The Philosophy of Epictetus

T H E PH ILOSOPH Y OF EPIC T ET U S

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The Philosophy of Epictetus Edited by

ANDREW S. MASON and

T H E OD ORE SC ALTSAS

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  the several contributors 2007

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Preface There is no message that would be of greater value in the face of today’s threats to society than Epictetus’ ‘bear and forbear’. A freed slave, Epictetus was central to Stoicism, no less for his life experiences than for his teachings. He lived in the first and second centuries of our era, becoming the ‘Stoic master’ of his time. His teaching centred on moral theory and the problems of its practice. The Municipality of Larnaca, ancient Citium, Cyprus, fosters the study of Stoicism, aiming to enhance the advancement of our understanding of Zeno’s school of thought. Two conferences on Stoicism have taken place under the Municipality’s auspices and with its support in Larnaca, in 1998 and in 2001. The first was devoted to the philosophy of Zeno, and the second to the philosophy of Epictetus. The fruit of the first was an anthology of articles on Zeno’s thought, and that of the second the present volume. I would like to express here our thanks, on behalf of all the conference participants, to the Municipality of Larnaca and Mr Demetrios Pierides of the Pierides Foundation for their warm and generous hospitality in Larnaca, as well as the organizational effort that was invested in the conference, which made it such a pleasant experience for all of us. Crucial in the latter was the late George Iacovou, Cultural Attaché of the Municipality, whose perfectionism and enthusiasm for the conference were a true measure of his love for Larnaca’s cultural heritage. I would finally like to thank the conference speakers and contributors to this anthology for the energy which they invested in this project, and the goods they delivered! Dory Scaltsas

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Contents Notes on Contributors

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Introduction Andrew S. Mason The Relevance of Moral Theory to Moral Improvement in Epictetus John M. Cooper Epictetus and Logic Paolo Crivelli Epictetus and Stoic Theology Keimpe Algra The Philosopher as God’s Messenger Katerina Ierodiakonou Epictetus on Cynicism Malcolm Schofield Epictetus on proairesis and Self Richard Sorabji Death is a Bugbear: Socratic ‘Epode’ and Epictetus’ Philosophy of the Self Michael Erler Epictetus on Freedom: Parallels between Epictetus and Wittgenstein Myrto Dragona-Monachou Epictetus on Moral Perspectives Julia Annas A Notion of a Person in Epictetus Michael Frede

Bibliography Index

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9 20 32 56 71 87

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Notes on Contributors Keimpe Algra is Professor of Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophy at the University of Utrecht. Julia Annas is Regents’ Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. John M. Cooper is Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Paolo Crivelli is Fellow and Tutor in Classical Philosophy at New College, Oxford. Myrto Dragona-Monachou is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens. Michael Erler is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Würzburg. Michael Frede is Professor Emeritus of the History of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Katerina Ierodiakonou is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens. Andrew S. Mason is Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London. Theodore Scaltsas is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Malcolm Schofield is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St John’s College. Richard Sorabji is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, and Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

Introduction Andrew S. Mason

Epictetus, who flourished at the end of the first century of our era, is, with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, one of the three leading figures of later Stoicism whose works we still possess. Alone of these three, he was a professional teacher of philosophy, and, since the writings of the great early Stoics have survived only in fragments, he is in fact the only professional Stoic teacher whose works we have in a continuous form. He was already famous during his lifetime, and, though he did not write for publication, his pupil Arrian recorded his thoughts in eight volumes of Discourses (Diatribai), of which four have survived, and in a summary form in the Handbook (Encheiridion), which became his most popular work. Epictetus has been one of the most widely read of ancient philosophers, both in antiquity itself and in modern times. Origen, writing in the early third century, when Platonism had already replaced Stoicism as the dominant philosophical school, wrote ‘while Plato is only in the hands of those reputed to be scholars, Epictetus is admired by ordinary people who have the urge to be benefited’ (Contra Celsum VI.2). In later antiquity, exceptionally for a Stoic, his Handbook became the subject of a commentary by the Neoplatonist Simplicius. Following a revival of interest in his work at the Renaissance, he was read by many philosophers, and also figured among the classical texts recommended to the educated public in general. He has also been an immensely influential philosopher. He paints a picture of the philosopher as tranquil in both prosperity and adversity, confident in divine providence and in the thought that nothing external can hurt his real self, his judgement. This, as Anthony Long has pointed out (2002: 119) has helped to form not

