Discourses I, 1-15 Translation and Appendices, Bibliography

   THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS BOOK I, CHAPTERS 1 - 15

Arrian to Lucius Gellius, greetings.

1.       I have not composed these writings of Epictetus as one might compose such things, nor have I myself brought them out to the public, and indeed I affirm that I did not myself compose them.

2.       Such things as I heard from him when he spoke, these very things in his own words, as well as I could, I tried to preserve, writing them down for later as notes or memorials for myself of his thought and his openness of speech.

3.       These are such things as someone would be likely to say off the cuff to another and not the sort of things he would compose for people to read afterwards.

4.       Being such as they are, I do not know how, without my approval or knowledge, they fell into the hands of the public.

5.       But for me it is not a great matter if I do not appear to be able to make a literary composition, and for Epictetus it is nothing if someone despises his words since, even as he was speaking them, it was clear that he was aiming at nothing else than to move the minds of his listeners towards the best things.  If these words of his here should bring about that same effect,

6.       I would think they had the very thing it is necessary for the words of philosophers to have.

7.       If not, let the readers know this, that when Epictetus himself spoke the words, the listener was compelled to feel what he wished him to feel.

8.       If these words by themselves do not accomplish this, perhaps I am to blame or perhaps matters must be thus.  Farewell.

1.   Concerning those things under our control and those not under our control.

1.1     Of the human faculties in general you will not find one which contemplates itself either for approval or for disapproval.

1.2     Up to what point does the art of grammar possess contemplation?  Up to the point of judging writings.  And what about the art of music?  Up to the point of judging melody.

1.3     Does any of these, then, contemplate itself?  By no means.  When you write something to a friend, the art of grammar will tell you what to write, but whether or not you should write, the art of grammar will not tell you.  Concerning melodies the same holds for the art of music.  Whether something must be sung now and played on the lyre or not sung or played, it will not tell you.

1.4     What, then, will tell you?  That faculty which contemplates both itself and all other things.  What is this?  The faculty of reason.  This alone has been inherited as a faculty contemplating itself and has come to us contemplating what it is and what it is able to do and what it is worthy of and all the other faculties. 

1.5 & 6        What else is it that says gold is beautiful?  The gold itself does not tell us.  Clearly this is the faculty that knows how to use impressions.  What else judges the art of music, the art of grammar and the other faculties and approves their use and indicates the proper occasions for their use?  Nothing else.

1.7     So it was a worthy thing, then, that the gods put under our control the one powerful and best thing of all, the right use of impressions.  But they did not put any other things under our control.  Was it that they did not wish to?

1.8     As for myself it seems to me that if they had been able to, they would have put those other things under our control.  But they were not in any wise able to do so.

1.9     For those existing upon the earth and confined in a body such as this, and among companions such as these, how would it be possible not to be impeded in these respects by external circumstances?  But what does Zeus say?

1.10   “Epictetus, if it had been possible I would have made this wretched body of yours and your few possessions free and unimpeded.

1.11   But do not let it escape your attention that this body is not yours but potter’s clay, finely molded.

1.12   Since I was not able to do those things, I have given you a certain part of myself, the power of pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion and, in short, the usage of impressions.  If you attend to this and found your own actions upon it, you will never be hindered and never impeded, you will not groan, you will not blame, and you will flatter no one.

1.13   What say you, then?  Surely these things do not seem to you like something trivial?   “Let it be not so!”  Are you satisfied then with them?  “I give thanks to the gods.”

1.14   Now being able to attend to one thing and to be involved with one thing, we wish ourselves rather to attend to many things and to be tied up with many things, the body, possessions, a brother, a friend, or child, or slave.

1.15   Inasmuch as we are tied up with many activities, we are burdened by them and dragged down.

1.16   On account of this, should the weather be bad for sailing, we sit drawing ourselves aside and constantly peeping out.  “What  is the wind that is blowing?  the north wind.”  And what difference does that make?  “When will the west wind blow?”  Whenever it may seem good to the wind, good sir, or to Aeolus.  For god did not make you housekeeper of the winds, but Aeolus.

1.17   So what is to be done?  We must make the best of those things that are under our control and use the other things as they naturally come about.  “How do they naturally come about?”  As god may wish.

1.18   “Must I alone be beheaded now?”  What’s the matter?  Did you want everyone to be beheaded so you could feel a little better? 

1.19   Do you not wish to stretch out your neck as a certain Lateranus did in Rome when he was ordered by Nero to be beheaded?  For when he stretched out his neck and was struck with a weak blow, he drew back a little but then he stretched it out again.

1.20   But even before that when Epaphroditus the freedman of Nero came out and asked someone about his dispute, the man replied, “If I want anything, I will ask your master.”

1.21   “What then should I have in hand in such situations?”  What else than to understand what is mine and what is not mine and what is in my power and what is not in my power.

1.22   I must die; surely I don’t have to die groaning.  I have been chained;  surely I don’t have to lament;  I have been exiled; surely no one prevents me from laughing and being serene and in good spirits.

1.23   “Betray the secrets.”  I do not speak; for this is in my power.  “But I will chain you.”  Man, what are you saying?  Me?  This leg of mine you will chain, but Zeus himself cannot overpower my will.  “I will throw you in prison.”  My poor body, you mean.  “I will chop off your head.”  When did I ever tell you that my neck alone in all the world is unchoppable?  Thraseas used to say, “I had rather be killed today than exiled tomorrow.”

1.27   What did Rufus say to him?  “If you choose death as the heavier misfortune, what a stupid choice that is; if as the lighter, who gave you that choice?  Don’t you wish to attend to being satisfied with what you have been given?”

1.28   Therefore, what did Agrippinus say?  That “I am not an impediment to myself.”  It was reported to him that, “You are being judged in the Senate.” 

1.29   “May my luck be favorable.  But the fifth hour has come.”  At this hour he was accustomed to exercise and then take a cold bath. 

1.30   “Let us go and exercise.”  When he had exercised, someone came to him and said, “You have been condemned.”  To exile or to death?” he said.  “Exile.”  “My estate, what of it?”  “It was not taken.”  “Let us depart, then, to Arikeia and have our lunch there.”

1.31   This is what it is to have attended to what is necessary, to have made desire and aversion unhindered and invulnerable.  I must die.

1.32   If now, I will die.  And should it be after a little while, I will have lunch now since lunchtime has come, and then I shall die.  How?  As it is fitting for one giving back what belonged to another.

2.   How can someone preserve his character at all times?

2.1     For the rational animal the only unbearable thing is the non-rational, while the rational is bearable.

2.2     Blows are not unbearable by nature.  “How so?”  See how the Spartans are whipped having learned that it is reasonable.

2.3     “To be hanged is not unbearable?”  Whenever someone feels that it is a reasonable thing to do, he goes off and hangs himself.

2.4     If we simply pay attention, we will find that a human being is distressed by nothing so much as by the non-rational, and again to nothing is he drawn so strongly as to the rational.

2.5     But one thing seems logical or illogical to one person and another to another, just as one thing seems good or bad to one person and another to another, or bearable or unbearable.

2.6     On account of this especially do we need education in order to learn to adapt smoothly in accordance with nature our preconception of the reasonable and unreasonable to what is in turn reality.

2.7     In judging what is reasonable and unreasonable we not only use the worth of external things, but also each person uses the worth of things as determined by his own character.

2.8     For one person it is reasonable to hold a chamber pot, looking at it as the only thing to do, because not holding it he will receive a lashing and will not receive his food, and holding it he will not get any rough or painful treatment.

2.9     But for another person not only does holding a chamber pot seem unbearable but also enduring the presence of someone else holding one.

2.10   Therefore, if you inquire of me, “Shall I hold the chamber pot or not?”, I will say to you that it is better to have something to eat than to have nothing and worse to be skinned alive than not to be skinned alive.  So if you measure your affairs according to such considerations, you must go and hold the chamber pot.

2.11   “But that is not according to my wishes.”  You must scrutinize this matter, not me.  You know yourself and you know how much you are worth to yourself, and for how much you will sell yourself.  For some sell at one price, others at another.

2.12   It was for this reason that when Florus was considering whether it was necessary for him to attend Nero’s stage show and to perform something himself, Agrippinus said,

2.13   “You must go.” And when Florus inquired “Why aren’t you going?”, he answered, “I do not even consider it.” 

2.14   For the person who once lowers himself to the consideration of such things and reckons up the value of external things comes very near to those who have forgotten their own character. 

2.15   Why do you ask me, “Which is better to choose, death or life?”  I say life.

2.16   “Pain or pleasure?”  I say pleasure.  “But if I do not act in the tragedy, I will have my head chopped off.”  Go, by all means, and act in the tragedy, but I will not do so.

2.17   “Why?”  Because you consider yourself to be just another thread in the cloak.  And what does this mean?  That you must be careful how you differ from other people, just as the thread does not wish to be different in any way compared to the other threads.

2.18   I want to be purple – that fine bright thread among the others, the reason for the graceful, beautiful appearance.  Why do you say to me, “Be like the many?”  How then will I still be purple?

2.19   Priscus Helvidius saw these things and seeing, acted accordingly.  When Vespasian sent to him ordering him not to go to the Senate, he responded, “It is in your  power not to allow me to be a senator, but as long as I am, it is necessary for me to attend.”

2.20   “Go, but when you go, keep quiet,”  he said.  “Do not question me and I will be silent.”  “But it is necessary for me to question you.”  “And for me to answer what appears to me to be just.”

2.21   “But if you speak, I will kill you.”  “And when did I ever tell you I was immortal?  You will play your part and I mine.  It is yours to kill, mine to die without flinching, yours to banish, and mine to go without complaint.”

2.22   “What good then did Priscus do, being a single individual?  What good does the purple thread do the cloak?  What else than that it stands out in that cloak as purple and is conspicuous among the others as a beautiful exemplar.

2.23   Another person, should Caesar have told him in similar circumstances not to attend the senate, would have said, “Thank you for excusing me.”

2.24   He would not have prevented such a person from attending but would have known that either he will sit there like a jug or, if he speaks, will say what he knows Caesar wants him to say and heap on even more.

2.25   In this way also a certain athlete, who was in danger of dying if he did not cut off his genitals, was approached by his brother who was a philosopher and who asked him, “Come, brother, what are you about to do?  Do we cut off this member and still attend the gymnasium?”  He did not submit, but enduring steadfastly he died.

2.26   Someone asked, “How did he do this?  As an athlete or as a philosopher.”  As a man, he said, a man who was proclaimed and contended at the Olympic Games and lived in such a place as that, not someone who oiled himself down at Bato’s gymnasium.

2.27   Another person would have had his head chopped off, if he could have lived apart from his head.

2.28   Such is the importance of character.  So strong is it with those accustomed to bringing forward this particular matter from among those in their inquiries.

2.29   “Come now, Epictetus, shave off your beard.”  If I am a philosopher I say, “I will not shave.”  “But I will chop off your head.”  If that is better for you, chop it off.

2.30   Someone asked, How will each of us discern what is in accordance with his own character?  How does the bull, he said, standing alone when the lion comes, discern his own set purpose and hurl himself forward for the sake of all the herd?  Or is it clear that there accompanies the possession of the set purpose the perception of it?

