Twenty-fourth 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 24.
How Should we Struggle Against Difficulties?
In this chapter we return to examination of the practical implications of the Stoic school. Given that we are not expected, by God, to retreat from the world, and must take on its contingencies with regard to externals, it asks what the appropriate attitude would be toward any challenges or hardships one will consequently encounter. This chapter, like others in the Discourses, asks us to put ourselves in the shoes of the believing Stoic as we attempt an answer.
To refresh our memory, that Stoic whose shoes we are inhabiting, would believe that Zeus, God or the designing logos has created the universe, and our world, and populated it with a certain intent in mind, a certain end state which he intends to bring to fruition. Each stage of the life of the universe, and each individual thing within it, has an ineliminable and vital assigned role in that unfolding fruition. What is more, as any good engineer would do, he has not placed any of these individual ‘cogs’ in positions for which they are not suited. Each of them is suited to take its particular assigned place in the cosmos and is designed to withstand the unique stresses that each assignment brings along with it. He has imbued every component of the universe with all of the intrinsic features and capacities that will enable it to handle its particular positional stresses. He has also surrounded each with relationships that will allow it to carry out its particular function in the fruition of the cosmos. So, it seems, the ultimate good for which the universe is brought into being can only be brought about by all and only the set of stresses that do obtain. That being the case, each particular individual in the cosmos, and each individual on Earth is given a set of capacities that allows it to play its role without prematurely disintegrating. We must emphasize that the full set of capacities given to human beings constitute them, not as ‘its’ (as things have been expressed so far in this brief), but as full persons, what Epictetus terms Moral Purposes. We are intended to function as moral agents, persons, who care for each other, and are concerned with the good. We are given certain internally installed monitors that function and act as something like guides or engine-governors for ourselves and others. Conscience (or the guardian ‘genius’) is one we’ve already seen referenced, the presence or absence of happiness or fulfilment is another. Obviously, our cognitive and rational capacities are yet another. We are to use these in symphony.
When these personal ‘coping potentialities’ are actualized, as lives unfold, we learn things about human beings, and see them develop in ways that mirror the governing logos of the cosmos as a whole. The end result, for us, is that we take on and understand, to an extent, that sentient, conscious and rational co-administrator’s role Epictetus has described before.
For human beings in Rome and other places, what does this amount to when taken out of the realm of abstract description? What does it mean in the hurly-burly of our day-to-day lives? Answering these questions is the primary focus of chapter 24. Through an intriguing set of what are in effect training exercises or thought experiments (the first an analogy with athletic coaching, the second a military analogy and the last an application of what we learn in Greek tragedy), Epictetus gives us strategies we can use in our day to day lives, as we face those ‘struggles and difficulties’:
It is difficulties that show what men are. Consequently, when a difficulty befalls, remember that God, like a physical trainer, has matched you with a rugged young man. ‘What for?’ someone asks,
So that you may become an Olympic victor; but that cannot be done without sweat.
Note here that the analogy with physical or athletic training allows him to make four points.
- The person undergoing the training Is never carelessly overmatched as to make the training work at cross-purposes with itself. This is by design. Coaches either match wrestlers with those against which they can compete, perhaps a level or two removed from each other or, if they train with students, take it down a notch themselves, so as to allow the student to derive value from the bouts. Logos, Zeus or God does something similar with us during our lives, fine tuning the level of stress, the amount of difficulty we encounter so that it is balanced and attuned with our levels of development. To do anything else would be bad coaching on his part, and bad design.
- In the process of being trained or coached, individuals bring into fruition potencies that, before the training exercises, lie dormant within them.
- The end in mind, includes, as a designed component, the making of each person into an analog of an ‘Olympic victor,’ that is; a person that excels in the particular functional roles he or she has been assigned, and can become flushed with that victory, fulfilled by it.
- The coach has made us such that we are capable of cognizing our progress, in that we can rationally examine the nature of the roles we have been ‘thrown into’ and those that we have voluntarily undertaken, and form pretty good, though localized criteria of success. We plan, assess, act, plan again and reassess. This inherent rationality is, again, intentionally given to us, for the sort of criteria we use in instituting our human ‘OODA loops’ are family related to those he possesses and institutes when considering the cosmos as a whole, in that it too is rationally designed.