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only the way Stoicism is commonly perceived, but also what is often meant by a ‘philosophical’ attitude to life. It is unusual for a philosopher who is not the founder of a school or a conscious innovator to have so great an impact. The Stoic system was well established in Epictetus’ time, and he saw himself as an orthodox Stoic. The formal teaching in his school was devoted to the exposition and discussion of the classic texts of Stoicism; the discourses which have been preserved represent extracurricular talks and conversations, designed to advise, encourage and challenge his students. Why, then, has Epictetus’ work been so influential? Undoubtedly one of his major achievements was to make Stoicism accessible to a wider audience, both in his own time and later. He does not discuss the details of Stoic cosmology and logic, or the complex definitions and distinctions for which Stoicism was known, and in his ethical teaching he is concerned with the question of how we may improve our own lives, rather than with the (perhaps unattainable) Stoic ideal of the ‘wise man’. It is not that he repudiates any of these aspects of Stoicism—the works from which they come would have been covered in his formal teaching sessions—but they are not the main focus of his philosophy. Moreover, he wrote in an engaging style, and made much use of examples drawn from real life. All these features of his work equip him to be the public face of Stoicism. However, we should not see Epictetus as a mere popularizer or a slavish follower of his predecessors. He seems to have been responsible for one definite innovation in Stoic thought, the distinction between three topoi or fields of study—desire and aversion, impulse and repulsion, and assent—a distinction which, significantly, belongs to the theory of education. More generally, however, the way in which he structures his thought and harmonizes elements drawn from the tradition, and the concepts which he chooses to emphasize, produce a moral vision which, though consistent with earlier Stoic thinking, is distinctively his own. In particular, Epictetus develops the idea of proairesis in a distinctive way; this term, variously translated ‘will’ or ‘rational decision’, was not much used in Stoicism before his time, being associated rather with Aristotle. For Epictetus our proairesis is our true self, and, unlike our body, can never be constrained by anything external. Distinctive of him, too, is his notion of freedom, which arises from the recognition of our true nature; if we do not identify our interest with anything external, we are free, because our will can never be frustrated.

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Perhaps the context in which Epictetus developed his thought may account for one feature of it which helps to explain its great success. Because his discourses had the aim of helping and advising students of philosophy, philosophy itself plays an even greater role in his thought than was usual in antiquity; much of what he has to say is concerned with philosophical method and the nature of philosophical education, the vocation of the philosopher, and philosophy as a way of life. Because of this he can be seen as a spokesman, not only for Stoicism, but for philosophy more generally, and this may explain how his thought came to be appropriated by philosophers of other schools, including Platonists and Christians. Epictetus was primarily an ethicist; Stoics had always seen the question of how one should live as central to philosophy, but Epictetus renewed this emphasis, which had sometimes been lost sight of. However, he did not wholly neglect other areas; he does not discuss physics in a narrow sense, but God and the soul, subjects assigned by the Stoics to physics, play an important part in his thought, with belief in divine providence in particular being central to his approach to ethics. Logic also had a place in his system, though a secondary one, being one of the three fields of study into which he divides philosophy, that concerned with assent. The essays collected in this volume discuss Epictetus’ thought on a wide range of subjects, including logic, theology and psychology, as well as ethics. They also explore his relations with his predecessors (including his two philosophical heroes, Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic, as well as the earlier Stoic tradition), and his influence on later thinkers. The first two chapters are both concerned with questions of philosophical method. In the first, John M. Cooper argues that for Epictetus the formal study of Stoic philosophy is indeed, despite initial impressions, relevant to moral practice; in this, he suggests, Epictetus contrasts with the other leading figures of late Stoicism, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, who rely on rhetorical appeals, rather than formal philosophical arguments, to move us to virtue. While the surviving works of Epictetus are largely rhetorical in nature, this can be explained by their protreptic function; they are meant to move us to the study of philosophy, but it is Epictetus’ formal teaching, consisting of the exegesis of the works of the great early Stoics, which he presents as a true source of moral improvement. Epictetus sometimes decries excessive reliance on books, but by this he means only that we should not simply repeat what we find

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in the books slavishly, but reflect on them and make our conclusions their own. Likewise, while he condemns excessive enthusiasm for logical studies, he does not regard logic as useless; he sees it as having a defensive function, of protecting the good assents which we have achieved against faulty reasoning, and hence holds that it should come late in one’s philosophical education, when one has already achieved good assents by ethical study. Paolo Crivelli explores in more detail the place of logic in Epictetus’ philosophy; like Cooper he holds that it has an important part to play, but nevertheless a secondary one, concerned not with the acquisition of new truths, but, in the first place, with defending them against faulty reasoning. He goes on to show that logic has two other functions for Epictetus, enabling us to organize our knowledge into proofs, and to defend it in dialectical debates. He argues that this attitude to logic is consistent with that of the leading early Stoics, particularly Chrysippus, and finally explores the nature of the particular kinds of argument with which Epictetus says logic is concerned, ‘changing arguments, arguments that conclude in virtue of the asking, hypothetical arguments, lying arguments’. The next three chapters are concerned with various aspects of Epictetus’ theology; Keimpe Algra deals directly with the figure of God in Epictetus’ thought, while Katerina Ierodiakonou and Malcolm Schofield are both concerned with the divine vocation of the philosopher. It has often been thought that Epictetus has a different view of God from that of the early Stoics, his view being a more personal theism in contrast with their pantheism. Keimpe Algra argues, on the one hand, that ‘theistic’ language can be found in the early Stoics as well, and, on the other hand, that Epictetus’ use of such language can be always interpreted in a way which is consistent with Stoic orthodoxy. Talk of God’s seeing, helping, guiding, speaking to and punishing us, and of God as our father, can be explained in terms either of God’s overall providence, or of our inner god or daemon, our reason, which is a fragment of the cosmic deity. Likewise prayer, for Epictetus, is not an appeal for intervention by an external God, but rather an admonition to oneself. Epictetus does differ from the early Stoics in the extent to which he uses personalistic language about God; this may be explained partly by his personal outlook, but also by the purpose of the Discourses, in the context of which God’s providence and his status as an ethical example are more important than the cosmological aspects of him which played an important part in early Stoicism.

