Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_§1.6.1.1. On Receiving Compliments, On Possessions, & On What is Rightfully Yours.

~by David Aiken~

Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_§1.6.1.1. [Phrontisterion translation]. You should never accept praise, from anyone, for any accomplishment or quality that belongs to another. (2) If a fine-looking horse should ever exclaim, exalting himself, “I am fine-looking,” that would be acceptable. (3) But you, each time you say, exalting yourself, “This fine-looking horse is mine” –remain aware that you are praising yourself for a quality that belongs rightfully to the horse. (5) So, your “accomplishment or quality” here is only a “borrowing” from “the horse’s” outward appearance. What then is actually yours? In a world cobbled together of outward surfaces & façades, what this means is that you should hold fast to your own real or natural qualities—in which case you are rightfully praised. (7) For then you shall accept praise for some quality that belongs rightfully to you.

2 “Ench”, 1.6.1.1

         ∆Epi« mhdeni« e˙parqhvøß aÓllotri÷wˆ proterh/mati. 2 ei˙ oJ iºppoß e˙pairo/menoß e¶legen o¢ti "kalo/ß ei˙mi", oi˙sto\n 3 a·n h™n: su\ de÷, o¢tan le÷ghØß e˙pairo/menoß o¢ti "iºppon kalo\n e¶cw", i¶sqi, o¢ti e˙pi« iºppou aÓgaqw◊ø e˙pai÷rhØ. ti÷ ou™n 5 e˙sti so/n; crhvsiß fantasiw◊n. w‚sq’, o¢tan e˙n crh/sei fantasiw◊n kata» fu/sin schvøß, thnikauvta e˙pa¿rqhti: to/te 7 ga»r e˙pi« sw◊ø tini aÓgaqw◊ø e˙parqh/shØ.

NB—Just a note on the translation of the datives in the opening line (ln. 1): the dative case for medeni [Epi« mhdeni«], which opens the paragraph and precedes the verb, is governed by the preposition epi and therefore dative. Following the verb, the closing datives of the phrase, allotriw proterhmati [aÓllotri÷wˆ proterh/mati], are datives of possession.

Although Ms. Carter gets to the gist of meaning in this section, her text is stilted and therefore fails to engage us or to move us very much. She renders this sixth segment of The Enchiridion in the following way:

Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be prideful and say, " I am handsome," it would be supportable. But when you are prideful, and say, " I have a handsome horse," know that you are proud of what is, in fact, only the good of the horse. What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances of things. Thus, when you behave conformably to nature in reaction to how things appear, you will be proud with reason; for you will take pride in some good of your own.

Likewise, the Thomas Wentworth Higginson translation at Project Gutenberg, which, in addition to being a somewhat fantastical rendering from about line 5 and on, also makes a modest and uninteresting attempt to introduce philosophical language into an otherwise fairly uncomplicated text, gives us this:

Be not elated at any excellence not your own. If a horse should be elated, and say, “I am handsome,” it might be endurable. But when you are elated and say, “I have a handsome horse,” know that you are elated only on the merit of the horse. What then is your own? The use of the phenomena of existence. So that when you are in harmony with nature in this respect, you will be elated with some reason; for you will be elated at some good of your own.

§ Some Comments on Structure. This segment of the Enchiridion is chock full of passive and reflexive verbs, which, when they occur to this extent in English writing, reflect questionable style. This is just normal everyday ancient Greek, though. Stylistically, of course, most of my generation learned in grade school that passive verbs mean the action is happening to the subject, and that middle or reflexive verbs mean the subject is doing the action to or for itself. In this section, Epictetus creates both ontological and ethical tension precisely in the interstice that separates what one can/should do for oneself (middle-reflexive verbs), and what is acceptable for others to attribute to you (passive verbs).

I.               Our text starts with a dominant passive in line 1: (1) You should never accept praise [e˙parqhvøß], from anyone, for any accomplishment or quality that belongs to another.

II.             And then Epictetus gives an illustration of his principle using the reflexive/middle (lns. 2-4): (2) If a fine-looking horse should ever exclaim, exalting himself [e˙pairo/menoß], “I am fine-looking,” that would be acceptable. (3) But you, each time you say, exalting yourself [e˙pairo/menoß], “This fine-looking horse is mine” –remain aware that you are praising yourself (leading to the only indicative in the text: [e˙pai÷rhØ]) for a quality that belongs rightfully to the horse.

III.           The conclusion, of course, which is in lines 5-7, is that you should hold on to the truth of what is in fact yours, which means that the praise will be relevant to you (lns. 6-7)—in which case you are rightfully praised [e˙pa¿rqhti]. (7) For then you shall accept praise [e˙parqh/shØ] for some quality that belongs rightfully to you.