2.31   And whoever of us may have such a set purpose will not be unaware of it.

2.32   A bull does not come into being all of a sudden, nor does a brave man, but a man must winter over, he must prepare himself and must not jump heedlessly into things that are not fit for him.  Only look carefully for how much you will sell your own free will.

2.33   Look carefully, man, if for no other reason than this, that you do not sell it for a small sum.  The great and outstanding deed is perhaps fitting for others, for Socrates and those like him.

2.34   Why, then, if we are by nature fitted for this, are not all or many like Socrates?  Are all horses fast?  Are all dogs good hunters?

2.35   What then?  Since I am dull witted, should I refrain from any effort on that account?

2.36   May that not be so.  Epictetus will never be a contender with Socrates, but otherwise, not being a rascal is good enough for me.

2.37   For I will not be Milo, yet nevertheless I will not neglect my body.  Nor will I be Croesus, yet I will not neglect my possessions.  We do not simply refrain from any effort on account of despair of reaching the highest things.

3.   How would someone go from the proposition that god is the father of             mankind to what might follow from that.

3.1     If someone is able to sympathize properly with this opinion, that we have all come into being directly through god and that god is the father of mankind and of the gods, I think that he will be conscious of nothing ignoble or low about himself.

3.2     If Caesar should adopt you, nobody would be able to endure your pride.  But if you know that you are the son of god, will you not be proud?

3,3     Yet as it is, we are not proud, but since there are mixed in our origins these two things, the body which we have in common with the animals, and reason and judgement which we have in common with the gods, many incline towards our heritage of misery and death while a few choose that of godliness and blessedness.

3.4     Since then it is entirely necessary for every person to do each thing as he understands it, a few, who think they have been created for honesty and for self-respect and for the sure certainty of use of the impressions, these few are conscious of nothing low or ignoble in themselves, while for the many the opposite is true.

3.5     “What am I? a small miserable man with my wretched lump of flesh.”

3.6     Wretched indeed, but you possess something better than flesh.  Therefore, why do you neglect that and cling to the other?

3.7     On account of this kinship we degenerate and some of us become like wolves, not to be trusted and treacherous and harmful, while others are like lions, savage and brutal and wild, and most of us are foxes and in fact are like miscarriages or mistakes among the animals.

3.8     For what else is an abusive, malicious man than a fox or something even more wretched and low?

3.9     Watch, therefore, and be attentive, lest you turn out to be one of those wretched miscarriages.

                    

4.    Concerning progress

4.1     The person who is making progress, having learned from philosophers that desire is for good things and that avoidance is towards bad things, and having also learned that a good flow of life and freedom from emotion do not come otherwise   to a person than from not failing in his desire and not falling into what he is avoiding, this person has removed desire from himself entirely and has put it aside and he uses avoidance only for things in the sphere of choice.

4.2     For, if he should avoid something of those things not in the sphere of choice, he knows that at some point he will fall into something he wished to avoid and he will be unhappy.

4.3     Now if virtue holds the promise of giving happiness and tranquillity and freedom from suffering, certainly progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things.

4.4     For it is always the case that the thing towards which the perfection of anything inevitably leads is the very thing towards which progress is an approach.

4.5     How is it, therefore, that virtue is such a thing, but we seek and display progress in other things?  What is the work of virtue?

4.6     A good flow of life.  Who, therefore, is making progress?  The person who has read many treatises of Chrysippus?

4.7     For surely it is not virtue to have studied Chrysippus?  If that is the case, then clearly progress is nothing else than knowing a lot of Chrysippus.

4.8     But now we agree that virtue brings one thing while we declare that approaching it brings another, progress.

4.9     “This person,” he says, “already is able to read Chrysippus by himself.”  Excellent.  By the gods, you are making progress, my friend, such good progress.

4.10   “Why are you mocking him?”  Why are you distracting him from awareness of his own failings?  Don’t you want to show him the work of virtue so that he can learn where to seek progress?

4.11   Seek progress there, you wretch, where your work is.  Where is your work?  In desire and avoidance, that you might be unerring in obtaining your desire and in not falling into what you avoid; in choice and refusal, that you may not be mistaken; in assent and in suspension of judgement, that you may not be deceived.

4.12   First and most necessary are the first topics.  Would you, trembling and grieving, seek not to fall into what you avoid?  How are you making progress like that?  You must show me your progress here.

4.13   It’s as if I said to an athlete, “Show me your shoulders,” and he replied, “Look at my dumb-bells.”  Get out of here, you and your dumb-bells.  I want to see the results from your dumb-bells.

4.14   “Take Chrysippus’ treatise on choice and see how well I’ve learned it,”  That is not what I’m looking for, you slave, but how you manage choice and refusal, and how you manage desire and avoidance;  how you undertake things and apply yourself and prepare yourself and whether in accordance with nature or not in accordance with nature.

4.15   For if you act in accordance with nature, show this to me and I will say that you are making progress.  But if you are not acting in accordance with nature, go away and not only must you expound these books, but you must also write some of the very same sort yourself.

4.16   What good is that to you?  Don’t you know that the whole book costs five denarii?  Now the one who’s done a commentary on that same book, does it seem to you that he is worth more than five denarii?

4.17   Never, therefore, pursue your work in one place and your progress elsewhere.

4.18   Where, then, is progress?  If any one of you, having abandoned external things, has turned to the management of his own will and self, to train and perfect it, so as to bring it to completion in accordance with nature as something elevated, free, unhindered, unfettered, true and modest;

4.19   And if he has learned that whoever desires or avoids things not under his control is not able to be trustworthy or free, and that he must be changed and be buffeted about along with those things and must make himself obedient to others, that is to those who can provide or prevent those things he desires or avoids;

4.20   And still further, if from the time he arises in the morning he watches and guards these principles and he bathes as a trustworthy person, eats as a modest person, and likewise in every matter that arises works out his chief principles, as a runner trains for running and a singer for singing;

4.21   If he does all these things, he it is who is making progress in all true things and he did not leave home in vain.

4.22  But, if he has set himself to the possession of what is in books and is working at that and has travelled abroad for that purpose, I tell him at once to go home and not to neglect matters there.

4.23   That for which he has ventured away from home is worthless.  But this is taking care to remove from his life sorrow and lamenting, cries of  “oh, me” and “I am wretched” and bad luck and misfortune and to learn

4.24   what death is, and exile, and prison, and hemlock, in order that he may be able to say in prison, “My dear Crito, if  it is pleasing to the gods that it should be like this, let it be like this,” and not, “Miserable me, an old man.  I have watched over my gray hairs for this.”

4.25   Who says these things?  Do you think that I will tell you of some disregarded, lowly man?  How about Priam?  Doesn’t he say this?  And doesn’t Oedipus?  And how many are the kings who say this?

4.26   For what else are tragedies than the sufferings of men who have admired externals exhibited in verse of one sort or another?

 4.27  If it were necessary for a person to be deceived in order to learn that external things and things not subject to our will are nothing to us, I would want this very deception from which I would undertake to live my life in a good flow and in tranquility – but you will see what you yourselves want to do.

4.28   What then does Chrysippus teach us?  In order that you may know, he says, that these things are not falsehoods from which the good flow of life and freedom from emotion come,

4.29   you must take my books and you will know how harmonious with nature are the things that give me peace.  Oh great good fortune, oh great benefactor showing us the way.

4.30   To Triptolemus all men have erected temples and alters

4.31   because he gave us cultivated crops for food, but to the one who found the truth and brought it to light and carried it to all people, and not the truth of living but the truth of living well, to him who of you for this gift has established an alter, or a temple, or set up a statue or who of you gives thankful prayers to god for this benefit?

4.32   But because the gods gave us the vine and wheat, on account of this we sacrifice to them, but because they brought forth such a fruit in the human mind through which they were prepared to show us the truth concerning human happiness, for this gift should we not give thanks to god?

5.   Against the Academics

5.1     If someone objects to the truth of things which are exceedingly evident, against such a person it is not easy to find an argument through which one may persuade him to change his mind.

5.2     This is not on account of the intellectual strength of that person or the weakness of the teacher;  but whenever someone has been carried away and has become petrified in his thinking, how can anyone still work with him with argument.

5.3     Now there are two kinds of petrification.  One is petrification of the intelligence, the other of the sense of respect, as when someone has drawn himself up for battle against giving his assent to things that are perfectly obvious and also refuses to stand down from contradictions.

5.4     Most of us fear deadening of the body and we would do everything not to fall into anything of that sort, but as for the soul, its deadening is not a concern to us.

5.5     And, by Jove, as for the soul, a man may be in such a condition as to understand nothing and comprehend nothing and he would, we think, be in a bad way.  But if someone’s modesty and sense of respect are deadened, we may even call that strength of character.

5.6     Do you understand that you are awake?  “No,” he says.  “Because I do not understand, when in sleep I picture myself, that I am awake.”  So do the two impressions differ in no way from each other?  “In no way.”  Do I continue to talk to this man?

5.7     What sort of fire can I light under him, and what sort of iron can I take to him to make him understand that he is deadened?  Perceiving, he pretends not to perceive.  He is worse than a corpse.

5.8     This man is not aware of a contradiction.  He is in bad condition.  Another man is aware but he does nothing and he makes no progress.  He is yet more wretched.

5.9     Another man’s sense of respect has been excised along with his modesty, but his intelligence has not been cut out.  Rather, it has been changed into that of a beast.

5.10   Should I call this strength of character?  Certainly not, unless I also call it strength of character for male prostitutes to do and say in public everything that comes into their minds.

6.  On Providence

6.1     For everything that occurs in the cosmos it is easy to give praise to providence if a person possesses these two qualities in himself, the ability to observe comprehensively each of the things which have come into existence and the quality of thankfulness.

6.2     Otherwise, one person will not see the good usefulness of what has come into being, while the other will not be thankful for those things, not even if he should see them.

6.3     If god had created colors but had not created the power of seeing them, what use would they have been?

6.4     None whatsoever.  But going back again, if he had created the power of seeing colors, but the things that existed were not such as are able to fall under the power of sight, what good would that be?

6.5     None whatsoever.

6.6     But what about this?  Suppose he had created both these conditions but had not made light.  That too would be of no use.  Who, then, is the one harmoniously fitting this to that and that to this?  Who fits the dagger to the scabbard and the scabbard to the dagger? 

6.7     No one?  Yet surely from the condition of objects that have been brought to completion we are accustomed to give the opinion that they are certainly the work of some craftsman and are not made without a plan.

6.8  Does each of these things, therefore, reveal the craftsman, and do not the things that are seen and the seeing of them and the light reveal him?

6.9   For the male and the female, too, do not the desire of each for union and the power of use of the members designed for that, do not these things reveal the craftsman?

6.10   But as for these things, there may be a pattern of thinking in which we fall under the influence of sensations and are not only ourselves molded by them but we also take something out of them and remove it and put it aside, and we put together certain things from those sensations and, by Jove, we somehow change certain things lying at hand from being one thing to being something else, and are not these changes sufficient to influence certain people and to turn them towards omitting the craftsman?