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Katerina Ierodiakonou develops a similar theme in connection with one particular aspect of Epictetus’ thought about God, his idea of the philosopher as God’s messenger. She argues that the role of the philosopher as a divine messenger is to reveal God’s will in his way of life, and so to act as an example to others and a stimulus to conversion. Like Algra, she holds that the idea of the philosopher as a divine messenger should not be understood in supernatural terms; it is his inner god, reason, which speaks through him. Epictetus sees two philosophers of the past, Socrates and Diogenes, as outstanding examples of the philosopher as a messenger of God; in this he is clearly inspired by Plato’s presentation of Socrates in these terms in the Apology. However, the idea seems to have been revived in Epictetus’ time after a long period of neglect; it appears at the same time in the thought of other philosophers, Pythagoreans and Platonists as well as Stoics. Ierodiakonou suggests that this is because of the emphasis on personal salvation which became important in philosophy at this time; the philosophers’ function is to inspire us to change our way of life and so achieve salvation. Malcolm Schofield takes his start from a famous passage in Epictetus, Discourse 3.21.18–19 (to which Ierodiakonou also refers), dealing with the various functions which God gives to philosophers: to Socrates that of examination (elenchos), to Diogenes that of kingship and castigation, and to Zeno that of instruction. He focuses on Epictetus’ presentation of Diogenes the Cynic, who appears both as a divine messenger and as a scout sent by God to spy on men. The two functions complement each other; as a scout the philosopher discovers whether life poses any danger to mankind; as a messenger he reveals to others the result of this enquiry, that there is no real danger, as good and evil are always within our power. Like Ierodiakonou, Schofield emphasizes that it is by his way of life, not by formal teaching, that the Cynic achieves this mission. ‘Kingship and castigation’, Schofield argues, can be identified with protreptic, which may be seen as the first stage in philosophy, preceding examination and formal teaching; ‘castigation’ is the identification of errors in our ordinary way of thinking, and pointing the way towards the truth; ‘kingship’ refers to the manner of life by which the Cynic does this, subject to no one and free from fear. In this way, Schofield suggests, Diogenes can be recognized as a philosopher, despite having no formal philosophical doctrine, since protreptic can be seen as a distinctive form of philosophy. The next three chapters are concerned with various aspects of Epictetus’ view of the self. First, Richard Sorabji considers two central features

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of Epictetus’ thought about the self, his concept of proairesis, and the use he makes of the language of self-awareness. Sorabji first explores Epictetus’ claim that we are our proairesis, clarifying problems that arise from language which seems to suggest that we have more than one proairesis and more than one self. He then goes on to draw out some differences between Epictetus’ concept of proairesis and that of Aristotle, showing Epictetus to be more original than is sometimes supposed; most importantly, while both confine proairesis to what is up to us (eph’ h¯emin), for Epictetus external actions are not up to us, but only our mental attitude. Finally Sorabji discusses Epictetus’ language of self-awareness, showing how much Neoplatonic terminology can be traced back to him; he suggests that the ‘inward turn’ in philosophy, the thought that we should look inwards in order to find the truth, which Charles Taylor has ascribed to Augustine, can be traced back to Plotinus and before him to Epictetus, though its ultimate roots may be even earlier, in Heraclitus. Michael Erler examines an interesting passage in Discourse 2.1: ‘That confidence does not conflict with caution’, in which death is compared to a bugbear, a mask used to frighten children, and the irrational element in us is seen as a child which needs to be comforted; he argues that this can be seen as a reference to Plato’s Phaedo, where the same metaphor of a ‘child within man’ and death as a bugbear is used. The metaphor of a child here represents the irrational aspect of the soul, not treated as a distinct faculty (since, both in the Phaedo and in Stoicism, the soul is fundamentally unitary) but as misjudgement arising from ignorance. In this way Epictetus, here as elsewhere, can be seen as appropriating the ideas of his philosophical hero, Socrates, presenting him as showing a Stoic confidence in the face of death. Myrto Dragona-Monachou discusses the theme of freedom, found throughout Epictetus’ work, but especially in Discourse 4.1, ‘On freedom’. She agrees with Suzanne Bobzien (1998a and b) that Epictetus’ concept of freedom does not constitute a contribution to the modern debate about free will and determinism; nevertheless she explores ways in which it may be connected with modern views. She sees it as having something in common with Benjamin Gibbs’ conception of positive freedom as freedom to pursue the good, but concludes that it is fundamentally different, and that the closest analogy in modern thought is in fact to be found in some reflections of the early Wittgenstein, who, like Epictetus, adopts a kind of quietism, finding freedom within himself even though there are external things which he cannot control.

