They exempt none who disobey or do wrong from dishonor, not the young or the old, not the strong or the weak, not anyone at all. Yet they should if virtue as a whole were something unnatural to us, and we had no claim upon it by nature. Just as no one is required to be flawless in performing actions that pertain to any of the other arts if he has not studied those arts, so no one is required to be flawless in matters pertaining to living if he has not made a thorough study of virtue, since virtue alone saves us from making errors in life. Now in the case of the sick, no one is required to be unerring except the doctor; and in playing the lyre, no one but the musician; and in manning the rudder, no one but the pilot. Yet in the case of living, we no longer demand only the philosopher to be unerring, though supposedly he alone is attentive to virtue. We demand it of all men alike, even those who have given it no attention. Clearly, then, there is no other explanation for this than the fact that man is born with a disposition to virtue.
There is also another important indication that we partake of virtue by nature. This is the fact that all men talk about themselves as having virtue and being good. No man off the street, if he is asked whether he happens to be dim-witted or intelligent, allows that he is dim-witted. No man, if he is asked whether he is just or unjust, says that he is unjust. Every man, if someone asks him whether he is in control of his appetites or utterly ruled by them, replies at once to such a question that he is in control. And should he be asked simply whether he is good or bad, he would say that he is good, though he would not be able to name his teacher of complete goodness, nor his studies in virtue, nor any training he happened to have had.
What is this an indication of, then, but the fact that there is in the soul of man a natural propensity to complete goodness, and that a seed of virtue lies in each of us? Because it is appropriate for us to be completely good, some of us delude ourselves that we really are good, while others are ashamed to admit that they are not. Why is it, by the gods, that we don’t see someone who has not learned writing or music or gymnastics claiming to know these matters? Or someone pretending to have these skills, though he can’t even name a teacher with whom he studied? Why nevertheless does everyone profess virtue? The reason is that none of these arts belongs to man by nature, and no one has come into this life having a natural propensity toward them.

Pity for thieves and robbers and even the child-killer Medea?

When I first read Discourses I. 18 and I. 28 in translation, I thought the translator must have gotten it wrong. Epictetus was surely recommending only some sort of understanding of these people, not pity. But pity it is. The Greek verb eleein means to pity. And at I.18.3 we read,

Why are you angry with these people?
“They are thieves and robbers!”
What do you mean ‘thieves and robbers’? They are people who have gone wrong in matters of good and evil. Ought we then to be angry with them or pity them? Do but show them their error and you will see how quickly they mend their ways.

And little later at 1.18.9,

Man, if you must be affected in a way that is contrary to nature at the ills of another, pity him rather, but do not hate him.

Pity for Medea comes at I.28.9,

Why do you not, if anything, pity her instead? As we pity the blind and the lame, so likewise pity those who are blind and lame in part of them that rules.

Notice first of all that Epictetus qualifies what he says about pitying these people. He seems to allow or accept it, rather than recommend it. If you must feel some emotion toward these people, he says, then let it be pity rather than anger. The second passage from I.28 identifies pity as a pathe, as an emotion contrary to (our) nature, which the wise man will not experience. Early Stoic sources condemn pity as a form of passion and distress, and Seneca follows this line. So it is little surprising when he hear Epictetus voicing even qualified acceptance of pity for wrongdoers. What, after all, is the point of trying to feel pity for these people? Is it intended as a kind of therapy to check our anger?

There is an obvious and immediate problem with “pity therapy.” The judgment on which pity rests is that someone has suffered undeserved harm. “Intent on making a go of their poor farm, the family was devastated by the flood that ruined their crops and wrecked their home.” There are some people to pity. And, if we are able, take action to help, because pity is not an emotion divorced from action. But thieves and robbers and murderers are not people, intent on good, who have suffered unfairly and need our help to recover. Thieves and robbers and murderers are people intent on doing undeserved harm to others. If they in turn suffer harm in the course of being prevented from carrying out their evil intent, or are punished after the fact for their evil deeds, there are no grounds for feeling pity or bringing aid to these malefactors. Pity rather their victims. We cannot feel pity for thieves and robbers and murderers, and it would be utterly inappropriate to do so. “Pity therapy”, if that is Epictetus’ point, won’t work.

