Twenty-second 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 22
Of our Preconceptions
This is one of those chapters that contains quite a bit, and needs some unpacking. It starts with a succinct statement about what Epictetus here calls “common preconceptions” held by all human beings. The examples he gives are from the sphere of axiology, (which includes the moral), not surprisingly. What we should note here is that the sphere of the axiological is not the only area of man’s intellectual life that exhibits the existence of common preconceptions. Other families of ‘preconceptuals’ come from what can be described as the foundational elements of our cognition of the natural world in its more value-neutral aspects. One such obvious preconception would be our more or less constant utilization of the concept of causality, another is our use of the equally ubiquitous and foundational notion of substance. These conceptions form the basis, not only of our interactions with the physical world, but of our cognitive and scientific activity.
The sketches Epictetus presently gives us of the structure of axiological and moral argumentation and disputation find parallels in scientific and practical discourse. Often people assume that there is some sort of cause for a given event, but may disagree as to what that particular cause is in that case at hand. They then go about sifting the actual cause from the various hypothetical causes suggested. Something like that goes on in moral argumentation as well. We see him illustrate with an example taken from that axiological sphere, sketching for us how one such train of argument might go with regard to the preconceptual notion of ‘good.’
After having done so, he goes on to illustrate how such arguments and choices made as to what to include in the set of the ‘good’ things inevitably lead to ramifications in other ‘preconceptual fields’ we carry with us as we deal with other aspects of the world. What do these choices imply when they interplay with other things we take to be the case with regard to ourselves and the universe? In this sample case, Epictetus leads us into a discussion of possible effects such axiologically valent choices will have in the theological sphere. He asks what possible effects the choices could have with regard to our conceptions of the nature of Zeus, or God, and how man takes his relationship to the divine.
We see, here too, that this discussion involves itself with the Stoic distinction between externals and those ‘internals’ over which we have complete control, and its relationship to that common human preconception of ‘the good.’ It sets itself to the task of ferreting out implications of a contrary view to that of the Stoics, according to which externals would be accorded equal status with ‘internals’ as they are placed among the ‘goods’ man should pursue. He wants to argue that they are indeed human goods, but should have a secondary status to what he claims is the primary good, a life according to nature (God’s plan) and in line with our Moral Purpose.
In short, we are getting a glimpse here into argumentation that backs up the Stoic position that these externals need to be accorded the status of ‘preferred indifferents.’ This is admittedly getting in the weeds, but an argumentative chain that will be engaged throughout the run of the Discourses. Again, this is all quite dense, and quick, but nevertheless fascinating:
Preconceptions are common to all men, and one preconception does not contradict another. For who among us does not assume that the good is profitable and something to be chosen, and that in every circumstance we ought to seek and pursue it?
This is a sketch of the formal framework or skeleton of our conception of the good. Anything we take to be good (even if we are ultimately in error in that appellation) is something we also take to be beneficial (profitable) for us, and, as such, something we should pursue. This definition doesn’t have any specific content as to what items might fit the description, is thus purely ‘formal’ in nature, analytic of certain bare-bones aspects of the axiological, and, for that very reason, universally admitted by one-and-all as being bloody obvious!
And who among us does not assume that righteousness is beautiful and becoming?
That is; virtue, or moral behavior, whatever it might amount to when spelled out in more content-full ways, is by all accounts worthy of admiration. Again, freaking obvious.
When, then, does contradiction arise? It arises in the application of our preconceptions to the particular cases, when one person says, “He did nobly, he is brave”; another, “No, but he is out of his mind.” Thence arises the conflict of men with one another.
This is the essence of moral disagreement. One and the same sort of act can be taken to be good or moral by some set of individuals or some culture or other, and immoral or evil by another. Similar things hold with the allied notions of “holiness” or “piety,” or “godliness”:
This is the conflict between Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans, not over the question whether holiness should be put before everything else and should be pursued in all circumstances, but whether the particular act of eating swine’s flesh is holy or unholy.
And things run similarly with the notion of ‘nobility.’ We have disagreements over which specific sorts of action count as noble, even though we all agree on the ‘no-duh’ formal or skeletal aspects of the definition, according to which, the noble is good, and should be pursued.
This, you will find, was also the cause of conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles. Come, summon them before us. What do you say, Agamemnon? Ought not that to be done which is proper, and that which is noble?
“Indeed, it ought.”
And what do you say, Achilles? Do you not agree that what is noble ought to be done?