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The last two chapters both consider, from interestingly different points of view, an important theme in Epictetus, that of the different roles which we play in life. Julia Annas confronts the problem arising from the fact that for Epictetus each of us has two kinds of role to play, each of which seems to bring with it a distinctive moral perspective; on the one hand the role of a human being, a citizen of the world; on the other hand roles which arise from the particular circumstances in which we are embedded, through family relationships, career, membership of a political community, and so on. How can these perspectives be reconciled? Annas rejects the proposal according to which the first is one we attain only in reflective moments, and which permits us to adopt the second in practical decision-making; both must be seen as relevant to practice. Rather, she suggests, the first should be seen as an ideal to which we aspire; this aspiration is expressed through the way we perform our ordinary roles. While it does not lead us to abandon these roles, it may lead us to revise our view of their requirements. She defends this view against the suggestion that it is insufficiently challenging; it can in fact make hard demands, and prevents us taking a utopian view which may distract us from our real obligations. Michael Frede, meanwhile, explores the way in which Epictetus’ theory of roles contributed to the development of the concept of a person, a process by which the term ‘person’ (pros¯opon/persona) progressed from meaning a dramatic part to its modern sense of a rational being, which it attained in late antiquity. The term first acquired the sense of a role one plays in life, for example, that of father, senator, philosopher, still considered as distinct from the person who plays it; then the Middle Stoic Panaetius gave the concept a philosophical twist by introducing, besides the notion of the roles given us by fortune and those we choose for ourselves, two new roles, that of a human being as such, a rational agent, and that of the distinctive individual we are. This is justified by a Stoic doctrine according to which both human beings as such and individual human beings with their distinctive nature play a special part in the make-up of the universe. Finally, Epictetus in Discourse I.2 combines the various roles recognized by Panaetius into the single notion of ‘the person one is’, a combination of the various roles we play in life, with that of a human being taking precedence; as human beings, our function is to act rationally, i.e. to do the right thing for the right reason; but what this amounts to in practice must be worked out in the light of the more specific roles which we play, all of which enter into

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the conception of the person we are. From here it is a short step to the modern notion of a person as a rational being. Thus Epictetus emerges as playing an important part in the development of a central conception of modern philosophy. These essays reveal Epictetus as a many-faceted thinker and one of continuing relevance. We hope that they will stimulate further discussion of his thought.

1 The Relevance of Moral Theory to Moral Improvement in Epictetus John M. Cooper

Both Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, who are besides Epictetus our main examples of Stoic philosophy in Imperial times, show considerable ambivalence about ethical theory itself (philosophical argumentation of a ‘technical’ sort about how to live our lives) and about the relevance of extensive knowledge of it to their projects of improving their own lives and (in Seneca’s case) helping readers to improve theirs. They little emphasize the crucial importance in Stoicism, or anyhow for ‘classic’ Stoics like Chrysippus, of increased philosophical understanding of the full array of Stoic ethical doctrines, and (most emphatically) a deep knowledge of the philosophical grounds on which they rest, for the moral life, and for any at all helpful steps taken towards living it. Instead they rely, almost overtly, upon rhetorical appeals of a not very philosophical sort. They use these in order to persuade themselves or their readers to feel that they believe, and even, on that basis, to stand by, the bottom-line conclusions about human life to which Stoic ethical argument and analysis leads—as if a firmly felt, enthusiastic commitment to these doctrines, constantly renewed through imaginative appeals to various attractive aspects of them, but without the need of full rational support through philosophical understanding of why they are true, would suffice.¹ Was this feature of Seneca’s ¹ By the time of the Larnaca conference I had delivered one part or the other of a paper about this aspect of their works, ‘Seneca and Marcus Aurelius on Moral Theory and Moral Improvement’, at a conference in Pittsburgh (Ideas in Motion, February 2000), a conference in Chicago (Roman Stoicism, April 2000), and in the Columbia University Philosophy Department Colloquium series (September 2000). Descendants of this paper have appeared as ‘Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Seneca’ and ‘Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Marcus Aurelius’, in Cooper (2004).

