Discourses and Selected Writings (19 page)

[1] The first thing a pretender to philosophy must do is get rid of their presuppositions; a person is not going to undertake to learn anything that they think they already know. [2] We come to the study of philosophy rattling off what should and should not be done, what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s disgraceful. On this basis, we are quite prepared to pass out praise, blame, censure, or condemnation, subtly distinguishing good habits from bad.

[3] So what do we need philosophers for, if we know it all already? We want to learn what we don’t presume to know – namely, problems of logic. We want to learn what those philosophers teach because it is supposed to be keen and clever.
^∗
[5] Well, it is ridiculous to imagine that you will learn anything but what you want to learn; in other words, you can’t hope to make progress in areas where you have made no application.

Many people, however, make the same mistake as the orator Theopompus. He criticized Plato for wanting to define every little thing.
⁴⁷
[6] ‘Did no one before you,’ he says, ‘use the words “good” and “just”? Or if we did, were we ignorant of what each of them meant – were we making empty sounds bereft of sense?’ [7] Look, Theopompus, no one denies that we had an inborn idea and preconception of these terms. What we lacked was the ability to apply them correctly. We had not yet organized them with a view to determining the class of things each of them belongs to.

[8] You might as well put the same challenge to doctors:
‘Didn’t we use the words “sick” and “healthy” before Hippocrates came along, or were we talking nonsense?’ [9] Well, we had a concept of what ‘healthy’ means, yes, but even now we can’t agree on how to adapt it. There’s one doctor who says, ‘Withhold his food,’ while another says, ‘Make him eat.’ One says, ‘Bleed her,’ another says, ‘She needs a transfusion.’ And the cause of this chaos is none other than our still-unrealized ability to apply the concept of ‘healthy’ to particular cases.

[10] The same problem occurs in the conduct of life. ‘Good’, ‘bad’, ‘useful’, ‘harmful’ – these words are part of everyone’s vocabulary, we all have a preconception of what they signify. But is it developed and complete? [11] Prove it – apply it correctly to particular things. Now Plato, for his part, associates definitions with his preconception of what is ‘useful’; you, however, categorize them as useless. [12] Both of you cannot be right. Some people associate the idea of the good with wealth, or pleasure, or health; others plainly do not. [13] Because if all of us who use these words are not just blowing smoke, and we don’t need help clarifying their preconceptions, why is there any misunderstanding, conflict or blame on either side?

[14] But why refer to conflict between different people, and bring up that? Just take yourself – if you are good at applying your preconceptions, why are you internally conflicted and confused? [15] We will ignore for now the second field of study, to do with impulse and the art of applying impulse to appropriate acts.
⁴⁸
Let’s skip the third field too, concerning assent – [16] I’ll give you a pass on both. Let’s stay with the first; it furnishes almost tangible proof that you are not good at applying preconceptions. [17] If your present desires are realistic – realistic for you personally – why are you frustrated and unhappy? If you are not trying to escape the inevitable, then why do you continue to meet with accident and misfortune? Why do you get what you do not want, and don’t get what you do? [18] This is categorical proof of inner confusion and unhappiness. I want something to happen, and it fails to happen, or I don’t want something to happen, and it does – and can any creature be more miserable than I?

[19] It is just this that Medea could not tolerate, and which book ii
drove her to slay her children – a magnificent act from one point of view, it shows she had the right idea of what it means to have one’s desires dashed.
⁴⁹
[20] ‘I’ll have my revenge on the man who hurt and humiliated me. But what good are the usual types of punishment? How should it happen then? I will kill my children. But I will punish myself in the process… [21] Well – what of it?’

Behold the ruin of a noble soul. She did not know, in effect, that obtaining our desire is not done by looking outside ourselves for help, or by changing or rearranging circumstance. [22] Don’t want your husband, and nothing that you want will fail to come. Don’t want to stay with him at any price, don’t wish to stay in Corinth – in short, don’t want anything except what God wants, and no one will stop or stay you, any more than they can stand in the way of God. [23] When you have him as your leader, and conform your will and desire to his, what fear of failure can you have?

