Christoph Kraiker
I
Epictetus
was a late stoic philosopher who lived from about 50 to 130 after Christ. Born
in Asia Minor, he was brought to
Epictetus
himself wrote nothing as far as we know. What we have are notes of lectures,
discussions and conversations collected by his disciple, the historian Flavius
Arrianus. These were published under the title „Diatribes“ in eight books of
which four and a few fragments have survived. Arrianus later compiled a summary
of Epictetus´ philosophy - the well-known Enchiridion or Handbook.
The
Enchiridion is what made Epictetus famous. It is easy to get - there are
several translations around - easy to carry and quite short for a book that
tells you the true and right way of living. It has about 30 to 35 pages.The
diatribes, on the other hand, are just that: diatribes, difficult to read,
difficult to understand and difficult to get. As far as I know, the only
complete English edition is that of Loeb classical library from the 1925 and
1928. There is also a translation in paperback which I, however, haven´t seen
so I dont know if it has the complete text or not.
The
Enchiridion has been popular throughout the centuries and is one of the
classical western guide-books for the soul, together with „Ways to Oneself“ by
the emperor Marcus Aurelius, „The Consolation of Philosophy“ by Boethius, „The
Guide out of Errors“ by Al Ghazali, or „The Imitation of Christ“ by Thomas a
Kempis. In our times and for our circles it was rediscovered, so to speak, by
Albert Ellis who based his Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) on certain principles
derived from the teachings of Epictetus. The sentence he quotes most frequently
is one known to us all, and that is:
„Men
are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by their opinions about the
things“
I
will take this as a starting point and it will get us quickly to the topic of
suggestion.
Second,
it does not talk about things or events or happenings. The term it uses is pragmata,
and pragmata are acts, things being done. I´ll come back to that later, but for
now let me return to the statements of fundamental convictions. It is easy to
change your opinions, but it is not at all easy to change your dogmata
or dogmas. But since erroneous fundamental convictions are the sole source of
human suffering, the aim of a philosophical education, or psychotherapy, is to
change those convictions, and as this is not easy, it is not enough to
listen to your philosopher or therapist, you also need rigorous training. This
training is called askesis (like in „ascetic“) and it has two aspects:
One which nowadays we would call behavioral (since wrong convictions lead to
behavior which becomes habitual) and one aimed at those convictions themselves,
the cognitive aspect.
Today
I will ignore the behavioral part of the training and concentrate on the more
fundamental, cognitive aspect. A basic assumption of Epictetus seems to be that
those convictions manifest themselves as things you say to yourself in certain
situations, real situations or expected situations. This way of talking to
yourself becomes habitual and has to be replaced by other, more rational ways.
(Fragments
16)
„One
ought to know that it is not easy for a man to aquire a fixed judgement, unless
he should day by day state and hear the same principles, and at the same time
apply them to his life“
This
sounds like Coué, or Donald Meichenbaum, or Autogenic Training. In a nutshell,
Epictetus holds that people become unhappy, worried and disturbed by irrational
self-suggestions, and his therapy (askesis) consists in exercises that replace
those by rational ones. And this is, of course, why he belongs in this
symposion.
II
The
Enchiridion starts with an essential distinction:
(E
1)
„Of
things some are in our power, and others are not“
This
is one of the numerous formulations that try to express the distinction between
what we do and what happens to us. Starting with Aristotle ( as
far as I know) and continuing throughout the Middle Ages until Descartes ( and
beyond) we find discussions of the difference between „actions“ and „passions“
(cf. Descartes´ „De Passionibus Animae“), and in modern times Freud´s idea of primary
processes and secondary processes, or Skinner´s categories of respondent
and operant behavior each in their own way reflect that difference
(to name just a few examples).
By
definition, what is not in your power you can neither create nor prevent. It
follows that, if you desire things which are not in your power or if you detest
things which are not in your power, you will be unfortunate and unhappy. Thus,
the ability to distinguish between what is and what is not in our power is of
fundamental importance.
Another
key concept is „phantasia“. This has been translated as appearance, impression,
perception, idea and so on. If you recall the A-B-C Model of RET, where A
stands for the activating events, B for the (irrational) beliefs, and C for the
consequences (of whatever kind), then we might say that phantasia means
the perception, imagination or expectation of activating events in this sense.
The translation of George Long uses appearance, and you have to keep in mind
that it actually means what I just explained.
