Twenty-ninth 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 29
Of Steadfastness
In several ways, this penultimate chapter of Book I of the Discourses pulls together the various threads of development. Here we will see Epictetus driving home the import of the distinction between person (Moral Purpose) and externals, be they reputation, property or life itself. Here too, we will see him propounding upon man as role player, assigned by God to his station in life with the charge of playing its combination of roles ‘well,’ that is; morally. We will also see him encouraging us to careful consideration of the control thesis, as being central to the way by which God intends us to navigate choice as we carry out those complex roles. We’ll see, again, a role model in the person of Socrates, who by his life, demonstrated the proper way for serious philosophers to treat these most important aspects of life, but also as a role model of how it is they should respond to fellows who are not philosophers.
As things unfold in this chapter, it gradually occurs to us that this seems to be couched in the form, not merely of a lecture but a commencement address with the usual exhortations. Was Arrian recording one such occasion?
The essence of the good is a certain kind of Moral Purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of Moral Purpose. What, then, are the external things? They are materials for the Moral Purpose, in dealing with which it will find its own proper good or evil.
If, as argued in the last chapter, evil consists in knowingly doing wrong, good in knowingly doing right, then it is necessarily true that occasions must exist that would allow for exercise of such choices. Those ‘occasions’ are the ‘materials’ here referenced; externals of various sorts. If choices are made that prioritize the acquisition or possession of these externals over what is moral, then evil is done. If, on the other hand, while people deal with these materials, they keep in mind doing their best to serve the good, and thereby, make best efforts to preserve the state of their Moral Purpose, that certain kind of Moral Purpose persists.
How will it find the good? If it does not admire the materials. For the judgements about the materials, if they be correct, make the Moral Purpose good, but if they be crooked and awry, they make it evil.
This is the law which God has ordained, and He says, “If you wish any good thing, get it from yourself.”
This is a truncated version of an argument we’ve reviewed before: If God has given us complete control over anything, this is an indicator that he expects us to actually exercise that complete control, and that it will serve his purposes, which are supremely good. The one thing that fits that description is our Moral Purpose, our moral agency. We have complete and ultimate control over that just so long as we are healthy and sane. So, we are expected to work from within that stance. It is our primary intended function. If we do this, both individually and in cooperation with others, good things will ensue. We will be the right sort of Moral Purposes.
This all sounds well and good in the abstract, but we’ll find ourselves ‘wishing to get good things’ from others. What then?
You say, “No, but from someone else.”
Do not so, but get it from yourself.
It is not only logically impossible to be the right sort of Moral Purpose by somehow receiving that status from others, but, it is generally true that pursuit of external ‘goods’ runs risk of leading us into being the wrong sort of Moral Purpose. To put top priority on acquisition of these will inevitably lead to moral compromise, and and it can even lead to lamentable tragedy. The other side of that coin, though, (giving first priority to Moral health) can lead to lives of incredible nobility, as we have repeatedly seen in rehearsals of dialogues with tyrants:
For the rest, when the tyrant threatens and summons me, I answer “Whom are you threatening?”
If he says, “I will put you in chains,”
I reply, “He is threatening my hands and my feet.”
Again, externals. Yes, he can threaten those, but does not, thereby threaten a man’s Moral Purpose, unless that man chooses to acquiesce to the threat. He cannot be harmed in this particular way unless he chooses so.
If he says, “I will behead you,”
I answer, “He is threatening my neck.”
If he says, “I will throw you into prison,”
I say, “He is threatening my whole paltry body”; and if he threatens me with exile, I give the same answer.
Does he, then, threaten you not at all?
If I feel that all this is nothing to me, not at all; but if I am afraid of any of these threats, it is I whom he threatens.
Who is there left, then, for me to fear? The man who is master of what? The things that are under my control? But there is no such man.
Actually, there is exactly one such man (or woman) in each of our cases, and he or she is us! Even God cannot take that control away.
Should I fear the man who is master of the things that are not under my control? And what do I care for them?
Now, again, we could take all this to be Epictetus recommending to us the life of a hermit, withdrawn from day-to-day commerce with fellow man, and certainly contemptuous or indifferent to political authority. Epictetus next addresses that interpretation:
Do you philosophers, then, teach us to despise our kings?
Far from it. Who among us teaches you to dispute their claim to the things over which they have authority? Take my paltry body, take my property, take my reputation, take those who are about me. If I persuade any to lay claim to these things, let some man truly accuse me.