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and Marcus’ work (they were philosophical laymen, not professional teachers of philosophy) somehow special to their laymen’s approach to self-improvement? Or did it derive from or reflect developments during their time within Stoic philosophical teaching and Stoic philosophy itself, as practised by recognized experts? Did Stoic philosophers too, during the first and second centuries , adopt the same approach? May one point to this tendency in Seneca and Marcus as characteristic of Stoicism in general during this last phase of its existence in antiquity? A natural, indeed almost the only available, place to turn with these questions in mind is to Epictetus, the only Stoic philosopher and teacher of Stoic philosophy from that period, any of whose works have survived. My contribution to these proceedings is devoted to that task. Our knowledge of Epictetus as a philosopher and a teacher of philosophy is derived almost entirely from the Diatribai or Discourses of Epictetus published by Arrian, together with the excerpts from them that Arrian published separately as the Enchiridion or Manual. Internal evidence shows clearly, however, that (as the title of ‘diatribes’ itself suggests) these addresses were not part of the formal course of instruction in Epictetus’ school. They were, with only a few exceptions, ancillary and informal admonishments or protreptics, or bits of practical advice, addressed to his pupils and delivered, it would seem, in the afternoons or evenings, after the main work of the day was already completed.² At a number of places Epictetus (or Arrian in introducing a Discourse) indicates in passing several features of the formal instruction itself. It consisted in part of instruction in (what we call) logic: a student was set an argument to read out and analyse (I.26.1, 26.13, II.17.27). Also, students read out and commented on passages of set texts, or perhaps also short writings of their own (II.1.30, 1.35, 16.20, 16.34). But, it appears, the main part of the curriculum consisted in the systematic reading out loud of classic ‘old’ Stoic texts—particularly those of Chrysippus, but we hear mention several times of Antipater ² The only clear exceptions are provided by Disc. I.26 and II.14, where Arrian reports two sets of remarks allegedly made by Epictetus in the classroom itself. In addition, I.11, I.13, I.14, I.15, II.24, II.25, III.1, III.4, III.5, III.6, III.7, III.9 and III.22 purport to give us conversations Epictetus had with individual persons, rather than general addresses to his assembled pupils—but it is quite possible that at least some of these were responses in those assemblies to questions asked by pupils or others (or, as perhaps in II.4, remarks occasioned by some outsider’s entrance into them). In any case, these are all informal remarks, not part of his formal teaching, even when they are reported as occurring in the course of a formal lesson.

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and Archedemus as well, and once of Diogenes of Babylon—together with Epictetus’ oral commentary and interpretation of them.³ Thus Epictetus’ teaching followed very much the standard pattern of Platonist and Peripatetic teachers later on, and indeed beginning already by his time, in their ‘lectures’ or readings of the works of Plato and Aristotle. It consisted of exegesis of classic texts of Chrysippus and others of the ‘founding generations’. Naturally, like that of his Platonist and Peripatetic contemporaries, his exegesis would not have been driven by any desire simply to understand and interpret accurately the thought of his authorities, in the manner of a philosophical scholar today. Rather, he presumably used their authority in the way Platonist and Peripatetic philosophers in later antiquity did, as a means of addressing questions of philosophical debate, and human life itself, that were then current. Besides setting out, explaining and defending the Stoic outlook quite generally, he would claim to find his own solutions to these contemporary questions already set out in the authoritative writings, if those were suitably interpreted. His own philosophical creativity would be shown largely in those efforts of interpretation. Thus, just as with Peripatetics and Platonists, he could appeal to the presumed ‘wisdom’ of the ancients—for him as a Stoic, of course, these would have to belong to the third century , no earlier—as grounding for his own philosophical and moral conclusions, even where modern scholars would rightly say that those differed to some extent from the views of the ‘ancients’. In his ancillary and informal Discourses we certainly find Epictetus expressing many of these conclusions (indeed over and over again, even ad nauseam), along with sketches of his philosophical reasoning in reaching them, or at any rate in pressing them upon others (these would not necessarily be entirely the same, of course). From the philosophical point of view, however, even if not that of social history, one would rather that Arrian, or someone better qualified than he presumably was for such a task, had left us records of some of Epictetus’ lectures (‘readings’) instead of these Discourses. Then we could presumably have seen for ourselves how (how on earth, one is tempted to say) Epictetus managed to relate his own peculiarly ³ See II.14.1, 21.10 ff.; III.21.6–7, 23.10–11 and 16 for descriptions of formal teaching. In some of these places, Epictetus does not describe his own teaching but the teaching that he imagines a pupil prematurely aspiring to in imitation of himself and other teachers of philosophy.

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passive and defeatist Stoicism (nonetheless triumphalist, of course, however hollowly so) to the (in fact) quite different moral outlook of Chrysippus and the other founders. And we might have been able to learn more about any special philosophical significance to attach to the fact that in the Discourses never once does Epictetus use the Zenonian terminology of pro¯egmena and apopro¯egmena (‘preferred’ and ‘dispreferred’ objects or conditions that are nonetheless neutral so far as the goodness or badness of one’s life goes),⁴ and that he uses the Aristotelian term prohairesis (considered choice, decision, commitment) with a special, narrower, Stoic significance (where it means, roughly, the ability to choose, decide, commit oneself as to questions of fundamental importance in life)—along with other anomalies or novelties of language or thought. As it is, we have only the informal, protreptic Discourses to go on in understanding and evaluating his philosophy. When we turn to the Discourses seeking an answer to my question about the relevance, for Epictetus, of moral theory to moral improvement, we need to bear clearly and firmly in mind Epictetus’ audience in these addresses. These are teenage boys or young men who have been attending his school, reading the Stoic classics under his guidance and hearing his exegeses of them. His main concern is to help them—people at that age and life-stage—to improve themselves morally, i.e. as persons, in coming into adulthood. He is not talking to the general reader—say, an already educated adult seeking for means of self-improvement (as Seneca’s Lucilius is presented as being). Bearing this context in mind, then, what do we find? Epictetus frequently berates his pupils for not engaging in their studies in the right way, for approaching the Stoic texts and the problems of philosophy in the wrong spirit. They too busily read Chrysippus and the other Stoic authorities in the spirit of research (historia), seeking to learn just what opinions they held, and how to explain the philosophical ⁴ It looks almost as if Epictetus agreed with Ariston of Chios, against Chrysippus, in rejecting this distinction altogether, in favour of a simple undifferentiated category of ‘indifferents’ none of which has value of any sort, whether positive or negative. Epictetus frequently emphasizes that humans simply receive, or do not receive, externals from Zeus, and that their whole function in the cosmos is to gladly accept and then live with and within those conditions. This, plus his frequent appeal to the image of humans as actors in a drama written by Zeus, sounds very much like Ariston’s views as we learn of those from Diogenes Laertius (VII.160). However, Epictetus never mentions Ariston in the surviving four books (of the original eight) of Discourses, and he repeatedly speaks of Chrysippus as his authority.

