The Discourses of Epictetus

"Epictetus was mainly a teacher. We think of him as a philosopher, but he was mainly a teacher of Stoic philosophy around the first century AD. He was born a slave in what is now Turkey, was eventually liberated, moved to Rome, taught there for a while and was banished to a city in Greece called Nicopolis. It’s hard to tell if he had many original ideas about Stoic philosophy. There were other Stoics—Rufus and Zeno, Chrysippus and others—who came before him, but he was for the most part a popularizer. In that way he was doing what I’m doing. So, he popularized Stoic philosophy and he was admirable: he went from being a slave to becoming a revered teacher. He was lame for most of his life, so he couldn’t walk very well and he was no nonsense. He was tough love. Lots of tough love. ‘Stop crying for your mommy’ was one of his lines. It’s become a t-shirt here in the US. It’s been picked up by Alcoholics Anonymous and all sorts of people. ‘Some things are up to us, and some things aren’t. Focus on the ones that are.’ Yes. The term ‘ethics’ is tricky because today people hear that word and they think of morality and ethical behaviour. In ancient times, ethics was more a question of how to lead a good life. It’s no coincidence that Stoicism is enjoying a revival today and Epictetus’s thought in particular, because it’s helpful in life. It’s the philosophy of hard knocks, the philosophy for people who have lived for a while and suffered for a while. It’s largely about coping with difficult situations. I find it’s been a very helpful philosophy during this time we’re living in, in a pandemic ; that simple first line of The Enchiridion ( The Handbook ): ‘some things are up to us and some things aren’t.’ It’s so incredibly obvious, but good philosophy, like a lot of things, is incredibly obvious and we need to be reminded of it. I don’t think we do recognize it. I think Socrates would jump in here and say, ‘Okay, you say that you know that some things are under your control and some things aren’t, but let’s interrogate that. Do you act that way?’ I go through my life acting like everything is under my control. I go through life acting like I can control whether my books are bestsellers or not, whether I’ll lose those 30 pounds I want to lose or not, whether I’ll be in good health, all those things. “It’s no coincidence that Stoicism is enjoying a revival today and Epictetus’s thought in particular, because it’s helpful in life” When you look at it from a Stoic point of view, you start to realize how little is actually under your control. I could get hit by a bus on the way to the fitness centre to exercise. You start to realize that where we draw that line is not where we thought it was. So that’s the first step, I think, in Stoic ethics. That’s a reason why this is a life-changing philosophy book. Then, once you realise what is under your control, you realize that 90 per cent of it is internal. That’s the starting point. Then you have to do something about controlling the internal aspects, which is hard. Only a philosopher would ask that question! I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve written about happiness before. I think that we all operate within a range of possibility, and I’m going to say internal possibility. I’m only capable of being so happy. But it’s a range, and whether I’m operating at the top of that range or the bottom of that range I think is under my control. I don’t think I could ever be as happy as the Dalai Lama, but I could be more at peace and have more Stoic contentment than I currently do, if I more rigorously practised the precepts of Stoicism and work, like for example Marcus Aurelius, to control what I can control, which is internal. I don’t know when this pandemic is going to be over. I can’t control whether the vaccine will be coming along or not. All I can control is how I cope internally with a difficult situation. I had not made that connection before, but I think you’re right. I think the existentialists were a little more outwardly oriented: they talked a lot about projects and they thought you were what you did, that there was no love, only acts of love, no charity, only acts of charity. I’m not sure Stoics would agree with that. I think they might say that you are your internal mechanism and your internal equilibrium as much as you are your external. I think the existentialists were busy beavers: in fact Simone de Beauvoir’s nickname was castor. The Stoics were certainly involved in public life, but, you know, ‘Stoic calm’ is a phrase I would use easily; I don’t know if ‘existentialist calm’ falls off the lips. And in this way Stoicism joins hands with Buddhism , I think, in that it is a practice. The Buddhists have meditation, the Stoics have their own meditations or spiritual exercises, as Pierre Hadot calls them. It’s not quite as spelt out as Buddhism, partly I think because in Stoicism our record is not as complete. Buddhism is a whole technology of spirituality, essentially. I think the modern Stoics are trying to put together a Buddhist-style program for Stoicism, this idea of premeditated adversity—think of the worst thing that is going to happen to you, as Seneca suggested, and imagine it. So I see commonalities there. I found throughout writing my book, as I was reading about one philosophy, I would be like, ‘oh, that’s like this one.’ There were overlaps and parallels. Buddhism came up a fair amount actually because one theme in my book is that of acceptance—radical acceptance I’d call it—and that certainly is within Buddhism, Stoicism and Epicureanism."

