~by David Aiken~
2 “Ench”, 1.5.1.1. TRANSLATION (Aiken)—About Sh#t that Happens. It is not really the things that happen to
people that we find upsetting; but it is, rather, the opinions we have about
all the stuff that happens—our beliefs about these occurrences, which disturb
us. Death, for example, is not at all dreadful, (or else it would have appeared
so to Socrates); what is dreadful, rather, is the opinion that we have about Death—that
it is an awful thing that happens. It is only this opinion that brings about
our dread. Therefore, whenever we are thwarted or vexed by circumstances of any
sort, let us never put the blame elsewhere, but rather only upon ourselves. Blame
is only truly to be found in terms of our own opinions. To blame circumstances is a sign of someone who
is unformed and uninformed; and such a one wreaks havoc upon others. To blame oneself is the sign of the beginner who
is only just starting to get some instruction about thinking. As for the one
who has received instruction about right thinking, on the other hand, he will
not only not blame the ‘sh#t that happens’, but neither will he blame himself.
2 “Ench”, 1.5.1.1
Tara¿ssei
tou\ß aÓnqrw¿pouß ouj ta» pra¿gmata, aÓlla» 2 ta» peri« tw◊n pragma¿twn do/gmata: oi–on
oJ qa¿natoß oujde«n deino/n (e˙pei« kai« Swkra¿tei a·n e˙fai÷neto), aÓlla» to\ do/gma to\
peri« 4
touv qana¿tou, dio/ti
deino/n, e˙kei√no to\ deino/n e˙stin. o¢tan ou™n 5 e˙mpodizw¿meqa h£ tarassw¿meqa h£
lupw¿meqa, mhde÷pote a‡llon 6 ai˙tiw¿meqa, aÓll’ e˚autou/ß, touvt’ e¶sti ta»
e˚autw◊n do/gmata. 7 aÓpaideu/tou
e¶rgon to\ a‡lloiß e˙gkalei√n, e˙f’ oi–ß aujto\ß 8 pra¿ssei kakw◊ß: hjrgme÷nou paideu/esqai
to\ [e˙gkalei√n] e˚autw◊ø: 9 pepaideume÷nou to\ mh/te a‡llwˆ mh/te
e˚autw◊ø.
Ms. Carter renders Fragment 5 like this:
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and
notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not
terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore
we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never
attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own
principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own
bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction
will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will
place blame neither on others nor on himself.
§ Interesting crumbs
from the table of the slave
Opinions and beliefs versus ‘sh#t that happens’. In the first line we read: “It is not really the things that happen to
people that we find upsetting; but it is, rather, the opinions we have about
all the stuff that happens—our beliefs about these occurrences, which disturb
us.” The philosophical and preeminently Stoic bottom line here for Epictetus,
is that the ‘sh#t that happens’ to us all in the course of a life, including
our death, is neither here nor there. These are simply neutral events of our
organic state that we should not take personally, and there is no harm to be
found in them. On the other hand, it is our preconceived opinions about Life
Events that ‘harm’ us; we create for ourselves, in our own minds, a condition
of fear that incapacitates us, both as thinking and as acting agents in the
world. Hence Epictetus’ conclusion that ‘it is only this opinion that brings
about our dread’. Dread or Fear does not derive from events in the world; but
rather, is the product of our interpretative minds.
The authority of excellent teachers. Line 3 reads: “Death, for example, is not at
all dreadful, (or else it would have appeared so to Socrates).” There is a
causal sense behind the ‘or else’ [e˙pei], which tells us, indirectly, a
story about Socrates (death—399 BCE) and the teaching authority he still
carried at the time that Epictetus is thinking and writing (AD 50-135). One
could render the phrase, for example, as, ‘Seeing that (or because) Death did
not appear dreadful to Socrates, we have no reason either to think that Death
is a fearful affair’.