“But they are only misguided people, mistaken about the nature of good and evil. If they knew that good and evil did not lie in having externals, they would not do the bad things they do.”

This sort of plea seem to rest on a very naïve diagnosis of the roots of criminal behaviour. Suppose we allow that criminals commit the “error” of thinking that my property would be good for them. Perhaps we can find some mitigation for this belief in their lack of a moral and philosophical education. Not enough Epictetus in the currriculum! But this misvaluing of my property is not the key “error” in their thinking. They also must believe it is proper for them to deprive me, by violence or threat or other criminal means, of my property. (If they didn't have this additional thought and assent to it, how could their impulse to action go forward on the Stoic model?)

This last belief and assent are not, I think, in the same sense an excusable “error” or confusion about the value of externals. Aristotle thought wealth a good, but did not, so far as I know, recommend robbery as a path to wealth. What violent criminals are guilty of, their cardinal “error” if you wish, is a willingness to harm others to get the things they want. I cannot find an excuse for this error in their lack of education or philosophy. "Oh really, so it's WRONG to rob and murder to get what you want? I didn't know that. Thank you for enlightening me." They know that it is wrong to steal and rob and kill.

In Stoic terms,again, they have experienced but rejected the judgment it is not proper to do these things. They have resolved the conflict between “ It would be good to have Tom’s car” and “It is wrong to steal it” by willfully disregarding the latter. If they err, then, and let's agree that they do, it is not an excusable mistake about the nature of good and evil, but a wilful decision to harm others to obtain what they desire.

“Do but show them the error of their ways and they will repent.”

This is an clear implication of Epictetus' view that criminality is the result of a simple excusable error about the nature of good and evil, and it is, I think, demonstrably false. We have no evidence of the efficacy of "moral instruction," and much evidence that it is not effective, especially in the case of people who resort to vicious violent crimes. It is not ignorance of what is right and wrong, but a willingness and a will to harm other people to satisfy their desires that is the source of their criminal behaviour. Moral instruction will not curb their vicious habits. Serious punishment may, and if it does not, then other solutions must be sought. But let's cease to pretend that criminals will be reformed by moral instruction.

“Do not be angry with these people.”

Here at last we can find some agreement with Epictetus, though we have undercut his rationale and his remedy. Anger is not an emotion that guides wise decisions, and we need to make wise decisions about what to do with thieves and robbers and murderers. Wise personal decision in the face of crime that menaces us, and wise social decisions about how to deal with criminal problem in our society. My first thoughts are that our highest priority should be to protect society from these people. The story Epictetus tells in I.18 about loosing his iron lamp to a thief once again fails to take an honest look at the problem of crime. One lamp is a small loss, but suppose the thief had decided to completely loot Epictetus' house and beat him senseless in the process ( "It's fun to beat up old philosophers.") Should we pity this thief for his "errors", or be angry with him, or just take effective action to remove him, perhaps permanently, from our society?

The only way philosophy will be of any profit

Here is another selection from the Stoic/Cynic philosopher Musonius Rufus, this one under the catchy rubric "That it is not necessary to give many proofs in regard to one matter." Presevere, the best parts are at the end.