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grounds for them.⁵ He warns in particular against the tendency of the young (anyhow, the young of his day) to get too much pleasure from and take too great an interest in logic and logical paradoxes for their own sake⁶—and to pride themselves, by comparison with the philosophically uneducated, on their mastery of the rules of logical inference as those are set out by Chrysippus. Some of his remarks in this connection might make one think—wrongly, as I will explain—that Epictetus supposes there is nothing to be gained for the improvement of human life in logic, or in detailed knowledge of Stoic ethical or physical theory, such as was relentlessly pursued in Chrysippus’ writings. Thus in I.4, on what it is to ‘make progress’, i.e. to advance one’s condition in the direction of being virtuous and so living well to perfection, he imagines a student telling him, in evidence of his progress, ‘Take the treatise On Impulse and you can see how I have read it!’ Epictetus replies (with his usual ingratiation): ‘Slave, that is not what I am looking into, but what your impulses toward and away from things are like, what sort of desire and aversion you have, how you go about achieving your purposes,⁷ in what way you aim at things, how you make your preparations—whether in agreement with nature or out of agreement.’⁸ As to logical studies, in discussing the Master argument in II.19 he imagines someone asking him what his own solution is. ‘I wasn’t in fact born for that, to weigh my own impressions about the correct solution, to compare together and critically evaluate the things said about it by ⁵ See III.21.7 and 10; I.17.13. ⁶ On the vogue of logical studies among the young in Imperial times, see Barnes (1997). ⁷ Inwood (1985: 231–4) notes that the verbs for ‘achieving your purposes’ etc. here (epiball¯ei . . . ) all have technical uses among the classic Stoics (their nouns get special definitions in Arius Didymus’ Epitome of Stoic Ethics, p. 87.14 ff. (Wachsmuth), along with several others). I agree with Inwood that Epictetus’ usage of these terms (all of which recur reasonably frequently in his Discourses) does not in any clear way conform to any technical standards. I disagree with him, however, when he endorses the idea (Voelke’s; see Inwood 1985: 324 n. 34) that Epictetus uses the term epibol¯e frequently in the sense ‘basic plan of life’. In fact it almost every time clearly just means ‘purpose’, ‘goal’, ‘aim’. (So for that matter does prothesis.) In my translations here I have been guided by Epictetus’ usage elsewhere. ⁸ I.4.14: ‘labe t¯en peri horm¯es suntaxin kai gn¯othi p¯os aut¯en anegn¯oka.’ andrapodon, ou touto z¯et¯o, alla p¯os hormas kai aphormas, p¯os oreg¯ei kai ekklineis, p¯os epiball¯ei kai pro[s]tithesai kai paraskeuaz¯ei, potera sumph¯on¯os t¯ei phusei e¯ asumph¯on¯os. From the context (see I.4.6–9) one would infer that the treatise referred to here is one of Chrysippus’, though we do not hear elsewhere in Epictetus or any other ancient source of a work of his under this title (both Zeno and Cleanthes are credited with one).

