Fourteenth installment:
Arrian, a student of Epictetus, wrote eight books, The Discourses of Epictetus, of which four survive. Selections from those eight books were also collected in the Enchiridion, or “Handbook.” The Discourses give us a quite vivid portrait of the man who inspired them, and also give us fascinating glimpses into his singular didactic style. We very quickly see how Epictetus ran his school, the nature of its curricula, and how he mentored his students. We see his earnestness, his zeal, and piety, but we also get a good dose of his sharp and often acerbic sense of humor. It is no wonder that Arrian felt he ‘had to get this down.’
It also can be quite a challenge to understand exactly what is being said in the chapters of the Discourses. The text is composed of lecture notes, we must recall.
So, with that genesis in mind, I’ve set out to read through the four books, a chapter at a time, while also breaking up the text with commentary, (essentially my best guesses as to how we might flesh out what can be very brief or truncated sketches of dialogue and argumentation), as it was no easy business for Arrian to get down what he had experienced in the lecture halls of Nicopolis!
Commentary is in italics! Also, please forgive any formatting issues (spacing between paragraphs) that you see. They stubbornly will not go away no matter what I do!
Book I Chapter 14
That the Deity Oversees All Men
This chapter extends the discussions of the last several chapters, and presents further argumentation for the existence of divine providence, or, as we’ve put it before, a designing intelligence having been the root cause of humanity’s existence. It does add a further layer to the design argument, in that we’ll see reference to something assumed or implied in earlier sections; the contention that the entirety of the cosmos has been designed, and is an interconnected whole:
Now, when someone asked him how a man could be convinced that each thing which he does is under the eye of God, he answered, “Do you not think, that all things are united in one?”
Otherwise put, this question asks whether or not the entirety of the world appears to be a complex and interconnected whole, parts of which are able to interact, and which interactions span the entire cosmos. The answer is obviously, ‘yes.’
To refer to the faculty of sight, as Epictetus earlier did, we can bolster the case for the universality of this causal connection, for we now know we are capable of seeing far back in time, and to incredible distances through today’s telescopes. As well, gravitational influences are equally universal. None of this would be possible unless every link in this, what for us is a cognitive chain, were causally fit to such interaction and influence; fit to be so connected. This is undeniable, ubiquitous, and something we do take for granted, even though we should not. That is Epictetus’s point here. He draws this out next:
“I do,” said the other
“Very well, do you not think that what is on earth feels the influence of that which is in heaven?”
“I do,” he replied.
Now Epictetus pivots a bit and notes that organisms generally are sensitive and respond to their environments in ways that are beneficial for them. Again, part of what he wants to drive home here is how striking is the appearance of this all having been designed. If he were privy to our knowledge of the genetic code, he would probably remind us that an explanation of the sheer multiplicity of examples of such sensitivities in the natural world hinges on the plausibility of that explanation’s account of the origins of that code; something that is in effect a very advanced form of our present-day machine code and associated manufacture, but something instantiated on the molecular scale, and very much more imbricated and sophisticated than anything we can produce.
If, as he’s argued earlier, the most likely of the competing explanations for its existence involves designing intelligence, then we should very seriously consider the likelihood that this intelligence intended to connect all aspects of biological life in its design, and intended the more universal causal connections, toward whatever end it had in mind. When focusing on ourselves, this includes not only our physical or biological aspects, but our intellectual, moral and spiritual characteristics. For what purpose are we endowed with these capacities and causal connections?
For how else comes it that so regularly, as if from God’s command, when He bids the plants flower, they flower, when He bids them put forth shoots, they put them forth, when He bids them bear their fruit, they bear it, when to ripen, they ripen; when again He bids them drop their fruit and let fall their leaves and gather themselves together and remain quiet and take their rest, they remain quiet and take their rest?
Notice here the phraseology used in the first sentence: “as if from God’s command.” That word choice is careful and advised.