Once, when a discussion arose about the proofs that those starting out should hear from the philosophers in order to apprehend with certainty what they are studying, Musonius said that it was not appropriate to pursue many proofs for each subject, but rather a few compelling and clear ones. For neither is that doctor praised, he said, who prescribes many drugs for the sick, but rather the one who assists them in a worthy fashion with the few drugs which he prescribes. Nor is the philosopher who instructs his students with many proofs, but rather the one who leads them to what they truly want with a few proofs. So too in the case of the student: the brighter he is, the fewer proofs he will need, and the quicker he will agree to the conclusion of the argument, if it is sound. But the person who requires proofs at every step, even where matters are transparent, and wants to have demonstrated to him with many proofs what could be done with a few, he is altogether a dim and dull-witted fellow.
The gods, it is likely, require no proofs of anything, because nothing for them is hidden or unclear, and for such things alone are proofs needed. Men, however, must seek to discover things that are not apparent and not immediately accepted by all through those things that are apparent and are manifest beforehand. That is the job of a proof. Consider, for example, the proposition that pleasure is not good. At first sight this does not seem to be credible, since in fact pleasure strikes us as being good. But if we take as an accepted premise that every good is choiceworthy, and add to it as another premise that some pleasures are not choiceworthy, we prove that pleasure is not good. Through things that are accepted we prove what was not accepted.
Or again, it does not seem at once to be plausible that toil is not an evil. For its opposite, that toil is an evil, seems much more plausible. But having laid down the obvious premise that all evil is to be avoided, and added to it the even more obvious claim that that many kinds of toil are not to be avoided, it follows that toil is not evil.
This being the nature of proof, since some human beings are quicker and others duller, some raised in better circumstances, others in worse, those who have an inferior character or nature will need more proofs and more diligence in order to embrace these doctrines and be molded by them. In just the same way, I think, the infirmities of the body require much more care when you want it to be probable that you will preserve your health. But those of the beginners who are better endowed and have enjoyed a better upbringing will more easily and rapidly and with fewer proofs assent to what it is being put forward properly and will follow it.
That these things are true we may easily discover if, let us suppose, we were to become acquainted with a boy or young man who has been raised in total luxury. His body has been made soft as a woman’s, his spirit enfeebled by habits conducive to weakness, and he displays a disposition that is lazy and slow to learning. Suppose on other hand we also came to know a young man who had been brought up in the Spartan mold. He is unaccustomed to luxurious living, trained to endure, and disposed to listen to what was said appropriately. Now what if we made both these young men listen to a philosopher who was saying of death and toil and poverty and alike that they are not evils, and, on the other hand, of life and pleasure and wealth and of similar things that they are not goods? Would both young men take in the words in similar fashion, and would each be persuaded to nearly the same degree by what was said? That could not happen. The first one, reluctantly and slowly and as if being pried loose by a 1000 arguments might perhaps in the end give his assent. He is the duller one. The second one, by comparison, will quickly and readily accept the things that were said as proper and appropriate to him. He will need neither many arguments nor further study.
Was it not a child of just that sort, a Spartan boy, who asked the philosopher Cleanthes if toil was good? For that question made it plain that the boy was so favored by nature and so well raised with a view toward virtue that he would consider toil to be closer to the nature of good than of evil. He had posed his question, whether toil might be good, after the manner of someone conceding that it was not evil. In admiration of the boy Musonius said to him, “of noble blood you are, dear child, such things you say.” How could such a youth not be easily persuaded not to fear poverty or death or any of the other things that seem fearful, and again, not to chase after wealth and life and pleasure?
But let me return to the beginning of our discussion. I said that the teacher of philosophy should not recite a volume of arguments to his students. He should instead talk about each matter in its due measure, and touch the mind of his listener, and utter arguments [ that are persuasive] and not easily refuted. But most of all, he should show himself in this way to be someone who talks about the most useful things and acts in accordance with what he says, and in this fashion guides his listener. The student, for his part, should exert himself to grasp what is being said and be on the lookout lest, without noticing it, he accept something false. But with respect to things that are true, he should not, by God, try to listen to many proofs, but only those that are perspicuous. And whichever of the things commended to him he is persuaded are also true, to these he should conform his life. For only in this way will anything profitable come from philosophy, if to words one accepts as true one adds deeds that harmonize.

Stoic or Cynic?