§ On possessiveness. Not to belabor the obvious, but possessive pronouns, such as my, mine, yours, ours, and theirs, really only work well, and with philosophical appropriateness, in matters of grammatical realities and relationships – my table, your table, their table. Otherwise, no one has true ownership of anything: we have de facto rights only to a usufruct rapport with everything that has our name on it. So, no matter how much we might want to hold on to a thing, anything at all, all our ‘wanting’ will not help us to keep hold of things in the real world. So, our use of possessive pronouns does not reflect true ontology; but only linguistic habit and convention. Which makes Epictetus’ point in this section important ethically, as meaningful direction for living the good life.

§ The unbridgeable divide between IS and HAVE. Self-Ownership [oikeiosis - οἰκείωσις] in Stoic philosophy, corresponds to the sense of self-awareness in humans, what modern neuroscientists such as Oliver Sacks would call proprioception, and it contributes in the most fundamental kind of way not only to our sense of ourself, but to an overarching sense of human community. So, Self-Ownership for the Stoics is truly a basis for human virtue. The same cannot also be said of Ownership tout court, however. In fact, in this section of the Enchiridion, Epictetus makes the case that possessions are not in any way whatsoever an indication of personal virtue or value.

So, there we are innocently by-standing down at the corner and we find ourselves inadvertently dropping eaves on a conversation, which goes something like this: Hey, look at this! I have this absolutely gorgeous new [TOY = fill in the blank with any ‘thing’]: car; girlfriend; baby; dog; house; laptop computer; big-screen television; fine, fancy stereo setup; set of six-pack abs; et cetera ad nauseam. Hearing this, we might well anticipate that the next bit of the conversation to drop upon our eaves, might pan to the ‘thing’ being admired by our two interlocutors, and to their comments concerning its many virtues—how pretty; wow, what great lines; wonderful resolution; great sound; etc.

At this latter point in our neighborly, corner-store heart-to-heart, however, Epictetus insists that the conversation between our two confidants, or at least the philosophically interesting bit in their otherwise completely insipid tête-à-tête, comes sliding to a screeching halt. It has to end, because there is no plausible connection or possible attribution of virtue that can be made between the qualities of independent things, and the fact that someone may actually possess such things.

In the illustration Epictetus provides for us in line 5 of the Enchiridion, of the hail-fellow-well-met one-up-ist who owns the fine-looking horse, his “virtue,” which is to say the accomplishment or quality for which he is seeking praise, consists only in an imagined and imaginary “borrowing” from some outward trait that belongs, rightly, only to the horse. And yet what the horse looks like, charger or old plug, reflects in no way whatsoever on the person who has paid for that horse, thus acquiring ownership and use of it, and who must for ever after feed it and clean up the trail of equine apples it leaves behind. And so, Epictetus rightly asks: Remind me again—What, here, is your virtue, exactly? [ti÷ ou™n 5 e˙sti so/n].

The moral of Epictetus’ story is this: who we are is not equivalent to what we own or what we might chance to have in our pockets or purses. Possessions, of any and all sorts, are only accoutrements of living. They may perhaps be pleasant enough accessories for us; but inessential possessions, traits & attributes, are not fundamental to the virtue or integrity of who we are according to our nature. In lines 5-6 Epictetus makes a very tidy and carefully articulated distinction grounded in levels of ‘rootedness’, which we may use much in the way intended by the younger Heidegger’s notion of ‘fundamental’ in Fundamental Ontologie. In the deepest, most fundamental layer of Epictetus’ notion of the Self, there are qualities or virtues that are profoundly us, that demarcate what we are by nature [kata phusin - kata» fu/sin]. Epictetus distinguishes these natural virtues of Self, from traits or accidents [per Aristotle] that “belong” to us only very casually, and which accompany us on our journey through Life as shallow or superficial baggage [para physin - para» fu/sin]—including those obviously incidental qualities such as weight, baldness, height, eye and hair color, physical beauty or ugliness, possessions, etc. Epictetus then reconfirms his levels of fundamental rootedness for the Self, by again highlighting the contrast between the natural virtue or attribute or quality [kata» fu/sin], which is deeply rooted in us, and the more superficial properties, which, he says, are only skin-deep appearances [en chresei phantasiwn - e˙n crh/sei fantasiw◊n].

What then is actually yours? In a world cobbled together of outward surfaces & façades, what this means is that you should hold fast to your own real or natural qualities—in which case you are rightfully praised. (7) For then you shall accept praise for some quality that belongs rightfully to you.

