Discourses and Selected Writings (2 page)

Tradition has it that late in life Epictetus retired from teaching introduction
and withdrew to the peace and quiet of family life, under conditions imposed by old age: that is, he became a parent by adopting rather than fathering a child, and took into his home a female servant to serve as a kind of surrogate mother to the child and domestic servant for himself. That he had absented himself from family life for so long shows that he regarded philosophy as a jealous mistress who demanded practically all his time and attention, which family life would not allow. That this renunciation of family life represented a real sacrifice is suggested by the fact that he took to it immediately upon retiring. He evidently thought he had earned the comforts of home after devoting most of his life to improving the lives of others – the successive generations of students who had passed through his school. We have no more news of Epictetus beyond this. After creating this version of a family he was evidently content to settle into it and live out the balance of his years in obscurity.

Stoicism was founded in the third century
BC
by Zeno of Citium; Cleanthes succeeded him as head of the school. But it was Cleanthes’ successor, Chrysippus (d. 208
BC
), who contributed most to the development of Stoic doctrine and deserves most of the credit for what Stoicism eventually became – the dominant philosophy of the post-classical era. Tacitus furnishes a neat summary of the core principles of Stoic ethics as they were taught in Rome at the time:

‘The [Stoic] school leaves us free to choose our own lives.’ Confidence in this capacity is a key postulate of the
Discourses.
‘Choice’ is one meaning
ofprohairesis,
a term that among Stoics is practically unique to Epictetus. According to him the faculty of choice distinguishes humans from irrational animals. We can make considered choices among ‘impressions’ or ‘appearances’, meaning anything that comes within range of our senses, together with whatever thoughts and feelings these sensations evoke. While all animals are subject to impressions, those of humans differ by virtue of the fact that we possess the power of language and reason (both faculties expressed by the single word
logos
).

Human impressions have ‘propositional content’, that is, our minds automatically frame them as a statement, such as ‘that is a good thing to have’ or ‘this is the right thing to do’. They also involve an intermediate step: the impression requires our ‘assent’ before it generates the impulse to act on it. Drawing on this orthodox Stoic account of human psychology, Epictetus makes two points with an emphasis distinctly his own: (1) that rational animals can hold off acting on impressions until they are scrutinized and assessed; and (2) if they are judged unreasonable – i.e. irrational or merely impractical – we can and should withhold our assent from them. ‘The gods have given us the best and most efficacious gift,’ he writes, ‘the ability to make good use of impressions’ (I 1, 7). And: ‘Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet;
just say to it, “Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test”’ (II 18, 24). These functions of mind define the sphere of ‘choice’ (
prohairesis
), the upshot being that it is ‘up to us’ how we act, and that we are responsible for determining the character and content of our lives.

Compared to Epicureanism, which after its founder’s death was a closed system whose doctrines were literally engraved in stone (in the form of a lengthy inscription in Lycia composed by one Diogenes of Oenoanda), Stoicism throughout its long history remained a work in progress. It was not considered bad form for one Stoic to criticize another, or grounds for questioning whether one deserved to be considered a Stoic at all. Stoics who parted company with Chrysippus on a fundamental point of doctrine used to be called unorthodox; but this is a judgement of modern scholars, not one we find the Stoics themselves making. Indeed, the Stoics’ openness to revision was a particular strength of their school.

In Epictetus you find not only fellow Stoics cited with approval; Plato is praised, Diogenes the Cynic is several times eulogized at length; but Socrates stalks these pages as the philosopher with the greatest moral authority of all. Now, it is true that Socrates was a figure universally admired; not only the Stoics, but Cynics, Sceptics and Epicureans recognized him as their foundational figure and did their best to show that their views were consistent or even identical with those Socrates supposedly held. Everyone, it seems, wanted a piece of him, and to the degree that these rival systems of thought succeeded in presenting themselves as Socratic in inspiration, their reputation with the public was enhanced. In no other Stoic, however – in no other writer from any of the various schools of philosophy – does Socrates figure more prominently than in Epictetus. He features as a philosophical saint and martyr, a model for the Stoic senators named in the first two Discourses who died for their principled opposition to Nero and Domitian; and, so far as his teaching is concerned, he is cited in support of key tenets of Stoic morality: that no one does wrong willingly; that harming another hurts the offender rather than the injured
party; that material ‘goods’ can do as much harm as good, and should therefore be classified as value-neutral; and so forth.

The prominent role allotted to Socrates is part of a broader ecumenical programme, however. The
Discourses
do not just preach to the choir, they are directed as much at sceptics as true believers. By aligning himself with Socrates, and dropping the names of Plato, Diogenes,
et al.
along the way, Epictetus aims to transcend a narrow sectarian appeal and position Stoicism squarely within the philosophical mainstream. References to the Stoic ‘paradoxes’, those outre views that many found implausible or downright incoherent, are kept to a minimum. Above all Epictetus
argues
for his theses. Socrates
et al.
lend legitimacy to his positions, but are never cited to settle a question out of hand. Stoics emphasized rationality (the
logos)
as man’s characteristic quality, and it is by the use of rational argument that Epictetus intends to draw (and over the centuries has managed to gain) a wide and varied audience.