6.11   Or let them explain to us what it is that makes each of these things or how it is possible for things so marvelous and so workmanlike to come into existence randomly and by chance.

6.12   What then? Have these things come into being for us alone?  Many have, of which the thinking animal especially has need, but you will find many shared in common between us and animals without speech.

6.13   Do those animals without speech understand the things that have come into being?  God had need of those animals using impressions and need of us understanding the use of them.

6.14   On account of this it is sufficient for those animals without speech to eat and drink and sleep and mate and to do those other things as many as each of them accomplishes.  But for us, to whom god has given the power to understand,

6.15   no longer are these things sufficient, but if we do not act properly and in an orderly way and according to the nature and condition of each, no longer will we achieve our own ends.

6.16   For those whose constitutions differ, their works and ends also differ.

6.17   Indeed, for the animal whose constitution is made only for use, for him use is entirely sufficient, but where the constitution is made also for understanding use, for this one, if the employment of understanding is not duly added, never will he reach his goal.

6.18   What then?  God made each of these creatures, one for being eaten, one for service in farming, one for producing cheese, and others for various similar uses.  What use is it to these creatures to be able to understand impressions and to interpret them?

6.19   God brought in man as a spectator both of himself (god) and his works, and not only as a spectator but also an interpreter of them.

6.20   For this reason it is shameful for a person to begin and end where the animals do.  Rather let him begin there but end where nature ends for us.

6.21 And nature ends for us in observation and understanding and in a way of life consonant with nature.  Watch, therefore, lest you die having not seen these things.

6.22   But you are going to Olympia,

6.23   to see the work of Phidias, and each one of you thinks it a misfortune to die without  having seen such sights.

6.24   And where there is no need to travel, but you are already in the place where the works are, don’t you want to see and understand these things?

6.25   Will you not perceive then who you are and why you were born and what it is for which you have been invited to the spectacle?

6.26   But there are certain unpleasant and difficult things in life.  But not in Olympia?  Won’t you be scorched and crowded?  Won’t you be unable to bathe properly?  Won’t you get soaked whenever it rains and won’t you have the enjoyment of crowds and screaming and other difficulties?

6.27   But, I think that weighing all these things against the importance of the spectacle, you bear and endure it.  Haven’t you received strengths and abilities,

6.28   through which you will bear everything that happens?  Have you not received greatness of spirit?  Have you not received courage?

6.29   Have you not received power?  Then why, being great spirited, should I still be concerned about things that may happen?  What will shock me, or disturb me, or what will appear painful to me?  Shall I not use my power for what I have received it, but instead shall I grieve and groan at what happens to occur?

6.30   “Yes, but my snot is running.”  So why do you have hands, you bozo?  Isn’t it so you can wipe off your own snot?

6.31   “But is there a good reason why snot should exist in the cosmos?”

6.32   And how much better is it to wipe off your snot than to blame the cosmos?  Or what do you think that Hercules would have become if there had not been such a great lion and hydra and stag and boar and certain unjust, savage men, whom he cleaned out and drove away?

6.33   And what would he have done if there had been no such ones?  Isn’t it clear that he would have wrapped himself up and slept?  So in the first place he would not have been Hercules, nodding off to sleep in such luxury and tranquility his whole life, and in the second place, if he had been Hercules, what use would he have been?

6.34   What would have been the use of the arms of that hero and of his other strength and power and prowess had not such circumstances and obstacles shaken and exercised him?

6.35   What then?  Was it necessary for him to provide such things for himself and to seek out whence to bring in a lion to his country and also a boar and a hydra?

6.36   This would have been folly and madness.  But being there and being found, they were useful to show forth and to exercise the strength of Hercules.

6.37   Come, therefore, and perceiving these things, consider the powers you possess and having noted them, say, “Bring on now, O Zeus, whatever circumstances you wish, for I possess that preparedness given to me by yourself, and that means for putting myself in good order through  the events that occur.”

6.38   No, but you sit trembling at some things lest they should occur and at other things already happening you lament and grieve and groan.  Then you blame the gods.

6.39   For what else is there following upon such baseness than impiety?

6.40   And surely god not only has given us these powers through which we shall bear every circumstance, neither bowed down nor broken by it, but like a good king and a true father he has given these powers unhindered, unrestricted, unencumbered.  He put this entirely under our control, not keeping out for himself any power over it to prevent or to hinder.

6.41   Having these things free and your own, you do not use them nor do you perceive what it is you have received and from whom,

6.42   But you sit grieving and groaning, some of you completely blinded to the giver himself and not recognizing the benefactor, and others through ignobility of spirit turn to blaming and accusing god.

6.43   Surely I will show you that you possess the means and preparation for greatness of spirit and courageous behavior, and you must show me what sort of occasions you have for blaming and accusing.

7. Concerning the use of variable terms, hypothetical terms and the like.

7.1     The importance of carefully studying variable and hypothetical terms and those that pose a question, and in fact all such terms – the importance of this study for the performance of the duties of life is not evident to most people.

7.2     For we seek in every situation to discover how a truly good man would find the proper way and mode of life in that same situation.

7.3     Therefore, let people say this, that the serious man will not submit to the process of question and answer or, if he submits, that he will not bother to behave in a way that is not casual and off-hand in question and answer,

7.4     or, if these people do not accept either of these, they must agree that it is necessary to examine these topics on which the process of question and answer especially turns.

7.5     For what is it that is offered by reasoning?  To set down what is true, to take away what is false, and to suspend judgement about what is unclear.

7.6     So is it sufficient to learn only this?  It is sufficient, a man may say.  Therefore, if one wants to avoid going wrong in the use of currency, is it sufficient to understand why you accept tested and true drachmas and reject untested ones?

7.7     It is not sufficient.  Then what must this man acquire?  What else than the power to test and judge tested and untested drachmas?  So also in reasoning, what has been said is not sufficient,

7.8     but is it necessary for there to be a testing and judging of what is true and what is false and what is unclear?

7.9     Yes, that is necessary.  In this undertaking what is promised by reasoning?  That you must accept the conclusion of the matters which were well set forth by yourself.

7.10   Well then, is it sufficient now to know this?  It is not sufficient, but one must learn how a certain thing follows upon certain other things and when one thing follows upon one thing and when it follows upon many things at the same time.

7.11   Isn’t having this skill a necessity for anyone who is going to behave intelligently in reasoning and is going to give proofs and demonstrations answering each and every point, and is going to understand fully others who are giving their own proofs and demonstrations and is not going to be led astray by people playing word games as though they were giving proofs?

7.12   Therefore, there has come to us the practice and exercise of using cogent arguments and modes and these have arisen through necessity.

7.13   But, indeed, it happens that we have properly given our premises and such and such is the result, a false proposition but none the less the result.

7.14   Then what is it proper for me to do?  Shall I accept the false result?

7.15   And how is that possible?  But shall I say, “I did not properly allow the premises?”  That is not permitted.  Then shall I say, “This false result not come from the premises I allowed.”  Neither is this permitted.

7.16   What must be done in this situation?  Is it not this?  That just as it is not sufficient to say that a man who has simply borrowed money is still in debt, but rather it must be said that he remains in debt and has not been discharged from the obligation, so also the fact that you granted the premises is not sufficient to compel you to allow the inference, but still you must acknowledge the granting of those premises.

7.17   And certainly if these premises remain to the end the same as they were when we granted them, it is entirely necessary for us to stand by the granting of them and to accept the conclusion drawn from them.

7.18   [Schenkl indicates a lacuna here.]

7.19   . . . for this inference is not still ours nor what we agreed to, since we have abandoned our agreement with the premises.

7.20   Indeed it is necessary to learn about such premises and their changes and variations by which, in the very process of questioning or in giving answers or in drawing syllogistic conclusions or in any other such things, taking on these variations, they provide occasion to the ignorant for confusion when the ignorant do not see what the conclusion is.

7.21   Why learn about premises and their variations?  In order that in just such a situation as this we might not behave in an improper, random and confused way.

7.22   And the same holds for hypotheses and for hypothetical arguments.  For at times it is necessary to require a certain hypothesis like a passenger’s fare to orderly reasoning.

7.23   Is it necessary to grant every hypothesis that is given or not every one?  And if not every one, which one?

7.24   [Concerning what is the inquiry?  It is concerning what is fitting.]  When one has granted an hypothesis, is it necessary to remain always on guard about it or sometimes to abandon it, and to accept the conclusions and not to accept the counter arguments?

7.25   Yes, the latter.  But someone says that “I will cause  you,  having accepted an hypotheses of what is possible, to be carried into what is impossible.”  Will the wise man decline to participate in this and avoid examination and common discussion?

7.26   Yet who else is skilled in using reasoning and acute in question and answer and, by Jove, is not going to be deceived or taken in by fast talk?

7.27   But will he participate and yet pay no attention to avoiding random, hit or miss behavior in his reasoning?  How then will he still be such a man as we expect him to be?

7.28   But without some such exercise and preparation is he able to preserve orderly reasoning?

7.29   Let them demonstrate that he will be able to do this and all these arguments are redundant.  They were absurd and incompatible with our concept of the serious man.

7.30   Why is it that we are still so lazy and easy going and stupid and look for excuses not to work and not to keep alert to perfect our own reasoning.

7.31   If I made mistakes in these matters, surely I did not in any way kill my father, did I?  Look, you dumbbell, where was there a father here for you to kill?  So what was it you did?  The only mistake there was in the whole place, and you made it.

7.32   Let me tell you, this is the very same thing I said to Rufus when he was criticizing me because I had failed to find one missing part of some syllogism.  I said, “It’s not as if I burned down the Capitol,” and he said, “Listen, dumbo, the thing you left out here IS the Capitol.”

7.33   Or are these the only crimes, to burn down the Capitol and to kill your father?  What about using your own impressions at random, heedlessly and haphazardly and not understanding reason or a proof or a trick argument or, in a word, not perceiving what is damaging to you and what is not damaging to you in the process of question and answer?  Is there no error in this?

8.       That the capacities are unsafe in the ignorant

8.1     In as many ways as it is possible to change things (propositions and terms) that are equivalent to each other, in so many ways is it allowable to change the forms of arguments and enthymemes in reasoning.

8.2     Consider such an instance as this: if you have borrowed from me and not repaid, you owe me the money.  If you did not borrow and did not repay, you surely do not owe me money.

8.3     And it is more suitable to no one than to a philosopher to do this in an experienced way.  For if the enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism, clearly the person who has mastered the complete syllogism would be able to master the incomplete one no less well.

8.4     Why, therefore, do we never train ourselves and each other in this way?

8.5     Because even now, not practicing these things nor being diverted – at least by me – from the study of morality, we still advance in nothing towards the good and the honorable.

8.6     What, then, must we expect if we take on this business?  In particular that this business would be not only something taken on in addition to more important things, but also a more than ordinary occasion for self-conceit and vanity,

8.7     For great is the power of argument and persuasive speaking, and especially if it should happen that a person is both well practiced and that he should also acquire polish in speech.

8.8     And we must expect that, in general, all power in this skill provided to the uneducated and weak is unstable and causes excitement and a puffing up with conceit over it.

8.9     For by what means would someone persuade a young man who excels in these matters that he must not become a fifth wheel to them, but that they must be subordinated to him.