"Yes. He was a very interesting figure. He was a slave, born in Hierapolis, which is modern Pamukkale in Turkey, which at that time was a Greek city and became a Roman colony in the late 1st century/early 2nd century. He was born a slave and badly treated when he was young: his master, through either carelessness or viciousness, broke his leg, and as a result he was crippled throughout his life. Then, at around age 15, he was bought by a much better master, who turned out to be Nero’s personal secretary. Epictetus was brought to Rome, and for a while lived at Nero’s court. Then Nero became more unhinged both in life and in the way in which he was running the business of the empire, and eventually that led to revolt. Nero committed suicide—well, in fact Nero botched his attempted suicide and it was his secretary, Epictetus’ master, who helped him in the end, so he’s the one who killed Nero. As a result of those events, Epictetus then started having his own quasi-independent life in Rome. Eventually he became a freedman, which was not unusual for bright slaves in ancient Rome. In the meantime he had, under the tutelage of his second master, started reading and learning about philosophy, and became the pupil of Musonius Rufus. Musonius was a major Stoic philosopher in ancient Rome. Epictetus studied with him for a number of years, and eventually started teaching on his own. In the meantime, several political events happened in Rome: there was one emperor after another. One was Domitian, who was a little unhinged himself and wasn’t particularly fond of philosophers: all this talk about virtue and how you should do things as opposed to how you actually do things I guess didn’t agree with him. Domitian kicked out all philosophers from Rome and sent them into exile. Yes, this is something that few people hear about. When we think about Rome, we think about persecution of the Christians, but actually philosophers, and in particular the Stoics, were persecuted by several Roman emperors because they really didn’t like this constant reminder that you should be doing better than you are doing. A number of philosophers were put to death and a number exiled. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus’ teacher, was twice exiled. Epictetus was also exiled by Domitian. He went to North West Greece to a place called Nicopolis and he established his new school there. He was about 40 by that time. Later on he was recalled to Rome, but refused to leave. He lived in Nicopolis to a ripe age of 80, which for the time was remarkable. Yes. It was really amazing. He kept teaching and he built a reputation so that fairly wealthy people sent their kids to Nicopolis to study with Epictetus and one of the later emperors, Hadrian, became a good friend of his. Hadrian was impressed by Epictetus and went to visit him, and they met a few times and became friends. Epictetus, by the end of his life took a wife of about his own age, apparently so she could help him raise a child fathered by a friend of Epictetus’. The child was destined to be exposed—which was the euphemism in Rome for being left to fend for himself in the elements, and probably die. Epictetus’ was an interesting life: a slave who turns prominent philosopher and teacher, who becomes friends with emperors and is kicked out by other emperors: it’s fascinating. Epictetus didn’t write any books; he was a teacher, in the same vein as Socrates, who made a point of not writing his ideas down. The two books we have by Epictetus are called the Discourses , and the Enchiridion— ‘enchiridion’ means ‘handbook.’ Both the Discourses and the Handbook were put together by one of Epictetus’ most brilliant students, Arrian. Arrian was probably about 23 or so when he did this. After a few years as Epictetus’ student, he became a historian and a writer in his own right. He wrote the definitive account of Alexander the Great’s expedition. Arrian was very well known in the ancient world. Some of his works survive. He put together eight volumes of the Discourses— basically these are his handwritten notes from Epictetus’ lectures. Of those eight books, unfortunately only four remain. The other four got lost somewhere during the Middle Ages. The Enchiridion , the Handbook, is the short version that Arrian put together by picking the best bits from the Discourses. So that’s all we have from Epictetus today: the surviving four volumes of the Discourses and then the Enchiridion, which is very short. It’s interesting because it guides you on how to live your life from a Stoic perspective. The chapter titles are topics that Epictetus debated with his students, and these topics were often very practical. There’s very little theoretical philosophy in Epictetus. He wasn’t interested in metaphysics. In fact, he explicitly told his students that whatever the nature of the world turns out to be doesn’t make any difference to human life. If the universe is made up of atoms, or it’s made up of something else, those are interesting questions but they’re not going to affect your life. In that sense he’s an unusual Stoic because most Stoics were into system-building, especially the early ones: the Greek Stoics before the philosophy moved to Rome, made major contributions to logic, they wrote a lot about