Hardcover(First Edition)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226682969 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2020 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 64 |
| Sales rank: | 396,720 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.40(w) x 6.30(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Philosopher as Doctor
TOWARDS THE END of the first century ad a former slave, originally from Asia Minor, whose real name we don't even know, set up a philosophy school in a new town on the western coast of Greece. He'd gone there not entirely through his own choice, having been banished from Rome – along with all the other philosophers – by the Emperor Domitian, who saw such intellectuals as a potential threat to his rule. The town was called Nicopolis, founded about a century earlier by Augustus, and the ex-slave was known by the name of Epictetus, which in Greek simply means 'acquired'. During the years of its operation, Epictetus's school attracted many students and eminent visitors, not least the Emperor Hadrian, who was far more favourably disposed towards philosophers than some of his predecessors had been. Epictetus himself wrote nothing, but one of his pupils – a young man named Arrian who would go on to become an important historian in his own right – took notes of the conversations in the school and later worked them up into the Discourses of Epictetus. In the Discourses, Epictetus is quite clear about what his role is as a philosopher. The philosopher, he says, is a doctor, and the philosopher's school is a hospital – a hospital for souls.
When Epictetus defined philosophy in this way he was following a well-established Greek philosophical tradition that extended back at least to Socrates. In Plato's early dialogues, Socrates had argued that the task of the philosopher is to take care of one's soul, just as a physician takes care of one's body. By 'soul' we ought not to assume anything immaterial, immortal or supernatural. Instead in this context we should understand it simply as mind, thoughts and beliefs. The task of the philosopher is to analyse and assess the things one thinks, examining their coherence and cogency. On this almost all philosophers, ancient or modern, would agree.
For Socrates, and later the Stoics, this concern with taking care of one's soul was all the more important because he and they held that the condition of our soul ultimately determines the quality of our lives. Socrates famously chastized his fellow Athenians for paying great attention to their bodies and their possessions but very little attention to their souls – to what they think or believe, to their values and characters. Yet Socrates insisted that the key to a good, happy life lies in attending to the latter, not the former. In an important argument later taken up by the Stoics, Socrates sought to show that something like great wealth is, in a sense, worthless. To be more precise, he argued that material wealth is value-neutral, because it can be used for good or bad ends. The money in itself is neither good nor bad. Whether it is used for good or bad ends depends upon the character of the person who has it. A virtuous person can use money to do good things, while a not so virtuous individual might use it to generate great harm.
What does this tell us? It shows that the real value – the source of what is good or bad – resides in the character of the person who has the money, not in the money itself. It also tells us that paying excessive attention to our money and possessions while neglecting the state of our character is a grave mistake. It is the job of the philosopher to provoke us to see this, and then to support us as we try to cure our souls of whatever infirmities they may have.
One response to this line of thought would be to say that we should pay attention only to the state of our souls, and become indifferent to things like worldly success, money or reputation. Indeed, the Stoics called such things 'indifferents'. Only an excellent, virtuous character is genuinely good, they claimed, while only its opposite, a vicious character, is bad; everything else is a mere 'indifferent'. There were some philosophers who came after Socrates who thought just this. These were the Cynics, the most famous of whom was Diogenes of Sinope, who is said to have lived – for a while at least – in a barrel, like a stray dog. Diogenes pursued a virtuous, excellent character at the expense of everything else, advocating an austere, simple life in harmony with Nature. On seeing a child drinking water just using its hands, Diogenes is reported to have said, 'A child has beaten me in simplicity of living,' and then to have thrown away one of the few things he owned, his cup.
Zeno, the first of the Stoics, was for a time drawn to the Cynic way of life, but ultimately found it wanting. Socrates had said that money can be used for both good and bad ends, but if you've got no money at all you're unable to do any good with it. As Aristotle had remarked, some virtues seem to require a certain amount of wealth, such as generosity or charity. Not only that, but Diogenes's active dislike of possessions seemed to go beyond the claim that these things are mere 'indifferents'. If money really is an indifferent, then why care whether you are completely broke or stinking rich? Diogenes seemed to be saying that it was always better to be poor than wealthy. One can see how this praise of poverty would leave its mark on parts of the later Christian tradition.