I am busy these days revising my translation of the fragments of Musonius Rufus found in Stobaeus. This Musonius was either the Roman Stoic who flourished in the third quarter of the 1st century AD and was a teacher of Epictetus, or an Athenian Cynic and writer whose floruit probably belongs at the end of Hadrain's reign. 20th century scholarly consensus inclined to the former identification, but I lean strongly in the other direction. Here is a translation of his essay on training, an excellent point of comparison with Epictetus essay of the same name at Discourses III. 12.

Musonius' On Training

Employing arguments such as these, he [Musonius] was always vehement in encouraging those around him to engage in training. Virtue, he said, is not just a theoretical science, but also a practical one, like medicine and music. Just as a doctor or a musician must have absorbed the principles of his art, but also trained to perform according to these principles, so too the man intent on goodness must not only thoroughly understand the many precepts leading to virtue, but also train with these precepts in a way that shows a love of honor and hard work. Otherwise, how could someone straightaway become able to control his passions if he merely recognized that one must not yield to pleasures, but was actually untrained in resisting them? How could someone become just, having learned that one must love fairness, but having no training in rejecting avarice? How could one acquire courage, having learned that the things that seem terrifying to many people are not to be feared, but having never practiced being unafraid in the face of such things? How could one become prudent, having learned what things are truly good and what things evil, but having never practiced disdaining those things that merely seem good? Training, therefore, must follow learning the precepts appropriate to each virtue, if we are actually going to derive any benefit from this study.
To the extent that philosophy is a more important and more arduous pursuit than all the others, training becomes even more necessary for a person professing philosophy than for someone pursuing medicine or some similar art. Those who aim at these other arts [ start out with a big advantage], not having had their souls corrupted beforehand, nor having learned the opposite of what they are about to study. But those who attempt philosophy come to it already corrupted in many ways, and full of evils, and they pursue virtue in such a way that they naturally have need of more training in this.
How then, and in what way, should these people be trained? Since it hasn’t happened that man is soul alone, or body alone, but some kind of synthesis of both of them, the man who is in training must be concerned about both, but about the better part more, as is fitting, that part being the soul. But also about the other part, if he is not going to be deficient in any part of a man. For it is certainly necessary that his body be well conditioned for physical labour—by his body I mean the body of the philosopher—since often the virtues employ the body as a necessary tool for the business of living.
There is, then, one kind of training that pertains strictly to the soul alone, and another that is common to soul as well as body. Training in common, then, will pertain to both, as when we become inured to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, plain food, hard beds, avoiding pleasures, and patiently enduring toil. For through these things and things of this sort the body becomes strong, and inured to suffering, and tough, and fit for any work. The soul for its part is strengthened by being trained both in courage by the patient endurance of hard work and in self-control through the avoidance of pleasures.
Training peculiar to the soul consists first of all in preparing ourselves with proofs, both those that concern apparent goods, as not really being goods, and those concerned with apparent evils, as not really being evils; and in discussing the things that are truly good, and becoming accustomed to distinguish them from things that are not good. Then it goes on to practice not fleeing from any of the apparent evils, and not pursuing any of the apparent goods, and turning away from true evils by every means, and going after true goods in every way.
In summary, then, enough has been said about the nature of each kind of training. Nevertheless, I will try to expand on how each of them should be conducted, not by differentiating and distinguishing further between those exercises that are common to the soul and body and those peculiar to the soul, but by examining ( in no particular order) the components of each kind of training.
And so, although we have heard and understood these things, all of us who have taken part in philosophical discussions, that neither hard work nor death nor poverty is in any way an evil, nor any other things that have been freed from evil, and again that not wealth or life or pleasure, or any other thing not partaking of virtue is good, still, even though we have understood these things, because of the corruption implanted in us right from our childhood, and because of our bad habits arising from that corruption, we believe that when hard work is at hand an evil has befallen us, and we believe that when pleasure is present, we are in the presence of something good, and we shutter at death as the worst misfortune and cling to life as the greatest good, and when we give money away, we feel pain as though we were being injured, whilst when we receive it, we rejoice as if we were receiving something really beneficial.
To an almost equal degree in the case of most other things, we fail to deal with our circumstances in accord with the proper innate concepts, preferring to follow bad habits. So I say then that since all these things are the case, the man who is in training must try to make himself superior to pleasure instead of being well-satisfied with it. He must try not to turn away from hard work. He must try not to be in love with life nor afraid of death, and in the case of possessions, not put getting above giving.

