So what is the first, and therefore perhaps the most emphatic,
lesson we have learned from our slave-turned-sage up to this point? Well, that
there are certainly things in our lives that we can control and others that we
cannot control, and that therefore our first baby steps on the road to freedom,
and then eventually to happiness, which Epictetus defines as Peace of Mind or
Serenity, must be to learn to distinguish between prone-to-control and
impossible-to-control types of actions/reactions. It is only when we realize
that we cannot control every facet of our lives, says Epictetus, that we can
finally get down to the business of deciding how to think well and act well in
the hustle and bustle of the workaday world. Our text for Lesson #1 from this
Handbook of Freedom was:
There are certain things we can control and then there are those
things that are beyond our control. Types of things we can control are our own
(re)actions, such as thoughtless assumptions, impulsiveness, cravings, and
allowing ourselves to be led by our inclinations –in a word, those types of
(re)action that come from ourselves. Types of things we cannot control, on the
other hand, are our body, possessions, our reputation, legal or political power
that others may over us, and in a word, types of (re)actions that do not come
from ourselves.
Now, naturally,
the types of things we can control are easily accessible to each one of us,
they are without coercive force, and they do not restrict us. On the other
hand, we must consider things beyond our control as of lesser importance [= unimportant, irrelevant, feeble], as enslaving [= slavish, unquestioning, unoriginal, mindless; submissive-subservient,
servile], as restricting us, as alien to us because
they come from others. (TLG Author 557, Work 2 “Ench”, .1.1.1.1-1.1.2.1)
Well and good, and we are firing on all four philosophical
cylinders—there are a whole lot of things in and about the world that I cannot control, but it is very important
to my mental stability that I should be able to identify such things in order to
avoid butting my head against the wall of reality. And then there are also those
other types of things over which I can
exercise some control, and these are mostly in the form of actions and
reactions that I generate from my own thinking, my own inclinations, desires,
and other particular lunacies.
In reading
through Epictetus’ little Handbook we are reminded that Desire, in all of its various colors and tons, has, in the Western
meantime, also become a topic of significant religious, philosophical, and
political interest, which becomes evident when reading, for instance, John
Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards. The
Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992: UK, Sinclair-Stevenson), who
groups together what he calls “methodologies” as opposed to “ideologies,” such
as Capitalism, Socialism, Christianity, Nazism and Communism, claiming that
they all belong to the same grouping, “if for no other reason than that all of
them prosper through the cultivation of desire, as indeed does Islam. Of the
great world myths, only Buddhism is centered on the reduction of desire in the
individual.”
So, Epictetus’
first important lesson in Stoicism is that Desire is something that a person
can and indeed needs to control. But where is Epictetus going to take us from
that point?
§3“Remember, then, that if you should mistakenly think that things, which are
by their nature enslaving, are really free, and if you should think that you
are the source for things that, in fact, really come from others, then you
shall be hampered, you shall be distressed, you shall be confused, and you
will blame both gods and men. If, though, you should think that only that which
comes from you is really yours, and that what comes from others really comes
from others/outside, as truly is the case, no one shall ever compel you, no one
ever hinder you; nor will you lay the fault
on any man, nor blame anything else whatsoever, nor do anything against your
will/involuntarily; no one, man or god, shall delude you nor shall you have any
enemy; for you shall not be prevailed upon to be hurtful with respect to
anybody or anything.”
Shorter and sweeter:
try to have a true perception about the things that are happening around you. In
this paragraph Epictetus is going to remind us of another useful fact-of-life,
that most of the time the types of problems that confound us come about because
we ourselves misinterpret the universe that is busy presenting itself to us. In
the history of philosophy we will see that this idea that errors of thinking or
judgment derive predominantly from our own misinterpretation of facts &
events, will also play a fundamental role in the argument unraveled by René
Descartes in his Metaphysical Meditations
(esp. Meditation IV).
We live in a
causal environment. So it is inevitable that events surrounding us are all
inextricably intertwined in a web of causally linked occurrences. Is this not,
after all, the bread-n-butter of religious thinking? That God sends along
such-n-such an event, like a car wreck, an illness, a flood, or some other thing,
which is then interpreted by us either as a reward for some good behavior or as
punishment to teach us (for instance) humility, or to punish us for wicked
thoughts, or to [fill in the blank]. The bottom line in such situations is that
the assumption itself that ‘God did something’ is absolute HUMAN fantasy (and not faith)! Because what if the beginning of the
causal chain was actually Satan?! Then the entire interpretative value of the conclusion
‘God did so-n-so’ is false. From the point of view of the human animal it is
impossible to have real knowledge about the beginnings of the causal chains surrounding
us; so Epictetus tells us to leave such dubious interpretative adventures aside
in order to avoid falling into knowledge traps of our own concoction. For
Epictetus, the only sure knowledge I can have about things going on in the
world is knowledge about what I am myself actually doing or thinking.