§ A Fantastical Excursus. On the question of phantasiwn, a genitive plural from phantasia [φαντασία], and which means appearances or surface level, its use is rather straight-forward in our text here from Epictetus, in that it is juxtaposed with the deeper, more radical and fundamental sense of kata phusin [kata» fu/sin]. Essentially, phantasia has everything to do with superficiality and appearances – what one perceives or sees; the external and transient aspects of a thing; its accidental versus its essential qualities, to put a dandy Aristotelian spin on it.

That said, however, phantasia is a rather magnificent word all in all, and covers lots of territory in Greek literature, from the philosophically rich to the quotidian and banal, encompassing phenomena such as ghosts, things invented, imagination, etc. Were he to have translated himself into ancient Greek, for example, Immanuel Kant would definitely have used phantasia to translate his noumenal sense of Verstandeswesen or Hirngespinste (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, 13:292).

            For the expansiveness of phantasia in Greek literature, Tuft University’s Perseus Project cites the LSJ in extenso to give some sense of its reach, which is here further decanted for the non-Hellenophile:

Phantasia-- fantasiw◊n [pl f gen]- φαντασία from φαντάζομαι: imagination, the power by which an object is presented (φαίνεται) to the mind (the object presented being φάντασμα), Plat., Arist.

1 φαντα^σία, ἡ,

φαντα^σί-α , ἡ, verbal noun of φαντάζομαι and (in sense) of φαίνομαι,

a. appearing, appearance; usu. with less verbal force, appearance, presentation to consciousness, whether immediate or in memory, whether true or illusory; the appearance of the milky way, Id.Mete.339a35; esp. of visual images, Arist. de An.429a2; image reflected in a mirror, Placit.3.1.2; also of other sense=perceptions, appearance is the same as perception, whether we are talking of hot things or of anything else like them, Pl.Tht.152c, cf. Chrysipp.Stoic.2.21; freq. in later Philos. esp. in meaning psychic image, Epicur.Ep.1p.12U., S.E.M.7.152, M.Ant.4.24, al.; mental images, Cic.Fam.15.16.1; apparition, Arist.Mir.846a37.

b. less scientifically, appearance, Id.SE165b25; “(in a conjuring trick) Cels. ap. Origenes Cels.1.68; Gal.6.105, cf. 15.17,115, 19.206; Id.18(2).73, cf. 71, al.

2. imagination, i.e. the re-presentation of appearances or images, primarily derived from sensation; colours as judged by the φ., apparent colours, Placit.1.15.8.

b. in Aristotle, faculty of imagination, both presentative and representative, opp. Arist.de An. 428a5; opp. δόξα, because πίστις is absent, ib.22, 24; opp. ἐπιστήμη, νοῦς, διάνοια, οὐδὲ [φ.] τῶν ἀεὶ ἀληθευόντων οὐδεμία ἔσται, οἷον ἐπιστήμη ἢ νοῦς ib.428a17;

c. creative imagination, Philostr.VA6.19.

3. the use of imagery in literature, Longin.3.1;

4. prestige, reputation, Plb.22.9.12, cf. 24.7.2, 24.11.5, Fr.233; Hipparch.1.1.6; parade, ostentation, Hp.Decent.7, cf. Plb.15.25.22, 16.21.1, 31.26.6, Posidon.36 J., D.S.12.83, Vett.Val.38.26, al.

Further reading:

·      https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality-ancient/

·      https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theophrastus/

·      https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sextus-empiricus/

·      From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy

·      Cf. the following article from Vox for a lesson in applied Epictetus on the question of taking credit for something ‘you’ did not do: http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/21/15389362/trump-video-aya-hijazi]

·      Example 2: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-panama-canal-juan-carlos-varela-boasting-twitter-mocking-a7799306.html

Of Tyrants & Wisdom

~by David Aiken~

Periander of Corinth

Ancient ‘How to’s’ for Commencements and Recommencements. Every day brings new chances for us, just as it brings along chances to be new. An ancient king of the Greek city of Corinth, Periander (Περίανδρος; 625-585 BC), left behind two bits of pearly wisdom useful to this idea, and which have served Greek posterity well: “Practice everything”; and "Be farsighted with everything." Now at first blush, this might not seem like much as far as pithy philosophical advice and wise witticisms go from a one-time sagacious king of ancient Corinth. But then, that is precisely our story.