Stoic Vespers

As a kind of detached prologue to his discussion of how to deal with our illnesses ( Discourses III. 10 ), we find Epictetus citing with approval five lines from the so-called Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

Let not sleep approach your weary eyelids,
before you’ve examined every action of the day gone by:
Where did I go wrong? Doing what? And what was left undone?
Starting from here review your acts and remember:
censure yourself for acts that were base, but rejoice in the good.

Keep these verses on hand, he goes on to say, and actually apply them, not merely recite them.

It is interesting to caught sight of Epictetus recommending evening “offices”, or vespers, to his students. I suspect Epictetus' practice also included at least an important morning office, primes by its monastic name, and perhaps also a midday “How is my day going?”. These kinds of offices are almost indispensable for getting a novice or proficient to refocus on his inner life and let go of his daily battles with the world.

But the Pythagorean examination that Epictetus seems to approve really needs to be considerably adapted to Stoic practice, doesn’t it? Stoic practices is much more about controlling one’s desires and aversions and choices and beliefs than about what one did. So instead of “what did I do,” the salient questions should be things like
“What did I desires today?
What distressed me today?
Were those things in the sphere of choice?
What decisions did I make today?
Did I make them properly? Did I abide by them?
What beliefs did I credit or accept today? Was it reasonable to do so?”

Stoic primes, similarly, would try to anticipate and plan for the decisions of the day, and prepare for any desires and aversions that were likely to occur. I suspect Epictetus was very clear about all of this, but Arrian’s draconic editing here has lost for us much of the distinct flavor of Stoic offices.

Be content

Someone whose advice I value enough that I sought it before I deviated into the blogsphere has posted for a second time on a (justly) famous selection ( 10.47) from Martial. Forbearance is a virtue I’ve never been accused of, so herewith is my reaction—not to the posting, but to the sentiments expressed by Martial .

The incipit—my incipits run to two verses-- goes as follows

These are the things, my deligtful Martial,
that create a happpier life

And the final verses are

Wish to be what you are and want nothing more,
Neither fear nor covet thy final day.

Stoic sentiments are not uncommon in Latin poetry, and I do not propose to tax Martial with the criticism that he has not argued his case persuasively. But think about the recommendations we are being given here. If you want a better life, be content with what you are and don’t desire anything more. Forgive me, but how in Hell can that possibly get you a “better” life that way?

“The poet is saying that my life is really fine as it is; I just need to adjust my attitude to it.” No, in all probability, if you dislike your life, things are not OK , and you need more than an attitude adjustment. You need in fact to make some fundamental changes in your life. Stoic dogmas aside, you probably do have the power to make basic changes to the externals in your life. It will be hard and painful, and you may fail, but the attempt is worth it if happiness lies on the other side of the change. I can never understand “be content” when your life does not work as it is. Do not despair of you power to affect change.

As someone who came from a background in Analytic Philosophy, I have always thought that literature and especially poetry are so much more powerful vehicles for examining and commending the Good Life. Good poetry seems to strike the soul as if it were a kataleptic presentation, commanding our assent. When I see will-corroding sentiments like Martial’s so well crafted, I feel the need the jump up and say,”no, no, think about it”. Indulge me.