On dogmatism,
dogma and dogmatics. In Line 6 of this section of the Enchiridion we read: “Blame is only truly to be found in terms of
our own opinions.” Epictetus makes it crystal clear that the world’s ‘evil’ is actually
to be discovered only in the mind of the beholder, and does not belong to the
world at all. Our word here for ‘opinion’ is standard usage in Greek: dogmata [do/gmata], which, in its radical sense, means ‘that which
seems to one’, which is really what an opinion is when all is said and done. An
opinion is a ‘seeming to be’; it is not an objective reality that exists as an
intimate part and parcel of the world’s materiality
[φύσις],
but rather, it is an ostensible judgment or interpretation, which we create in
the (noetic) world of our personal perceptions and then drape cosmetically [κόσμος] about the reality of the world—to phrase
things in a Pre-Socratic kind of a way.
On another note, we have all met dogmatic people. According to The Free Dictionary, someone who is
dogmatic is defined as “Asserting or insisting upon ideas or principles, especially when
unproven or unexamined, in an imperious or arrogant manner […], often with an
unconsidered rejection of criticism.” This is an attitude that one might freely
associate with demagogues and despots, if one were minded to think about recent
American elections.
Then there are dogmatisms of a more philosophical persuasion. In the Prolegomena of Immanuel Kant, the German
enlightenment and rationalist philosopher famously gives credit to David Hume, the
Scottish enlightenment and empiricist philosopher, for awakening him from his
“dogmatic slumber” about the nature of causality (i.e., not as objective phenomenon [located in φύσις], but as subjective [κόσμος] phenomenon), which radically changed the orientation of
Kant’s speculative philosophy.
Finally, there are dogmatisms of a religious sort. Karl Barth, for instance, the famous Swiss Protestant theologian, wrote his fourteen-volume Church Dogmatics between 1932
and 1967, in which he “explores the whole of Christian doctrine, presenting it as necessarily
and entirely Christo-centric. He presents Jesus Christ as the unique and
complete Word of God, made flesh. The Bible, therefore, functions as the
attestation thereof…”
And then there is Voltaire—who graciously helps
us to remember that dogmata are nothing
more than opinions about things or ideas. And going one more step into the
outback of subjectivity, dogmata about ‘things’ have only a “seem to be” kind
of relevance; they are most certainly not indisputable truths, nor worth the
bother of killing those who may have a different take on what it is that ‘seems
to be’. In the Philosophical Dictionary
(French edition des Oeuvres Completes:
Tome VII, Section II, 444), under Dogmes,
one reads: “The Eternal says: Let it become common knowledge to all the
inhabitants of all the hundreds and billions of worlds that it pleased Us to
create, that We shall never judge any of the said inhabitants on the merits of
their empty ideas [emphasis Phrontisterion’s], but only on their actions; because such is Our
justice. […] Because such is Our pleasure.”
Ataraxia. The wiki-folks define ataraxia as “a
Greek term used by Pyrrho and subsequently Epicurus for a lucid state of robust
equanimity, characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry. The
ancient Greek author Sextus Empiricus gave this definition: "ataraxia is
an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul." In non-philosophical
usage, the term was used to describe the ideal mental state for soldiers
entering battle.” From Enchiridion 1.3.1.1 we already learned something about the
history of this term:
“‘To not become devastated’, or ataraxia, is
an expression that originally comes to Western philosophy from Epicurus (died
270 BC), and it will subsequently become a fixed philosophical notion
for the three great schools of philosophy in ancient Greece: Epicureanism,
Pyrrhonism, and Stoicism; Epictetus, of course, who died almost 400 years after
Epicurus, is classified as a later Stoic philosopher. The
dictionary definition of this future passive verb [ouj taracqh/shØ; ou taraxthese] is, to get stirred up or troubled; to
confound, to agitate, to disturb or disquiet. In its passive form, which we
have here, it denotes to be in a state of disorder or anarchy (per Thucydides
and Democritus). The literature (in the form of Xenophon) also provides a nice
figurative image: to be shaken in one’s seat on horseback.
