Twentieth 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. The subject matter sometimes jumps from one subject to another, veering into matters that are not obviously related to what we have just read. Sometimes these tangential matters are finally related back to things brought up earlier, or to the main topic of the chapter. Sometimes they are not. This leaves the reader with the task of finding the connections. Epictetus deliberately ‘weaves’ in an almost conversational style. His is most certainly not the style of the tightly outlined academic’s essay. He does not write like Aristotle, nor, if we are to believe his own testimony, like the Stoic school’s founders (chief among them, Chrysippus). Yet, we can see, as we ride his ‘weave’ that he was quite versed in all aspects of the school’s doctrine.
So, with that genesis, and that style of writing in mind, I’ve set out to read through the four extant 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 some of his ‘weave,’ (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!
A last note: I use the Oldfather translation in the Loeb Classical Library, and have taken some editorial and interpretive liberties where I thought it necessary. But, I’ve tried to keep such changes to a minimum. The advantage of using this translation is that it can easily be accessed via various online sources, and given that it presents, along with Oldfather’s translation and footnotes, the text in the original Greek, it is quite useful for those that would like to check any translations or interpretations against the original.
Book I, Chapter 20
How the Reasoning Faculty Contemplates Itself
This chapter revisits matters from chapter 1, once again distinguishing skills, arts, faculties or capacities by their subject matters, and whether or not they “contemplate” themselves, which, please recall from that first chapter, means to indicate whether or not they can determine proper or appropriate ‘all-things-considered’ occasions for their own use. We saw there, that most skills do not have this capacity. In fact, only one does; the faculty of reason. Even those skills that require exercise of reason, when considered in isolation, lack this property.
This chapter starts from this position, weaves and meanders a bit as it explores what Stoics take reason’s proper role to be, more broadly construed. It ends up exploring the level of commitment the Stoic has not only toward developing this rational faculty in its broadest application, but all that it truly entails intellectually. Along the way, Epictetus pokes, and has a little bit of fun at the expense of a rival school, the Epicureans. This is the first of several occasions where he takes great relish in doing so:
Every art and faculty makes certain things the special object of its contemplation. Now when the art or faculty itself is of like kind with what it contemplates, it becomes inevitably self-contemplative; but when it is of unlike kind, it cannot contemplate itself.
The point here is a bit obscured by the choice of terminology, so it would behoove us to rephrase:
‘When an art or faculty is similar in nature to the objects which it tends, as it goes about its own particular job, that art or faculty will inevitably also be able to determine all-things-considered appropriate or proper occasions for its own exercise.’
This is still woefully abstract, even rephrased. We know, from chapter 1, that he means to be talking about reason here, and means to demonstrate to us that it is a faculty that, in some way shape or form, fits this bill. But, what we have so far is quite quick and truncated. We really need a serious effort at elaboration and expansion.
We should ask what Epictetus really means to be saying, we should demand an answer in detail, and are well served if we also demand he throw us some bones, some illustrating examples. Fortunately, he anticipates this concern and these requests:
For example, the art of leather-working has to do with hides, but the art itself is altogether different from the material of hides, wherefore it is not self-contemplative.
This particular skill applies itself to hides, but, as a skill, it is obviously not a physical object. It is a mental or intellectual item. Its focus is leatherwork, the objects it works on, obviously animal hides. So, this skill, considered in and of itself, cannot “self-contemplate.” It cannot determine, for itself, on what occasions it would be apropos to do some leatherwork. If something is going to make that second level all-things-considered, sort of determination, it must be some third thing distinct both from the particular art and obviously also distinct from the hides!
Now, a second example:
Again, the art of grammar has to do with written speech; it is not, therefore, also itself written speech, is it? Not at all. For this reason, it cannot contemplate itself.
Again, the ability to apply grammatical rules to written speech is obviously not written speech, it works with and crafts that speech. Because the object this skill focuses upon are written texts, it follows that this skill is unable to ‘contemplate itself’ in the way Epictetus has in mind.
Again, some third distinct capacity needs to examine the art, examine the written texts it might work on, and other matters, then determine whether or not it would be proper, on any given occasion, to actually apply the grammatical ‘arts.’ What might that third capacity be in these two cases? We already know from chapter 1. It is reason; reason at a second level, one step removed from this first-order uses of reason. But because both ‘levels’ are exercises of reason, the second level is able to make these calls:
In short, these two brief examples and this opening section are intended to show that certain specialist capacities or faculties we can describe as first-order exercises of reason, are, by virtue of their specialized subject matter, simply unable to make these sorts of judgments as to ‘all-things-considered’ appropriateness of exercise. For example, we can imagine occasions where skilled grammarians would be very inappropriately insisting on exercising their abilities.