This is Epictetus’s version of ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s! Note, though, that Epictetus holds that we are constitutionally unable to give over those elements of our inner life that are essential to our person, our Moral Purpose. One such element is our faculty of judgment What is more, a corollary of this is that it is impossible for others to ‘overcome’ or control our faculty of judgment:
“Yes, but I wish to control your judgements also.”
And who has given you this authority? How can you have the power to overcome another’s judgement?
“By bringing fear to bear upon him,” he says, “I shall overcome him.”
Threat may cause one to claim his judgment on some matter is other than it actually is, but this in no way alters the fact that the judgment is what it is. That cannot be changed. What is more the act of acceding to the threat is itself a judgment on the part of the threatened. He or she judges it is best to acquiesce, and then acts on that judgment. The threat in and of itself does not make that judgment. Necessarily, only the threatened person can make the judgment to accede to the demand. Be that as it may, no true alteration of the initial judgment, whatever it might have been, has occurred. That is not possible. The person is, in fact, acting, faking:
You fail to realize that the judgement overcame itself, it was not overcome by something else; and nothing else can overcome Moral Purpose, but it overcomes itself.
In short, such cases show this: When someone, under threat, chooses to put a ‘material’ interest, or possession or avoidance of an external, before doing what is right, this is an act of his or her will, his or her Moral Purpose. A regrettable act, to be sure, but an act of will. In such cases Moral Purpose overcomes or degrades itself, and freely chooses to do so. This is true even under threat. There is no brainwashing going on. There is no getting around this basic fact.
For this reason, too, the law of God is most good and most just: “Let the better always prevail over the worse.”
God has put it within our power to be able to follow this command. That is; pay heed to what your conscience, considered judgment and ‘genius’ indicate as the proper and moral path. ‘Do your best,’ it says, ‘to only act in ways that survive this touchstone.’ Now, as highlighted many times throughout the Discourses, this is not always easy.
Now, Epictetus focuses on some natural objections that come from an inaccurate reading of this statement of the ‘law of God,’ readings that hinges on the ambiguous term ‘better.’ In one sense of the word ‘better’ we can say that mobs prevail because they are ‘better,’ but in the sense of better intended by this law, mobs cannot possibly prevail over an individual, unless he or she chooses to bend the knee under threat from the mob.
“Ten are ‘better’ than one,” you say.
For what? For putting in chains, for killing, for dragging away where they will, for taking away a man’s property. Ten overcome one, therefore, in the point in which they are better.
In terms of physical strength, yes, ten will be ‘better’ than one, and will indeed prevail. But this says nothing about that mob’s status with regard to the other sense of ‘better.’ In that sense, they may very well be ‘worse.’
In what, then, are they worse? If the one has correct judgements, and the ten have not; what then? Can they overcome in this point?
Not a chance.
How can they?
But if we are weighed in the balance, must not the heavier draw down the scales? So that a Socrates may suffer what he did at the hands of the Athenians?
This is a restatement of the objection, again depending on the ambiguous term, and now utilizing the analogy of scales. As well, it fundamentally confuses Socrates the ‘Moral Purpose’ with Socrates’s body:
Slave, why do you say “Socrates”? Speak of the matter as it really is and say: That the paltry body of Socrates may be carried off and dragged to prison by those who were stronger than he, and that someone may give hemlock to the paltry body of Socrates, and that it may grow cold and die? Does this seem marvelous to you, does this seem unjust, for this do you blame God?
One may be very tempted to do so. But, did Socrates? Did he blame God for his fate?
Did Socrates, then, have no compensation for this? In what did the essence of the good consist for him? To whom shall we listen, to you or to Socrates himself? And what does he say?
“Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me.”
And again,
“If so, it is pleasing to God, so let it be.”
But do you prove that one who holds inferior judgements prevails over the man who is superior in point of judgements? You will not be able to prove this; no, nor even come near proving it. For this is a law of nature and of God: “Let the better always prevail over the worse.”
Prevail in what? In that in which it is better. One body is stronger than another body; several persons are stronger than one; the thief is stronger than the man who is not a thief. That is why I lost my lamp, because in the matter of keeping awake the thief was better than I was. However, he bought a lamp for a very high price; for a lamp he became a thief, for a lamp he became faithless, for a lamp he became beast-like. This seemed to him to be profitable!