III
So
we now are ready for the first and fundamental principle
(E
1)
„Practice
saying to every disturbing appearance: you are an appearance, and in no manner
what you appear to be. Then examine it by the rules which you possess, and by
this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power
or to the things which are not in our power: and if it relates to anything
which is not in your power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you“
For
example:
(E
24)
„Dont
say: I shall live unhonored and without reputation everywhere
Is
it then in your power to obtain the rank of a magistrate or to be invited to a
reception?
By
no means. How then can this be lack of honor?“
„But
I will be of no help to my friends? What is help? They will not receive money
from you, nor will you make them Roman Citizens. Who then told you that these
are among the things which are in your power, and not in the power of others?
And who can give to another what he has not himself?“
„But
my country, as far as it depends on me, also will be without my help“ I ask
again, what help do you mean? It will not have porticoes and baths through you:
So what? After all, it doesn´t get shoes from the smith nor weapons from the
shoemaker.“
What
Epictetus here tells us is not to be unhappy because we are not famous, rich or
powerful, because having or not having those qualities is outside our control.
This corresponds to Ellis´ irrational belief that you have to great and perfect
to be happy. But he goes on:
(E
12)
„If
you intend to make progress, dont say: „If I neglect my affairs, I shall not
have the means of living.Unless I punish my slave, he will be bad.“For it is
better to die of hunger and so to be released from grief and fear than to live
in abundance with perturbation, and it is better for your slave to be bad than
for you to be unhappy“
I´m
afraid some of us may still prefer living in fear to dying of hunger, and the
question is, whether this is due to our lack of understanding, but for now I
would like to draw your attention to another question which we have to ask of
an appearance or „phantasia“, and that is: what is it worth und whose worth is
it?
(E
6)
Be
not proud of any excellence which belongs to another: If a horse should proudly
say: I am beautiful, one might endure it. But when you are elated and say: I
have a beautiful horse, you are proud of some excellence which is in the horse.
(E
12)
Begin
then from little things: Is the oil spilled? Is a little wine stolen? So what.
Say to yourself: At such price is sold freedom from perturbation, at such price
is sold tranquility.
(E
26)
When
your neighbor´s slave has broken his cup or anything else, you say: that is one
of the things which happen. You must know, then, that when your cup also is
broken, you ought to think as you did when your neighbors cup was broken.
This
is meant to inoculate against the negative effects of daily hassles and
corresponds to the irrational belief that things should be the way I want them
to be.
If a man has reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do
not make any defense to what has been told, but say: that man did not know the
rest of my faults, for otherwise he would not have mentioned these only.
...
the idea being not getting upset at what other people think or say about you.
(E
44)
These
statements are not consistent: I am richer than you, therefore I am better than
you.
I
am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you. It is correct to
say: I am richer than you, therefore my possessions are greater than yours. I
am more eloquent than you, therefore my speech is superior to yours. But you
are neither possession nor speech.
(E
45)
Does
a man bathe quickly? Dont say he bathes badly, but that he bathes quickly. Does
a
man
drink much wine? Do not say that this bad, but that he drinks much.
All
this is quite clear and I think most of us will find these suggestions quite
reasonable. They represent, so to speak, the homely part of Epictetus´
teaching. But let us return to the question of what is in our power and what
is not. Recall that to desire or to detest things which are not in your
power makes you unhappy. So what should we detest or what should we desire, in
other words: what is in our power?
I´m
afraid: very little. Nothing outside our body is in our power and,
unfortunately, our body itself is not in our power either. Epictetus says:
(E
1)
„...not
in our power are the body ...“.
or
(Dia
I, 1)
„This
body is not thine own but only clay cunningly compounded“
Another
good one is:
„You
are a little soul, carrying around a corpse“
So,
your body, and what happens to your body, should not be the object of your
concern:
(E
2)
„If
you attempt to avoid disease or death or poverty, you will be unhappy“
(Dia
III, 26).
„You
tremble and lie awake at night for fear the necessities of life will fail you.
Wretch, are you so blind, and do you so fail to see the road to which lack of
necessities of life leads? Where, indeed, does it lead. - Where also fever, or
a stone that drops on your head, lead - to death“
(E
5)
„We
know that death is nothing terrible, for if it were it would have seemed so to
Socrates; but the opinion that death is terrible, that is the terrible thing.“
Now,
in our culture health, death, our family and their well-being are among those
things that concern us most. We have heard Epictetus argue against the fear of
death, and he also goes out of his way to liberate us from our concern for the
kids, wifes, husbands and parents. The person who has been convinced that it
makes no sense to be anxious about the necessities of
life
still has something to worry about:
(
Dia III, 26)
„You
say: yes, but my family too will starve. - What then? Their starvation does not
lead to some other end than yours (i.e. death), does it?“
The
goal of this kind of training, evidently, is to enable you to watch with
equanimity while your children slowly die of hunger.