Say one (call him Conan the Grammarian) is at a funeral, and a bereaved person expresses grief in some ungrammatical way. It would be the height of insensitivity if Conan were to stand up and correct the utterances. Bad form, to say the least. Similarly, suppose Conan the Grammarian were to attempt to correct the grammar in the lyrics of a Blues classic, say Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster.” Again, this is NOT an appropriate occasion to exercise his expertise.
But by having only conversance in his particular art, Conan has no way of knowing these things. But, typically, human beings do have some semblance of this ability. So, there must be some sort of implicit or explicit reference to a wider-scope view of things they use in order to determine appropriateness. Again, we know Epictetus means to tell us that reason, generally understood, is that second order thing that can pull off this sort of judgment.
In fact, we can easily construct Epictetus’s case for taking reason (not merely logic, mind you) as being that second order thing, that one faculty that seems situated to make such calls. In so doing, we must point out that the first order skills are actually exercises in reasoning as well, but focused merely on carrying out the technical aspects of the arts in question. So, again, what exactly is he saying about the relationship between first and second order reason?
Again, it helps to think of examples. Imagine the above-mentioned funeral, and also imagine that Conan isn’t a socially maladroit idiot. Conan’s second-order reasoning can be described: Conan thinks carefully about the setting, and the emotional state of the bereaved. He thinks about the purpose of the occasion. Funerals allow survivors, friends and family to pay respects and honor the deceased. He will realize that this is the primary aim of the occasion, and that other considerations, such as those he, as the mighty specialist ‘Conan the Grammarian,’ is professionally concerned with, should be set aside, again, as a sign of respect, not only for the deceased, but for the grieving, allowing them space to express their love, respect and grief for the deceased. Recognizing all that, Conan will not be tempted to exercise his particular skill. In doing this, Conan will be carrying out and displaying for us a good example of second-order reason.
Similarly, Conan, the Socially Adroit Grammarian, when reviewing the lyrics of a classic song in the Blues tradition, will recognize that the song was carefully constructed to convey a mood, emotion or attitude, and may even recognize that the fact that the lyrics violate certain grammatical protocols actually aids toward that end. What is more, he will also recognize that it, as a traditional song, is like other sorts of cultural objects or texts, and there is an interest in preserving them as they were actually composed. In fact, he will see that there is an obligation to do so. Again, it would be clear to him that it would be massively inappropriate for him to insist upon correcting the grammar of the song, and thereby insinuating his very pedantry into the very object itself, in effect, not only altering the work, but taking over authorship. It would be tantamount to painting over something like the Mona Lisa. Bad form, to say the very least.
In both of these scenarios, we see Conan the Socially Adroit Grammarian is exercising reason in the second-order sense Epictetus intends for us to recognize. This sort of exercise is the function of that second-order reason as contrasted with the first-order sort of reasoning that goes into exercise of particular skills or faculties like leatherwork or grammar. This leads him to a definition of reason as broadly construed. This definition covers both second order and first order use of reason:
Well then, for what purpose have we received reason from nature? For the proper use of external impressions.
Each of our cases illustrates this, in regard to both first and second-order reasoning. He now offers what I believe is a further definition of reason, focusing merely on its inherent properties, not so much on its purpose. Unfortunately, this addition is not helpful at all:
What, then, is reason itself? Something composed out of a certain kind of external impressions.