§ On Tyranny, Tyrants, and Pearls of Wisdom. Periander of Corinth was a tyrant. In the Greece of high antiquity, however, tyrants were not necessarily ‘tyrannical’ or oppressive in our modern sense of the word. Rather, throughout much of Greek history the ‘tyrant’ was simply a title given to rulers such as Gyges of Lydia, Oedipus (of Sophocles’ fame) and Periander; it referenced an authoritarian structure for the government of the polis, as opposed to oligarchies or aristocracies. Nonetheless, it is quite evident that a change occurred at some point in the perception of the tyrant and tyrannical governance in ancient Greece, because by the 4^th century the term is clearly become pejorative, particularly in Plato.

Now although Periander was a tyrant, this did not keep him from also being named one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece by, among others, Diogenes Laertius (3^rd century AD). The Seven Sages was a select cast of characters from the 6^th century BC, which was to become for all Greeks the go-to fountainhead of Abbreviated Wisdom, which took the form of witty and sagacious proverbs—the Seven Sages for the Greeks was an early predecessor of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac for revolutionary America. This Greek list of seven included Thales, Solon the lawmaker, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, and Pittacus; the list is not always exactly the same, however—in Plato’s Protagoras, for example, Socrates does not include Periander among the Seven Sages.

In his historical incarnation, Periander was the second tyrant of Corinth (following his father, Cypselus, who was the first of that familial dynasty), and was by all accounts an extremely effective ruler, bringing much prosperity and wealth to Corinth through both trade and conquest. It is worth remembering about Corinth that much later in its history, in the early Christian period, the city had already long gone into decline; the letters of the Apostle Paul attest to Corinth as a center of Aphrodite worship and libertine conduct, which apparently caused problems in the Corinthian Christian churches.

During the rule of the tyrant Periander, however, some 5 centuries earlier, Corinth had enjoyed a period of exceptional stability. The historical consensus seems to be that his rule was both just and fair, and that he was interested in the evenhanded distribution of wealth in his polis. In addition to being himself both a philosopher and poet, he also encouraged the arts though a regular fare of art festivals, and had a sustained building program. That said, according to Herodotus (Histories V 91-93) there is one little anecdotal skeleton in this wise and skillful tyrant’s closet, which is his rather erratic attachment to his wife; but perhaps this was only to be expected from a polis devoted to things of the goddess Aphrodite. To wit: first, Periander killed his wife in a fit of rage while she was pregnant, although the exact means of and motive for killing her is in dispute, but then he apparently, writes Herodotus, “baked his bread in a cold oven” –a euphemism suggestive enough to put anyone off their morning brioche.

Diogenes (Ch. 7) records for History the commemorative inscription that was placed by the Corinthians in memory of Periander the tyrant:

[97] In mother earth here Periander lies,

The prince of sea-girt Corinth rich and wise.

My own epitaph on him is:

Grieve not because thou hast not gained thine end,

But take with gladness all the gods may send;

Be warned by Periander's fate, who died

Of grief that one desire should be denied.

§ Greek Proverbial Wisdom #1: “Rehearse (repeatedly) everything.” So, Periander the philosopher and poet left behind proverbial pearls of wisdom, among which one of the aphorisms that interest us, which is commonly translated as, “Practice everything” (μελέτη τὸ πᾶν; meleth to pan-TLG, Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, Bk 1, section 99, ln. 5). The ‘practice’ bit of Periander’s adage, which is μελέτη [meleth; feminine noun], generally means care or attention; and the everything bob is τὸ πᾶν [to pan; an accusative of respect], which means with respect to everything. Assembled, this gives us: Give care with respect to everything. Now the bob, everything, is straight-forward enough to pass over quickly; but it is actually the practice bit that gives us some food for wise thinking.

Life as a martial art. The noun μελέτη [meleth] is generally rendered by translators as an imperative: practice. Be that as it may, this noun comes from the verb mello [μέλω], whose first sense is to have care for, attention to action. But this fuses into a second denotative meaning, which is practice or exercise, such as the kinds of exercises one might do consistent with Spartan discipline. This second sense is reinforced even more strongly, again drawing upon Thucydides, by its use in a military context as a training exercise or practice or drill.

            In the most radical sense of this wise saying, then, in addition to the idea of simply practicing everything, as the majority of translators render it, μελέτη τὸ πᾶν has more the sense of training or drilling with respect to everything. The difference may seem pedantic, but there is a world of color and intensity in the military connotation that is lacking with just practice. With this martial coloration, μελέτη τὸ πᾶν describes the frame of mind of someone who accomplishes the days of his life with attention to detail and precision in execution—perhaps much like the world-class athlete who trains unceasingly for the day he will have to compete for the prize, with only this difference: that for the Wise Man each day is its own competition. In this sense, Periander’s adage is better translated: Train for everything.