Epictetus reminds us of that lamp he lost, and uses it to illustrate the point in this section. The thief compromised his Moral Purpose. He treated Epictetus with disrespect, became like an animal skulking about to take things, regardless of the distress it would cause his victim. He betrayed the implicit trust of his fellow man. All for a trinket. Yes, he was ‘better’ at staying awake and ‘better’ at the game of thievery than Epictetus was at the ‘game’ of staying awake and protecting his lamp, but this thief is certainly not ‘better’ in the most vital sense indicated by this term as it is used in the “law of nature and of God.” He demeaned himself.
Epictetus now presents us with a few more possible objections along the same vein; again, drawn from the very risky world of Roman life, and the contingencies of mob rule. (It should be noted that the sheer number of such examples is clear indication that the Stoic school was not a hermitage, and its ethos was one that included admonitions toward an active life of service, quite in contrast to other schools, which advocated retreat and sometimes utter disdain for public life):
Very well; but now someone has taken hold of me by my cloak and pulls me into the market-place, and then others shout at me, “Philosopher, what good have your judgements done you? See, you are being dragged off to prison; see, you are going to have your head cut off.”
And what kind of ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ could I have studied, which would prevent me from being dragged off, if a man who is stronger than I am should take hold of my cloak? Or would prevent me from being thrown into the prison, if ten men should hustle me and throw me into it? Have I, then, learned nothing else? I have learned to see that everything which happens, if it be outside the realm of my Moral Purpose, is nothing to me. Have you, then, derived no benefit from this principle for the present case? Why, then, do you seek your benefit in something other than that in which you have learned that it is?
Well, as I sit in the prison I say, “The fellow who shouts this at me neither understands what is meant, nor follows what is said, nor has he taken any pains at all to know what philosophers say, or what they do. That being the case, don’t mind him.”
Epictetus now takes this imaginary soliloquy in a different direction, which allows him to recapitulate the notion that he (and we too) have been assigned congeries of roles in society which we must see ourselves through, and which we are not expected to abandon until we have been given clear and unmistakable signs that we are being discharged from the duty. The complex of roles will often introduce conflicting duties or obligations which we must do our best to adjudicate and accommodate. Compromise can be challenging to preservation of Moral Purpose. When the challenges are too much for us, we will know we can ‘retreat’ from life.
Epictetus has Socrates’s Defense in mind, where he report that his ‘sign’ or ‘genius’ did not give him a ‘no’ at any time during his trial, sentencing and execution, which indicated that it was permitted for him to leave his post, that is; die. Again, for Epictetus’s students in the highly contingent world of Roman public life, the issue of suicide is being raised.
We are presented with a bit of dialogue between Epictetus and a hypothetical jailor that bears directly on this issue of moral compromise:
“But come out of the prison again.”
If you have no further need of me in the prison, I shall come out; if you ever need me there again, I shall go back in.
For how long?
For so long as reason chooses that I remain with my paltry body; but when reason does not so choose, take it and good health to you!
As long as ‘reason’ chooses, I am to remain ‘in my body,’ stand and fight. This use of reason has two senses, (senses which Epictetus reminds us, are in harmony). We can say that “big-R” reason, God’s plan, wants us to stay at our post as long as is necessary to accomplish whatever mission it is, of which we are playing an integral part.
At the same time, he has seen to it that our local ‘small-r’ reason, if carefully and conscientiously utilized, in conjunction with our ‘genius’ and careful deliberations with others (if possible), will allow us to realize when compromise asks too much of Moral Purpose. Our reason taps into and harmonizes with that ‘big-R’ reason, on Epictetus’ view of the relationship of the divine with the human, enabling us to receive communications from ‘headquarters,’ so to speak, as to when it is permissible to retreat or leave the mission. This is all quite by design:
Only let me not give up my life irrationally, only let me not give up my life faintheartedly, or from some casual pretext. For again, God does not so desire; for He has need of such a universe, and of such men who go to-and-fro upon earth. But if He gives a signal to retreat, as He did to Socrates, I must obey Him who gives the signal, as I would a general.
An interesting aside is now given. Should the Stoic indiscriminately state this position to one and all? Apparently not. It may be inappropriate to the audience. He considers an analogical case, kids celebrating Saturnalia. We might, these days substitute some other holiday, say Christmas:
What then? Must I say these things to the multitude? For what purpose? Is it not sufficient for a man himself to believe them? For example, when the children come up to us and clap their hands and say, “To-day is the good Saturnalia,” do we say to them, “All this is not good?” Not at all; but we too clap our hands to them. And do you too, therefore, when you are unable to make a man change his opinion, realize that he is a child and clap your hands to him; but if you do not want to do this, you have merely to hold your peace.