“As for me, I agree most emphatically with that principle.”
Very well, then, apply your preconceptions to the particular cases. It is just there the conflict starts.
You go first Agamemnon…:
The one says, “I ought not to be compelled to give back Chryseis to her father,”
Your turn Achilles…
while the other says, “Indeed you ought.”
Remember that Agamemnon eventually relented, but only after having brought a plague upon his men. Also, as recompense for Chryseis he took Briseis from Achilles, who promptly decided to sit out the war and pout, even as he saw his comrades dying in droves. Two very mature individuals eh? But, to Epictetus’s point, we can assume that it’s not possible for both to be correct in their claim to have a handle on what would be the appropriate or right thing to do morally. At most, one person can have claim to being closer to the truth. (We must note something obvious from our modern perspective; taking women as booty during war is a wrong act, and they should not have been doing that in the first place!)
Most certainly one of the two is making a bad application of the preconception “what one ought to do.” Again, the one of them says, “Very well, if I ought to give back Chryseis, then I ought to take from some one of you the prize he has won,”
…and the other replies, “Would you, then, take the woman I love?”
“Yes, the woman you love,” the first answers.
“Shall I, then, be the only one…?”
“But shall I be the only one to have nothing?”
So a conflict arises.
Cases like this abound. Is it morally permissible or impermissible to kill civilians during war? When is it morally permissible to go to war? Is it morally permissible to abort, and if so, when? Should recreational drug use be legal? Should sex-change surgeries be performed on children? If so, at what age? Should I be entirely honest when asked my opinion of my host’s cooking? The variety of cases is endless, ranging from important to trivial. Opinions on these sorts of matters differ, and much argumentation results.
The important thing, though, for Epictetus, is that such matters do have answers. He is no relativist. He believes education is geared toward answering such questions. If we carefully cleave to the intent to determine what is in accord with nature (whatever that precisely means) we can answer these questions, while at the same time, we can come to understand what actions and roles we should take as individuals by pairing with that careful study of nature, an equally careful intention to be very clear about those aspects of our world that are under our complete individual control, and those that are not:
What, then, does it mean to be getting an education? It means to be learning how to apply the natural preconceptions to particular cases, each to the other in conformity with nature, and, further, to make the distinction, that some things are under our control while others are not under our control. Under our control are Moral Purpose and all the acts of Moral Purpose; but not under our control are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country—in a word, all that with which we associate.
This is a standard boiler-plate statement of the Stoic strategy with regard to life. Epictetus now wants to bring this back around to the question of how it is we go about determining which choices and which ways of life are in fact the ‘good’ ones. Which way of life, and which particular consequent sorts of actions are those that, when used to fill out the formal or skeletal framework of the definition of the good, the holy, the pious or the noble, will end up generating the true and full definition of good?
Answering this query is a very complex project, but it can be broken down into subsidiary enquiries. We can plug statements of ingredient components of the potential content into the skeletal container, and ask certain questions about the logical consequences of those adoptions. If they result in weird or unintuitive results, we can take that as evidence that we are farther from the truth than we would be if we had plugged in content that is not so bizarre or counterintuitive. For example, we can ask how much we should include in the class of ‘good things.’ Should we include only those things over which we have complete control? Let’s see what results from that move. A question and answer dialogue presents the results:
Where, then, shall we place “the good”? To what class of things are we going to apply it? To the class of things that are under our control?
That is; should be apply the appellative ONLY to those things over which we have complete control?
What, is not health, then, a good thing, and a sound body, and life? Nay, and not even children, or parents, or country?
And who will tolerate you if you deny that? Therefore, let us transfer the designation “good” to these things.
In other words, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that we should include these things, as does seem natural for us to do, in the class of things ‘that should be pursued.’ What is more, let’s assume that these are necessary conditions of happiness. What follows:
But is it possible, then, for a man to be happy if he sustains injury and [thereby] fails to get that which is good?
It is not possible.
I think we are to assume the hypothetical scenario where the injury is severe enough that the person cannot recover to the extent that he has a ‘sound body.’ If he cannot possibly recover to that degree, then he necessarily will be unhappy, by the definition, for he cannot possibly attain bodily health, which has been hypothesized as a necessary condition of human happiness.