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others, and form an opinion of my own on the topic.’⁹ He goes on to compare himself with a philologist asked who the brothers of the Iliad’s King Priam were: the philologist can’t have any personal view of his own on such matter (how could he know?), the most he can do (and what he does do) is to cite the authorities in full (Homer, for example). Just so, Epictetus says, he can tell you what Diodorus Cronos had to say on the puzzle and its solution, and Cleanthes and Antipater, and finally Chrysippus who advanced a third solution. Beyond that he can’t go, and doesn’t need to. By contrast, on the question what is truly good and what bad for you—there, you really ought to weigh your impressions carefully, examine what the philosophers have said on the question, and form a solid and stable opinion for yourself, that you then stick to, not as a matter of theory and philosophical debate, but in actually making your decisions and performing your actions (I.19.14–15). But no one should allow passages like these to lead them to think that Epictetus holds that learning Stoic moral theory, including its detailed arguments, or any of the rest of Stoic technical philosophy, for example dialectic or logic, is not needed, or of any use, for moral improvement. Nor yet that he favours instead some other sort of persuasion—for example by rhetorical appeals rather than logical argumentation, to get a pupil to accept the bottom-line Stoic ethical doctrines—thinking that that would suffice, and indeed work better. Dialectic or logic is a special case, to which I will turn shortly, but as for technical ethical theory (and, it would seem, physical theory too, though in the Discourses Epictetus never really alludes distinctly to that part of Stoic philosophy) Epictetus’ views are quite clear. His objection is solely to a wrong approach to reading the authoritative texts, one perhaps specially characteristic of the young (and, as we will see, this applies as well to logic, once its special status is taken into account). Sixteen- or eighteen-year-olds might well aim to please by showing the teacher (or their parents) how much they have read, how learnedly and correctly they can discourse on Stoic topics, how well they perform if asked difficult or trick questions about the doctrines. Or they might like simply to impress other people, at dinner parties perhaps, with their recently acquired learning.¹⁰ That is, however, altogether the wrong way to behave, and the wrong objective, Epictetus insists. It represents a perverse idea of what education (paideia) ⁹ I.19.6: oude gegona pros tout¯oi, t¯oi basanisai t¯en emautou phantasian kai sunkrinai ta legomena kai dogma ti emautou poi¯esasthai kata ton topon. ¹⁰ See e.g. I.26.9, II.21.17, IV.4.42.

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consists of. Epictetus tells his pupils repeatedly that what truly matters is their purpose in reading the texts. If instead they read them to learn how to think correctly, and then, as a result of further practice, they learn actually to think that way in facing the situations that arise in life—well, that is the sort of pupil that Epictetus does want.¹¹ He wants one who will read Chrysippus’ treatises with care and retention, and will put into effect in their daily lives the lessons Chrysippus has to teach. Epictetus does not in his daily lessons make his pupils read and learn the authoritative texts simply so that they will know what is in them. He teaches these texts as an integral and, he must think, necessary part of true moral improvement. His point is simply that the texts must be approached properly and utilized in the way he intends—with a view to moral improvement. Thus, it would seem, full knowledge of Stoic moral theory, derived from the study of the Stoic authorities, retains for Epictetus the central place in morality and moral improvement that it had for Chrysippus himself. There are complications, however, which threaten to cloud this pleasingly direct, exculpatory account. What does Epictetus mean when he includes the condition, as I have just put it, that the pupil should not just read Chrysippus and the other authorities in order to learn what it is to think correctly, but should also learn how, by further practice, to think that way in facing the situations of life? What does this practice consist of? Here we need to consider in some detail one of Epictetus’ apparent innovations—his distinction of three main themes or topoi in the training (ask¯esis) which one needs to undergo if one is to become fully good.¹² This is expounded, though less completely and less clearly than one would wish, in Discourses III.2, and alluded to or applied a number of other times, already in fact in I.4.11 (the Discourse cited just above), well before any account of the topoi has been provided.¹³ The first theme—the first step to take—is to train oneself with regard to desires and aversions ‘so that one will not fail to get what ¹¹ See I.4.21–3, 17.18; II.17.29–33, 9.13–14, 19.21–4 and 29–34; III.21.23–4; IV.4.11–13 and 16–18. ¹² On this see, most recently, the account in Long (2002: 112–18). Long, misleadingly I think, calls these ‘fields of study’, thus downplaying the fact that they are explicitly set out as elements in ask¯esis (training, i.e. the practice of self-improvement). My account below differs considerably from his, partly as a result of my emphasis on this aspect of what Epictetus has in mind in speaking of ask¯esis in this connection. ¹³ See also I.17.22–4, 21.2; II.17.15–17 and 31–3; III.9.18, 12.13–14, 26.14. Contrast the different list of three topoi in Ench. 52.

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one desires and won’t run up against what one is averse from’.¹⁴ The Greek for desires and aversions here is orexeis and ekkliseis, terms used in classic Stoic theory with special meanings, though unfortunately we are nowhere given a precise account of them: Arius Didymus tells us that ‘desire’ does not refer generically to the desires of rational beings (humans, as distinct from animals) but rather to a special case of that sort of desire.¹⁵ But orexis seems, as Epictetus himself elsewhere says (I.4.1), to be desire for something (conceived as) good (while ekklisis is an aversion from something conceived as bad for you). Now, for the original Stoics the principal reason why one ought to restrict desire and aversion in such a way that they do not take anything ‘external’ as their objects was that, as philosophical analysis could show, no such thing could ever in fact be good or bad for you: you should make only your own internal state, your orientation to and action in relation to external things, the object of your desire and aversion, because in fact only it could possibly be either good or bad for you. Characteristically, Epictetus starts instead from the pretty questionable assumption that everyone who desires anything thereby strongly insists upon having it, and can’t stand the idea of missing out on it (and mutatis mutandis for aversion).¹⁶ So, for him, the aim in this first step is to train ourselves so that our desire and aversion cannot possibly be frustrated. On Stoic principles, only desire and aversion taking our internal state as its object can achieve this, and, as a preliminary step towards achieving it, we can try to avoid having any of the usual human desires or aversions at all, ones directed toward ‘externals’. The second step concerns impulses towards and away from external things, and hence also appropriate actions, since appropriate actions, of course, are directed at obtaining or avoiding specific external objects or conditions.¹⁷ Here, recognizing that of course no desire that could possibly lead to action can fail to involve a further impulse, one towards or away from some or other objective to be achieved in the world outside our minds, Epictetus directs us to train ourselves so that we adopt ¹⁴ III.2.1: ho peri tas orexeis kai tas ekkliseis, hina m¯et’ oregomenos apotunchan¯ei m¯et’ ekklin¯on peripipt¯ei. See also I.4.11. ¹⁵ Stobaeus Eclogae II.86.17 ff. (SVF 3.169 = Long and Sedley 53Q). ¹⁶ See Enchiridion 2. ¹⁷ III.2.2, ‘the second concerns impulses toward and away from things, and, to put it simply, concerns appropriate action, so that one [acts] in an orderly fashion, reasonably, not carelessly’: ho peri tas hormas kai aphormas kai hapl¯os ho peri to kath¯ekon, hina taxei, hina eulogist¯os, hina m¯e amel¯os. See also I.4.11.