And the appropriate attitude to take toward contingencies of life, for a serious student of Stoicism, involves the assumption that he or she has been deliberately presented with situations so as to serve the larger purpose, and so as to be given opportunity to develop and show his or her mettle. God intends both, and meshes them:
All this a man ought to remember, and when he is summoned to meet some such difficulty, he ought to know that the time has come to show whether we are educated. For a young man leaving school and facing a difficulty is like one who has practiced the analysis of syllogisms, and if someone propounds him one that is easy to solve, he says, “Nay, rather propound me one that is cunningly involved, so that I may get exercise from it.” Also, the athletes are displeased with the youths of light weight: “He cannot lift me,” says one. “Yonder is a sturdy young man.”
God as athletic coach and trainer:. This is how one should take challenges, even the most pressing. This is not always what happens though. Some students pine for the cloistered days of their tutelage instead of taking their graduation papers, and going out there in the hurly-burley, applying what they have learned and honing those hard won skills:
Oh no; but when the crisis calls, he has to weep and say, “I wanted to keep on learning.” Learning what? If you do not learn these things so as to be able to manifest them in action, what did you learn them for?
At this point, it sure seems like Arrian is recording an occasion where Epictetus was addressing some angst ridden and anxious soon-to-be graduates. As if to confirm this suspicion, he holds out as example the one student in the graduating class that he hopes is out there amongst the anxious; the one sheepskin clasper who is chomping at the bit, and ready to go:
I fancy that someone among these who are sitting here is in travail within his own soul and is saying, “Alas, that such a difficulty does not come to me now as that which has come to this fellow!
The man wants the challenges.
Alas, that now I must be worn out sitting in a corner, when I might be crowned at Olympia!
He does not want to be a bench warmer.
When will someone bring me word of such a contest?”
Chomping at the bit! Now, Epictetus brings his focus back to those greater-numbered anxious and fearful graduates:
You ought all to be thus minded. But among the gladiators of Caesar there are some who complain because no one brings them out, or matches them with an antagonist, and they pray God and go to their managers, begging to fight in single combat; and yet will no one of you display a like spirit?
Now, he has these graduating students imagine his going to Rome to check on one of last year’s alumni:
I wanted to sail to Rome for this very purpose and to see what my athlete is doing, what practice he is following in his task.
He finds the man is of the anxious sort:
“I do not want,” says he, “this kind of a task.”
Now, on behalf of God, Epictetus chastises him. ‘You’ve agreed, have you not, that we are all assigned a complex of roles by Zeus, and that we are duty-bound to carry them out to the best of our abilities?’
What, is it in your power to take any task you want? You have been given such a body, such parents, such brothers, such a country, such a position in it; and then do you come to me and say, “Change the task for me?”
‘Not only has Zeus placed you in this assignment, but like any competent general, he has also given you the tools with which he can communicate with you, allowing you to be quite capable of figuring out what the mission is, and the matériel with which you will be able to successfully carry it out. So, get on with the job man! Don’t retire, don’t be a quitter!’
What? Do you not possess resources to enable you to utilize that which has been given? You ought to say to Zeus, “It is yours to set the task, mine to practice it well.”
He now brings this back to a setting with which this graduating class would be all too familiar, the logic classroom. If they had protested in like fashion to their instructors, and those instructors had relented, they would not have developed their reasoning skills to the optimum level, but would have maintained an inferior level of skill:
No, but you do say, “Do not propose to me such-and-such a hypothetical syllogism, but rather such-and-such a one; do not urge upon me such-and-such a conclusion, but rather such-and-such a one.”
And now he gives the graduating class a further comparison; the competent actor. That actor is able, by mastery of his art, to take on either a comedic or tragic role, and play either adroitly. So too, the Stoic student should be able to dexterously take on whatever roles he finds himself inhabiting, for he is, after a fashion, an actor on a stage, and God is the Author. But, those roles as vital as they are to divine purpose, are not the persons themselves, but assignments. It pays to keep that in mind.
