How would epictetus analyze the value of bodily pain?

HANDBOOK of

EPICTETUS

Translated, with introduction and annotations, by NICHOLAS WHITE

HACKETT PUBLISHING COMPANY Indianapolis/Cambridge

EPICTETUS: c. A.D. 50-130

Table of Contents

Copyright © 1983 by Nicholas P. White All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 99 98 7 8 9 10

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Introduction 1

HANDBOOK OF EPICTETUS 11

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Epictetus. The handbook of Epictetus.

(HPC philosophical classics series) Bibliography: p. 1. Ethics. I. White, Nicholas P., 1942—

II. Title, m. Series. B560.E5W54 1983 188 83-267 ISBN 0-915145-69-3 (pbk.) ISBN 0-87220-049-3 (cloth)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Introduction

Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. A.D. 50-130) is a represent- ative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 B.C. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 B.C., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth cen- tury, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descrip- tions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus—and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nine- teenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an under- graduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition.

As one should expect in a philosophical tradition of as much as 500 years' active duration, Stoic philosophy varied a great deal, though its basic ideas remained the same. Although it is unclear to what extent Zeno was a theoretically oriented philosopher like Plato or Aristotle, or to what extent he was instead concerned mainly to dispense practical advice to people on how to live their lives, it is

2 / INTRODUCTION

clear that early Stoic philosophy, particularly as carried on by Chrysip- pus (c. 279-206 B.C.), the third head of the Stoic school at Athens, was very largely a theoretical and (in the modern sense) academic philosophical movement. In a philosopher like Epictetus, on the other hand, one has the sense that the practical advice-giving side dominates, and that interest in working through philosophical problems or arguments is relatively small. In varying degrees, the works of later Stoics such as Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. 65) and Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180) are in this respect much like those of Epictetus. It is a dif- ficult and interesting question whether this difference reflects a dif- ference in philosophical doctrine between the earlier and the later writers, or rather simply a difference in the manner in which they chose to expound the same underlying doctrine.

We can both examine this question and take a first look at Epictetus' views at the same time. Perhaps the most succinct statement of his view of the best possible condition for a human being to be in is given by c. 8 of the Handbook:

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.

Epictetus is here not claiming that if you adopt this attitude then external events in the world will go well for you, but that the best possible human condition, not being a matter of such external events but of one's state of mind, precisely is one of adopting just this at- titude. This appears to be much the same thought that motivated the statement by Zeno that the end or telos of a human being's life is to be in accord or agreement with nature (cf., e.g., cc. 4, 30). The problem, however, concerns just what this thought amounts to, and whether it is really the same in Epictetus as it was in Zeno.

If we look at it in the following way, which seems to me correct, it does appear to be the same idea in both, up to a point. The basic idea is that for a human being to be in an ideal state is to lack all dissatisfaction with anything about the world, while at the same time being conscious and intelligent. One way of doing this might be to satisfy all of one's desires; but the Stoics held, not unreasonably, that a human being is by nature unable to do this, both because one's powers are so limited and because desires, at least for certain things, are unlimited by anything except life span. Therefore, in the passage quoted, Epictetus recommends against this way. The other way, rather than altering the external world to bring it into

Introduction I 3

line with one's desires, is to set those desires so that they are in line with the way the external world actually is. This is the way that the Stoics recommend, and thus far Zeno and Epictetus seem to be in agreement.

The question, however, is how to put oneself into such a state, and what must be going on in one's mind, so to speak, to be actually in it. Both early and late Stoics seem to have agreed that this must be done by realizing that all events, at least in the external world, are completely determined by prior states of the universe as a whole. According to this form of determinism, anyone knowing all there is to know about the world prior to a given time would be able to predict with complete certainty what would happen at that time and later times. In addition, the Stoics seem to have viewed the world as organized by a perhaps even stronger sort of coherence than mere determination of future events by past events. For they held that the universe is an organic and perfect whole, exhibiting an orderliness that somehow links all of its parts together. As a result of these views about the coherence of the pattern exhibited by the cosmos, the Stoics believed that once one became aware of that pattern, one would see that the nature of any local occurrence was completely fixed by the rest of the pattern, so that it would be regarded as an impossibility that, the rest of the world being what it is, the local event might have been different.