8.10   Wouldn’t he stomp on all this advice and parade around before us, elated and puffed up?  And wouldn’t it happen that someone unable to endure him would grab him and remind him of what he’s lost and where he’s gone wrong?

8.11   But wasn’t Plato a philosopher?  Yes, and wasn’t Hippocrates a physician?  But you see how Hippocrates talks.  Surely Hippocrates does not speak in this way in so far as he is a physician.

8.12   Why do you mingle things in other people that occur together coincidentally?

8.13   If Plato had been handsome and strong, would it be necessary for me to settle down to striving to become handsome and strong, as though this were necessary for philosophy since some philosopher was once handsome and strong and also a philosopher?

8.14   Don’t you want to understand and to judge in what respect men become philosophers and what characteristics are present in them otherwise?  Tell me, if I were a philosopher, would it be necessary for you, too, to be lame?  What do you say?

8.16   Nevertheless, if you should ask me what is the good for man, I have nothing else to say to you than that it is a certain proairesis.

9.       How from the hypothesis that we are relatives of god would one proceed to the consequences.

9.1     If these things that are said by the philosophers about the kinship of god and mankind are true, what else is left for mankind than the answer of Socrates whenever anyone asked what country he was from?  He never said, “I am an Athenian” or “I am a Corinthian” but “I am a citizen of the cosmos.”

9.2     Why do you call yourself an Athenian and not just someone from that corner into which your wretched body was thrown when you were born?

9.3     Or is it clear that from some more lordly region, one encompassing not only that corner of yours but also your whole clan and in a word the region where the race of your ancestors came down to yourself, that from such a region you call yourself an Athenian or a Corinthian.

9.4     The person who has understood the government of the cosmos and has learned that the greatest and most authoritative and most all-embracing system of government is the one composed of people and god, and that from god the seeds have come down not only to one’s father and one’s grandfather, but to all things that are begotten and that grow upon the earth and especially to rational beings,

9.5     because it is the nature of rational beings alone to share life together with god being intertwined with him because of reason,

9.6     as for the person who has understood all this, why should he not call himself a citizen of the cosmos?  Why should he not call himself a son of god?

9.7     But being kin to Caesar or to some other very powerful person in Rome, is that sufficient to guarantee that we will live in safety, free of reproach and fearing nothing, while having god as our maker and father and protector will no longer keep us from suffering and fear?

9.8     And where will I get something to eat, having nothing, a man may say.  Well, what about slaves?   What about runaways?  What do they rely on when they get free of their masters?  On their estates or on their household staff or their silver plate?  No, they rely on no one but themselves,  And yet food does not fail them.

9.9     Will it be necessary for our philosopher to travel abroad relying and depending on others and for him to neglect himself and to be worse and more cowardly than savage, wild beasts, each one of which is self sufficient and does not lack his own food and proper means of life according to nature?

9.10   I think it is necessary for the old man to sit here not providing the means for you not to think ill of yourselves nor to engage in lowly or sordid conversation among yourselves,

9.11   but he needs to be here lest any of these young people should fall down when they have learned about their kinship to the gods and that we are bound by certain bonds, the body and its possessions and as many things as are necessary to us on account of these matters for managing a household and living in this life, so that they may wish to cast these things aside as heavy and painful and useless and want to depart to their ancestors.

9.12   And it is necessary for your teacher and preceptor to fight this fight, if indeed there were someone, and it is necessary for you to come and say, Epictetus, we can no longer stand being bound to this miserable body and feeding it and giving it to drink and resting it and cleaning it and for its sake being jerked around for these needs and then those.

9.13   Are not these things indifferent and nothing to us, and death no evil?  And are we not kinsmen of god and have we not come from god?

9.14   Let us depart from whence we have come, and let us be freed now from these fetters that bind us and weigh us down.

9.15   Here there are cheats and thieves and counts and so called tyrants who think that they have some authority over us on account of this wretched body and its possessions.  Let us demonstrate to them that they have authority over nothing.

9.16   And at this point I would say, Friends, wait for god.  Whenever he may give the signal and release you from this service, at that time be released to him.  For the present you must endure to live in that place in which he stationed you.

9.17   Short indeed is this time of dwelling here and easy for those who are so disposed.  For what kind of tyrant or what kind of thief or what kind of courts are frightening to those who have thus set no value on the body and the things that belong to it?  Wait, and do not in any wise depart without reason.

9.18   Something such as this is necessary from a teacher to his gifted young people.

9.19   But now what happens?  A corpse is your teacher and corpses are you.  When you are full and satisfied today, you sit whining about tomorrow and where you can get food.

9.20   You wretched thing, if you have it you will have it, and if you don’t have it you will depart.  The door has been opened.  What reason is there for you to grieve?  Where is there still a place for tears?  What occasion is there still for flattery?  What could one person envy in another?  Why should a person admire those who have many possessions or great power, especially if they are both powerful and violent?

9.21   For what will they do to us?  What they can do we will care nothing about, and what we care about they cannot do.  Who, therefore, will ever rule over a person who is so disposed?

9.22   How did Socrates think about these matters?  How otherwise than as one who knows that he is a kinsman of the gods?

9.23   “If you should say to me now,” he said, “that you will let me go free on these conditions, that I no longer converse about those things which before now I was conversing about, nor trouble our young men and our old men,

9.24   I will reply that you are ridiculous, esteeming it right that, if your own general stations me in a certain position, I must protect that position and guard it and choose to die a thousand times rather that abandon it, whereas if god has stationed me in a certain place and situation it is necessary for me to abandon it.”

9.25   This is what it is for a man in all truth to be a kinsman of the gods.

9.26   We are like stomachs, like intestines, like genitals – for so we think of ourselves, because we are afraid and we desire.  We flatter those who have the power to assist us in these matters.  These same people we fear. 

9.27   Someone asked me to write to Rome on his behalf, an unfortunate man as it seemed to many, formerly being of high rank and wealthy, but later deprived of everything and living here.

9.28   And I wrote on his behalf in a humble, abject style.  He read the letter and gave it back to me and said, “I wanted your assistance, not your pity.  Nothing bad has happened to me.”

9.29   So it was that to test me Rufus used to say, “This or that is going to happen to you at your master’s hands.” 

9.30   And I would reply to him, “It’s human nature,” to which he would say, “Why should I still petition that man when I can get the same thing from you?”

9.31   In truth, when someone already possesses something himself, it is vain and idle to take it from another.

9.32   Therefore, if I am able to take great-spiritedness and nobility from myself, should I take an estate from you and money, or some office?  Certainly not.  I will not be so unaware of my own possessions.

9.33   But when someone is cowardly and meek, what else is there than the necessity to write on his behalf letters as though for a corpse,  “Please grant the cadaver to us of such and such and a pint of blood”?

9.34   For surely such a man is a cadaver and a scant pint of blood and nothing more.  If he were something more, he would understand that one person is not unfortunate because of some other person.

10.   To those who are worried about their rank and position in Rome.

10.1   If we exerted ourselves as vigorously about our own work as the old men in Rome do concerning what they are worried about, maybe we ourselves would accomplish something.

10.2   I know a man older than myself who is now in charge of the grain supply in Rome.  When he was passing through here returning from exile, he railed against his former existence and promised that for the future he would be anxious to embark on nothing other than to finish out the remainder of his life in quiet and tranquility.  “For how much life is there yet left for me?”

10.3   And I said to him, “You will not do it, but having caught just the slightest whiff of Rome you will forget all that.”  And that if some entrée to the court opened up, he would jump right on it, rejoicing and giving thanks to god.

10.4   If you should find me, Epictetus, putting one foot in the court, take from me whatever you wish.”

10.5   So what did he do?  Before he got to Rome, messages from Caesar greeted him.  When he received them, he forgot everything else and since then he has been acquiring one thing after another.

10.6   I was wishing that I could stand beside him now to remind him of the words he spoke when he was going through here and to say, “How much more clever a soothsayer am I than you.”

10.7   What then?  Do I say that man is a creature of inaction?  Certainly not.  But why would anyone say that we philosophers are not active creatures?

10.8   Look at me for instance.  First thing straight away when day breaks, I remind myself quickly of what things I must review.  Then I immediately say to myself, “Why is it any concern of mine how so-and-so reads?  The first order of business is for me to get some sleep.”

10.9  Still, how is the business of those people like ours?  If you pay careful attention you will perceive what it is those people are doing.  For what else is it than that all day long they tally, they dispute and they confer, about a bit of grain, about a scrap of land, or about some such profit making projects.

10.10 It is like taking a little petition from someone and reading, “I ask you to allow me to export a small amount of grain,” vs. “I ask you to learn from Chrysippus what the governance of the cosmos is and what sort of place in it the rational animal holds, and to examine also who you are and what sort of thing is your good and your bad.”

10.11 Are these things like those?  Do they require similar application?  Is it equally shameful to neglect these things and those?

10.12 Well, then, are we the only people who are lazy and half asleep?  No.  Much rather you young men.

10.13 For certainly we old men, when we see young people playing, desire to play ourselves along with you.  And much more so if I saw you wide awake and eager would I want to work seriously with you.

11.   Concerning familial love

11.1   When someone of those in high office came to him, Epictetus, having gotten an account from the man of those things he had by turns asked him, inquired if he had a wife and child.

11.2   When the official acknowledged that he had both, Epictetus inquired further, How do you manage this matter?  Wretchedly, he replied.

11.3   And he asked, In what way?  For it is not in order that they should be wretched that men marry and have children, but rather that they should be happy.

11.4   But, he said, I have been so worried about my young children that lately when my daughter became sick and seemed to be in danger I could not stand to be with her during that sickness but I ran off until someone brought news that she was well.

11.5   Well then, does it seem to you that you were right to do this?  What I did was natural, he said.  But you must persuade me of this, he said, that you acted naturally and I will persuade you that everything that exists according to nature exists rightly.

11.6   This, he said, is what all or most of us fathers experience.  I am not saying that this is not the case, he said, but rather that the point in dispute for us is this, whether these fathers act rightly.

11.7   For by this way of thinking it is necessary to say that tumors develop for the good of the body, because they do develop and that, in a word, to make mistakes is according to nature because nearly everyone or at least most of us do make mistakes.

11.8   Do you show me, then, how this is according to nature.  I am not able to do that, he said, but rather you must show me how it is not according to nature and not rightly done.

11.9   Then suppose we were inquiring about white things and black things, what sort of criterion would we call upon to distinguish them?  The eyesight, he said.  And what if it were a question about hot things and cold things and hard ones and soft, what sort of thing would it be then?  The sense of touch.  And what if it were a question about hot things and cold things and hard ones and soft, what sort of thing would it be then?  The sense of touch.

11.10 Therefore, since we are inquiring about things done according to nature and things done rightly or not rightly, what sort of criterion do you want us to employ?

11.11 I don’t know, he said.  Certainly not knowing a criterion for judging colors and smells and tastes is perhaps not a great loss, but as for what is good and what is bad, what is according to nature and what is contrary to nature, does it seem to you that it is a small problem for a man who has no criterion to judge these?