But this was not Zeno's view. Diogenes had said we ought to live a life in harmony with Nature. Zeno's response was to say that it is completely natural for us to pursue things that help us to survive – food, shelter, things that maintain our health, and possessions that contribute to our physical comfort. We all do it, and there's no reason to feel bad about it. We all pursue material prosperity because it helps to secure our survival.
In everyday language we might say that all these things that benefit us are 'good', but Zeno, following Socrates, wanted to reserve the word 'good' for an excellent, virtuous character. So instead he said that they have value. We value being healthy, well off and respected, but nevertheless none of these things are 'good' in the way that an excellent character is good. This led Zeno to call these things 'preferred indifferents' in his technical vocabulary. All other things being equal, we'd all prefer to be rich rather than poor, healthy rather than ill, and respected rather than despised. Of course we would; who wouldn't? But – and this is a key point - because a virtuous character is the only thing that is truly good, we ought never to compromise our character in the pursuit of such things. Nor ought we to think that any of these things can, on their own, make us happy. The person who pursues money, not simply to meet the needs for survival, but because they think that it will automatically give them a good, happy life, is gravely mistaken. The person who compromises their integrity in the pursuit of fame or money has made a graver mistake still, for they have damaged their character – the only truly good thing – for the sake of a mere 'indifferent'.
These are some of the things that Epictetus would have discussed at his school in Nicopolis. His pupils would have been predominantly the children of the Roman elite, about to embark on administrative careers in the Empire. One hopes that such lessons made them better than they would otherwise have been.
But just what does it mean to take care of one's soul? What is involved in having an excellent character? To use a very out-of-fashion word, it means to be virtuous. In particular it means to be wise, just, courageous and moderate – the four cardinal virtues according to the Stoics. This is what it means to have a good character and to be a good human being. While at first blush all this talk of 'virtue' might sound a bit moralistic, it is also possible to translate it into more descriptive terms. What is a good human being?
Can we talk about good people in the same way we might talk about a good table or a good knife? A good table is one that meets the definition of providing a stable surface; a good knife is one that cuts well. If humans are by nature social animals, automatically born into families and communities, then a good human being will be one that behaves sociably. Someone who does not behave well towards others – who does not have the character traits ofjustice, courage and moderation – will in a sense fail to be a good human being, and if they fail completely we might even question whether they are really human at all. 'That person is a monster,' we might say about someone who has committed unspeakable crimes against others.
No one wants that. Indeed, the Stoics also followed Socrates in thinking that no one chooses to be vicious and unpleasant. Everyone pursues what they think is good, even if their idea of what's good or what will benefit them is hopelessly distorted. Again, that is where the philosopher comes in. The task of the philosopher, conceived as a doctor for the soul, is to get us to examine our existing beliefs about what we think is good and bad, what we think will benefit us, and what we think we need in order to enjoy a good, happy life.
According to the Stoics, a good, happy life is one that is in harmony with Nature. We'll come back to this idea a number of times in the chapters that follow. For now, we can say this involves both the thought that we should live harmoniously with the external natural world (Nature with a capital 'N') and in harmony with our own human nature. These days we are often encouraged to think that people are by nature selfish and competitive, always out for their own advantage. The Stoics have a quite different, more optimistic, view about human nature. Left to their own devices, the Stoics think that humans will naturally mature into rational, virtuous adults. We are by nature reasonable and decent social animals. Of course, many things can interrupt and interfere with that process of development, and when they do we find ourselves living a life out of sync with our deepest natural inclinations. When this happens, we become unhappy.
This is when we need the help of a philosopher-doctor, who can offer remedies that will enable us to get back on track. One of the things we hope these remedies will do is reconnect us with a sense of what we are as human beings and how we might live in the light of that knowledge. The first step towards this is to start to pay attention to the condition of our souls, just as Socrates exhorted, which is to say our beliefs, judgements and values. The first lesson, then, is that while there may well be external aspects of our lives that we might want to change, we need to pay close attention to how we think about things as well.
CHAPTER 2What Do You Control?
WHAT ASPECTS OF your life do you really control? Do you control whether you get ill or not? Do you ever decide to be involved in an accident? Can you stop your loved ones dying? Do you get to choose whom you fall in love with and who falls in love with you? Can you guarantee your own worldly success? How much control do you really have over any of these things? You might be able to influence them in various ways, but can you ever guarantee that they will turn out in your favour? Questions such as these were a central preoccupation of the Stoics.