Finally, at the
end of this paragraph Epictetus seems to value as a general ethical principle the
idea that we should not be “hurtful with respect to anybody or anything.” This
idea was such an established Stoic theme that even Socrates, already some 350
years prior in the Crito [47c ff.], places
value on the idea of doing no harm either to others or to ourselves.
§4“When seeking to accomplish great or important
things, one just has to remember that it is not possible to desire only
moderately when the ambition is to try to achieve goals, but some things must
be given up utterly, although it is possible to hold on to others for the
present. But if you should wish to achieve such goals, and also to rule and to
have wealth, although it may perhaps be possible only to desire them
moderately, one shall not bring them about just by ‘desiring’ them more than
anything else. Besides, one would most certainly fail to completely accomplish
such things.”
Epictetus is not
yet done with the question of Desire, which, although it is obviously an immensely
powerful motivator in our lives, yet seems to be for all intents and purposes
an almost invisible adhesive binding together all the varied & sundry causal
strands wrapped around our thinking and doing. Epictetus’ goal, though, is not
that we should necessarily try to get rid of our desires entirely, but rather
that we should only try to be aware of our desires as being our own in order to
moderate them, to harness them to some degree, so they do not end up controlling
us and driving us into some blind fury of fruitless ambition.
§5“To be Free and Thrive is much more advantageous
than these other things alone. So in reference to any such crude impression,
practice in order to anticipate saying right from the start: “You are simply an
impression and not really the Real Thing.” Then, examine the impression closely
to determine whether it passes scrutiny according to your standards, but first
and foremost by this, whether it concerns things within our power or those
outside of our power; and if it should be something beyond our power to
control, then because of that very thing be ready and willing to say: ‘This is
nothing to me.’”
As do most
teachers of virtue, Epictetus closes this section with an admonition. We saw at
the beginning of the opening precept that ‘having’ lots of stuff is our
psychological ‘middle passage’ to a life of enslavement, but Epictetus assures
us that it is infinitely better for our souls to be Free and Thrive. We have
each of us gotten swept up in some desire or another that seems to consume us,
and then, when we have finally gotten the object of our desire, we inevitably
experience a let-down, a strange disappointment—somehow the
object-of-our-desire never seems to keep its promise of bringing us happiness,
and we are ‘had’, bound fast in a prison of our own construction. So in this
final paragraph Epictetus invites us to remember that just as we are the
creators of the world of our own desires, so we are also in a position, more so
than anyone else, to control those desires—if we are ready and willing to put
them to the side.
Full translation of section 3-5 of E’s Enchiridion (Aiken 2015):
“Remember, then, that if you should mistakenly
think that things, which are by their nature enslaving, are really free, and if
you should think that you are the source for things that, in fact, really come
from others, then you shall be hampered, you shall be distressed, you shall be confused, and you will blame both gods and men. If,
though, you should think that only that which comes from you is really yours,
and that what comes from others really comes from others/outside, as truly is
the case, no one shall ever compel you, no one ever hinder you; nor will you lay the fault on any man, nor blame
anything else whatsoever, nor do anything against your will/involuntarily; no
one, man or god, shall delude you nor shall you have any enemy; for you shall
not be prevailed upon to be hurtful with respect to anybody or anything.
When seeking to accomplish great or important things, one
just has to remember that it is not possible to desire only moderately when the
ambition is to try to achieve goals, but some things must be given up utterly,
although it is possible to hold on to others for the present. But if you should
wish to achieve such goals, and also to rule and to have wealth, although it
may perhaps be possible only to desire them moderately, one shall not bring them
about just by ‘desiring’ them more than anything else. Besides, one would most
certainly fail to completely accomplish such things.
To be Free and Thrive is much more advantageous than
these other things alone. So in reference to any such crude impression,
practice in order to anticipate saying right from the start: “You are simply an
impression and not really the Real Thing.” Then, examine the impression closely
to determine whether it passes scrutiny according to your standards, but first
and foremost by this, whether it concerns things within our power or those
outside of our power; and if it should be something beyond our power to
control, then because of that very thing be ready and willing to say: ‘This is
nothing to me.” (TLG Author 557, Work 2
“Ench”, .1.1.3.1-1.1.5.1)
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