And
it goes on:
(E 3)
„If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you
love; for when it has been broken, you will not be disturbed. If you are
kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being
whom you are kissing, for when your wife or child dies, you will not be
disturbed“
(E
26)
„Is
another man´child or wife dead? ‘There is no one who would not say: „Such is
the fate of man“.Yet when a man´s own child dies, immediately he cries: Woe to
me, how wretched I am“ . - But we must remember how we feel when we hear of the
same misfortune befalling others“
So,
to summarize, we are not supposed to be concerned about our body and its
health, our family and their well-being, our friends, the community, wealth,
honor, oil, wine, horses, earthen vessels - in short: we are not supposed to be
concerned about anything.
You
will surprised:
(Dia
I,1)
„As
was fitting, the gods have put under our control only the most excellent
faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely the power to make
correct use of appearances (phantasiai), but all the others they have not put
under our control.
And
what is the correct use of the appearances? The exercise of „prohairesis“
towards them, that is, to consent to them as they are. All what Epictetus
teaches is summarized in the statement:
(E
8)
„Seek
not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things
which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life“
Not
only is there nothing in our power except the power to assent to what befalls
us, it is also true that nothing belongs to us:
(E
11)
„Never
say about anything, I have lost it, but say I have given it back. Is your child
dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been given back. Has
your estate been taken from you? Has not this also been given back? But he who
has taken it from me is a bad man. But what is it to you, by whose hands the
giver demanded it back? So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing
which belongs to another, as travelers do with their inn“
Let
me add a few afterthoughts. Many suggestions formulated by Epictetus seem very
reasonable to us, and indeed, of therapeutic value. But his fundamental
Weltanschauung is completely alien to our own views of life, the universe and
everything. According to Epictetus, everything is good as it is, since it was
created by a good and omnipotent God who would not create anything bad. To the
Deity everything belongs and we cannot change the course of creation. In the
last analysis, there are no events, there are only acts of God, and this
explains the use of the term pragmata (things being done) at the
beginning. If we are unhappy about something, it is because we are mistaken.
The goal of philosophy is to correct those mistakes, and this is in fact the
only thing we can do, at least with a little help from our friends and
by systematic askesis, that is, telling ourself again and again the
correct principles.
Evidently,
this is far removed from the views of contemporary enlightened cognitive
therapists as exemplified, say, by Albert Ellis. He certainly would not say
that all things are good as they are. He would say that many things are pretty
lousy, and that there is something but not much we can do about it, and that
this is the reason why we should not get mad at us and the world.
So,
there are some useful precepts to be extracted from Epictetus, but his
philosophical basis seems to be incompatible with our own. However, strange as
all this may seem to us, if we really took serious our own modern world-view,
namely that the universe expands relentlessly according to fixed deterministic
or propabilistic laws, then the very concept of having control over something
would be meaningless, and to follow Epictetus would be the absolutely reasonable
thing to do.
As
we don´t, let me end with a last quotation to take home
The
uneducated person blames others for his own bad condition. He who has made some
progress blames himself. And he who has complete understanding blames neither another,
nor himself.
Thank
you for your attention (and for a satisfactory amount of applause)
A note on the text
The authoritative edition for
an English speaking audience is that of Loeb Classical Library.
Epictetus: The Discourses,
with an English Translation by W.A. Oldfather
Vol. I; Book I-II (1925, reset
and reprinted 1998)
Vol.II; Book
III-IV-Fragments-Encheiridion (1928)
However, here the translation
of some of the key concepts seems to be inappropriate. „prohairesis“ is
translated as moral purpose, but a better choice would be „will“, as in
the translation of G. Long, and „phantasia“ as external impression,
but the term phantasia also covers expectations and imagined events. There is
actually no good translation for this. I would prefer perception (leaving it
open whether that would be an inner or outer perception), but Long´s
„appearance“ is acceptable, too, even though a bit vague.
In German no complete edition
is easily available. For the Enchiridion
I prefer
Epiktet:
Handbüchlein der Ethik. Aus dem Griechischen übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen
versehen von Ernst Neitzke.
The quotations presented here
are mostly taken from the translations by Long and Oldfather. In some cases I
did change the text a bit, especially in cases where the translations seemed to
be rather antiquated or inappropriate in other ways.
Paper presented at the 9th
ESH Congress in