So, if we carefully consider all this in each of our own cases, we must conclude that we are being very carefully tended to and coached, and that we have unique “victories” fulfilments or joys for which we are intended. God evidently cares enough to coach each of us personally, as well!
To my way of thinking no one has got a finer difficulty than the one which you have got, if only you are willing to make use of it as an athlete makes use of a young man to wrestle with.
Now having said all this by way of analogy with athletic training, Epictetus now turns his attention toward a more military analogy, the role of scout:
And now we are sending you to Rome as a scout, to spy out the land.
This can be read in three ways. We can imagine this scout as being one of Epictetus’s students, being sent from Nicopolis to Rome, in order to reconnoiter how safe it might be for philosophers to follow (as an invading force perhaps)? It seems Epictetus is having some fun here. For philosophers had been kicked out of Rome. That is why Epictetus founded his school in Nicopolis.
A second reading is more broadly applicable. We can take the question as addressing what the student-scout would have to say about the lay of the land when it comes into entering into the thick of Roman political life. He is not so worried about scouting ahead for philosophers, per-se, but concerned with adequately informing anyone that has a Stoic bent, and wants to enter politics.
A third reading: The Stoic student-scout is getting the lay of the land concerning life in the Capital city, a huge metropolis, so that would- be Stoic immigrants, relative rustics, can decide whether it’s worth it to make the move from small town life to the big city!
Whatever way we take it, we naturally assume the Stoics back home would want this student-scout to keep his wits about him, observe and convey accurate information. They would not expect that he be carried away by fear. That does no good for anyone, neither invading philosophers nor would-be political functionaries from the Stoic school who are keen to enter public life, nor Stoic ‘settler-colonials,’ (as it were).
But no one sends a coward as a scout, that, if he merely hears a noise and sees a shadow anywhere, he may come running back in terror and report “The enemy is already upon us.” So now also, if you should come and tell us, “The state of things at Rome is fearful; terrible is death, terrible is exile, terrible is reviling, terrible is poverty; flee, sirs, the enemy is upon us!” we shall say to you, “Away, prophesy to yourself! Our one mistake was that we sent a man like you as a scout.”
Continuing along the lines of this military analogy, we might ask Epictetus what sort of historical person he would cite as a good and courageous reconnoitering scout for those in his school. He has one in mind, a man who developed to a high art the ability to treat that wide swath of externals we have seen discussed so far as “indifferents.” He was well known as treating these as things that he could actually live without, and he remained undisturbed for years, never indulging in moral compromise in vain attempts at controlling them; Diogenes the Cynic. While this man was not a Stoic, he was held in high regard by Epictetus for this lifestyle. By his example he showed one could be content or happy even if bereft of most externals. He adopted extreme poverty to prove his point. The extent to which he hewed to that poverty we can see in what Epictetus says Diogenes the scout would report back to Nicopolis:
Diogenes, who before you was sent forth as a scout, has brought us back a different report. He says, “Death is not an evil, since it is not dishonorable”; he says, “Ill repute is a noise made by madmen.”
Death, considered in and of itself, is an event, nothing more and nothing less. The choice to die may be a dishonorable choice, it may be an honorable choice, but the mere fact that we can draw this distinction shows that death in and of itself, is a neutral, one of those indifferents.
Similarly, whether someone is labeled as a person of bad character or bad reputation is something that is up to those others who are talking about him. Whether or not he actually is someone of bad character is something else, something logically distinct from that ‘noise.’
We need to be concerned with the latter matter, not the former. What is more, most of those that make such accusations are ill- equipped to make the call in the first place. They are the ‘blind’ or ‘uneducated’ folks we’ve already run into reading earlier chapters; people who are in effect, functioning as ‘madmen.’.
And what a report this scout has made us about toil and about pleasure and about poverty! He says, “To be naked is better than any scarlet robe; and to sleep on the bare ground,” he says, “is the softest couch.” And he offers as a proof of each statement his own courage, his tranquility, his freedom, and finally his body, radiant with health and hardened.
Diogenes was one tough, though eccentric cookie when it came to that self-imposed poverty!
“There is no enemy near,” says he; “all is full of peace.” How so, Diogenes? “Why, look!” says he, “I have not been struck with any – missile, have I, or received any wound? I have not fled from anyone, have I?”