A time will soon come when the tragic actors will think that their masks and buskins and the long robe are themselves. Man, all these things you have as a subject-matter and a task. Say something, so that we may know whether you are a tragic actor or a buffoon; for both of these have everything but their lines in common. Therefore, if one should take away from him both his buskins and his mask, and bring him on the stage as a mere shade of an actor, is the tragic actor lost, or does he abide? If he has a voice, he abides.
And so, it is in actual life. “Take a governorship.”
God and reason suggest or assign this role to our hypothetical ‘actor’ on the world’s stage. What is the appropriate response? How should this man and those other former students of Epictetus’s he is visiting in Rome behave when assigned this duty? What does Epictetus hope to see? He hopes to hear this from the graduate that has been given governorship:
‘I take it and having done so I show how an educated man comports himself.’
And, now suppose that circumstance has taken the office from the man. What is the appropriate response?
He is given the order:
“Lay aside the laticlave, and having put on rags come forward in a character to correspond.”
What then?
Has it not been given me to display a fine voice?
Again, the reference here is to the actor’s art. The actor endeavors to give ‘fine voice’ to whatever character he is assigned in a play. So too should the man who has been booted from office. He has necessarily landed in some other role or roles, and should play those with ‘fine voice.’
“In what role, then, do you mount the stage now?”
At any stage of life, and in any role one may find oneself playing, we can ask this question. If we take seriously the notion that God has assigned roles for vital reasons, we should always answer in a way that recognizes that fact:
As a witness summoned by God. God says, “Go you and bear witness for me; for you are worthy to be produced by me as a witness.”
Now come a series of questions, from God, directed at each of us (and also toward that set of graduates Epictetus is addressing). These questions are intended to be used as a sort of dialogical guidance mechanism, raising matters that, if kept in mind, will allow us to navigate the contingencies and reverses of life’s complexities adroitly and in line with preservation of Moral Purpose, which, we must remind ourselves, will necessarily also be in line with divine purpose:
“Is any of those things which lie outside the range of the Moral Purpose either good or evil?”
As we have seen previously, the answer here is ‘no.’ Good and evil for Epictetus, reside only in free choice, harms and benefits knowingly visited on others by moral agents. All those other things, like death, property, reputation, are externals, and can only be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in that second sense discussed earlier; they are preferred or dis-preferred ‘indifferents.’
God now asks:
“Do I injure any man?”
The answer again, is ‘no.’ Zeus may directly or indirectly cause men to bear physical harms or die, but these are not injuries to person, they are injuries to externals. The one thing that is the exclusive property of each man or woman is his/her Moral Purpose, and only the individual person can injure this, and only by choosing to do so. God can in no way harm Moral Purpose.
“Have I put each man’s advantage under the control of any but himself?”
The answer again; no. By ‘advantage’ he means to refer to moral standing, moral worth, dignity and self-respect. He also wants to make plain that no assignment is going to be given that makes it impossible for a person to preserve this core of himself. To do that would be less than all-good, which is, of course, contrary to God’s nature.
‘So,’ Epictetus asks his graduating class, ‘when our graduates are forgetful of these things what ends up happening?’
Among other things, when they are asked the following question, they respond in some such way as is presented:
What kind of witness do you bear for God?
“I am in sore straits, O Lord, and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.”
In essence, the accusation is made that God, in letting such things happen, is capricious and cruel.
Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and is this the way in which you are going to disgrace the summons which He gave you, in that He bestowed this honor upon you and deemed you worthy to be brought forward in order to bear testimony so important?
What is more, our bewailing protester may complain that he is being unjustly accused by others of impiety toward God!
But the one who has political or legal authority over you declares, “I pronounce you impious and profane.”
Epictetus reminds him that the accusation, if ill founded, is nothing more than that, an accusation:
What has happened to you?
“I have been pronounced impious and profane.”
Nothing else?
“Nothing.”
The accusation, in and of itself, does not create the reality. So, don’t sweat it. Consider the source of the accusation. If the person is ill-informed, and poorly educated the true graduate will not take it seriously.
Again, consider the analogical case of someone not versed in logic claiming some falsehood as true, or some argument as valid when it is not. Should that vex us? Has the proposition or argument been shown to be actually lacking? Obviously not:
But if he had passed judgement upon some hypothetical syllogism and had made a declaration, “I judge the statement, ‘If it is day, there is light,’ to be false,” what has happened to the hypothetical syllogism? Who is being judged in this case, who has been condemned? The hypothetical syllogism, or the man who has been deceived in his judgement about it?
