Epictetus, the Discourses as reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments/Book 2/Chapter 17

by Epictetus

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CHAPTER XVII

How ought we adjust our preconceptions to individual instances?

What is the first business of one who practises philosophy? To get rid of thinking that one knows^[1]; for it is impossible to get a man to begin to learn that which he thinks he knows. However, as we go to the philosophers we all babble hurly-burly about what ought to be done and what ought not, good and evil, fair and foul, and on these grounds assign praise and blame, censure and reprehension, passing judgement on fair and foul practices, and discriminating between them. But what do we go to the philosophers for? To learn what we do not think we know. And what is that? General principles. For some of us want to learn what the philosophers are saying, thinking it will be witty and shrewd, others, because they wish to profit thereby. ⁵But it is absurd to think that when a man wishes to learn one thing he will actually learn something else, or, in short, that a man will make progress in anything without learning it. But the multitude are under the same misapprehension as was Theopompus, the orator,^[2] who actually censures Plato for wishing to define every term. Well, what does he say? "Did none of us before your time ever use the words 'good' or 'just'? Or, without understanding what each of these terms severally mean, did we merely utter them as vague and empty sounds?" Why, who tells you, Theopompus, that we did not have a natural conception of each term, that is, a preconceived idea of it? But it is impossible to adjust our preconceived ideas to the appropriate facts without having first systematized them and having raised precisely this question—what particular fact is to be classified under each preconception. Suppose, for example, that you make the same sort of remark to the physicians: "Why, who among us did not use terms 'healthy' and 'diseased' before Hippocrates was born? Or were we merely making an empty noise with these sounds?" For, of course, we have a certain preconception of the idea "healthy." But we are unable to apply it. That is why one person says, "Keep abstaining from food," and another, "Give nourishment"; again, one says, "Cut a vein," and another says, "Use the cupping-glass." What is the reason? Is it really anything but the fact that a person is unable properly to apply the preconceived idea of "healthy" to the specific instances?

¹⁰So it stands here also, in the affairs of life. Who among us has not upon his lips the words "good" and "evil," "advantageous" and "disadvantageous"? For who among us does not have a preconceived idea of each of these terms? Very well, is it fitted into a system and complete? Prove that it is. "How shall I prove it?" Apply it properly to specific facts. To start with, Plato classifies definitions under the preconception "the useful," but you classify them under that of "the useless." Is it, then, possible for both of you to be right? How can that be? Does not one man apply his preconceived idea of "the good" to the fact of wealth, while another does not? And another to that of pleasure, and yet another to that of health? Indeed, to sum up the whole matter, if all of us who have these terms upon our lips possess no mere empty knowledge of each one severally, and do not need to devote any pains to the systematic arrangement of our preconceived ideas, why do we disagree, why fight, why blame one another?

And yet what need is there for me to bring forward now our strife with one another and make mention of that? Take your own case; if you apply properly your preconceived ideas, why are you troubled,^[3] why are you hampered? ¹⁵Let us pass by for the moment the second field of study^[4]—that which has to do with our choices and the discussion of what is our duty in regard to them. Let us pass by also the third—that which has to do with our assents. I make you a present of all this. Let us confine our attention to the first field, one which allows an almost palpable proof that you do not properly apply your preconceived ideas. Do you at this moment desire what is possible in general and what is possible for you in particular? If so, why are you hampered? Why are you troubled? Are you not at this moment trying to escape what is inevitable? If so, why do you fall into any trouble, why are you unfortunate? Why is it that when you want something it does not happen, and when you do not want it, it does happen? For this is the strongest proof of trouble and misfortune. I want something, and it does not happen; and what creature is more wretched than I? I do not want something, and it does happen; and what creature is more wretched than I?

Medea, for example, because she could not endure this, came to the point of killing her children. In this respect at least hers was the act of a great spirit. For she had the proper conception of what it means for anyone's wishes not to come true. ²⁰"Very well, then," says she,^[5] "in these circumstances I shall take vengeance upon the man who has wronged and insulted me. Yet what good do I get out of his being in such an evil plight? How can that be accomplished? I kill my children. But I shall be punishing myself also. Yet what do I care?" This is the outbursting of a soul of great force. For she did not know where the power lies to do what we wish—that we cannot get this from outside ourselves, nor by disturbing and deranging things. Give up wanting to keep your husband, and nothing of what you want fails to happen. Give up wanting him to live with you at any cost. Give up wanting to remain in Corinth, and, in a word, give up wanting anything but what God wants. And who will prevent you, who will compel you? No one, any more than anyone prevents or compels Zeus.

When you have such a leader as Zeus and identify your wishes and your desires with His, why are you still afraid that you will fail? Give to poverty and to wealth your aversion and your desire: you will fail to get what you wish, and you will fall into what you would avoid. Give them to health; you will come to grief; so also if you give them to offices, honours, country, friends, children, in short to anything that lies outside the domain of moral purpose. ²⁵But give them to Zeus and the other gods; entrust them to their keeping, let them exercise the control; let your desire and your aversion be ranged on their side—and how can you be troubled any longer? But if you show envy, wretched man, and pity, and jealousy, and timidity, and never let a day pass without bewailing yourself and the gods, how can you continue to say that you have been educated? What kind of education, man, do you mean? Because you have worked on syllogisms, and arguments with equivocal premisses? Will you not unlearn all this, if that be possible, and begin at the beginning, realizing that hitherto you have not even touched the matter; and for the future, beginning at this point, add to your foundations that which comes next in order—provision that nothing shall be that you do not wish, and that nothing shall fail to be that you do wish?

Give me but one young man who has come to school with this purpose in view, who has become an athlete in this activity, saying, "As for me, let everything else go; I am satisfied if I shall be free to live untrammelled and untroubled, to hold up my neck in the face of facts like a free man, and to look up to heaven as a friend of God, without fear of what may possibly happen." ³⁰Let one of you show me such a person, so that I can say to him: Enter, young man, into your own, for it is your destiny to adorn philosophy, yours are these possessions, yours these books, yours these discourses. Then, when he has worked his way through this first field of study and mastered it like an athlete, let him come to me again and say, "I want, it is true, to be tranquil and free from turmoil, but I want also, as a god-fearing man, a philosopher and a diligent student, to know what is my duty towards the gods, towards parents, towards brothers, towards my country, towards strangers." Advance now to the second field of study; this also is yours. "Yes, but I have already studied this second field. What I wanted was to be secure and unshaken, and that not merely in my waking hours, but also when asleep, and drunk, and melancholy-mad."^[6] Man, you are a god, great are the designs you cherish!

No, that is not the way it goes, but someone says, "I wish to know what Chrysippus means in his treatise on The Liar."^[7] If that is your design, go hang, you wretch! And what good will knowing that do you? With sorrow you will read the whole treatise, and with trembling you will talk about it to others. ³⁵This is the way you also, my hearers, behave. You say: "Shall I read aloud to you, brother, and you to me?"^[8] "Man, you write wonderfully." And again, "You have a great gift for writing in the style of Xenophon," "You for that of Plato," "You for that of Antisthenes." And then, when you have told dreams to one another, you go back to the same things again; you have exactly the same desires as before, the same aversions, in the same way you make your choices, your designs, and your purposes, you pray for the same things and are interested in the same things. In the second place, you do not even look for anybody to give you advice, but you are annoyed if you are told what I am telling you. Again, you say: "He is an old man without the milk of human kindness in him; he did not weep when I left, nor say, 'I fear you are going into a very difficult situation, my son; if you come through safely, I will light lamps.'"^[9] Is this what a man with the milk of human kindness in him would say? It will be a great piece of good luck for a person like you to come through safely, a thing worth lighting lamps to celebrate! Surely you ought to be free from death and free from disease!

It is this conceit of fancying that we know something useful, that, as I have said, we ought to cast aside before we come to philosophy, as we do in the case of geometry and music. ⁴⁰Otherwise we shall never even come near to making progress, even if we go through all the Introductions and the Treatises of Chrysippus, with those of Antipater and Archedemus thrown in!

Footnotes

1. i.e., of conceit in one's own opinion.
2. Almost certainly the same as Theopompus of Chios, the pupil of Isocrates, more generally known to us as an historian, but also famous in his own time in his declamations (ἐπιδεικτικοὶ λόγοι). The following quotation is probably from the Diatribe against Plato (Athen. XI, 508C).
3. The word, δυσροεῖν, ia the opposite of the technical term εὐροεῖν (τὸ εὐροῦν, εὐροία), which is a metaphor derived from the even flow of quiet waters.
4. The three fields, according to Epictetus, are, 1. ὄρεξις, desire; 2. ὁρμή, choice; 3. συγκατάθεσις, assent. Compare III. 2.
5. What follows is a free paraphrase of Euripides, Medea, 790 ff.
6. Compare I. 18, 23.
7. A stock sophism in the form: If a person says, "I am lying," does he lie or tell the truth? If he is lying, he is telling the truth; if he is telling the truth, he is lying. Cf. Von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, II. 92, frag. 280 ff. Chrysippus is said to have written six books on the subject, Diog. Laer. VII. 196. Cf. Pease on Cic. De Div. II. 11.
8. That is, each his own compositions, in expectation of mutual compliments. Cf. Hor. Ep. II. 2, 87 ff.
9. Compare I. 19, 24.