metaphysics. Epictetus was focused on ethics, which is the third Stoic concern. That’s right. He says whatever turns out to be turns out to be. There are people interested in that stuff and they’ll figure it out, but really when you have to deal with your daily life and the challenges that it brings, that’s not going to be particularly helpful. Yes. That’s an interesting question. The early Stoics thought that there were three areas of philosophical inquiry. What they called ‘physics’ is what today we would describe as a combination of metaphysics and natural science. Their ‘logic’ we would still call logic today, but for them it included epistemology, cognitive science, and psychology . And then there was the ‘ethics’, which was the study of how to live your life. Their idea was that in order to figure out how to live your life, you needed to understand how the universe works and what your place in it was—that would be the ‘physics’—and you also needed to understand how human beings reason and fail to reason well; that’s where the ‘logic’ came in. Now, Epictetus didn’t necessarily reject this, he just said there were many different alternatives, many different ways of doing or understanding physics and understanding logic that would support the same way of living your life. So, in modern terms, we would say that Epictetus thought that the physics and the logic were relevant at some level to the ethics, but they underdetermine it. It’s not as if you need to know all the details about how the world works in order to figure out how to live your life. Correct. Exactly. In fact, Epictetus says just this in several places in the Discourses . There are a couple of places, for instance, where he says that we can have interesting discussions about metaphysics or logic, but those discussions have to bear on specific ethical issues. If you’re just going off splitting hairs in logic, then you’re doing something different that’s not particularly interesting or particularly relevant to living your life. “Some things are under your control and other things are not under your control” Broadly speaking the Discourses are about how to live your life: they present the basic principles of Stoicism over and over, from different angles and exploring the consequences in different contexts. Arguably the most basic one, which Epictetus insists on several times, and is also how the Enchiridion starts, is his famous dichotomy of control: he says, some things are under your control and other things are not under your control. Then he lists the kinds of things that are under your control and those that are not: things under your control are your behaviour, your decisions, your rational thinking processes; the things that are not under your control are all the externalities: your health, your wealth, your education, your stature in life, your reputation. It’s not that you can’t influence the things not under your control, of course you can. He says so explicitly. But they’re not entirely under your control. You can only try to be healthy, and wealthy, and educated, and have a good life in the sense of externalities, but, you know, shit happens, so to speak—that’s not a direct quote—and Stoicism in the great part, especially Epictetus’ Stoicism, is about how to deal with situation where shit does actually happen. What do you do then? How do you react in life when things don’t go your way? The dichotomy of control is crucial in Stoicism, particularly to Epictetus’ philosophy. When I began reading Stoic works I started making furious notes and highlighting things and then going back to quotations one after another. I just want to read you one which is right at the beginning of the Discourses , volume 1, chapter 1.32, it’s an example of the dichotomy of control, but it’s also an example of something that immediately endeared Epictetus to me: his sense of humour. He has a very wicked sense of humour, a very interesting sense of humour. Here’s the quotation: I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later. When I read that I started laughing. Ok, sure—death is inevitable. Is it coming now? If it’s now then I’m ready, let’s go, let’s do it, because everybody has to die; but if not now, then I’m going to do other things, and of course when death comes, it’s not under your control, so you just accept it, whenever it is. Yes. Suicide is a big deal for the Stoics, and for Epictetus in particular. Epictetus referred to it as “the open door.” He says to his students several times not to take it lightly: suicide for the Stoics was a serious business and he was not saying jump out of the window at the first problem; but, he says, if you do get yourself into a situation where there really is no way out and life really does become insufferable, or so painful, or you realise that you cannot contribute any longer to society in any meaningful way, then the door is open, you can leave of your own accord. He also adds, which is crucial I think to understanding the whole thing, that it is the fact that the door is open that gives meaning to what you do. The very reason why you can keep on going, struggling on, and living your life, and trying to do your best, is precisely because you know that if it becomes unbearable, you do have another option."