The missiles, wounds and trauma that the cowardly scout would no doubt have reported are, from the point of view of Diogenes, and from the point of view of the Stoics, only apparent harms to person, not real harms. The ‘missile’ here is the prospect or threat of living with few, if any externals, the wounds inflicted by these are, in fact, only surface wounds. When strictly considered, they are not wounding to the person, the Moral Purpose, at all. The one and only thing that wounds the Moral Purpose is some certain choices that persons might make in the face of threats to their continued possession of these externals.
Epictetus now returns us to focus upon that would-be Stoic scout who ended up being inconsistent and cowardly in the face of what he observed from life in Rome:
This is what it means to be a proper scout, but you return and tell us one thing after another. Will you not go away again and observe more accurately, without this cowardice?
Go on, get out of here, and try again. The student-scout balks:
What am I to do, then?
What would a good Stoic scout do?
What do you do when you disembark from a ship? You do not pick up the rudder, do you, or the oars? What do you pick up, then? Your own luggage, your oil-flask, your wallet. So now, if you are mindful of what is your own property, you will never lay claim to that which is another’s.
So, return to Rome, and be very careful about keeping in mind that fundamental distinction between what is truly your own (your Moral Purpose) and those things that are not yours. Just as it would be inappropriate for you to attempt to remove parts of a ship you had taken to Rome, once you had disembarked, so too, you should not treat other sorts of externals either given or lent you in Rome as if they were fully your property. You must maintain this attitude because we are sending you to Rome not just as any old scout, but a Stoic scout. You must report to us firmly upon that basis. It is your mission. We must get an idea of how easy or difficult it would be to maintain Moral Purpose in dear old Rome. So, give us the unvarnished truth as to what you see, the variety of externals, the varieties of threats and temptations that might lead us to compromise that fundamental of our school. And report how well prepared you think we are for facing these. That’s what scouts do. So, get moving and don’t screw it up now!
So, our scout goes to Rome, and we are to imagine him as having acquired some glistening externals while there. He becomes a political big-wig, a Senator whose toga bears the scarlet hem. For some reason the Emperor has it in for the man:
He (the Emperor, presumably) says to you, “Lay aside your broad scarlet hem.”
OK, the scout realizes that the toga and office are not his property, but possessed at the sufferance of the Emperor. As a Stoic scout how should he respond? Like this:
Behold, the narrow hem!
Our imagined scout is being given a lesser office, that of knight. He seems fine with that demotion and takes the toga. The Emperor is not satisfied. He hasn’t distressed our scout, so he tries again:
“Lay aside this also.”
‘Fine by me,’ says our Stoic scout:
Behold, the plain toga!
You can see the next imperial response coming up the Appian Way, can’t you?
“Lay aside your toga.”
No worries:
Behold, I am naked!
“But you arouse my envy.”
‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’ (Our Stoic scout is really pushing his luck now.) Perhaps realizing this, he anticipates the Emperor’s next step, and beats him to the punch:
Well, then, take the whole of my paltry body. Do I any longer fear the man to whom I can throw my body?
This is all an amusing way to illustrate how the scout should behave, and how we all should behave when we consider ourselves as Stoic ‘scouts’ in this world. Along with the first analogy, that of the athlete in training, we are supposed to take away, as the import of this chapter, how we should go about our lives.
We are athletes in training. Zeus is the trainer. We are scouts, sent into this world by our senior officers. We’ve been sent into Rome, with orders to adopt certain roles and play them well, as scouts. We can undertake the roles and cope with the difficulties they introduce by keeping in mind the metaphysical big-picture and also keeping straight about what is fully ours and what belongs to others, and ultimately, to God himself.
Now, having said all this, Epictetus is not quite finished with our hypothetical Stoic scout. He now imagines the man, somewhat inconsistently as having some second thoughts. We can imagine him voicing a concern that the fusillade of snark he had aimed at the Emperor in the last bit of dialogue might cause the big guy to disinherit him:
But he will not leave me as his heir.
Then, the Stoic bucks up. (Maybe this is Epictetus again remonstrating with his backsliding self?) He reminds himself of his scout’s mission, and the second lens through which he is supposed to consider that possibility:
What then? Did I forget that none of these things is my own?