Consider that machine code/manufacturing analogy just drawn. If you look at the robots on an assembly line as they carry out their programmed machine code, they will appear “as if” they are doing what the human manufacturers command them to do. In a way, that is correct, but the commanding is indirect, and through the machine code. Similarly, when plants exhibit tropism, it appears as if they are following God’s command to follow the sun, but, in fact, there is no direct commanding going on. Instead the plant’s molecular machine network is carrying out what its molecular “machine code,” DNA, and other epigenetic information, programs, in light of its evolving environmental situation.
And how else comes it that, at the waxing and waning of the moon and at the approach and recession of the sun, we see among the things that are on earth so great an alteration and change to the opposite? But are the plants and our own bodies so closely bound up with the universe, and do they so intimately share its affections, and is not the same much more true of our own souls?
Again, we can refer to our cognitive abilities, our ability to understand nature, perceive its parts as well as postulate hypotheses concerning those behaviors. All of this is indicative of a desire, on the part of the divine designer, to connect our minds, our higher aspects, not only with the physical aspects of the universe, but with those aspects indicative of that divine mind. We are meant to understand it, and see our own similarity to it.
Now, Epictetus takes another interesting turn, one that sets Stoic theology apart from other schools. He makes a claim about the nature of the relationship or connection we subordinate minds have with the divine mind that has created the cosmos:
But if our souls are so bound up with God and joined together with Him, as being parts and portions of His being, does not God perceive their every motion as being a motion of that which is His own and of one body with Himself?
This is couched in hypothetical language. IF our individual persons, our souls, are constituent parts of God’s person or soul, then it follows that actions of the former are actions of minds which are the property of God, and perceptions of the former are also perceptions experienced either by possessions of God, or God himself. Note too here, the closing description of this status we have: we are ‘of one body,’ with God. How literally is this to be taken? Does God have a material aspect? Is he dual in nature, as we, apparently are? How does this view square with the fact that we clearly take it to be the case that we know far less than God? We are quite well aware of our relative level of ignorance, yet, if we are constituent parts of God, how is it that we do not share in his level of knowledge? There is a fascinating lacuna here that begs for explanation.
We can, perhaps, provide a provisional answer based upon what he offers next. In the very fact that we are aware of what we lack, in the very fact of our awareness of our lack of complete knowledge, there is a pro forma presence of that more complete and encompassing divine knowledge. As to why we constituent intelligences have to experience ourselves, the world and the divine in this way, there is no explanation. Perhaps we can understand it if we consider the analogy of our own case, with regard to the relationship that exists between constituent parts of the human brain, their capabilities, on the one hand, and the brain entire, and its capabilities, on the other. The brain entire is our full person, it has capacities its parts lack, yet those parts are indispensable constituents without which that full person could not exist. Of course, there is an important disanalogy here, in that in our case, viz God, we, like he, are full persons, can reason, etc., whereas the constituent parts of our brains (neurons or regions) have no such status. Be that as it may, the analogy is still of some use in trying to get a handle on the Stoic point of view:
And yet you have power to think about the divine dispensation and about each several item among things divine, and at the same time also about human affairs, and you have the faculty of being moved by myriads of matters at the same time both in your senses and in your intelligence, and at the same time you assent to some, while you dissent from others, or suspend judgement about them; and you guard in your own soul so many impressions derived from so many and various matters, and, on being moved by these impressions, your mind falls upon notions corresponding to the impressions first made, and so from myriads of matters you derive and retain arts, one after the other, and memories. All this you do, and is God not able to oversee all things and to be present with all and to have a certain communication from them all?
Yet the sun is capable of illuminating so large a portion of the universe, and of leaving unilluminated only the small space which is no larger than can be covered by the shadow that the earth casts; and is He who has created the sun, which is but a small portion of Himself in comparison with the whole, and causes it to revolve, is He not able to perceive all things?