The Handbook of Epictetus opens with a fairly blunt account of what things he thinks are and are not 'up to us'. The things that we can control – the things in our power include our judgements, impulses and desires. Pretty much everything else is, Epictetus suggests, ultimately out of our control, including our own bodies, our material possessions, our reputation and our worldly success. He goes on to say that much of human unhappiness is simply due to misclassification, the product of thinking that we have control over certain things when in fact we don't.
This division looks like it might involve a distinction between things that are either internal or external: we can control our minds but not the world around us. Or we might think of it as a distinction between the mental and the physical: we can control our thoughts but not material things such as our bodies or possessions. Neither of those ways of thinking about it are quite right, although both do capture something of what's going on. Epictetus does not say that we have control over everything internal to us or over all of our thoughts. Instead he claims that we have control only over a certain set of mental actions. To be more precise, he thinks that all we really have control over are our judgements, along with things that derive from our judgements. We don't have complete control over everything in our minds; we don't choose the sensations and memories that we have, and we cannot switch on and off our emotions (we'll come back to emotions in the next chapter). No, all we have complete control over are our judgements, which is to say what we think about the things that happen to us.
Now, our judgements are hugely important because, among other things, they determine how we act. As Epictetus put it, they control our desires and impulses. We might see something, make a judgement that it is something good, which creates a desire for it, which in turn prompts us to pursue it. Depending on what the thing is – a dream career, an expensive house – it might be a long and arduous pursuit, carried out at great cost to both ourselves and others. But the whole process begins with a simple act ofjudgement.
So, judgements are fundamental, and we neglect them at our peril, but we often make them so swiftly that we don't even notice that we are doing anything. We might judge so quickly that something is good, and do it so often, that we start to assume that the thing in question just is good in itself. But nothing external is inherently good; it's all just matter in motion. Only a virtuous character is genuinely good. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was an avid reader of Epictetus, often tried to remind himself of this by pausing to think about the physical nature of seemingly desirable things before passing judgement on them: a fine meal is merely the dead body of a pig or a fish. Equally, the expensive gadget or executive car is just a lump of metal and plastic. Whatever value these things might seem to have is value that we attribute to them with our judgements, and not anything inherent in the things themselves.
The good news, according to Epictetus, is that we have complete control over our judgements, and with some reflection and training we can soon overcome the tendency to judge things unthinkingly. If we can do that – if we can become masters of our own judgements – then we'll be in complete control of our lives. We'll decide what's important to us, what we desire and how we act. Our happiness will be completely within our own control. On the face of it Epictetus seems to be saying that we don't have control over very much at all, but in fact he is saying that we have control over everything that truly matters for our wellbeing.
What about all the other stuff that he says we don't control, all the stuff that preoccupies so much of our attention – our bodies, possessions, reputation and worldly success? We've already seen the Stoics argue that none of these things are inherently good. Epictetus's point here is slightly different.
His point is that even if you think they are good, the fact is that you have no control over them. If you make your happiness dependent on one of these things, it will be extremely vulnerable to forces out of your control. Whether it be a romantic relationship, a specific career ambition, material possessions or a certain physical appearance, if your sense of wellbeing depends on one of these sorts of things, then you have effectively handed over your happiness to the whims of something or someone else. That's not a good position to be in. If you think you do have control over these things, when the plain fact is that you don't, then frustration and disappointment are almost guaranteed.
It is worth stressing here that Epictetus is not suggesting that we should give up on or turn away from the external world. Just because we cannot control something does not mean that we ought to ignore it. It's simply a matter of developing the right attitude towards it. Later on in his Handbook, Epictetus proposes thinking of your life as if you were an actor in a play. You haven't chosen your role, you don't get to decide what happens, and you have no control over how long it will last. Rather than fight against all these things which are out of your control, your task is to play the role you find yourself in as best as you can.
We should probably qualify this a bit. We all find ourselves assuming a number of roles. Some of these we can certainly change if we want to – no one is suggesting that it is compulsory to remain stuck in a miserable job or an unhappy relationship. But there are other things more closely tied to the human condition that we can't do much about. None of us have chosen our nationality, gender, age, skin colour or sexual orientation, yet all these things will have a significant impact on the shape of our lives.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Pocket Stoic"
by .
Copyright © 2019 John Sellars.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