Training for the New Year

We have been pondering the differences between Stoic and Cynic. Amongst the Stoics no one is more sympathetic and disposed to Cynic discipline than Epictetus, unless it is someone identified to us in Stobaeus as "Musonius Rufus." Perhaps this is the Roman eques who was Epictetus' teacher, but much likely, I think, we have the words of a well-known Athenian Cynic and writer who fluorished in the early Antonine era. Here is an excerpt from that Musonius preserved under the rubric " On Training." Compare this essay with Epictetus' own "On Training" at Discourses III.12., and imagine Epictetus trying to subject his own scholars to some of Musonius' Spartan ways.

Employing these sorts of arguments, more or less, [Musonius] was always vehement in encouraging those around him to engage in training. Virtue, he said, is not just a theoretical science, but also a practical one, just like medicine and music. Just as the doctor or the musician must each have not only absorbed the principles of his art, but also have trained to perform according to these principles, so too the man intent on goodness must not only thoroughly understand the many precepts leading to virtue, but also train with these precepts in a way that shows an eagerness for honor and hardship. How otherwise could someone straightaway become able to control his passions if he merely recognized that one must not yield to pleasures, but was untrained in resisting them? How could someone become just, having learned that one must love fairness, but having no training in avoiding greediness? How could one acquire courage, having learned that the things that seem terrifying to many people are not to be feared, but having never practiced being unafraid in the face of such things? How could we become prudent, having learned what things are truly good and what things evil, but having never practiced disdaining those things that merely seem good? Training, therefore, must follow learning the precepts appropriate to each virtue, if indeed it is going to happen that we derive any benefit from this study at all.
To whatever extent philosophy is more important and more arduous than all other pursuits, to that extent is training even more of a necessity for a person professing philosophy, rather than for someone pursuing medicine or some similar art. For truly those who aim at these other arts [ start out with a big advantage], not having had their souls corrupted beforehand, nor having learned the opposite of what they are about to study. But those who attempt philosophy come to it already corrupted in many ways, and full of evils, and they pursue virtue in such a way that they naturally have need of more training in this.
How then, and in what way, should these people be trained? Since it has not come to pass that man is soul alone, or body alone, but some kind of synthesis of both of them, the man who is in training must be concerned about both, but about the better part more, as is fitting, that part being the soul. But also about the other part, if he is not going to be deficient in any part of a man. For it is certainly necessary that his body be well conditioned for physical labour—by his body I mean the body of the philosopher—since often the virtues employ the body as a necessary tool for the business of living.
There is, then, one kind of training that pertains strictly to the soul alone, and another that is common to soul as well as body. Training in common, then, will pertain to both, as when we become inured to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, plain food, hard beds, avoiding pleasures, and patiently enduring toil. For through these things and things of this sort the body becomes strong, and inured to suffering, and tough, and fit for any work. The soul for its part is strengthened by being trained both in courage by the patient endurance of hardships and in self-control through the avoidance of pleasures.
Training peculiar to the soul consists first of all in preparing ourselves with proofs, both those that concern apparent goods, as not really being goods, and those concerned with apparent evils, as not really being evils; and in discussing the things that are truly good, and becoming accustomed to distinguish them from things that are not good. Then it goes on practice not fleeing from any of the apparent evils, nor to pursue any of the apparent goods, and to turn away from true evils by every means, and to go after true goods in every way.
In summary, then, enough has been said about the nature of each kind of training. Nevertheless, I will try to expand on how each of them must be conducted, not by differentiating and distinguishing further between those exercises that are common to the soul and body and those peculiar to the soul, but by examining ( in no particular order) the components of each kind of training.
And so, although we have heard and understood these things, all of us who have taken part in philosophical discussions, that neither hardship nor death nor poverty is in any way an evil, nor any other things that have been freed from evil; and again that not wealth or life or pleasure, or any other thing not partaking of virtue is good, still, even though we have understood these things, because of the corruption implanted in us right from childhood, and because of our bad habits arising from this corruption, we believe that when we are overtaken by a hardship an evil has befallen us; and we believe that when pleasure is present, we are in the presence of something good; and we shutter at death as the worst misfortune, and cling to life as the greatest good ; and when we give money away, we feel pain as though we were being injured, whilst when we receive it, we rejoice as if we were receiving something really beneficial.
To an almost equal degree in the case of most other things, we fail to deal with our circumstances in accord with the proper innate concepts, preferring to follow bad habits. Since that these things are the case, then, the man who is in training must try to make himself superior to pleasure instead of being well-satisfied with it. He must try not to turn away from hardship and not to be in love with life, and not to fear death, and in the case of possessions, not to put getting above giving.