Given this much, one can see something about the state of mind that the Stoics thought was involved in bringing desires into line completely with the way the world actually is. It was one of under- standing fully that nothing, and notably no event that might result in dissatisfaction, could possibly be otherwise than it actually is. Given the awareness of the place of such an event in the whole pattern of the cosmos, one could be quite unable to conceive of the events being any different. It is helpful to use an example (not one that the Stoics themselves used). Given a grasp of the series of positive integers, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., one can easily feel that it is quite impossible to conceive that, for example, 2 + 1 might have been equal to 4 or 17 or indeed anything other than 3. Given the inconceivability of any alternative, it seems reasonable to hold that there is no in- telligibility in the idea of wishing or desiring that 2 + 1 might not have been equal to 3, or might have been equal to anything other than what it is equal to. It is this sort of attitude that the Stoics thought one might be able to reach with regard to all events in the world. One would understand the pattern as well as we understand the pat- tern of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. (or some finite segment of it—since the Stoics

4 / INTRODUCTION

believed that the universe is finite); and so just as we cannot regard as intelligible the idea of wishing that 2 + 1 were other than 3, so too one could not regard as intelligible the idea that any event might be otherwise than it is. The inconceivability of alternatives would thus rule out dissatisfaction with things as they actually are.

But the question then arises, once we have gone this far, what sort of understanding of the pattern of nature would be required for a person'to reach this complete lack of dissatisfaction. For exam- ple, would it suffice merely to be convinced that—in just these words—the universe is a perfectly organized whole governed by deter- minism? Or would one have to be familiar with, or even consciously aware of, a great many details of the pattern, or even of all of the details of it? (Likewise one can ask how well one would have to under- stand the series of natural numbers to be unable to conceive of alter- natives to, say, its being the case that 67 + 475 is equal to 542, and so on for more complicated facts.) There may have been some disagreement among the Stoics on this question. Some of them (in all likelihood Chrysippus and his predecessor Cleanthes) may well have thought that to be in a fully ideal and dissatisfaction-free state of mind, one would have to possess a completely detailed knowledge of all aspects of the organization of the cosmos, including a great deal of physics and also logic (it is possible that Cleanthes stressed the former and Chrysippus the latter). Alternatively, it may have been held by others—perhaps including Aristo of Chios, the somewhat heretical Stoic contemporary of Chrysippus, and quite possibly also many later Stoics, and perhaps even Epictetus (see c. 49)—that a simple acceptance of the proposition that the universe is an organized whole subject to determinism would be enough. If this is so, then perhaps there is an important disagreement within the Stoic move- ment on the nature of the ideal state of mind for a human being.

On the other hand, it is possible to suppose that the disagreement was not such a basic disagreement about doctrine, but was rather a matter of emphasis and intended audience. Even if one believed that the ideal state of mind—as sometimes attributed to the paragon of perfection, the Stoic "sage"—required a completely detailed knowledge of all aspects of the cosmic pattern, one could still hold that there were various different approaches to, or approximations of, that ideal state; and that important among them, especially for ordinary people, would be the simple acceptance of the idea, without all of the details, that the universe is a perfectly organized whole. If Epictetus is interpreted in this way, he would be regarded not as having differed with the earlier Stoics in matters of basic doctrine

Introduction I 5

about the ideal state of a human being, but as having a preference for concentrating on how ordinary people might begin to approx- imate it, rather than on describing the details of the state itself. (In- deed, as c. 49 suggests, one could reasonably think that the latter sort of description might actually get in the way of the former effort.)