The translation, ‘devastated’, as in, “you will not become devastated,” seems to get to the
heart both of Epictetus’ word choice [ouj taracqh/shØ; ou taraxthese],
and of the philosophical distance that Epictetus encourages us to acquire as we
learn to respond to Loss in our lives. We have
written elsewhere that ‘not-taraxia’ or ataraxia is a mental state that one can learn; it is “the tranquility
of mind that characterizes someone who is free from worry and distress.” It is
this discipline of keeping in mind the real nature of the world—the limitations
of materiality in general, which Epictetus is here trying to teach us.”
We can add to
this earlier history of ataraxia
several other contrasting images by way of clarification. Taraxia, for example, which is a state of confusion, is like a
speechifier who mumbles his words and jumbles his argument, making himself not
only unintelligible, but nonsensical; taraxia
describes an army that is taken by surprise and completely ‘thrown into
disorder’ (cf. Herodotus); or it can be said of a country’s political
establishment being rocked, agitated, or thrown into an uproar (per
Thucydides), as has been the case, for example, since the Americans recently
elected their 45th president.
Ø Relevant posts on ataraxia: Enchiridion 1.3.1.1, and June, 2013 ‘The Pursuit of Happiness and the Well-Demoned Life’
§ Paideia
The cornerstone of Epictetus’ Stoic philosophy,
which becomes especially clear in this section from Lines 6-9, is the careful distinction
he makes between the formed and the ill- and uninformed, the aware (educated)
and the unaware (ignorant). Epictetus’ premise, we recall, is that ‘Blame is
only truly to be found in terms of our own opinions.” In Bard-ese this looks a
lot like Hamlet’s Stoically-minded retort to Rosencrantz: “there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act 2, Scene 2).
So, on the question of who and what to blame when ‘sh#t
happens’, Epictetus gives us three possibilities. 1) Lines 7-8: To blame the circumstances themselves is a sign of
someone who is unformed and uninformed [aÓpaideu/tou], and, says Epictetus, such a one wreaks havoc upon
others [aÓpaideu/tou
e¶rgon to\ a‡lloiß e˙gkalei√n, e˙f’ oi–ß aujto\ß 8 pra¿ssei kakw◊ß]. Wreaking havoc, which quite literally means to
act evilly [pra¿ssei
kakwק], is what we create when we
act out of ignorance. When we blame the world for being the world and for doing
what the world does for a living (e.g., seasons, storms, floods, winds, heat,
cold, sickness…), and try somehow to make the world itself responsible for what
we call our misfortunes (as if we had
some ownership in this process!)—Epictetus calls this attitude a-paideutos. To not be paideutos-the a is privitive in the
expression—is, diversely, to be uneducated or uninstructed; as it is to be
boorish, rude, or clumsy. Perhaps a clarifying image for a-paideutos might be the clumsy or black-n-white way in which
children speak about the world. Because for the most part, while certainly meaningful,
there is little that is rigorously correct about children’s perceptions of or
understanding about the ways of the world. Childish interpretations are not
necessarily ‘wrong’ or ‘untruthful’, because they carry meaning for the
childish mind, but they do not yet yield the refined or nuanced understanding
of the adult mind, which constitutes for Epictetus the paideutos mind. So, we should not lay blame on the altar of the
world for ‘sh#t that happens’. It is just the way of the world to be…well,
worldly and world-like.
Likewise, says Epictetus, 2) To blame oneself for ‘sh#t that happens’ in the
world is the sign of the beginner who is only just starting to get some
instruction about thinking [hjrgme÷nou paideu/esqai]. It seems just a tad obvious to say that there is
no intelligence or understanding in asserting that I, the person, am to blame
for all the [x]—fill in the blank—which the world brings down on my doorstep. A
severe winter storm is the gift of and from the world—I have no true burden of
responsibility in its coming or its severity. But, says Epictetus, in learning
how to think correctly about the whys and wherefores of sh#t happening in the
world, I can begin to understand
where and to what degree I might have played a contributing role in the Theatre
of the World. When we begin learning to think correctly about the world, we
begin by placing ourselves inside the Theatre of the World as players in the
world’s eco-system. Right-thinking about the world will certainly not protect
us from having to wade through the sh#t that happens to All & Sundry who
wander around in the ‘lower 40’ of the world’s eco-system; but right-thinking will calm our minds, making us ataraxia. Right thinking will allow us
to center ourselves so we have control of our own minds. We will not be anxious
or unsettled in our minds [tara¿ssei—Line 1],
and therefore our interior spaces will not be jarred around by the whims of the
exterior world.