[24] Attach your desire to wealth and your aversion to poverty: you won’t get the former, but you could well end up with the latter. You will fare no better putting your faith in health, status, exile – any external you care to name. [25] Hand your will over to Zeus and the gods, let them administer it; in their keeping, your happiness is assured.

[26] But please stop representing yourself as a philosopher, you affected fool! You still experience envy, pity, jealousy and fear, and hardly a day passes that you don’t whine to the gods about your life. [27] Some philosopher! You learned syllogisms and changing arguments. Good, now try unlearning them, if you can, and make a fresh start. Wake up to the fact that so far you have barely touched the subject. [28] Begin to fashion your future in such a way that nothing happens contrary to your desire and nothing that you desire fails to materialize.

[29] Give me one student with
that
ambition when he presents himself at school, one committed to
that
kind of training, one who says, ‘To me those other things are worthless; it’s enough if one day I can live without sorrow and frustration, if I can lift up my head like a free person in the face of circumstance and look to heaven as a friend of God, without fear of
anything that might happen.’ [30] Show me such a person, so I can say, ‘Come, child, take what you deserve. You were born to honour philosophy with your patronage – these halls, these books, these lectures, they all belong to you.’ [31] Then, after he’s tackled and mastered this field of study, I will wait until he returns and says, ‘I want to be free from fear and emotion, but at the same time I want to be a concerned citizen and philosopher, and attentive to my other duties, toward God, my parents, my siblings, my country, and my guests.’ [32] Welcome to the second field of study, this is yours as well. [33] ‘But I’ve already mastered the second field of study; I want to be faultless and unshakeable, not just when I’m awake, but even when I’m sleeping, even when I’m drunk or delirious.’
⁵⁰
You are a god, my child, you are headed for the stars.

[34] But no, what I get instead is, ‘I want to read Chrysippus’ treatise on the Liar.’
⁵¹
Is that your plan? Then go and jump in the lake and take your ridiculous plan with you. What good could come of it? Your unhappiness will persist the whole time you are reading it, and your anxiety will not abate a bit during a reading of the thing before an audience.

[35] Here’s how you behave: ‘Shall I read to you, brother, then you to me?’

‘Man, it’s marvellous the way you write.’

‘Well, it’s uncanny how you capture Xenophon’s style.’

[36] ‘And
you
have caught Plato’s manner.’

‘And you Antisthenes’!’
⁵²

Then, having indulged each other in your fatuous fancies, you go back to your former habits: your desires and aversions are as they were, your impulses, designs and plans remain unchanged, you pray and care for the same old things. [37] And so far from looking for someone to bring you to your senses, you are distinctly offended by any advice or correction. You say, ‘He’s nothing but a mean old man; when I left him he showed no sign of sorrow. He didn’t say, “My, it’s a dangerous journey you’re going on, child, I’ll light a candle if you come through safely.” [38] That’s what he would say if the man had any compassion.’ And what a blessing it would be for a person like you to come through safely, calling for many candles to book ii
be lit! Really, you deserve to be immortal and impervious to misfortune.

[39] As I said, then, this presumption that you possess knowledge of any use has to be dropped before you approach philosophy – just as if we were enrolling in a school of music or mathematics. [40] Otherwise we won’t come close to making progress – not even if we work our way through the collected works of Chrysippus, with those of Antipater
⁵³
and Archedemus thrown in for good measure.

[1] Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act – walking makes you walk better, running makes you a better runner. [2] If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be a painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and you’ll see what the result is. [3] And if you’re laid up a mere ten days, when you get up and try to walk any distance you’ll find your legs barely able to support you. [4] So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you don’t like doing something, make a habit of doing something different.

[5] The same goes for moral inclinations. When you get angry, you should know that you aren’t guilty of an isolated lapse, you’ve encouraged a trend and thrown fuel on the fire. [6] When you can’t resist sex with someone, don’t think of it as a temporary setback; you’ve fed your weakness and made it harder to uproot. [7] It is inevitable that continuous behaviour of any one kind is going to instil new habits and tendencies, while steadily confirming old ones.