Ok, this is an ambiguous sentence. It’s puzzling. We want to say that reason is not a kind of external impression. No, it takes these in, along with cognizance of the other kinds of faculties that may be exercised on any given occasion, mixes all this with certain concepts of propriety, and conceptions of end states desired, and determines whether or not the occasions with which it is presented are appropriate circumstances for various sorts of possible actions. Reason itself is not built from the external impressions that give us some of the information with which it works. It receives these, cognizes them, evaluates things and renders judgment. On one reading, this last sentence’s formulation is simply incoherent with what Epictetus offers in support of its content. On another reading (leaning heavily on a charitable reading of the phrase “something composed out of”) it isn’t. But, that is not of great import, in any case, because those illustrating cases do still effectively convey Epictetus’s main point:
Specialist faculties or skills, like leatherworking or grammar are essentially intellectual activities, they do look at and work with objects that are not themselves intellectual. They also examine their own ‘tool sets’ as it were, and reason out how best to use those tools on those objects to bring about desired end states. For instance, the leather-craftsman looks at the piece of leather before him, gathers his tools, and plans out a series of cuts, carvings, sewing, etc., that, when completed, will eventuate in the production of a saddle. The grammarian looks it his tools, the formulation rules of his language, looks at a given text, and figures out how best to alter the words in that text so that they conform to those protocols. Again, these are what can be described as first-order exercises of our rational faculties.
Now, consider our two hypothetical scenarios with Conan the Adroit Grammarian: In the case of the funeral, we see a similar intellectual exercise, taking into consideration, along with the grammatical arts, a broader set of protocols, expectations, rules and circumstances. Similar, things can be said for the “Little Red Rooster” case. So, we see, in each case, a wider-scope (or, as we’ve also termed it, a second-order) exercise of reason. It takes in and “contemplates” the more narrow-scope first-order exercises of reason. It can do this because its ‘object of contemplation’ in each case, is like itself, each is also an exercise of reason.
In so far as we have two orders of reason here, we can say that these are cases of like ‘contemplating’ like. A more general and second-order form of Reason is adjudicating on potential exercises of specific first-order uses of reason based technical skills. This ‘attempt’ on the part of Second order reason works because the object of concern or contemplation in such cases is first order technical reason. In each case information is evaluated in light of certain desired end states, and judgments are made.
Thus, it comes naturally to be also self-contemplative.
Once more, what are the things that wisdom has been given us to contemplate?
In other words; when we use big “R” Reason (here also referred to as “wisdom”), in this adjudicative way with regard to whether or not we should exercise little “r” technical reason on given occasions, what factors do we consider?
Things good, bad, and neither good nor bad.
We take into account harms, benefits, duties and obligations. We come at these questions in our roles as moral agents, Moral Purposes. We also consider elements of given situations that are not directly morally relevant in any way, but which are nevertheless factors that must be considered. At the funeral, Conan the Grammarian might consider, not only whether his actions would distress the bereaved, but he might also consider the amount of time he really would have to undertake his correction, or perhaps, whether or not he would interfere with the interment in some way. In the “Little Red Rooster” case he might, along with determining if he’d be wrongfully interfering with artist intent, or rights, consider whether it was really feasible to retroactively change every single score sheet of the song.
In any case, we can see that conscientious exercise of Reason or Wisdom is a boon, a good thing.
What, then, is wisdom itself? A good. And what is folly? An evil. Do you see, then, that wisdom inevitably comes to contemplate both itself and its opposite?
Big-R reason is able to tell when it is morally appropriate or ‘good’ to exercise “little-r” technical reason. It is also able to tell when it is morally inappropriate or perhaps evil to do so. So, this is a case of Reason ‘contemplating’ reason to use Epictetus’s term. Can ‘big-R’ Reason determine when it is morally appropriate to exercise ‘big-R’ reason as well? Again, it seems so. We have examples in other parts of the Discourses that seem to be illustration of such cases. We will later run into one such example having to do with grief. In that example, Epictetus has us imagine a Stoic student consoling someone, a non-Stoic, greatly grieved at a loved one’s death. He recommends that the Stoic comfort and sympathize with the person. He does not suggest that this Stoic enter lecture mode and remind that grieving person that the lost loved one is an external, and that he should not tie up his well-being or state of mind with the loss of this external ‘possession’; that loved one! That, he realizes, would be massively inappropriate to the occasion. That tact would seem to be a case of Big-R Reason or Wisdom doing some self-adjudication.
Therefore, the first and greatest task of the philosopher is to test the impressions and discriminate between them, and to apply none that has not been tested.
In our cases we have seen something like ‘testing’ being done. The wise person takes cognizance of the situation, the possible courses of action suggested to him by his ‘immediate impressions’ of the situation, what his emotions might suggest to him, what others might suggest to him as right or appropriate courses of action, he also takes into account his more specific skills, capacities and faculties, and ‘tests’ his options by carefully reasoning out how they comport with his moral duties and obligations, and any other commitments he may have. The wise person commits, as best he or she can, given particular circumstances, to act only after carrying out such ‘testing.’