Even when looked at sympathetically, the Stoic view has a number of features that are open to objections, as was pointed out by critics in antiquity and since. (1) For one thing, it has seemed to many that the Stoic belief in determinism raises problems, essentially the same problems familiar from present-day discussions of determinism. It is held, for example, that determinism is incompatible with or- dinary notions of moral responsibility, and with the possibility of praise and blame. It is also held that if determinism is true, then there is no point in anyone's making any effort to do anything or to accomplish any goals. The Stoics maintained that these objec- tions could be met, and indeed many philosophers nowadays agree (though many also do not) that determinism is in fact compatible with moral responsibility, and with the making of effort. Cicero's De Fato contains an account of Stoic views about this issue, though unfor- tunately not all of that work has come down to us. (2) Another ob- jection to the Stoic view is that, given their position on what the ideal state is for a human being, they had to regard all particular states of the external world as "indifferent," i.e., neither good nor bad (see cc. 32 and 1), since the best state to be in was one of not being dissatisfied with any external state at all. This view has seemed para- doxical to some opponents, who have held that some external states of the world themselves have positive or negative value. For exam- ple, some philosophers have believed that it is better if people in- crease each other's happiness than if they do not, or better if the world is beautiful than if it is not—and such philosophers have found it implausible to maintain, with the Stoics, that such states of the external world are neither good nor bad. (3) In another way, too, opponents have seen a difficulty in the Stoic contention that ex- ternal states are "indifferent." For such a contention might make it seem senseless, once again, to put any effort into doing anything to affect the external world, if nothing of genuine value could thereby be produced. The Stoics, however, generally denied that their view made ordinary human efforts pointless, and tried to explain how one might simultaneously both (a) regard all external states of af- fairs as indifferent, and (b) engage in efforts and actions as human beings ordinarily do. There is room for disagreement over how suc- cessful their explanation was. The reader of Epictetus' Handbook will

6 / INTRODUCTION

perhaps see in it a tension over this very issue. On the one side, he denies that anything not "up to us" is of value; but on the other side, although he presses us to accept this idea, he does not recom- mend that we refrain completely from all normal human efforts. The reader will find it interesting to ask whether there really is a conflict here. (4) A further difficulty resembles the previous two, but is perhaps even more acute. The Stoics apparently regarded as "indifferent" not only states that are plainly external to one's consciousness, but also many states of consciousness as well, including such feelings as pleasures and pains, to which most people are strongly inclined to assign some value or the contrary. On the Stoic view, these states are part of what is determined by the organization of the cosmos, and so are to be regarded as unchangeable and not appropriately to be desired to be otherwise than they are. Very roughly, if one feels a pain, then no matter how intense or severe it is, one is ideally sup- posed to be able to adopt the attitude that, given one's understand- ing of the organization of the cosmos, the pain really does not matter— that is, it is not really appropriately wished otherwise. Hedonists will obviously disagree, but one does not have to be an out-and-out hedonist to feel that there is something difficult to accept in this view. It seems to involve a dissociation of one's judgments of value from one's normal affective responses, and even from one's normal responses to those responses. It is rather difficult, and many would say impossible, to regard this dissociation as a part of an ideal human condition, or even perhaps of a conceivable one. The Stoic reaction was generally to emphasize that what they were describing was very much an ideal, and not a state that many or even any actual people have attained or can even imagine attaining, but this reaction has not always been felt to be satisfactory.

In spite of the possibility of these objections, the Stoic view has been felt to have strength arising from a number of considerations. One is that, as a matter of psychological fact, we often do find ourselves able to bear discomfort or pain apparently because of the thought that after all, the pain is not really important in the overall scheme of things. However one may be inclined to explain this phenomenon, it is not hard to see why the Stoics would have been tempted to extra- polate from it, to the conclusion than an ideal state would involve looking at all events in the world in this way. In addition, it is not inexplicable why they might have thought that this attitude could be maintained, as I have explained, by an understanding of the organization of the universe. There is something tempting in the idea, which has been taken very seriously by philosophers as con-

Introduction I 7

siderable as Plato and Spinoza and Kant, that the way to judge mat- ters of value correctly is by abstracting radically from all of the par- ticularities of one's own situation, and looking at matters from a purely impersonal point of view. The Stoics pressed this line of thought strongly, and insisted not only that this was the standpoint to adopt in correctly judging matters of value, but also that doing so con- stituted the best state of an individual human being. Indeed, they maintained that the ideal state of a human being was divine, in the sense that it was the point of view that ought to be ascribed to a god. The Stoic idea of the ideal human condition, therefore, can be fairly well approximated by saying that it attributes to that condi- tion many of the characteristics that many people attribute to God. This description of course raises questions about whether it can then be described as an ideal human condition, but at least it does indicate the line of thought that the Stoics were following.