Life as staged performance. A second denotative coloring of this proverb (μελέτη τὸ πᾶν; meleth to pan), is based on μελέτη [meleth] as a theatrical or speechifying term. It is used frequently of orators who practice their speeches (cf. Demosthenes), or of actors (per Aristotle) who study and rehearse their lines and gestures and movements for a performance. Rendered with this coloring in mind, Train (repeatedly) for everything begins to look more like, Rehearse (repeatedly) everything.

Finally, with the addition of (repeatedly) in Periander’s adage, Rehearse (repeatedly) everything, the Phrontisterion translator is able to provide an additional bit of color that is also the proper of μελέτη [meleth]—the idea that we should study and rehearse everything we do until all of the articulations and intonations and gestures of our Live Performances should become habit, until we become so accustomed to the dramatic ‘show’ of living out our lives, that the enactment of each hour of each day is the equivalent of Opening Night in the Theatre of Life.

§ Greek Proverbial Wisdom #2: “Always look ahead.” A second piece of wisdom attributed to Periander the tyrant is, "Be farsighted with everything" (Greek: Ὅρα τὸ μέλλον, hora to mellon). Quite briefly, Be farsighted, which is the common rendering, is an effective translation for the entire expression; with everything is an addition that is neither in the Greek proverb, nor necessary to the sense. Now the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae does not formally attribute this second precept specifically to Periander; but it is certainly attributed to the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. Other sources do indeed link it specifically to our one-time tyrant of Corinth.        
            Ὅρα [hora] is the present imperative of the verb ‘to see’, thus giving us: watch, look, observe, or the older, behold. The sense is clearly banal enough: to keep something before the eyes; keep in sight; keeping an eye on it. The second denotation, however, is perhaps even more interesting to the astute insight on offer here, because the imperative, Ὅρα [hora], invites us, with some sense of urgency, to look out for, or to make provision for the future (pro-vision (Latin) whence the notion of fore-sight). Tὸ μέλλον [to mellon], which is an accusative single neutral participle being used as the direct object of the phrase, means something like: whatever is about to come about. In mind, of course, is simply future time—we should not be neglectful of the future [the unknown?].

So, this tidbit of wise insight invites us, individually, to take into consideration, to keep an eye on, not just the today of our life, but to keep in mind as well the Unknown Tomorrow that constantly attends us. The admonition is not just preventative, as in la Fontaine’s fable of the cicada and the ant (La cigale et la fourmi), where one tries to forestall ‘grim Necessity’, as Homer might have said, but it encourages us, also, to look forward in optimism to that which attends us, and with a spirit of adventure, to see what Tomorrow holds in store for us.

Similarly, but using bugs to carry along his message, in his moral fable with the same wise punchline as the ancient Greek sage-King, Periander, the French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine’s (1621-1695) encourages us to prepare today for all our tomorrows (link).

The cicada (cricket) having sung
All summer long,
Found herself most destitute
When the north wind blew:
Not even one little morsel
Of fly or worm.

[La Cigale, ayant chanté
                  Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau .]

§ On Periander, the Etymological Man. We have already seen that Periander of Corinth was a wise and philosophically shrewd tyrant in ancient Greece, although he may have had a rather odd conception of baked bread. But there is also another interpretative possibility for reading Periander; and that is to read his all-too human wisdom as truly peri-andros— as brief but perceptive insights for and about all men, which is the lexical meaning of peri-andros. In this sense, the wise king Periander provides for us our daily bread of peri-andros wisdom, of reminders about how to live well and perceptively as men in the world—and peri-andros thus becomes finally a metaphor for each of us.

The wiki-universe tells us that, according to tradition, each of the seven sages of Greek antiquity supposedly represents some specific aspect of worldly wisdom, which was then reduced to its aphoristic quintessence. The list tends to go something like this:

·       "Moderation is best in all things" -- Cleobulus of Lindos (πάν μέτρον άριστον, pan metron ariston).

·       "Nothing in excess" -- Solon of Athens (μηδὲν ἄγαν, meden agan).

·       "Do not desire the impossible" -- Chilon of Sparta (μὴ ἐπιθυμεῖν ἀδυνάτων, mei epithumein adunaton).

·       "Most men are bad" -- Bias of Priene (πλεῖστοι ἄνθρωποι κακοί, pleistoi anthropoi kakoi).

·       "Know thyself" -- Thales of Miletus (γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnothi seauton).

·       "Know thy opportunity" -- Pittacus of Mytilene: (γνῶθι καιρὸν, gnothi kairon).

·       "Be farsighted with everything" -- Periander of Corinth: (Ὅρα τὸ μέλλον, hora to mellon).

“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear…”

Further reading:

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2014/01/januarys-blogpostredemptions-memories.html

·      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sages_of_Greece--The Seven Sages