11.12 It is the biggest problem.  Come then, tell me, all things which seem to be good and fitting to certain people, do they seem rightly to be so?  And as for Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans today, is it possible that all their opinions about food are rightly held?

11.13 And how could that be possible?  But I think it is entirely necessary that, if the opinions of the Egyptians are right, then the opinions of the others are not right, and if the opinions of the Jews are right, then those of the others are not.

11.14 How could this not be so.  Where there is ignorance, there also is a lack of learning and of education concerning the things that are necessary.

11.15 That is agreed.  Therefore, he said, perceiving these things, you will for the future pursue nothing else and you will not have your mind on anything other than how, having learned the criterion for distinguishing those things which are in accord with nature, making use of it you will distinguish each of these things individually.

11.16 As for the present matter I have some things to help you in what you wish.

11.17 Does it seem to you that familial affection is in accordance with nature and is a good thing?  Certainly.  What then?  Is this affection in accordance with nature and good, but what is reasonable is not good?

11.18 Not at all.  Surely, then, what is reasonable is not in conflict with affection.  It doesn’t seem so to me.  And, if not, it is necessary that one of these things in dispute should be in accordance with nature and the other contrary to nature.  Or is this not the case?  No, it is the case, he said.

11.19 So then, whatever we might find that is both consistent with affection and at the same time also consistent with reason, do we boldly proclaim this as being right and good?

11.20 This must be so, he said.  What then?  To go and leave your sick child, that this is not reasonable I do not think you will deny.  But it remains for us to find out if it is consistent with affection.  Then let’s consider that. 

11.21 So then, since you are affectionately disposed towards your child, did you act rightly running off and leaving her?  Her mother, has she no affection for the child?  She does love her.

11.22 Then would it be right for her mother to leave her or not right?  It would not be right.  And what about the nurse?  Does she love her child?  She does love her, he said.  And would it be right for her to leave the child?  Not at all.  And what about her teacher, does he love her?

11.23 He does love her.  Would it then be right for him to leave her and depart, so that either she would be left alone and helpless because of the abundant love of you her parents and of those caring for her, or else would she be left to die in the hands of those not loving her and caring nothing for her?  Let it not be so.

11.24 And, indeed, is this an unfair and senseless thing, that what someone thinks is proper for himself because he is affectionate, is not allowed to those who are equally affectionate?

11.25 That would be very strange.  Come then, if you were sick, would you want to have people loving you like this, your relatives and friends, your children and your wife, so that you were left by them deserted and alone?

11.26 Not at all.  Would you pray so to be loved by your family and friends that through their abundant love you were always left alone in your illnesses, or for the sake of this, would you rather pray to be loved by your enemies, if that were possible, so that you would be left alone by them.  If what I have described is the case, it remains that what you did was not loving.

11.27 What then?  Was it nothing that moved you and drove you to leave your child?  How is this possible?  But it may be something of the sort that motivated a certain man in Rome so that he hid his face when a horse he was very concerned about was running, and then when the horse unexpectedly won, he fainted and had to be revived with sponges.

11.28 What is this thing, this leaving your child?  Perhaps this does not fit the present case exactly.  But it is sufficient to be relied on, if what is said by the philosophers is sound, because it is not outside the bounds where we must seek it, but it is itself the cause for all things, for our doing something or not doing it, for saying something or not saying it, for being elated or being downcast for fleeing or for pursuing,

11.29 and it is the very thing which now is the cause for me and for you – the cause for you of coming to me and sitting now and listening, and for me of saying these things.

11.30 What is this cause?  Is it anything other than that it seemed right to us?  No, that’s it.  And if it seemed otherwise to us, what else would we do than the thing that seemed right to us?

11.31 Surely this was the reason for Achilles’ grief, not the death of Patroclos (for no one else experiences this sort of grief for the dead companion),

11.32 but that it seemed right to him.  So also for you at that time running away was the thing that seemed right to you.  And again if you should remain, you would do so because that seemed right to you.  And now you are going off to Rome because it seems right to you, and if it seemed otherwise you would not go.

11.33 In a word, neither death nor exile nor suffering nor anything else of this sort is the cause for us of doing something or not doing it, but our opinions and our wills.  Am I convincing you of this, or not?

11.34 You are convincing me, he said.  Such things as are the causes in each case are also those things which are accomplished.  So, then, whenever we do something that is not right,

11.35 from this day forward, we will not blame anything other than our own will through which we did it, and will strive to extract that wrong opinion and cut it out more than all tumors and abscesses from the body.

11.36 In like manner also in the case of those things which are rightly done, we will make known the cause.

11.37 And we will no longer blame our slave or our neighbor or our wife or our children, being convinced that if certain things do not seem right to us, we do not do what follows from them.  Of seeming to be good and of not seeming to be good, we are the masters and nothing outside us.

11.38 It is so, he said.  From this day today we will neither look at nor examine anything else to determine of what sort it is or how it is situated, neither field nor slaves nor horses nor dogs, nothing other than our opinions.  I pray it may be so, he said.

11.39 You see, then, that you must become a student, that animal everyone laughs at, if you really want to make an examination of your own opinions.

11.40 And that this is not something of one hour or one day, you know for  yourself.

12.     Concerning contentment

12.1   As for the gods, there are some people who say that the divine does not exist and others who say that it does exist but is inactive and heedless and takes an interest in nothing.

12.2   A third group say that the divinity does take an interest but only in great and heavenly matters and not in anything on earth.  A fourth group say that the divinity takes an interest in the earth and human existence, but only in a general way and not in each person individually.

12.3   A fifth group including Odysseus and Socrates say, “I could not escape your notice moving.”

12.4   First of all, therefore, we must examine each of these groups to determine whether what they say is sound or unsound.  For if there are no gods, how can it be our goal to follow the gods?

12.5   And if gods do exist but take an interest in nothing, how will this be sound?

12.6   But even if the gods exist and do take an interest, if there is nothing communicated to men from them, and by Jove, even to me, how is this a healthy situation?

12.7   The noble and good man carefully examines all these things and submits his own mind to the one who administers the cosmos, just as good citizens submit to the law of the city.

12.8   The person who is being educated ought to come to his education having this as his intention, How can I follow the god in all things and how can I be content with the divine management of the cosmos, and how can I become free?

12.9   For that person is free for whom all things occur according to his will and whom no one is able to hinder.

12.10 What do you mean?  Is being out of your mind freedom?  Certainly not.  For madness and freedom don’t go together.

12.11 But I want everything that seems good to me to happen and to happen in whatever way it should seem good to me.

12.12 You are insane.  You are out of  your mind.  Don’t you know that freedom is a noble and important thing?  For me randomly to want those things to happen that randomly seem good to me – this risks being not only ignoble but the most base thing of all.

12.13 For how do we do things in writing?  Do I want to write the name Dio just as I like?  No.  But I am taught to want to write it as it must be written.  What about music?  It’s just the same.

12.14 And what about the situation in general wherever there is some skill or knowledge?  Otherwise there is no knowledge that is worth anything if it is adapted to the wishes of each and every person.

12.15 In this alone then, in the greatest and most significant of all things, freedom, has it been permitted to me to want whatever I want?  Not at all, but to be educated is this, to learn to want each and every thing to be just as it does occur.  And how do things occur?  As the one giving the orders has ordered these matters.

12.16 He has ordained summer and winter and abundance and dearth and good and evil and all such opposites for the sake of the harmony of the whole and to each of us he has given a body and parts of the body and possessions and companions.

12.17 Being mindful of this ordering of things, we must embark upon our education, not planning to change the ground rules (for it is not given to us to do so, nor would it be an improvement), but in order that, things being such for us as they are and as they occur by nature, we ourselves might have our own minds fitted harmoniously with the things that do occur.

12.18 For is it possible to escape other people?  How is that possible?  But living with them, is it possible to change them?  And who gives us that power?

12.19 What is left then beyond what means can be found for association with them, by which they will do what appears good to themselves, but we, none the less, will be able to stay in accord with nature.

12.20 But you, you are impatient and hard to please and, if you are alone you call it desolation and, if you are with people you call them conspirators and thieves and you blame your own parents and children and brothers and neighbors.

12.21 But being alone, you should call it tranquility and freedom and think yourself like the gods, and when you are with many people, don’t call it a crowd or an uproar or a disgusting shame, but a festival and holiday assembly, and thus accept all things contentedly.  What then is the punishment for those who do not accept all things contentedly?

12.22 To be as they are.  Is someone dissatisfied with being alone?  Let him be alone.  Is someone dissatisfied with his parents?  Let him be a bad son and let him grieve.  Is he dissatisfied with his children?

12.23 Let him be a bad father.  Throw him in jail!  Where he is now.  For it is involuntary, and where someone is involuntarily, that is prison to him.  Thus, Socrates was not in prison because he was there voluntarily.

12.24 My leg is lame.  Wretch, on account of one miserable leg do you then blame the cosmos?  Will you not give it back to the universe?  Will you not abandon it?  Will you not gladly yield it to the one who gave it to you?

12.25 Will you be angry and distressed at what has been ordained by Zeus, what he himself, with the Fates beside him spinning out your existence, has defined and ordained.

12.26 Do you not know how small a part of the universe you are?  But this is for the body.  As for reason, you are in no way inferior to the gods nor less than them, for greatness of reason is not judged by length or height, but by our wills.

12.27 Do you not wish to establish your goodness in those things in which you are equal to the gods?

12.28 I am wretched, and I have a wretched father and a wretched mother.  What then, was it given to you to go forth and choose and say, That man there, let him go with this woman here, at this particular time, in order that I may be born?

12.29 No, that was not given to you.  But it was necessary for your parents to exist before you and then for you to be born.

12.30 But born from people like them?  From such people, of just the sort that they were.  And your parents being such as they were, has no remedy been given to you?  Now if on the one hand you did not know why you had the power of eyesight, you would be unlucky and miserable if you closed your eyes when colors were presented to you; but on the other hand are you not more unlucky and more wretched, having a great spirit and nobility for dealing with each of these things, that you do not know it?  It is those things commensurate with the power which you have that are presented to you.

12.31 But you turn most away from this power when it is most necessary to have your eyes open and seeing.

12.32 Do you not rather thank the gods that they have put you beyond those things they did not put under your control and have made you responsible only for those things which are under your control?  They have freed you of responsibility for your parents.

12.33 They have freed you of responsibility for your brothers.  They have freed you of responsibility for your body, your possessions, death, life.

12.34 What, then, have they made you responsible for?  Only that which is in your power, the use of appearances such as are necessary.

12.35 Why, then, do you drag down upon yourself things for which you are not responsible?  That is to cause trouble for yourself.

13.     How in all things it is possible to act pleasingly to the gods.

13.1   Someone asked him how it is possible to eat pleasingly before the gods.  If it is done justly, he said, and considerately and in like manner with moderation and good order, is it not also done pleasingly to the gods?

13.2   When you ask for hot water and your slave does not obey you, or he does obey but brings lukewarm water, or is not even found in the house, not getting violent and not blowing up, isn’t that pleasing to the gods?

13.3   How could anyone endure such things?  Wretch, will you not endure your own brother who has Zeus as a parent and was born as a son from those same seeds as you, and who has the same origin from above as you?