Epictetus wants us to compare this outcome, this logical result we derive from the hypothesis that possession of this particular external good is necessary to happiness, with what actually obtains with regard to human happiness. We are to ask ourselves if this deductive consequence of the hypothesis is reflected in reality. We are to ask if reality does teach us that such folks cannot be happy. It most certainly does not:
I think Epictetus has his own lameness in mind here, and, perhaps his overall frailty, (if indeed he was a generally unhealthy man, as some ancient sources claim). He is as much as saying that his own case, and others like it, show that happiness is not necessarily tied to pursuit or possession of this particular ‘external,’ even if it does make sense to include it in the class of good things (things that should be pursued).
The evident reality of his own case conflicts with the stronger claim. Yet, this need not prevent us from including bodily health as a good; as something worthy of pursuit. But we should include it as a good of secondary importance. To use the unfortunately paradoxical parlance of the school, though we do include health as a good, and worthy of pursuit, we must treat it as a ‘preferred indifferent.’ That is, a thing that is not, in itself of moral value (hence, morally indifferent or neutral) but nevertheless of value. (We can bowdlerize, perhaps, instead using the phrase ‘preferred neutral’ but this again seems clumsy.)
In any case, Epictetus has shown, with this example, how we can go about sifting those things essential for the good of man from those that are, strictly speaking inessential. Through the filtering mediation of the presence or absence of happiness, we are able to tell what aspects of our being are unique to us, and which aspects are thereby intended for us to exercise in our unique role as species. The fact that we can derive happiness, even when debilitated, shows that our unique function lies in the sorts of activity that do bring about that happiness, even in those circumstances. Next, Epictetus broadens the scope of the hypothetical, now asking not so much after whether the debilitated can attain happiness, but whether they would be able to function in society, serving not only their own interest, but maintaining their ‘proper’ relations with others:
[It must be noted that the next section is truncated and very hard to follow, and calls for fair warning that some of that difficult textual interpretation Epictetus has already referenced needs to be indulged, with all appropriate caveats laid out beforehand. I may very well be getting things wrong here]:
And [would it be possible for a debilitated man] to maintain the proper relations with his associates? And how can it be possible?
For it is my nature to look out for my own interest. If it is my interest to have a farm, it is my interest to take it away from my neighbor; if it is my interest to have a cloak, it is my interest also to steal it from a bath. This is the source of wars, seditions, tyrannies, plots.
This is, quite frankly puzzling. The debilitated man would not be able to protect himself from such predatory behavior, no doubt. It would also seem to be the case that he could not indulge in such behavior himself, for his disability prevents this as well.
Epictetus seems to be saying here that it is part of human nature to act in self-interest, and that a debilitated man, if he receives no aid from others, or has no trustworthy associations, would not be able to do so. OK, so what? We get the distinct impression here that Epictetus wants us to imagine a Hobbesian world where there is little or no social cooperation, and there is, to use the phrase ‘war of all against all.’ In that situation our debilitated man would be in dire straits indeed!
Thinking theologically we can, perhaps, state the point this way: If God arranged things so that it is of the nature of man that his happiness or flourishing requires that he be able to physically act in self-interested ways, and if man were not naturally social, and if it were also the case that a man become disabled, then, it would follow that God arranged things so that this man can never flourish, nor attain happiness. He would have purposefully doomed the man. The debilitated man would not be able to protect himself from predators, and would necessarily have to be counted as unhappy if this external, health, were a necessary condition of his happiness.
This would be cruel treatment, and, as such, not Godlike. But God does exist, so, via modus tollens, we can again conclude that man’s happiness does not contain as a necessary constituent, continued possession of individual bodily health. Also, it follows from man’s natural sociality, not only that the debilitated are not doomed, but that any advice given by philosophers (Epicurus is in mind here) that man should not indulge himself socially is ill-considered.
We can also say this in support: As in the first argument, there are convincing counterexamples to the Hobbesian doom here deduced from the assumptions. Epictetus himself is one. He was able to maintain ‘proper relations with associates’ even though lame, and even though slave. He was able to look out after himself as well. So, again, while we can count physical health as a good, (though ‘preferred indifferent) because we find that it is not a necessary ingredient to happiness, we should not count it as a primary human good. We have to draw the conclusion, here again, that man’s most vital good does not consist in possession of this item.
All of this, as you no-doubt are thinking, is a very speculative reconstruction of roughly four sentences, an attempt at fleshing out a very truncated argument. I must emphasize that I’ve imported into the second portion, that notion of happiness that was an explicit feature of the first portion, and certain theological assumptions Stoics held. I did this latter knowing that we would next find Epictetus bringing up Zeus! He now does this by asking another question, moving us into a third stage of this examination of the hypothesis that health should be afforded the status of a primary good:
And again, how shall I any longer be able to perform my duty towards Zeus [if I am disabled]?