[8] And as philosophers point out, this, of course, is how moral infirmities develop also. If you are seized by greed on some occasion, reason can be invoked to alert you to the danger. Then the passion will abate and the mind will be restored to its former balance. [9] But if you don’t bring anything by way of relief, the mind will not return to normal; when it’s inflamed
by an impression, it will yield to passion more quickly the next time. Keep it up, and the mind grows inured to vice; eventually the love of money is entrenched. [10] When someone contracts smallpox, if he lives he is not the same as he was before the illness, unless the recovery is complete. [11] It’s the same with the passions of the soul; they leave certain scars and blisters behind. And unless you remove them well, the next time you’re flogged on the same spot those blisters will be open wounds.

[12] So if you don’t want to be cantankerous, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which you don’t get mad. [13] ‘I used to be angry every day, then only every other day, then every third…’ If you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one, until it is wiped out altogether. [14] ‘I didn’t lose my temper this day, or the next, and not for two, then three months in succession.’ If you can say that, you are now in excellent health, believe me.

[15] Today, when I saw a good-looking girl, I didn’t say to myself, ‘It would be nice to sleep with her,’ or ‘Her husband’s one lucky guy.’ Because that’s tantamount to saying, ‘Anyone would be lucky to sleep with her, even in adultery.’ [16] Nor do I fantasize about what comes next – the woman undressing in front of me, then joining me in bed. [17] I pat myself on the back and say, ‘Well done, Epictetus, you’ve solved a devilishly difficult problem, much harder than the Master Argument itself.’
⁵⁴
[18] But if the woman is willing, if she calls to me or gives me a nod, if she takes me by the arm, and begins to rub up against me – and still I overcome my lust – well, that’s a test far harder than the Liar paradox, it even beats the Quiescent.
⁵⁵
That’s the sort of thing to boast about – not propounding the Master.

[19] So how does one get there? Start by wanting to please yourself, for a change, and appear worthy in the eyes of God. Desire to become pure, and, once pure, you will be at ease with yourself, and comfortable in the company of God. [20] Then, as Plato said, when a dangerous impression confronts you, go and expiate the gods with sacrifice, go to the temples to supplicate
the gods for protection. [21] It will even do to socialize with men of good character, in order to model your life on theirs, whether you choose someone living or someone from the past.
⁵⁶

[22] Consider Socrates; look how he lay next to Alcibiades and merely teased him about his youthful beauty.
⁵⁷
Think how proud he must have been to have won that victory over himself – an Olympic-sized victory, and one worthy of a successor to Heracles;
⁵⁸
so, really, he’s the one who deserves to be addressed, ‘Greetings, hero’ – not these grimy boxers and pancratiasts
⁵⁹
or gladiators, their current counterparts.

[23] With these thoughts to defend you, you should triumph over any impression and not be dragged away. [24] Don’t let the force of the impression when first it hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, ‘Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.’ Next, don’t let it pull you in by picturing to yourself the pleasures that await you. [25] Otherwise it will lead you by the nose wherever it wants. Oppose it with some good and honourable thought, and put the dirty one to rout. [26] Practise this regularly, and you’ll see what shoulders, what muscles, what stamina you acquire. Today people care only for academic discussion, nothing beyond that. [27] But I’m presenting to you the real athlete, namely the one training to face off against the most formidable of impressions.

Steady now, poor man, don’t let impressions sweep you off your feet. [28] It’s a great battle, and God’s work. It’s a fight for autonomy, freedom, happiness and peace. [29] Remember God, ask him to be your helper and protector, as sailors pray to the Dioscuri
⁶⁰
for help in a storm. Is there any storm greater than the storm of forceful impressions that can put reason to flight? What is a real storm except just another impression? [30] Put away the fear of death, and however much thunder and lightning you have to face, you will find the mind capable of remaining calm and composed regardless.