It should be said at this point that there was within the Stoic move- ment, particularly during the Second and First Centuries B.C., an apparently strong tendency to qualify in some way this extreme account of the completely impersonal and non-self-referential character of the ideal viewpoint of the Stoic sage, and to suggest ways in which different people might aim at different ideals, each appropriate to one's own actual endowments and circumstances in life. This idea is particularly associated with the philosopher Panaetius (c. 185-105), some of whose views are expounded in Cicero's De Officiis. Panaetius especially emphasized the idea that the appropriate actions vary from circumstance to circumstance. It is not clear whether he thereby meant to be denying that there was a single, unitary ideal human condition, though some have taken him in this way. He may, for example, simply have been pointing to variations in the ways in which this ideal may be approximated, or variations in the ways in which a person in this single ideal condition might manifest it in action. If this is so, then he would, like Epictetus, have been em- phasizing not the description of the Stoic ideal, but aspects of how to act in the condition in which one actually finds oneself. But it does appear that he, more than Epictetus, stressed the differences that might obtain among various people all aiming at the same ideal. For although Epictetus is concerned, as I have said, with giving ad- vice to imperfect human beings, he tends to assume that generally speaking the same advice will do pretty well for all of us.

A word should be said about one of the better-known slogans of Stoic ethics, ' 'Nothing is good except moral virtue,' ' nihil bonum nisi honestum. It is misleading, especially when reading Epictetus, to think

8 / INTRODUCTION

of the Stoic ethical position as perfectly characterized by this saying, especially if it is taken in the way that we find natural. For the Stoics, early and late, identified living in accordance with virtue as living in accordance with nature, meaning by this the telos of human life that I have described in the first few pages of this introduction, and which is expressed in c. 8 of the Handbook (see, e.g., Diogenes Laer- tius, Lives of the Philosophers, VII. 87). Thus, in propounding the Greek sentence translated by, "Nothing is good except moral virtue,' ' they were not expressing the view that we might express by that sentence, but rather the claim, which I have said is characteristic of their view, that nothing is of value except an attitude adapted to the natural organization of the cosmos. They believed, in fact, that a person having such an attitude would in general live in accordance with established moral standards (though they allowed exceptions). But their main point was not this, but rather the contention about the ideal state of a human being that I have described.

As I have implied, Epictetus' own view has some features that do and some features that do not reflect the strict Stoic view of the ideal condition of a human being. To a great extent, he is interested mainly in explaining to people, not how they should understand an ideal condition, but how they can make their own condition somewhat better than it is. For this purpose, he adopts the strategy of persuading them that they should adjust their desires and their attitudes toward them in certain ways, which seem largely to be ways of setting their sights lower, not expecting to have certain desires satisfied, and living with the idea that such desires were not worth satisfying anyway. In many situations, of course, this is a sensible strategy, and Epictetus' remarks are often interesting in that light. Epictetus himself was a slave during the earlier part of his life, and must have known something of what it was like to have no other strategy available. At the same time, however, his advice is heavily influenced by his belief in the earlier Stoic view of the ideal condition for a human being, and will be regarded by many as open to the same objections to which that earlier view is open.

We do not possess any works actually written by Epictetus. What we do have is four books of Discourses compiled by Flavius Arrianus, some fragments reported by others, and the Handbook or Manual or Encheiridion translated here, which is made up of extracts from the Discourses. It appears that Epictetus wrote nothing for publication,

Introduction I 9

and that his activity was almost entirely as a teacher, mostly in Nicopolis on the northwest coast of Greece, after banishment from Rome by the emperor Domitian in A.D. 89 or 92. Someone who wants to get the flavor of his style and personality should read the Discourses, which reveal more about them than the highly condensed Handbook.