13.4   But if you have been stationed in some exalted place, will you straightway establish yourself as a tyrant?  Will you not remember what you are and whom you rule?  That they are kinsmen, that they are brothers by nature, that they are the children of god?

13.5   But I have a deed of sale for them and they do not have one for me.  Do you see where you are looking?  That you are looking into the earth, that you are looking into the pit, that you are looking into the wretched laws of the dead and that you are not looking at the laws of the gods?

14.     That the divine watches over all people

14.1   Someone asked him how a person could believe that all the things he did were observed by god.  Does it not seem to you, he said, that all things are united in one?

14.2   Yes, it seems so, he said.  Well then, doesn’t it seem to you that earthly things are affected in common with heavenly things?

14.3   Yes, it does seem so, he said,  For how does it happen so regularly, as though by god’s ordinance, that when he says to the plants to flower, they flower, and when he says to them to put out buds, they bud, and when to bear fruit, they bear it, and when to ripen, it ripens, and when again he says to them to drop their fruit and shed their leaves and fold themselves into themselves and to remain and rest in quiet, they do remain and rest in quiet?

14.4   How else, in regard to the waxing and waning of the moon and the approach and departure of the sun, do we see such changes and alteration towards their opposites of earthly things?

14.5   But are plants and also our own bodies so greatly bound up in the whole of nature and affected by it, and our souls not much more bound up in it?

14.6   But since our souls are so bound up and connected with god, just as if being parts and pieces of him, does not god therefore perceive every movement of them as his own and part of himself?

14.7   But you are able to make a careful consideration concerning the divine administration and concerning each of the things that are divine, and in the same way concerning the affairs of mankind, and likewise you are able to be affected feelingly by ten thousand things, and you are able to be moved in respect to your intellect, agreeing in some cases and in others disagreeing or suspending judgement,

14.8   and you preserve in your own soul so many impressions from so many and such varied things, and moved by these you fall into notions similar in form to those first making impressions and from ten thousand things you preserve abilities one after the other and also memories.

14.9   And is god not able to oversee all things and to be present in all things and with all things to have some sort of communication?

14.10 But is the sun able to give light to so great a part of the whole and to leave so little unlighted, so much as is able to be taken in by the shadow which the earth makes?  But has god made the sun itself and has he made it go around, the sun which is a small part of himself as compared to the whole, and yet is god not able to perceive all things?

14.11 But I, he said, am not able to comprehend all these things at one time.  But does anyone say this to you, that you have power equal to that of Zeus?

14.12 Yet, nevertheless, Zeus has established a guardian for each person and he has assigned this sleepless and unerring daimon to watch over each person.

14.13 For to what better and more attentive guardian has he assigned each of us?  So it is that whenever you close your doors and make it dark within, remember not in any way to say that you are alone.

14.14 Because you are not, but god is within and your own daimon is within.  And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

14.15 You must swear an oath to this god as soldiers do to Caesar.  They, taking their pay as mercenaries, swear to preserve before all other things the safety of Caesar, but you who have expected such great and so many things, will you not swear and having sworn, will you not remain steadfast?

14.16 And what will you swear?  Never to disobey, not to blame, not to find fault with anything given by god, and not to do or suffer any necessity unwillingly.

14.17 Then is this oath like that one?  There they swear to honor no other person before him.  Here they swear to honor themselves above all.

15      What does philosophy promise?

15.1   Someone came to Epictetus for advice about how he could persuade his brother no longer to be angry with him,

15.2   and he said, philosophy does not promise to procure for a person any external thing.  If it were otherwise, it would be offering something beyond its own subject matter.  For as wood is the material of the carpenter and bronze of the maker of statues, so the material of the craft of life is the life of each person.

15.3   Then what about my brother’s life?  Again, his life is the material of his own craft, and as far as your own craft his life is one of the externals, like a field, like health, like reputation.  Concerning these things, philosophy promises nothing.

15.4   In every circumstance philosophy says, I will guard the governing principle and keep it in conformity with nature.  Whose governing principle?  That of the person in whom I am.

15.5   How, then, can my brother cease to be angry with me?  Bring your brother to me and I will tell him, but I have nothing to say to you concerning his anger.

15.6   And when the man consulting him about his brother said: this is what I’m looking for, if my brother does not change his mind, how can I keep myself in conformity with nature.

15.7   Nothing great comes about suddenly here on earth where the cluster of grapes and the fig do not.  If you now say to me, I want a fig, I will reply to you that time is necessary.  Let it first flower, then put forth fruit, then ripen.

15.8   And so the fruit of the fig is not perfected suddenly or in one hour, and do you then wish in so short a time and so easily to obtain the fruit of a man’s mind?  Don’t expect it, even if I tell you so.

APPENDIX

Topic # 1 - Where do Epictetus’ ethics and morality come from?

The interactions of animals, whether they are ants, wolves, bonobos or human beings, can produce an array of outcomes for individual and community well-being or suffering.  It seems axiomatic that well-being is what is desired.  Undoubtedly human beings had accumulated a store of information about how to achieve that and they passed it down from generation to generation orally using the language which biologists think was acquired about 150,000 years ago.  Certainly since the coming of writing 5000 years ago people have had a penchant for writing down laws and formulas. 

          Our western history of philosophical discussion, as opposed to the making of laws and rules, begins in the Platonic dialogues, against the background of thought which constitutes pre-Socratic philosophy, where Socrates asks fundamental questions about, among other things, knowledge, love, piety, pleasure, wisdom, virtue, beauty, art, courage, friendship, temperance and, in The Republic, justice.  The discussion is never simply about what is just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, pious or impious, but about what justice or beauty or piety itself is.  Socrates describes this effort as having great importance.  “For it is no ordinary matter we are discussing but in what way we are going to live our lives.”

          The Platonic dialogues are the foundation stones of moral philosophy, and Socrates’ own moral ideals, particularly as they are expressed in The Republic, Gorgias and Apology, are a high water mark for any age.

          The general Platonic view of morality says that it has a real, absolute basis  which exists outside time and change as the perfect forms or ideas of justice, virtue, knowledge, etc.  This position is in opposition to the relativist belief (as represented at that time, for instance, by Protagoras) that moral codes are simply rules made by human beings for their own convenience in living peacefully together and have no universal or absolute basis.  The Platonic position is very appealing and is understandable in, for example, considering the basic geometrical shape of the circle.  Its form can be imagined and described precisely, yet the  production of a perfect circle by any physical means is absolutely impossible.  The form of the circle is absolute, universal and unchanging.  It is much more difficult to imagine any comparable form for justice and, if  it did exist, how would you make contact with it and understand it?

          The work of Aristotle is more practical.  His Nicomachean Ethics defines the purpose, the telos, of human activity as well-being, eudaimonia, and, to achieve that, he prescribes doing well the thing that is most distinctively human.  What is it that distinguishes us from the other animals?  Logos, which is reason or intellect, and, for Aristotle, god within us.  The well-being which is distinctively human is achieved by engaging in what is distinctively human, i.e., intellectual activity.  This use of reason by human beings in intellectual activity allows them to understand, choose and use the virtues to achieve a balanced behavior free of extremes and conducive to well being.

          For both Plato and Aristotle, morality and ethics are developed through the use of reason to determine the best means of achieving well-being and, in particular, to define and understand the virtues which lead to well being.  There is a general equating of knowledge, reason, goodness, and god.

          The main schools of thought that followed Plato and Aristotle were the Epicureans, Sceptics and Stoics.

          To live a hidden life, to avoid pain, to eat so simply that a small cheese would be a feast, to share conversation with friends, to put aside any fear of the gods and supernatural threats, to live in peace and tranquility – this was the way of Epicurus.  His philosophy is humane and peaceful and remains extremely attractive.  His morality is based on his materialism.  The world is made entirely of atoms and void, and the gods live outside it, in the intermundane spaces where they enjoy themselves and take absolutely no interest in mankind.  Morality is what human reason determines will best ensure pleasure, happiness and the absence of pain.

          Sceptics were philosophers who held no doctrine and suspended judgement on everything.  As a school the Sceptics arose as a continuation of Plato’s Academy during the Hellenistic period, putting emphasis on the Socratic tradition of challenging all assertions, which, for Socrates himself, had been a means of clarifying knowledge.  For the Sceptics it became an attempt to show that there are no foundations for knowledge to rest on.  Pyrrhonist skeptics, a breakaway sect who followed Pyrrho of Elis, developed modes of argument which, they said, could force anyone to suspend judgement on anything.  The goal of Sceptics in general was “a life without belief” which in practice was quiet, conservative and completely non-contentious.  Passive acceptance of appearances, of what appeared right or wrong, and of local ethical and religious customs, the acquisition of a trade and the denial of any responsibility for the truth of any position they accepted yielded for them the fulfillment and tranquility (ataraxia) that other philosophers had hoped to find in their pursuit of  knowledge.  Some Sceptics reached the point of saying that it was too dogmatic to say that knowledge was impossible and so they said nothing.  Plato’s Academy was dominated by Sceptics from about 270 BC to 50 BC and thereafter returned to more conventional philosophy.

We now come to Stoicism and the ethics and morality of Epictetus, one of whose favorite lines was, “Live according to nature.”   It is nature itself which is the origin and basis of Stoic morality.  It provides human beings and other animals with oikeiosis or self-interest, the instincts for self-preservation and for living socially.  Knowledge is needed to survive in nature and avoid error and allows human beings and animals to live in accordance with nature.  Up to this point animals share everything about oikeiosis with human beings,  but then a difference appears.  Zeus gives mankind understanding or reason.  Reason sorts out knowledge and allows human beings to understand what is good and what is evil, and this constitutes wisdom.  But there is still no specific instruction from nature on what constitutes good and bad beyond what nature has supplied for self-preservation.

At this point the Stoics use the idea of prolepsis or preconceptions that arise naturally in human souls which have reached the age of reason.  These preconceptions give human beings useful, self-preserving fundamental  tendencies and also what is needed to live by these tendencies. 

Dr. G. Striker, a scholar of Hellenistic philosophy, comments on this that it is hard to see a relationship between these fundamental mechanisms and the very specific rules of conduct found in Cicero’s De Officiis, and we can certainly add to that the works of  Epictetus.

Dr. Striker says, “Apart from vagueness, the main problems with the Stoic account of natural impulses as a foundation of morality seem to be, first, that the optimistic assumption that our natural instincts are all for the good makes it hard, if not impossible, for the Stoics to explain why most people in fact turn out to be bad rather than virtuous; and second, that the theory introduces two potentially conflicting tendencies without at the same time providing a method for deciding which one is to be given precedence in cases of actual conflict.  This second point is perhaps the more important, since it indicates that even if one could establish that human beings have just the respectable instincts accepted by the Stoics, it would not follow that they would naturally come to lead a virtuous life.”⁴

Epictetus has had students like this before and he has a good answer in  Discourses 1.25.

“Give me commandments!”

Why should I command you?  Has not Zeus commanded you?  Has he not given you, as your own, things unhindered and unfettered and, as not your own, things hindered and fettered?

What commandment did you have, what kind of rule, when you came from Zeus?