We see a similar sort of circumspection and care when we consider how diligent we are when it comes to fiscal issues. Consider the case of counterfeit coinage. All kinds of testing goes on:
You all see in the matter of coinage, in which it is felt that we have some interest, how we have even invented an art, and how many means the tester employs to test the coinage—sight, touch, smell, finally hearing; he throws the denarius down and then listens to the sound, and is not satisfied with the sound it makes on a single test, but, as a result of his constant attention to the matter, he catches the tune, like a musician. Thus, where we feel that it makes a good deal of difference to us whether we go wrong or do not go wrong, there we apply a great amount of attention to discriminating between things that are capable of making us go wrong, but in the case of our governing principle, poor thing, we yawn and sleep and erroneously accept any and every external impression; for here the loss that we suffer does not attract our attention.
Epictetus here meanders. He grumbles yet again about the relative laxity he sees in his fellow man. This not only reflects his views as to the average run of man, but, I suspect, his view of a good number of his students. As we have seen, he found himself constantly reminding them that they should put as much effort toward this sort of testing, this sort of ‘big-R’ thinking, as they do to ‘little-r’ testing for things like counterfeit currency or grammatical error, or indeed, toward textual interpretation of Chrysippean textbooks. Again, I also think he’s making himself a whipping boy, if he’s being honest, in that he, as an older man by this point in time, recognizes that he also persists in behaving in similar ways, and would like to impress upon his students that they, like he, have a short and finite time in which to operate and get things right!
When, therefore, you wish to realize how careless you are about the good and the evil, and how zealous you are about that which is indifferent, observe how you feel about physical blindness on the one hand, and mental delusion on the other, and you will find out that you are far from feeling as you ought about things good and things evil.
A quick note on a terminological ‘first appearance’ here. Notice the word “indifferent.” This word has a quite specific technical sense for the Stoic that is imperfectly captured by the English word. What its appellative use is intended to convey is that an item is something about which the practicing Stoic must remind himself or herself of two things; firstly, possession or avoidance of the thing is outside his or her complete control, and secondly; as such, the practicing Stoic must constantly remind him or herself of that fact so that, as inevitably will occur, when he or she does lose possession of it, or, on the other hand, encounters it despite wishes and efforts to avoid, the Stoic will not become totally unglued by that event.
Now, there are distinct sorts of ‘indifferents’ according to the Stoics, some are ‘preferred’ and others are not. Preferred indifferents are those which will be more likely to unglue us when we lose them, because we are naturally inclined to desire or love them. Among these are family members, property, good food, health, station in life, etc. Indifferents that are not preferred come in two varieties. There are those that are repugnant to us, and can cause us great fear or angst (death is chief among these, torture would be another) and those that are basically neutral items, which bear little risk of causing upset.
Another quick note about this section: Epictetus has us compare how we would respond to loss of sight “on the one hand,” and loss of our mental health “on the other.” Does he mean to argue that most of us would be more distressed at the former than we would be at the latter? Perhaps. In each case the loss is something that is bad for us. But, it seems he wants to make it clear to us that the latter sort of loss is worse in that it would render us unable to discern moral good from evil. If, given the choice of either losing sight or losing our mind, (that is; the ability to competently reason in the ‘big-R’ sense), Epictetus seems to be saying most would choose retention of sight. I’m not quite sure about that, but we might suppose that he canvassed people both inside and outside his school, and got this result. What is more, he might be implying that the untutored mind is a bit like this latter sort of case, a lite version of the madman, as it were, and that anyone, like those lazy students of his, that chooses to refrain from his studies is in fact making something very much like that choice to take madness over blindness! He is choosing to be delusional! That seems to be the import of the very next bit of dialogue, a lazy man’s complaint:
“Yes, but this requires much preparation, and much hard work, and learning many things.”
Well, what then? Do you expect it to be possible to acquire the greatest art with a slight effort?