Why be a good actor?

I have another selection from the Cynics Teles and Bion to offer you. Bion is again telling us to be good actors. Last time I invited you to think about how close Epictetus stands to some his Cynic heroes. This time I want to remark an important difference between them. Both Bion and Epictetus counsels us to play well the roles assigned to us, but the playwrights are not the same. Bion’s thea and Epictetus’ theos are very different. Here's the new selection, found in Stobaeus under the rubric “ From the writings of Teles, On Circumstances”

Fortune, like some poetess, authors roles of every sort: a shipwrecked man, an indigent man, a man of reputation, a man of bad reputation. A good man, then, must play well whatever part she assigns him. You've been shipwrecked? Then play a shipwrecked man well. Once prosperous, you’ve fallen into poverty? Then play a poor man well. “ Equipped for adversity and equipped for prosperity,” [ as the poet says], and satisfied with any old garment and diet and service. Like Laertes, [Odysseus’ aged father, who had only one servant to care for him and who slept upon the ground.] For these things suffice for living suitably [ prosenos ] and in good health, unless of course one wants to live in luxury [ truphe]. “But not in the stomach lies the good.”

O’Neil translates prosenos in the last sentence as “calmly”, and that may be the meaning intended.
So why should we play well these roles of misfortune that the fickled goddess of chance [ tuche] assigns us? Why shouldn’t our total focus be upon reversing our turn of fortune and reclaiming the kind of roles we’d prefer to play? Better a rich man, ah, than a poor one.
Epictetus has the answer that God, a rational ,benevolent, immanent presence in the universe, has assigned this role to us for a good reason. Trust in His judgment and play the role you must play anyway. Bion and Teles, on the other hand, have a fickled goddess handing out roles with no presumption that anything is for our own good. Apparently, we are equally pawns of fate, just not a benevolent fate. So then why play a bad hand well?
The Cynic answer seems to be that none these misfortunes really matter. Shipwreck, exile, poverty, ignominy, and old age can all be endured, whilst we still live a tranquil and healthy life. So Diogenes and Crates have shown us. None of these circumstances, the Cynic goes on to say, involves us in a real evil. Evil is a thing like “truphe”, an addiction to luxury, which makes us dependant on unnecessary externals and subservient to them. That way lies no inner peace and healthful living.

So the Cynics counsel acceptance of our externals circumstances, of conditions that most men would call misfortunes, because they think such circumstances don’t matter to living a tranquil and healthy life. They don’t emphasize our powerlessness to overcome such circumstances, as do the Stoics, but it seems clear we cannot hope to fight against the assignments of God or Fate. Remember the excerpt from the previous post where personified Poverty asks Bion, “Why are you fighting against me? I bring you nothing evil?”

Let me end with a bold conjecture. Arrian is somewhat attracted to, or at least sympathetic with , the Cynics’ view of the universe, ruled more by Chance than God. The Encheiridion, which fairly consistently excises explict reference to God’s determining what is in our power, what are roles are, etc, reflects Arrian’s decision to frame Epictetus’ philosophy in a way that de-emphasizes its dependence on Stoic theology.

( I’ve not forgotten my promise to examine the Argument from Acceptance we found in Bion yesterday. I leave on the table for your comments before I offer my own.)