How, then, do we call them “my own?”
In other words, he’s saying this to himself: ‘In a precise sense, very little of what I call “my own” is really my full possession. Technically, the only thing under my complete and utter control is my Moral Purpose, my choices, my attitudes toward life and events. (Even that capacity will eventually be taken away from me, by infirmity or old age, and ultimately death. But, as long as I do possess this capacity, it is the only one under my complete control, and the only one that can accurately be described as “my own.”) As for everything else, these are ‘my own’ –
Merely as we call the bed in the inn “my own.” If, then, the inn-keeper dies and leaves you the beds, you will have them; but if he leaves them to someone else, he will have them, and you will look for another bed. If, then, you do not find one, you will have to sleep on the ground; only do so with good courage, snoring and remembering that tragedies find a place among the rich and among kings and tyrants, but no poor man fills a tragic role except as a member of the chorus.
In the second sentence Epictetus introduces our third tool or strategically oriented thought experiment: He reminds us here, not only of standard features of Greek and Roman tragedies, amongst which is the fact that the main characters were typically the rich and powerful, and that commoners invariably were portrayed in choruses (groups of observers that basically indulged in providing commentary and asides concerning the main action), but he wants to remind us how easy it is to become convinced that we can guarantee ourselves continued possession of desirable externals, or avoidance of those we do not desire, and of how completely unglued we can become when events disabuse us of this conceit. Consider the typical run of events in a tragedy:
Now the kings commence in a state of prosperity:
“Hang the palace with garlands”;
then, about the third or fourth act, comes
“Alas, Cithaeron, why didst thou receive me?”
The first quote shows us a king celebrating his office and good fortune, blissfully unaware of the contingency of it all. The second line comes from Oedipus Rex. It is Oedipus bewailing his incredible run of bad fortune and essentially cursing his life. As an infant, he had been ‘exposed’ (left to die on a mountain), by a servant of his father, King Laius of Thebes. The mountain was Cithaeron. He had been rescued. Later, he was adopted by King Polybus of Corinth. By a combination of bad luck and ignorance he ended up king of Thebes, killing his biological father and marrying his mother just as had been prophesied to him earlier. He had taken all the measures he thought necessary in order to thwart the prophecy, but to no avail. He ended his life in misery and blind, having gouged out his eyes in anguish at having learned the truth.
There is an object lesson in all of this, even for those of us not inhabiting positions of status
Slave, where are your crowns, where your diadem? Do your guards avail you not at all?
Even the most powerful cannot guard against tragic contingencies. They are ‘slaves’ to outside powers just as much as are the chattel slaves they own. So, rather than envy them, and rather than focusing only upon what looks to be attractive and tantalizing in their lives, realize that they, like everyone else, cannot possibly control all those possessions and other externals to which they have grown accustomed, and are, by virtue of high station, in for what could be calamitous leveling.
When, therefore, you approach one of those great men, remember all this; remember that you are approaching a tragic character, not the actor, but Oedipus himself.
“Nay, but so-and-so is blessed; for he has many companions to walk with.”
So have I; I fall in line with the multitude and have many companions to walk with.
But, to sum it all up: remember that the door has been thrown open. Do not become a greater coward than the children, but just as they say, “I won’t play any longer,” when the thing does not please them, so do you also, when things seem to you to have reached that stage, merely say, “I won’t play any longer,” and take your departure; but if you stay, stop lamenting.
An interesting last passage here, as it implies, not only that the option always exists to leave cities, situations or stations, but that it is sometimes acceptable to commit suicide. We have run into this issue before. As he did in that earlier chapter (9), Epictetus wants to emphasize to his students that the circumstances which would permit such escape are rare, but it is always the case that the door is indeed left open. Here, he says there is a requirement that we persist in playing ‘the game of life’ until a stage is attained after which you can realistically assess that we have done our courageous best. We should not retreat out of cowardice. When we reach the limits of human endurance, it would seem, we are allowed to make the choice to leave the game. There was much debate in the Stoic school on this very matter, as they recognized that their disciplined ‘indifferent’ attitude toward externals could lead to a too-easy choice to retreat. This attitude exists in an uneasy tension with the school’s equally foundational insistence that we stay at our assigned posts and carry out our missions.