We have a hint here of what may be the purpose of God’s allowing for and making use of our relative ignorance. Epictetus has us consider our own analytic and synthetic abilities. We are quite sophisticated beings. We gather information via experience, retain things in memory, both subjectively, and via written or ‘objective’ knowledge and culture. We formulate explanatory hypotheses, arts, sciences, normative codes, building human culture in the broadest sense, and do make progress in all of these endeavors over the centuries. Now, if that much accomplishment is possible in the case of humanity, with the level of knowledge (as relatively low as it is) we have, and we have good evidence that there is a much greater intelligence (God) which caused us to come into being, along with the cosmos as an arena within which to work and develop, then is it not reasonable to assume the divine as having always also been deliberately present with us as we so develop, and as also interested in taking information or “communication” from the progress in our corner of creation as it is generated? Note that phrase:
“is God not able to oversee all things and to be present with all and to have a certain communication from them all?”
To use yet another analogy: Sometimes we need to run experiments in order to gain knowledge, knowledge that we cannot gain merely from a-priori reasoning or hypothesis formation. An example might be the need to stress-test engines, as opposed to running computer simulations of mock ups of those same engines. God’s purposes may require that he do something similar.
“And yet,” says one, “I cannot follow all these things at one and the same time.”
Again, this seems to be an expression of puzzlement as to why we purported parts of God do not have the highest of God’s cognitive capacities. He contrasts our human way of knowing things (serial and piecemeal, prone to error, taking a great deal of time) with God’s all-at-once and complete way of cognizing things. That question, cast up along with the sort of metaphysical picture just presented is, to say the least, a head-scratcher:
Why has God made of some parts of himself virtual sandboxes (to use a term of art from the world of programming) which are blocked from the full system? We don’t know, and cannot pretend to know. But, Epictetus reminds us (perhaps in an effort to lighten the apparent paradox), that we do have experiences that could count as communications from that wider, wiser cognitive context, from God proper; the developer outside the sandbox. Even as we carry out our tasks inside the sandbox, we do seem to receive input from that ‘outsider’:
But does anyone go so far as to tell you this, namely, that you possess a faculty which is equal to that of Zeus? Yet none the less He has stationed by each man’s side as guardian (his particular genius), and has committed the man to his care, (and that also, this is a guardian who never sleeps and is not to be beguiled). For to what other guardian, better and more careful, could He have committed each one of us? Wherefore, when you close your doors and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your own genius is within. And what need have they of light in order to see what you are doing?
You cannot hide from this ever-present partner. By the word “genius” here Epictetus is referring to something we usually call conscience. He, no doubt, has Socrates and his daemon in mind as a prominent and famous example of someone that paid careful heed to this guide. This guide, even if not the voice of Zeus (God) himself, is the voice of reliable information as to God’s intended roles for us as individuals, and what would constitute playing those roles well. He notes we can try to shut out the remonstrances of our geniuses, but seems to say we can never totally eliminate those communications. What are those communications, and by what methods do our geniuses remonstrate? We shall see. But, for now, he wants to make this point: If we do indeed take this overall metaphysical view seriously, it has certain immediate practical implications as to how we should behave, what attitudes we should adopt, and how our loyalties should be directed:
Yes, and to this God you also ought to swear allegiance, as the soldiers do to Caesar. They are but hirelings, yet they swear that they will put the safety of Caesar above everything; and shall you, indeed, who have been counted worthy of blessings so numerous and so great be unwilling to swear, or, when you have sworn, to abide by your oath?
And what shall you swear? Never to disobey under any circumstances, never to prefer charges, never to find fault with anything that God has given, never to let your will rebel when you have either to do or to suffer something that is inevitable. Can the oath of the soldiers in any way be compared with this of ours? Out there, (in the world outside the Stoic school) men swear never to prefer another in honor above Caesar; but here (in our school) we swear to prefer (and conduct) ourselves in honor above everything else.
And, why is that? Because it is what divinity requires us to do. To disobey, to refuse our divinely assigned roles, or complain about our circumstance, blaming God for ill treatment, would be dishonorable. It is also to pretend to wisdom we do not possess.
Again, this is not an easy position to take, as we will all run up against what to all appearances are injustices, either against ourselves or those we care for. Yet, if these kinds of eventualities are indeed necessary for divinity’s purposes, ultimately good and wise purposes, we must trust that they are also unavoidable, even for Zeus, and that we must therefore forbear in good faith, knowing our several geniuses will provide vital guidance in times of difficulty, and of fortune.