The question answers itself. ‘Now,’ Epictetus asks our protester, ‘apply the like reasoning to your case; should you be vexed at the accusation of impiety?’
Who in the world, then, is this man who has authority to make any declaration about you? Does he know what piety or impiety is? Has he pondered the matter? Has he learned it? Where? Under whose instruction?
Take that Anytus and Meletus (the accusers of Socrates)! These were them men that had accused him of impiety.
More analogical examples:
And yet a musician pays no attention to a person, if he declares that the lowest string is the highest, nor does a geometrician, if the man decides that the lines extending from the center to the circumference of a circle are not equal; but shall the truly educated man pay attention to an uninstructed person when he passes judgement on what is holy and unholy, and on what is just and unjust?
Ok, we get the message Epictetus.
Now, he tells those graduates something that may not be directly apparent, but which is implied in the protester’s accusations of divine cruelty. For the fully educated Stoic man or woman to make this accusation is something truly impious and unjust!
How great is the injustice committed by the educated in so doing! Is this, then, what you have learned here? Will you not leave to others, mannikins incapable of taking pains, the petty quibbles about these things, so that they may sit in a corner and gather in their petty fees, or grumble because nobody gives them anything, and will you not yourself come forward and make use of what you have learned? For what is lacking now is not quibbles; nay, the books of the Stoics are full of quibbles. What, then, is the thing lacking now?
The man to make use of them, the man to bear witness to the arguments by his acts. This is the character I would have you assume, that we may no longer use old examples in the school, but may have some examples from our own time also. Whose part is it, then, to contemplate these matters?
The part of him who devotes himself to learning; for man is a kind of animal that loves contemplation. But it is disgraceful to contemplate these things like runaway slaves; nay, sit rather free from distractions and listen, now to tragic actor and now to the citharoede ( a musical performer), and not as those runaways do. For at the very moment when one of them is paying attention and praising the tragic actor, he takes a glance around, and then if someone mentions the word “master,” they are instantly all in a flutter and upset.
It is disgraceful for men who are philosophers to contemplate the works of nature in this spirit. For what is a “master?” One man is not master of another man, but death and life and pleasure and hardship are his masters. So, bring Caesar to me, if he be without these things, and you shall see how steadfast I am. But when he comes with them, thundering and lightening, and I am afraid of them, what else have I done but recognized my master, like the runaway slave?
But so long as I have, as it were, only a respite from these threats, I too am acting like a runaway slave who is a spectator in a theatre; I bathe, I drink, I sing, but I do it all in fear and misery. But if I emancipate myself from my masters, that is, from those things which render masters terrifying, what further trouble do I have, what master anymore?
This is a stirring conclusion to Epictetus’s commencement speech. In each of those cases he’s canvassed, the student, who has quite laboriously mastered the logic classes, the metaphysical doctrines, the ethics of the Stoic school, finds himself being rattled and ‘discombobulated’ by the opinions or threats of others, people typically not as educated, and instead of relying on what he takes to be carefully considered judgment as to his own nature, God’s nature, and man’s mission in life, both in his own person, and considered specifically, he instead invests his well-being and his efforts toward pleasing those others, or at least avoiding the threats they pose. Insofar as he does this, he fails in his mission, and makes a slave of himself to these externals.
This hard and high personal bar need not be foisted on others, especially those not educated. He brings this back around to the ‘Saturnalia’ example: What is said here need not be taken as implying that serious Stoics need to be self-important asses about it when confronted by such folks as described here. They should tailor responses ensuring that they are not crass, and not inappropriate to the level of education of those they encounter:
What then? Must I proclaim this to all men? No, but I must treat with consideration those who are not philosophers by profession, and say, “This man advises for me that which he thinks good in his own case; therefore, I excuse him.”
For Socrates excused the jailor who wept for him when he was about to drink the poison, and said, “How generously he has wept for us!” Does he, then, say to the jailor, “This is why we sent the women away?” No, but he makes this latter remark to his intimate friends, to those who were fit to hear it; but the jailor he treats with consideration like a child.
A little bit of sexism here! A bit of condescension there. Be that as it may, the idea is that Socrates thought it would be bad form, and not playing some of his roles well, to tell the jailor that he was behaving like a woman, especially after he had been so kind and worried. That would have been tactless, and inappropriate response to genuine concern. Now, if the jailor had been one of the young graduates hearing out Epictetus during this commencement address? What then?
We can rest assured that things would have been different!