The things that are your own guard carefully in every way and do not covet what belongs to others,  Your trustworthiness is yours, your modesty is yours.  Who then can take away these things of yours?  Who will prevent you from using them besides you yourself?

And how do you fail to use them?  You fail whenever you run after things not your own and you destroy the things that are your own.

Since you have such instructions from Zeus, what kind do you still want from me?  Am I greater than he, or more trustworthy?  If you keep these commands of his, do you need any others besides?  Has Zeus not given you these directions?

Epictetus has reviewed his favorite basic precepts for his sceptical student and then says, look, you have to put everything into this struggle for understanding.

Bring to bear your preconceptions, bring to bear the proofs of the philosophers, bring to bear the things you have often heard, bring to bear what you yourself have said, bring to bear what you have read, bring to bear what you have studied.

The coming of Christianity brought an end to Greek philosophy which in any case had fallen into the sere and yellow leaf exemplified by the mysticism of Plotinus.  Plato and Aristotle can be described as theists and god for them was entirely abstract, the form of the good for Plato, and for Aristotle, intellect or reason, the prime mover.  Similarly, the Hellenistic schools of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism did not offer anything like the personal, loving and omnipotent god of Christianity who was, in addition, the giver of commandments, laws and teachings which formed the basis of ethics and morality.

The Dark Ages enveloped philosophy and as Gibbon comments in his description of the formal closing of the schools of philosophy by Justinian in 529 AD, the ministers of the new religion “superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or sceptic to eternal flames.”

Towards the end of the Dark Ages, as knowledge of the ancient world began to seep back into the intellectual life of the West, the power of Platonic and especially Aristotelian thought began to be felt.  This resulted in the study and adoption of Aristotelian logic by Scholastic thinkers of the 13^th and 14^th centuries, in particular Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham, and the attempt by Aquinas to form a Christian Aristotelian philosophy which would reconcile the Church’s thought with Aristotle’s moral philosophy and metaphysics .  Plato was also studied, for example in the School of Chartres where the Timaeus was taught and provided with an extensive commentary and Bernard of Chartres developed a concept of the mind of god as a repository of all true Platonic forms.

The intellectual reconciliation of philosophy with revealed religion ran into the philosophical problem of the origin of the good of the revelations.  When god gave commandments, where they good because he gave them or did he give them because they were good?  In the former case, the simple obedience to authority which seems to be de rigueur does not sit well with philosophers, while in the latter, the goodness of the command has nothing to do with god’s authority as he just noticed that it was good like anyone else would.  In a nutshell, moral philosophers would be put out of business if they had to sit back and take revelations on trust and faith.  Accordingly, the history of moral philosophy since the Renaissance of the 14^th – 16^th centuries has been secular.

A fresh and stimulatingly secular mood is seen in the writings of Machiavelli and Montaigne;  and the new empirical science began to produce valuable and objective factual ideas and to erode the authority of the Church in the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Galileo and Newton.  At the same time secular philosophy began to flourish again and the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason was embodied in the works of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, the English empiricists Locke, Berkley and Hume, and the French thinkers Bayle, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.

Modern moral philosophy begins with Hobbes who looks for the basis of ethics and morality in nature in observed human behavior and sees self-interest as the primary motivator of action.  In the state of nature, where there is no form of government, every person is at liberty to pursue his own good without regard for anyone else, and this results in what Hobbes referred to as “a war of every man against every man” and a life which is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and brief.”  It is the same self-interest for their own good, the same desire for self-preservation which eventually results in a social contract which establishes constraints of morality.  People being what we are, simply having the contract is not sufficient and, therefore, a leader, a sovereign must be established to enforce the contract.

Locke, too, describes people living in a state of nature, free from any external authority, but they seem less harsh than Hobbes’.  In this natural state each person has a duty not to harm others and a right to defend himself against harm.  But the problem of making this work throws up the same conclusion Hobbes reached, that a society must be formed under one supreme government, so people choose to leave their state of nature and appoint a leader with authority to settle disputes.  However, his authority is not absolute and he is answerable to the will of the majority.  “The community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from their legislators whenever they shall be so foolish or so wicked as to lay and carry on designs against their liberties and properties.”  Locke’s writings and ideas were very familiar to the founders of our nation.  As for the origins of our ethics and morality, Locke felt that we are born with no ethical ideas or knowledge and our minds at birth are like “white paper.”  All our ideas are derived from experience which is acted on by reason.  “Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.”  Locke thought that a systematic science of ethics similar to that of geometry might be developed.

Locke’s contemporary, Spinoza, did indeed present his own Ethics in the style of Euclid with definitions, axioms and theorems.  His fundamental idea was to show that ethical and metaphysical truths could be demonstrated logically, by reason alone, since he considered that the relationships of all parts of the universe are logical.  This comes from his view of the perfection of the physical world.  For Spinoza there is only one substance and it is divine, “deus sive natura,” god or nature.  Like Socrates, Spinoza felt that the way to right action was through knowledge obtained by the use of reason and that all wrong action is due to intellectual error.

The problem with understanding Hume’s view of the origin of morality is his unique view of the limitations of human reason and his definition of the passions.  His statement in the Treatise of Human Nature that “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions….” is the reverse of what philosophy had said previously (e.g., in Plato’s tripartite soul allegorized as a charioteer and two horses, reason the driver and spirit and appetite the horses)  and of what we ordinarily say.  He takes reason to be “nothing but the comparing of ideas and the discovery of their relations,” and feels that reason itself has no motivating force.  “Reason is perfectly inert.”  As for passion, the word is Hume’s general term for emotion, attitude and desire rolled into one and seems to mean something like frame of mind or disposition and to be a steady aspect of character.  Our desires and attitudes drive our activities and reason supplies all our tech support.  Hume feels that reason locates and sets up the materials which passion (our desires and attitudes) acts on.

This way of looking at human nature leads into Hume’s moral theory which says that the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason but are derived instead from a moral feeling, sense, or emotion.  It is common experience to notice our own admiration for certain things in our own and others’ behavior, e.g., patience, perseverance, forethought, considerateness, order, good sense, etc., as well as our disapproval of things like lying, stealing etc.  This admiration or disapproval is not the result of reason but of the emotions of pleasure and pain evoked by the actions.  Hume feels that human behavior is generally uniform over time and around the world and it seems to be axiomatic with him that human beings have similar responses of the passions to the same actions.  Morality is a set of feelings based on the innate, generally uniform responses that people have in themselves to actions and which they recognize in others by instinctual sympathy.  The Hume scholar Simon Blackburn sums this up with the statement that, “Hume thinks that ethics is a matter of which traits we admire and esteem, and which we hate….  His approach to moral philosophy marks a decisive break from classical and mediaeval thought.”

Kant thinks that human reason (without any help from Hume’s passions) can determine the form of our moral duty, and duty with Kant is a major word.  Duty is put in contrast with our natural inclinations or passions, our desire for well-being, our sympathy with others and morality is not derived from these.  Reason determines that the requirement of duty is to act in accordance with the moral law and that moral law, not being able with Kant to be found in our innate desire for well-being, or elsewhere, has to be found in Kant’s own mind, and it is a pretty good one.  It is THE fundamental moral law and is based on reason, Kant’s categorical imperative.  (Categorical here means unable to be avoided as opposed to his hypothetical imperative, hythothetical meaning conditional.  An example of the conditional imperative is,  keep quiet – if you want to look wise).  The categorical imperative comes in at least five forms, the default setting being, “Act only on that maxim which you can will to be a universal law for all agents.”  Kant feels that, using this basic law as a test, we can make judgements about the morality of any particular action.  This sort of universalizibility is similar to Rawls’ idea of justice and a sort of social contract fairness.  Blackburn says that Hume thought making morality depend on any kind of law was a fundamental mistake. 

Much more easily understood is the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill and the latter is a positive pleasure to read because of the lucidity of his ideas and the clarity of his English.  For the utilitarians, the test for all morality (and in fact for all legislation) is the principle of utility: actions are right or wrong to the extent that they increase or diminish the general well-being.

Other major philosophers of the 19^th  century are Schopenhauer, Hegel and Nietzsche, but unfortunately I know almost nothing about them.  Here’s what is said in brief from the Oxford Companion to Philosophy.  Schopenhauer rejects Kant’s separation of morality from natural human feelings of compassion and says that the essential being of all persons is literally one and the same and that our moral concern for the suffering of others is a recognition of this.  Hegel calls Kant’s categorical imperative empty formalism and says ethics is a social phenomenon.  Nietzsche says there is no such thing as morality, there are only different moralities.  There’s the “master morality” and I guess we’ve all heard about that, and the “slave morality” which is Christian duty and self sacrifice, the veneer of concealed resentment and vindictiveness.

Ethics in the 20^th century was kicked off in 1903 by G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica which rejects a basis for ethics in nature or in an understanding of human behavior and says that people can recognize that the most important things which are good in themselves are the pleasures of living well together.  There is no proof or need for proof of this as it is self evident.  Logical positivism (also more clearly called linguistic empiricism) says that the only meaningful statements are either analytic truths (i.e., statements true or false purely by virtue of the meanings of the words used to make them) or empirically verifiable propositions.  Unfortunately, value judgements or ethical statements do not fall into either category and are, therefore, meaningless.

The first two thirds of the 20^th century produced a great deal of very abstract philosophy, from the Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead to Goedel’s incompleteness theorem to the linguistic philosophy of Austin and Ryle after World War II.  Existentialism was the other side of that coin and was pretty much what was available in the 1950’s for those of us who were not math geniuses.

A good book just out that covers a number of topics in ethics over the past 60 years is Conversations in Ethics by Alex Voorhoeve, Oxford 2009, a series of eleven interviews with major people in moral philosophy today, including Frances Kamm (case judgements), Peter Singer (animal rights and medical ethics), Philippa Foot (virtue ethics), and Bernard Williams (rejects Kant, goes back to Hume’s emotions).

 In the past thirty years, practical philosophy has taken an upswing in such ethics-hungry fields as business and medicine.  Thanks to the work in biology of such scientists as our own E.O. Wilson, we have become more aware of the close relationship of all living creatures to each other, and there has been welcome attention brought to our responsibilities towards animals and the environment.

As for our initial question, where do our morality and ethics come from?,  let me recommend another new book that updates our knowledge of animal behavior, Wild Justice the Moral Lives of Animals by Bekoff and Pierce, Chicago 2009.  Darwin said that, “Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts, which in us would be called moral…and dogs possess something very much like a conscience.”  Bekoff and Pierce use the information taken from behavioral observations of primates, social carnivores and other animals to support their conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species and that morality is an evolved trait that we share with other social animals.

Perhaps Epictetus is quite right in telling his students to listen to the precepts of Zeus sive natura (god or nature) and to live κατὰ φύσιν (according to nature).  Certainly St. Francis was right when he spoke of Brother Wolf and Sister Bear.

         

Topic # 2 - Logic

εὖ γὰρ ἴσθι, ἦ δ’ὅς, ὦ ἄριστε Κρίτων, τὸ μὴ καλῶς λέγειν οὐ μόνον εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο πλημμελές, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακόν τι ἐμποιεῖ ταῖς ψυχαῖς.