Epictetus’ Stoicism is distinctive in other ways too. Because his interest is in ethics primarily, he does not engage with certain theoretical issues that were debated by the original Stoics and their rivals. The controversy over whether there was a place for free will within their deterministic system is nowhere engaged directly. To be sure, he emphasizes repeatedly that our thoughts and actions have immediate and inescapable consequences: ‘You have only to doze for a moment, and all is lost. For ruin and salvation both have their source inside you’ (IV 9, 16). ‘Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason’ (IV 3, 4). Or, to quote Tacitus again, ‘Once the choice is made… the subsequent sequence of events cannot be altered.’ But, as noted above, humans do have freedom to shape mental events – Epictetus is equally adamant about that. And in this area, as he says more than once, ‘not even God has the power of coercion over us’.

Other paradoxes, or points of controversy, such as whether there was a moral state intermediate between perfect virtue and utter depravity (the old Stoics denied it), are tacitly deprecated. No one reading deeply in Epictetus can doubt that he believes humans are capable of moral progress, and that it makes sense
to distinguish between degrees of virtue and vice. Indeed, nearly every reference to the
Discourses
, from antiquity to the present, assumes that they have no other goal than moral improvement. The
Discourses
are primarily Stoic documents, but since Stoicism along with the other philosophical sects closed up shop in the sixth century ad, over the centuries many more non-Stoics than Stoics have read them with appreciation. If they continue to speak to the contemporary reader it is because they are grounded in common experience and common sense.

Epictetus’ influence has been enormous. We only have space to pass a few highlights in review. His outreach programme was evidently successful, to judge by the long commentary devoted to the
Enchiridion
by the neo-Platonist philosopher Simplicius (sixth century ad), otherwise known mainly for writing commentaries on Aristotle. In the Preface, Simplicius explains that Epictetus’ maxims are beneficial to those who want their bodies and desires to be ruled by rationality.

Marcus Aurelius, in the acknowledgements at the head of his
Meditations
, mentions the discovery of a copy of the
Discourses
as a crucial event in his own intellectual development. The
Meditations
in fact abound in quotations and paraphrases of the
Discourses
. That a Greek slave should be the acknowledged
maître à penser
of a Roman emperor illustrates in a most literal way the famous line of the poet Horace: ‘captive Greece captured her uncivilized captor [i.e. Rome]’.

Of decisive importance for his currency during the Middle Ages (and no doubt one reason his writings survived antiquity) is that he was among a handful of pagan authors approved for reading in the early Church. Epictetus himself was esteemed an
anima naturaliter Christiana
, by reason of the supposed consistency between his principles and practice. Besides giving incidental proof of his own reading of Epictetus at many points in his work, the Christian apologist Origen reports that by the third century his fame exceeded even Plato’s: ‘Plato,’ he writes,
‘is only found in the hands of those reputed to be philologists. By contrast, Epictetus is admired by ordinary people who have the desire to be benefited and who perceive improvement from his writings’ (
Contra Celsum
VI, 2). With a few minor editorial changes (such as the regular replacement of Socrates’ name with that of St Paul), the
Enchiridion
was adapted to monastic use and in its Christian habit served the monks of the Eastern Orthodox Church for centuries as an ascetic rulebook.

Through Syriac Christian scholars Epictetus’ thought became well known in the Islamic East. The ninth-century philosopher al-Kindi (according to the Muslim historian Ibn al-Nadim (d. 955), ‘the best man of his time, called The Philosopher of the Arabs’)
²
was appointed by the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun to the House of Wisdom, a centre for the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific texts in Baghdad. His own work of ethics, ‘On the Art of Dispelling Sorrows’, shows the unmistakable influence of Stoicism in general and Epictetus in particular. There he lays emphasis on the importance of freedom from the world and highlights humans’ status as agents, who through their ultimate independence are responsible for their own happiness and independent of others. The weight Epictetus puts on the ephemeral nature of worldly goods is recalled; from chapter 7 of the
Enchiridion
al-Kindi borrows the comparison of earthly life to a ship which has, during the course of its voyage, temporarily anchored at an island and allowed its passengers to disembark; passengers who linger too long on the island risk being left behind when the ship sets sail again. The implicit warning, as in Epictetus, is that we must not become attached to material things (represented by the island and its foodstuffs), because they will invariably be taken away from us when the ship relaunches.

The first printed edition of the
Discourses
appeared in Venice in 1535; within a century they had been translated into all the major European languages; and in one version or another they, and the
Enchiridion
, have remained continuously in print.

Two of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century witness to the fact that Epictetus survived the transition to the modern era with no loss in reputation. Pascal, in his ‘Discussion with
Monsieur de Sacy’, praises Epictetus for his delineation of human duties and his recommendation that we submit to the will of a providential God. He objects, however, to the assumption, common among ancient philosophers, that human nature was perfectible without the need of God’s grace.

That the redemptive message of the Gospels was not available to the ancients makes their morals incomplete. But this Christian caveat aside, Pascal shrewdly identifies and correctly describes a central tenet of Epictetus’ teaching. Stoicism purported to be an internally consistent system the doctrines of which were mutually self-entailing across all three branches – logic, physics and ethics. Pascal’s contemporary Descartes was deeply affected by his reading of Epictetus, and he seized on one of the philosopher’s most original moves, the way he enlists epistemology (specifically humans’ use of appearances) in support of his moral principles. In Descartes too we find a close fit between the method of doubt he adopts regarding the truth of our impressions and opinions and his philosophy of life. In the
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
, he states: