The Mneme Manual, 2nd Edition
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page 8, segment 2/2
our power to care for one thing, and apply ourselves to
one, we choose rather to care for many, and to encumber ourselves with many -
body, property, brother, friend, child, and slave - and, by this multiplicity of
encumbrances we are burdened and weighed down.... 20
What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the
rest as it occurs. And how does it occur? As God wills.21
Epictetus
Is that right? The one power that we have seems right, but do we not have any power over
anything else? I mean, what about the potter and his clay as a simile for the Stoic working
with his indifferents, the externals? Don't I have some power over my health, for example, if I
eat right, exercise, avoid destructive habits, et cetera? Statistically, my chances of living a
long life increase if I take care of my health, right? True, but you could be struck by lightning,
get run over by a truck, or die of lung cancer at the age of 30 without ever smoking (as my
wife's friend did a couple of years ago).
One of the first surprises you discover when you are in the medical profession, or close to
someone in that profession, is that people at the peak of health can acquire disabling physical
conditions and can die at all ages of diseases that they should never have gotten. Or so we
commonly believe. The truth is that we are able to take care of ourselves, and prudence says
that we should, but in the end, a life of good health and the proximity of death are not in our
power.
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page 9, segment 1/2
The same can be said of all other externals. People who have amassed a fortune want us to
believe it was done by their own power, by their superior intelligence and exceptionally hard
work. That's just a form of denial and lack of self-awareness. Fate and destiny work twice as
hard in the accumulation of wealth as any individual, and it can work to put an end to that
wealth overnight.
To begin with, people are born with certain talents that others do not possess. They didn't
create these innate talents any more than a genius is responsible for his or her superior
intellect. They were born with certain talents as certainly as one child is born into crushing
poverty and another is to the manor born. Even of those born into poverty one will struggle
night and day to rise above his station and another will succumb to the first drug dealer that
knocks on his door. Why? We are born into certain environments and with certain talents that
tell much more about us and what our future holds than any other factor.
Here's a story to illustrate my point. Aristotle Onassis, a Greek shipping magnate, amassed
one of the greatest fortunes of the 20 th century. He was also born into poverty, but he was
born with a special talent: he somehow got the best of every deal he made. When he was a
small child he would find one marble and trade it for two. Then he would take his two marbles
and an old, discarded pair of gloves and trade them all for a broken tricycle with a missing
wheel. And so on, until he ended up with the finest bicycle in town. It was always like this for
Ari, as his friends called him.
When he was a teenager, his parents moved to a Latin American country, and they could no
longer afford to send him to school. So, where did Ari go to work? As an office boy in a trading
and
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shipping company. Before he had been there a year, he overheard a deal that he
believed could make him rich. Only, it would require some capital, and he had none. Did that
stop him, as it would have stopped 99.9% of the office boys in his city? No. Did he have
boundless courage and energy that aggressively put together the capital he needed? No.
Actually, he was a bit shy, and didn't really impress anyone as being especially hard-working.
(Albert Einstein was told by his graduate school physics professor that he was very bright but
so lazy he would never amount to anything.)
Ari sought out the name of the richest man in town and got his address. Then he went to the
man's house and found out at what time he left his estate for work each day. Every morning,
Ari stood just outside the man's gate and quietly watched as the rich man's chauffeur-driven
limousine turned out of the gate on its way. He made no motion to stop the rich man; didn't
beg, didn't call out, just stood there watching as the limo drove by. At first, the man ignored
this strange teenager standing there looking at him every day, but then his curiosity got the
better of him. He told his driver to stop, and he asked the boy what he was up to. Ari told him
of the great deal he had heard about at his trading company and that he would need two
ships to make it work. If the rich man would lend him the money, he would make the deal and
split the profits with him. The rich man was convinced, and the Onassis fortune and legend
was born.
The choice of good and evil is in the power of our will – and ours alone. Everything else is in
the will of Nature. We are responsible for one thing; fate is responsible for everything else.
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page 10, segment 1/2
Was Aristotle Onassis wasting his time working with all those indifferents that made up his
colossal shipping empire? No. Was he bound to be evil in managing all those externals that
were not in his power? Of course not. Nature made Aristotle Onassis. Nature gave this poor
and shy boy an extraordinary talent. It also gave him the same thing it gave each of us:
absolute power over one thing, the choices of the will. If Ari employed virtue to consistently
choose good over evil in his work with indifferents, then he was able to build both great wealth
and a noble character with what he was given.
THREE STUDIES
Three studies abide us:
Judgments and the inner discourse,
Desires and the rising passions,
Actions and the noble duties.
There are three fields of study in which he who would be wise and good must be
exercised: that of [1] desires and aversions ... [2] pursuits and avoidances, and in
general, the duties of life ... [and, 3] whatever belongs to the judgment. 22
Epictetus
You'll notice the order in which these class notes were written down by Arrian places desires
first and judgments last. Assuming Arrian wrote them down in the given order, Epictetus
apparently believed that the thing he needed to emphasize to his students was, first and
foremost, the desires. Then, it naturally followed that the actions would proceed from the
desires. However, I have taken the liberty of beginning with the judgments that form in the
mind, because that's chronologically more accurate. I'm more comfortable starting at the
beginning of an event rather than in the middle, and we have seen time and again that what
we think about a thing is where it all begins.
The passage above appears to be used by Epictetus for a specific teaching purpose, because
as he points out elsewhere that
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desires and aversions begin in the mind. “Men are disturbed
not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it
would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is
terrible.”23 It is the judgment we have learned and reinforced with our inner discourse, what
we tell ourselves about death, that creates the fear of death.
And from desire, action surely follows. An impression comes to the mind from outside stimuli,
external or internal discourse, and a judgment is made. From this judgment, one feels desire
or aversion, and the motivation for action has begun. Epictetus knew this. Listen to what he
says: “If what the philosophers say be true, that all men's actions [my emphasis] proceed from
one source, namely feeling....”24 And what is that feeling? Desire or aversion. We either desire
something to be or we desire it not to be.
What Epictetus refers to as “pursuits and avoidances” we can more easily remember as
actions. Just as we narrowed down the idea of desires and aversions to the single word,
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page 11, segment 1/2
“desire,” so too can we encompass pursuits and avoidances with a single word. It is important
to bear in mind that actions include acts of omission and acts of commission. As Marcus said,
“A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.” 25
If you have trouble with such changes, forgive me. I, too, am loathe to take liberties with the
word of Epictetus, but such exercises as these require a certain amount of streamlining.
Marcus did that,26 and that's what we have done here. The meaning is the same; the words
are variously translated according to the light of the translator, and in this case I believe we
can safely follow Michael Chase's translation of Pierre Hadot's interpretation of pursuits and
avoidance as actions,27 which is how the third study will be represented henceforth.
Incidentally, according to Hadot, Epictetus was the first to divide Stoic thought into three
studies – judgments, desires, and actions – but he was really just following the three parts of
philosophy. He did this by pairing judgment with logic, desires with physics, and actions with
ethics.28 Marcus Aurelius apparently followed Epictetus in using the same tripartite division,
and it was his focus on these three studies that made up the bulk of his writing exercises we
now know as the Meditations.29
Judgments:
Take away the complaint, “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away. 30 The
habits of your thoughts will become the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed
by the thoughts. Dye it, then, with thoughts such as these: wherever one lives, one
can live well - even if he must live in a palace.31
Marcus Aurelius
Judgment, Logic, and the Inner Discourse. Clearly, the inner discourse, what we tell
ourselves about our world, is one of the most important themes in all of
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Stoic literature. Hadot
believes it is the very essence of being a Stoic. He says, “Everything in an individual's life
depends on how he represents things to himself - in other words, how he tells them to himself
in inner dialogue.”32 As you can see from the quotations above, much of the actual work of
becoming a Stoic begins with judgments and the inner discourse.
So, what does this have to do with logic? The ancients believed that the truth of the
judgments that form in the mind could be proved by formal logic, syllogisms. However, it's
more important to remember that logic is made up of both syllogisms and rhetoric. The
rhetoric part, essentially the clarity and accuracy of our reasoning with words, the stuff of our
inner discourse, is what we emphasize here. There is danger in getting bogged down and
sidetracked by analysis, and it's been going on for millenia. Both Seneca and Epictetus
caution us against it.
One is led to believe that unless one has constructed syllogisms of the craftiest kind,
and reduced fallacies to a compact form in which a false conclusion is derived from
a true premise, one will not be in a position to distinguish what one should aim at and
what one should avoid. It makes one ashamed that men of our advanced years should
turn a thing as serious as this into a game. . . .
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page 12, segment 1/2
'Mouse is a syllable,
and a mouse nibbles cheese;
therefore, a syllable nibbles cheese.'
Suppose for the moment I can't detect the fallacy in that. What danger am I placed
in by such a lack of insight?... What childish fatuities these are! 33
Seneca
...our present philosophers, leaving the first [desires] and second [actions] topics,
employ themselves wholly about the third [judgments]; dealing in the logical
subtleties.... Is this really, then, the thing you need? Have you mastered the other
points?”34
Epictetus
Our first study is the inner discourse and how it forms our judgments. As we have already
seen “... death is nothing terrible ... the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is
terrible.”35 Shakespeare said the same thing more concisely and poetically in Hamlet. “There
is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” 36 It is the judgments we form in the
mind that inflame or cool the passions, the emotions that have run amuck. If we were not
afraid of death or great pain, we would not know fear even in the face of a raging lion.
Of course we do feel fear in such circumstances because of the primary impulse of survival,
and that's OK. It's more than OK; it's ordained by Nature. Stoics are not retarded. We know
there is a place for adrenalin. We are supposed to be energized by such emotion – in this
case, be prepared to fight or flee.
In addition to facing danger, there are many other kinds of judgments we form with the
thoughts of our inner discourse. In fact, virtually everything. Where else can the feelings of
desire and aversion come from? We desire one thing; we don't desire another. Why?
Because of what we have been told and/or told ourselves about this thing. And there's
another source: the body. It also enters the inner discourse with
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it's own feelings of hunger,
fatigue, dis-ease, and other physical complaints of the body.
However, it is what we do with this information, all information from all sources, that matters.
The mind acquires an impression, makes a judgment, then desires something to be or not to
be: a large bowl of yummy food – without a hair in it; a different president – one that's
thoughtful, strong, and kind; a new wife that is rich – and good-looking. All of our desires imply
aversions, and vice versa.
Desires:
Of these [three studies] the principal and most urgent is that which reaches the
passions; for passion is only produced by a disappointment of one's desires and
an incurring of one's aversions. It is this which introduces perturbations, tumults,
misfortunes, and calamities; this is the spring of sorrow, lamentation, and envy; this
renders us envious and emulous, and incapable of hearing reason. 37
Epictetus
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Observe the courses of the stars as if you were to run those courses with them;
have constantly in mind the changes of the elements into one another, for such
thoughts sweep away the squalor of life on earth. And when you talk about men
you should look upon things on earth as one who looks from above on things below....38
Marcus Aurelius
The Physics of Desires and Aversions. The Stoic's desires and aversions are studied so
that we can bring them into alignment with the will of Nature. This is an expansion of our
motto, living in agreement with Nature. In the first place, we use our chief attribute designed
for us by Nature, our reason. When we use reason, we see that there is only one good, virtue.
Evil, then, is the lack of virtue. Both good and evil are in the will, and only the will is in our
power. Thus, living according to Nature means desiring the good, virtue, and desiring to avoid
evil, the lack of virtue. This is the one power that Nature has given us, the choices of the will.
The right use of reason and will power are the desires of a Stoic.
There is a subtle but significant difference between the use of 'desire' by Epictetus compared
to that of Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus teaches that we should desire only that which depends
on us, the will, while Marcus Aurelius speaks of aligning our desire with the fate of universal
Reason. That is, we should desire that our will is the same as the divine Will.39 However, this
is the stuff of scholarship, and not being a scholar I can only appreciate both points of view
without insisting on one being more correct or more orthodox. I can't even imagine ignoring
one in preference for the other. I believe we should consciously study to align our desire with
both the individual will and with the greater Will of Nature.
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Actions:
The next topic regards the duties of life. For I am not to be undisturbed by passions,
as a statue is; but as one who preserves the natural and acquired relations - as a
pious person, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen.40
Duties are universally measured by relations. Is a certain man your father? In this
are implied taking care of him; submitting to him in all things; patiently receiving his
reproaches, his correction.
“But he is a bad father.”
Is your natural tie, then to a good father? No, but to a father. Is a brother unjust?
Well, preserve your own just relation towards him. Consider not what he does, but
what you are to do, to keep your own will in a state of harmony with nature. 41
Epictetus
Actions, Duties, Ethics, and Oikeiosis. Our desires and aversions depend upon judgments
we have made and become motivation for ensuing action. Epictetus doesn't dwell on the
mere mundane of our actions, but on how they become our duties – the duties of life. The
evolution from the Primary Impulse of self-love, oikeiosis, to other-love, social oikeiosis, is the
work of a Stoic philosopher. They are his duties. Mature adult, socialized behavior is
exemplified by the noble character, the lofty spirit, the Stoic philosopher. This process is one
of the great principals of ethics.
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If our desires and aversions are aligned with Nature, we are burdened with only one
responsibility, the good and evil in the will. The proper exercise of that responsibility shows in
our actions as a pious person, a good son, a good brother, a good father, a good citizen. A
Stoic is the cornerstone of civilized society in that we preserve the natural and acquired
relations. All of our actions are oriented to that preservation. To a Stoic, these are the noble
duties of life. They are noble duties because they clearly show the true nature of our
character.
What about being a pious person? What is a pious person? The first definition of 'pious' in my
dictionary says that a pious person is one having or showing a dutiful spirit of reverence for
god or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations.” 42 How do we do that? Are we supposed
to be religious? No. It's true, the classical Stoics believed it was appropriate for a person to
attend the religious devotions of the society in which you live. If you were a Roman you
honored the Roman gods: Jupiter, Venus, Mars, et cetera. If you were Greek, you honored
the Greek gods: Zeus, Aphrodite, Aries, et cetera. Did they believe in these gods as actual
living, immortal deities? No, Stoics believed they were anthropomorphic concepts identifying
different aspects of the character of the One, the Logos, Nature. 43 Being pious meant
honoring the divinity in Nature in a manner harmonious with the time and place in which you
live.
Then how can we be pious? I think it's more difficult to answer this question today for a couple
of reasons. For one, many Stoics today are atheists, many more are skeptics or agnostics.
Does that mean a Stoic should be a Buddhist in Japan, a Hindu in India, a Muslim in Iraq, a
Jew in Israel, and a