Now Epictetus is going to go off on one of his patented ‘weaves.’ He is going to poke the pedant and poke the Epicureans. He starts this tangent by drawing a distinction we’ve seen before, between a merely intellectual grasp of the doctrines of the school, and the hands-on application of those insights. This is a point he usually makes as a lead-in to teasing his students, (and himself probably) people who had painstakingly mastered the books, so to speak, but never quite come around to ‘walking the walk.’ He initiates this latest tease by first reciting the basics of the Stoic’s metaphysics, as first adumbrated by Zeno of Citium, and then noting the daunting fact that gaining that necessary ‘book knowledge’ can become quite involved, once you set about the task of fully understanding and explicating it. This carries with it a risk of losing the main task, the forest, for the trees, to use the old cliché:
And yet the chief doctrine of the philosophers is extremely brief. If you would know, read what Zeno has to say and you will see. For what is there lengthy in his statement: “To follow the gods is man’s end, and the essence of good is the proper use of external impressions?”
Ask, “What, then, is God, and what is an external impression? And what is nature in the individual and nature in the universe?”
You already have a lengthy statement!
Compounding his weave he now notes that things get even more involved when you find yourself responding to competing schools, their critiques and rival positions with regard to metaphysics and values. ‘Take, for instance those Epicureans who are always pestering us, and competing for students!’, Epictetus seems to be saying here. ‘I’ve had more than one wrangle with them. It usually goes something like this’:
If Epicurus should come and say that the good ought to be in the flesh, again the explanation becomes lengthy, and you must be told what is the principal faculty within us, and what our substantial, and what our essential, nature is.
Since it is not probable that the good of a snail lies in its shell, is it, then, probable that the good of man lies in his flesh?
The shell, it seems, in playing its obvious protective role, is protecting the snail so that it may go about doing snail things, living its snail life. The good of the snail consists in doing all those things. Similarly, the good of man lies not in the functioning of his body, per-se, but in what his living allows him, as rational person and Moral Purpose, to do, which is, according to the Stoic, to be able to take part, along with Zeus, God or logos, in the rational administration of the cosmos.
But take your own case, Epicurus; what more masterful faculty do you yourself possess? What is that thing within you which takes counsel, which examines into all things severally, which, after examining the flesh itself, decides that it is the principal matter?
The answer here, if Epicurus will be consistent and honest, can only be that it is his reason, his ‘big-R’ reason that seems to be making this call. It is, in fact, the incorrect call, according to Epictetus, and can be shown to be so, for though in error, it is nevertheless a considered call about how man should live. As such, it implicitly recognizes the adjudicative and superior role of reason over pleasure as being the guiding element for human life, not only de facto, but de-jure.
Epictetus might continue, making the implicitly moral aspect of Epicurus’s professional life more clear to him: ‘Again consider, Epicurus, why you take such pains to teach others. What other reason can you have but that you believe that you are obliged to do so by having reasoned out what is best for mankind? But, that runs counter to your stated principle that the good or right is invariably that which provides personal pleasures, does it not? Shouldn’t you be whiling away your time enjoying yourself, pleasuring yourself, instead of writing books teaching and arguing with other schools. Eh? Why is reasoning and arguing so damn important to you?’
And why do you light a lamp and toil in our behalf, and write such quantities of books? Is it that we may not fail to know the truth? Who are we? And what are we to you? And so, the argument becomes lengthy.
Assuming we can convince Epicurus that he values transmission of truth over simple pursuit of pleasure, we may find a way to argue him out of the hedonist or egoist position he seems to advocate. If, for instance, he feels obligated to tell people what he believes to be true, and will do so even if he derives no pleasure in so doing, we might have a leading wedge with which we can work. If Epicurus admits to the accuracy of this portrait, he will have to admit that he is a counterexample to his own stated doctrines. Perhaps, but again, this argumentative and persuasive project will be a lengthy enterprise. And, again, involve much work.
But, closing the weave for Epictetus, we can say this much. The primary point in this excursus into the battles of the day is to impress upon the student how much work is involved in being a consistent practicing Stoic. It involves not only years of schooling, mastering opaque texts, and inter/intra-school disputation, but it also involves work toward actual cultivation and implementation of Wisdom in all aspects of our day-to-day lives. It requires that we seriously aim ourselves toward becoming masters of Wisdom, truly able to have our big-R reason competently “contemplating” not only ‘impressions,’ and all of our other faculties, (those like our senses, that are non-rational and those, like grammar, that are first-order technical exercises of the rational) but doing so in ways that allow us to understand ‘nature,’ it’s telos, and our telos, thereby putting ourselves in position to truly co-administer the cosmos in as non-haphazard a way as we can, along with God, the father, the ‘boss’ and supreme engineer!