Epictetus concludes in Line 9 with this: On the
other hand, 3) As for the one who has received instruction about right thinking
[pepaideume÷nou], he will not only not put blame on the ‘sh#t
that happens’, but neither will he blame himself. The gift of paideia, of right thinking in an adult
kind of way, is the understanding that there is no true blame, neither toward
the world nor toward us. This is the freeing reality of paideia. ‘This’, by which we mean The World, is all just what it
is—and nothing is to blame for it. We are all simply players on the World-Stage;
and the secret of playing well, is to begin by thinking well.
§ The sins of
the fathers…
When
we ask our students, what is the job of the parent in parent-child
relationships?, the response is quasi-unanimous – the parent is to ‘provide
for’ the child. But this is, importantly, to miss the boat—entirely. By way of
explanation, let us imagine a friendly chinwag between two slaves: Aesop and
Epictetus.
Aesop first tells his story [TLG: AESOPUS et AESOPICA Scr. Fab. Fabulae {0096.002} Fable 294] of a Wolf who happens to be passing in the
neighborhood, who spies a Large Dog staked to the ground by a neck collar –
with the exchange going something like this: Wolf: “Who is it who, by
putting this chain around your neck, has trained you to act this way? Dog: “My huntsman master.” Epictetus nods his head knowingly at the
conclusion of this very-short fable. He finds this story interesting,
primarily, because of the verb Aesop uses for ‘trained you to act this way’,
which is eksethrepse [ἐξέθρεψε],
and means to bring up from childhood, to rear up. This Dog’s training, acquired
from years of routine-become-habit, consists entirely in addressing him as his
body. The Wolf understands instantly what the Dog does not see at all—that the
Dog has been trained by the Huntsman chain to remain physically postured, bound
and imprisoned, in a way that has value only for the Huntsman. Now, Epictetus
certainly understands the value of routine and habit in raising up, in
providing for children’s needs bodily, but he also knows that this sort of
education is not so much of interest to the Dog as it is useful to the
Huntsman.
So, by way of response, Epictetus crafts this short
philosophical narrative for Aesop, which turns out to be Fragment 5 of the Enchiridion, where he adds to the eksethrepse of the Dog’s body the paideia of the Wolf’s mind. It is
obvious that both Aesop and Epictetus admire the understanding and perception
with which the Wolf interrogates the Dog, as it is evident that neither much
care for the Dog’s imprisonment—in both body and mind. The Wolf’s understanding
of his world comes as a result of training of the paideia sort, and leads to a liberation of the understanding,
whereas the habits and routines of the Dog’s eksethrepse lead only to neck collars and captivity.
The moral of this short story of an imagined
philosophical chitchat between the two slaves, is to remind us that ‘our
fathers’ have conceived of and continue to fashion an educational system that
is almost entirely material, entirely utilitarian in focus [eksethrepse]. So it must not surprise us
any longer that consecutive generations, who have been raised up and trained eksetrepsically for such a long time,
cannot see the prisons that enthrall them, which hold them fast and bind them
as slaves to some Huntsman’s purpose. Education in paideia, on the other hand, is the instruction of the mind in the
art of thinking and understanding—in the way of thinking philosophically about
our world. Paideia bespeaks the freed
mind of Aesop’s Wolf and Epictetus’ educated thinker [pepaideume÷nou], as
eksethrepse speaks of the apprehended
body and a-paideutos mind of the Dog. Among the various conceptions
of education on offer in the world, where paideia
(humanistic study) continues to stand in clear opposition to eksethrepse (STEM study), it seems that
our fathers, unfortunately, have chosen to prioritize eksethrepse. This explains, almost certainly, today’s ‘way of the
world’.