This is now a third component of this hypothetical. Suppose that Zeus created human beings expecting they physically serve him in some way, and also constituted them in such a fashion that the only possible way they could satisfy that requirement is by way of using a completely healthy body. Suppose he also promises bad consequences for those that do not serve him. It would follow that there would be no way for this debilitated person to perform those acts. So, necessarily, Zeus would punish him, and gallingly, would have set the poor man up for failure! Not very compassionate, loving or fatherly or Godlike of Zeus! He would be the worst sort of sadist, in fact.
But, obviously, this is an absurd view of God. It follows, again whatever the service is that we are to render to him, we can say this much about it; the most important component of that service will not have to do with this particular external, bodily health. It seems natural to assume that it would have to do with those ‘internals’ those things over which we have complete control. We know, by now, that this means that most vital service has to do with what Epictetus calls our Moral Purpose. He expands on this reductio argument now, again, assuming these ungodlike expectations from God, as men might do when faced with adversities, and deriving further untoward consequences from them:
For if I sustain injury and am unfortunate, he pays no heed to me. And then we hear men saying, “What have I to do with him, if he is unable to help us?” And again, “What have I to do with him, if he wills that I be in such a state as I am now?” The next step is that I begin to hate him. Why, then, do we build temples to the gods, and make statues of them, as for evil spirits—for Zeus as for a god of Fever? And how can he any longer be “Savior,” and “Rain-bringer,” and “Fruit-giver?” And, in truth, if we set the nature of the good somewhere in this sphere, all these things follow.
Again, the argument is a bit truncated, but he believes there is a family of reductio arguments such as this one, repeatable via further hypotheticals using different externals. The cumulative force of these is to show us that the good of man, the really important components of the good life, and happiness, have not been placed in ‘the sphere of the externals.’ For, we can always derive absurdities and we can always point out counterexamples to what the assumptions lead us to, if their threads are followed out.
These arguments and counterexamples collectively show that individual happiness is evidently dependent on something fully ‘internal’; something over which we have complete individual control. That being the case, we can say something similar in regard to collective happiness as well, and that it involves some sort of cooperation in the realm of Moral Purpose, cooperation that involves both God and man.
This is not to say that we should not include things such as health, station in life, life with associates, etc., in the class of good things. We are, by nature, inclined toward them. Our nature has direct connection with the designs of God. God would not have placed these natural inclinations in us only to make it impossible for us to be happy or do good if we lose control of those externals, or if things were to go south in regard to them in other ways. That would be inconsistent with his nature, for he would have knowingly put us in the untenable position of being unavoidably miserable when he, as God, has the ability to do otherwise. That is less than all-good, to say the least!
Still, this leaves us with questions. What is the nature of that internal? What is it that we have been designed to do with it? What relations are we to undertake with God and with other people, (our two primary “associates”) and the world around us? The questions are several, and the task of answering them appears daunting:
What, then, shall we do? This is a subject of enquiry for the man who truly philosophizes and is in travail of thought. Says such a man to himself, “I do not now see what is the good and what is the evil; am I not mad?”
Again, a comparison of the uneducated or the student put off by the difficulties as being something like the madman, ignorant of his own good, and, in the case of the lazy student, perhaps even flirting with the choice to remain mad, or in a demented state. Keep in mind too, Epictetus is here scolding himself, along with his students, for indulging these very natural reactions to being faced with a very steep uphill climb.
What is more, we see him admitting to a natural worry about how he will be taken by others if he gives voice to the contention that the primary good of man is somehow connected only with those things over which he had complete control. They will scoff:
Yes, but suppose I set the good somewhere here, among the things that the will controls, all men will laugh at me. Some white-haired old man with many a gold ring on his fingers will come along, and then he will shake his head and say, “Listen to me, my son; one ought of course to philosophize, but one ought also to keep one’s head; this is all nonsense. You learn a syllogism from the philosophers, but you know better than the philosophers what you ought to do.”
Man, why, then, do you censure me, if I know? What shall I say to this slave? If I hold my peace, the fellow bursts with indignation. So, I must say, “Forgive me as you would lovers; I am not my own master; I am mad.”
It seems you must be politic with such folks, and move on.