“You must know this, my dear Crito, that the misuse of words is not only a mistake in itself but also is damaging to the soul.” Socrates speaking in the Phaedo 115e

          Zeus spoke to Epictetus in the early part of Book I of the Discourses (1.10 – 1.13) about the unfortunate natural condition of the human body, made as it is of potter’s clay, and expresses his regret at being unable to help out with the problems of physical existence.  Wanting to do what he could, though, he decided to give mankind something that was in his power to give, a small part of himself, reason, λόγος, ἡ δύναμις ἡ λογική, the spark of Zeus.  The right use of reason is a constant theme of Epictetus’ philosophy and, although he does not put great emphasis on formal logic and in Enchiridion Chapter 52 cautions against getting over involved in the study of it, he does, nevertheless, want all his students to know how to think critically, how to use the one gift given to human beings by Zeus, λὀγος or ἡ δύναμις ἡ λογικἠ.  Chapter 7 of Book I is devoted to this and presents a number of terms as though they will be understood in their logical usages by his students.

          To better understand Chapter 7, we can examine the basics of syllogistic logic, a clear, formal way of thinking developed by Aristotle and augmented by Chrysippus and other philosophers of the ancient world.  The power and influence of syllogistic or Aristotelian logic can be judged from its extensive use and further development  down to the end of the classical world and the continued study of it by  the Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages, especially Peter Abelard, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.  In fact, it was studied right up until the advent of modern symbolic logic in the early twentieth century.  A major work devoted to syllogistic logic, Formal Logic with Exercises by John N. Keynes, was published in 1887. 

          Aristotelian logic, the logic of the Stoics and of Epictetus, is the study of deductive inference.  Deduction is reasoning from premises to a conclusion, where the premises are known or given facts and the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.  This type of reasoning is not based on observation, examination or experiment and can be referred to as a priori reasoning.  It is seen mainly in math and formal or syllogistic logic or in any reasoning process that uses axioms or other facts which are simply accepted or designated as facts.  Induction is reasoning based on observation and experiment and, of course, is what science does.  It can be called a posteriori reasoning.  These terms are difficult to visualize – a posteriori means from the later and suggests that an assembly of observations, e.g. shells, trilobites and crinoids, found fossilized in sedimentary rock in Jefferson County, can lead back to a conclusion or new fact that explains them, that an inland sea once covered the area.  This conclusion or new fact, the presence of the inland sea, is based on what followed from its presence, the fossils.  A priori means from the former and suggests that an assembly of already known or accepted facts can lead to another necessarily true fact, e.g., the classic syllogism, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore, Socrates is mortal, where the new fact that Socrates is mortal is based on the facts that came before it.  You can see that these distinctions blur into each other.

          Syllogistic logic consists of deductive reasoning only and the process is called inference.  Inference is the logical process of deriving a conclusion from premises known or accepted to be true.  The form of the argument is the syllogism which consists of two premises and a conclusion.  A premise is a proposition from which a conclusion is drawn and the syllogism has two, the major and the minor premises.  There are four kinds of premises or propositions:  A, E, I and O depending on the words that begin them, the quantifiers.

          A       the premise begins with all

          E        the premise begins with no

          I         the premise begins with some

          O       the premise begins with some…are not

Terms refer to three aspects of a syllogism

          S        is the subject of the conclusion

          P        is the predicate of the conclusion

          M       is the middle term which is seen in both premises but not in the conclusion.

For example,

All men are mortal (A-type premise, M is men)(MP)                                             Socrates is a man (A-type [one=all], M is man)(SM)                        Therefore, Socrates is mortal (A-type)(SP)

The figure of a syllogism is the arrangement of its terms S,M and P, and there are four possible figures.  The conclusion is always SP.

          First figure MP, SM, SP (middle term, then predicate in first premise; subject, then middle term in second premise; subject, then predicate in conclusion).

          Second figure PM, SM, SP

          Third figure MP, MS, SP

          Fourth figure PM, MS, SP

The mood of a syllogism is determined by the arrangement of the quantifiers in the three sections.  There are four quantifiers, A, E, I and O, and 64 possible combinations of three letters.  Every syllogism can be characterized by a combination of its figure and mood and, as there are four figures and 64 moods, there are 256 possible patterns.  Of these, it has been found that 19 are valid and strong, five valid and weak, and the other 232 invalid.  A valid syllogism is one that yields a valid inference or argument.  It is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false.  How do you tell if a syllogism is valid?  Aristotle distinguished a number of valid and invalid forms by direct inspection of examples and that remained the way it was done.  Today Euler diagrams (3 circles designating S, P and M arranged according to the meaning of the premises) can be helpful in inspection.  In antiquity, after Aristotle, the five valid but weak forms were also described and all are characterized by weak (I and O) conclusions.  In the Middle Ages elaborate mnemonics were developed for remembering the valid forms.

          In Chapter 7 we encounter a scattering of logic vocabulary but not a systematic presentation of Stoic logic:

          ἀπόδειξις – proof

          λόγος – reasoning 

          συνάγοντες λόγοι – valid arguments

          τρόποι – moods

          λῆμμα – premise

          τὸ ὡμολογημένον – premise, proposition

          τὸ ἐπιφερόμενον – inference

          τὸ ἀκόλουθον – conclusion, inference

          συλλογίζομαι – infer by means of syllogism

          It’s certainly very possible to see how getting into the mechanics of logic could turn into a consuming interest, and it is just that that Epictetus speaks to his students about in Enchiridion 52:

“The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is the use of precepts, such as, do not lie.  The second topic is that of proofs, such as why it is necessary not to lie.  The third topic is explanatory and confirmatory of these things, such as why is it that this constitutes a proof.  In fact, what is a proof?  What is a consequence?  What is a contradiction?  What is a truth?  What is a falsehood?  So the third topic is necessary on account of the second and the second is necessary on account of the first.  The topic that is most important and where we must abide is the first.  But we do the opposite.  For we spend our time in the third topic and all our effort is spent on it and we neglect the first altogether.  Indeed, we lie while we have ready at hand a proof to demonstrate that it is necessary not to lie.”

                                                                                                                          

         

Philosophical terms used in the Enchiridion

ἀγανακτέω  be annoyed, be discontented

ἀδιάφορος  indifferent

αἰδήμων   modest

αἴσιος  boding well, auspicious

ἀκολουθία  consequence

ἀκωλυτός  unhindered

ἀληθές  true

ἀμφορμαι  means, origins

ἀναφορά  reference

ἀνεξικακία  forbearance, long suffering

ἀπάθεια  freedom from emotion

ἀπαραπόδισος  not entangled at the feet, unimpeded

ἀπόδειξις  proof

ἀρχαί  power, office

ἀσύνακτος  illogical, incoherent, incompatible

ἀταραξία  calmness, tranquility

ἄτιμος   without honor

ἀτυχής  luckless

ἀφορμάω  refuse;  τὸ ἀφορμᾶν  refusal

διαιρέω  analyze, interpret, draw a distinction

διαλογίσμος   consideration, calculation

διατροφή  sustenance, support

δόγμα  that which seems to one, opinion, dogma, belief

δόξαι  reputation, public acclaim

δυστυχής  having bad luck

ἐγκαλέω  blame

ἐγκρατεία  self-control, continence

ἔκβασις  outcome, result

ἔκκλισις  aversion

ἐλευθερία  freedom

ἐνθυμέομαι  take to heart, be hurt by

ἔνστασις  plan of life

ἐπαίρω  lift up; passive: be excited about, be pleased

ἐπιθυμέω   desire

ἐπιλογισμός   reckoning, calculation, consideration

ἐπιστήμη  knowledge

ἐπιτυχία  luck, chance, advantage, success

εὐροέω  flow well, speak well, do well

θεωρήμα  precept

θλἰβω  distress

θλἰψις   affliction

κανών  precept, rule

καρτερία  patience, endurance, patient endurance

καταληπτικός  able to seize, conveying direct apprehension of an object

καταφρόνησις  contempt, disdain

κτῆσις  property

κωλυτός  hindered

λοιδορία  railing, abuse

μάχη  contradiction

ὅλα, τὰ ὅλα  the cosmos

ὄρεξις  desire

ὁρμάω  choose;  τὸ ὁρμᾶν  choice 

ὁρμή  impulse, intention, motivation

παραποδίζω  entangle the feet of

πιστός   true, trustworthy

προαίρεσις  volition, will, choice

προκείμενον  matter set forth

προκόπτω  make progress (cut forward)

προτέρημα  advantage, victory

οἰκείωσις appropriation, a taking as one’s own, self-interest

σκέψις  inquiry, viewing, perception, speculation, thought, doubt, hesitation

συνακτικός  logical, coherent

ταπεινός  base, low

ταρασσόμενος  disturbed in mind

τηρέω  watch over, preserve

ὑπεξαίρεσις  reserve, reservation, removal

ὑπόληψις  judgment, understanding, conception

φαινόμενον  manifest thing

φαντασία  impression

χρῆσις φαντασιῶν  use of impressions

ψεῦδος  false

Footnotes

Footnotes

1.   Hume, David, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion 10.25 p.74

2.   Long, George, The Discourses of Epictetus 2.26 footnote

3.   Dobbin, Robert, Epictetus Discourses Book I p. 101

4.   Striker, G.  Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics  p.256

                                                  

Bibliography

Bekoff, M, and Pierce, J. 2009 Wild Justice (Chicago)

Brittan, C. and Brennan, T. 2002 Simplicius On Epictetus’ Handbook 1-26 (Ithaca, NY)

Brittan, C. and Brennan, T. 2002 Simplicius On Epictetus’ Handbook  27-53 (Ithaca, NY)

Glare, P.G.W. 1982 Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford)

Goodwin, W.W. and Gulick, C.B. 1930 Greek Grammar (Boston)

Hadot, I. 1996 Simplicius Commentaire sur le Manuel d’Epictete (Leiden)

Higginson, T.W. 1890 The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. Epictetus. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. translator  (New York. Thomas Nelson and Sons)

Liddell, H.G. and Scott, R. 1889 An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford)

Liddell, H.G. and Scott, R. revised by Jones, H.S. 1996 A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford)

Long, G. 1890 The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments. Epictetus. George Long. translator (London. George Bell and Sons)

Morwood, J. 2001 Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek (Oxford)

Oldfather, W.A. 1925 Epictetus The Discourses as Reported by Arrian Books I-II (Cambridge, MA)

Oldfather, W.A. 1928 Epictetus The Discourses Books III-IV, Fragments, Encheiridion (Cambridge, MA)

Schenkl, Heinrich 1916 Epicteti Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae  (Leipzig, Teubner)

Smyth, H.W. 1956 Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA)

Striker, G.1996 Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge)

Traubel, H. 1910 With Walt Whitman in Camden (Lantham, MD)

Voorhoeve, A. 2009 Conversations on Ethics (Oxford)

                                            Abbreviations

G&G – Goodwin, W.W. and Gulick, C.B. 1930 Greek Grammar (Boston)

L&S – Liddell, H.G. and Scott, R. 1889 An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford)

LSJ – Liddell, H.G. and Scott, R. revised by Jones, H.S. 1996 A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford)

All translations from Greek and Latin are my own.