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objectives of that sort that are appropriate for us (and, of course, so that we are impelled towards or away from them in the right way, i.e. without thinking of them as either good or bad for us). Before turning to the third step, let us pause to consider how Epictetus envisages our taking these first two steps. He speaks of training (ask¯esis), which certainly suggests something more than just thinking clearly and understanding truths of a philosophical or indeed any other sort—more than intellectual inquiry or study. But he says very little concretely about it. There is some suggestion that at the beginning of the first stage one must for a time bring oneself not to desire anything at all, to totally suspend desire (i.e. desire aimed at anything, conceiving of it as good for oneself).¹⁸ But presumably such suspension will function as a respite enabling one to consider without distraction, and come fully to appreciate, the reasons why it is correct to limit one’s desire to having and maintaining a certain condition of one’s mind. And, for this, hearing or reading and thinking for oneself about what Chrysippus and other Stoic philosophers have to say about goods and bads will be essential conditions. Likewise, at the second stage one must hear philosophers explaining (with rationally convincing arguments) what are appropriate external things to aim at under different circumstances, and how to aim at them. For example, as Epictetus puts it at one place in the Enchiridion (ch. 2), but nowhere in the surviving books of the Discourses, one must aim at them ‘with reservation’, meth’ hupexairese¯os —i.e. with the rider ‘deo volente’. If one heard no arguments, or heard none one found convincing, one could hardly be expected to come to direct one’s impulses in the required way. As Epictetus himself frequently says, the mind by nature believes the true (i.e. what it takes to be true) and disbelieves the false, and the mind is for him, as for the classic Stoics, the source of all our impulses.¹⁹ So far, then, Epictetus’ ask¯esis is in large part the training of our minds by stocking them with truths that we come to have rational appreciation for as truths, things true for compelling reasons. Presumably Epictetus ¹⁸ See I.4.1, III.22.13, and Enchiridion 2. Note that Epictetus is quite explicit in these places both that one should stop, for a time and as a first step, altogether from having any desires, and that one should stop having aversions only from anything ‘external’, while instead having aversions from bad states of mind. Thus he treats desiring differently from aversion: apparently, he considers that at the very beginning of training one can muster aversions against bad states of mind (i.e., ones that really are bad, according to Stoic theory), but he mistrusts beginners’ ability to desire the good states of their own minds at all. ¹⁹ See I.18.1–2, 28.1–9; II.24.20–1, 26.3; III.3.2, 7.15; Ench. 42.

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did not feel the need, in discussing his three ‘themes’ for training in his Discourses, to go into all this in detail, because he could count on his pupils’ knowing it from their daily lessons, when they read and heard Epictetus’ exegesis of Chrysippus’ treatises. What then about the third and final stage of training? This is ‘concerned with proof against being led into error and with wariness, and in general with assents’.²⁰ In a related passage Diogenes Laertius explains that for Stoicism the knowledge of dialectic—skill at reasoning and the detection of fallacies, based on a knowledge of the theory of valid inferences, or more generally the ability to distinguish truths from falsehoods²¹—was itself a virtue, necessary, as virtue in general is, for living a good life.²² That is because, without that skill, one will inevitably sometimes assent to impressions when there is good reason not to, or fail to assent when one should, or become confused and withdraw assents that one has previously correctly given. The good or bad quality of our lives depends directly upon what we assent to and withhold assent from, because our assents determine what we do and in what spirit we do it. It is therefore crucial to bring ourselves into the condition in which our determination to assent, and to withhold assent, precisely and only when there is sufficient reason to do so, is deeply and firmly implanted. It is with training for this purpose that Epictetus’ third stage is concerned. He emphasizes, reasonably, that this third stage is only for those who have already made substantial moral progress, by having been trained to a fair extent in the first two stages (III.2.5). You can’t secure your tendencies to assent correctly, until you actually are in the habit of so assenting (see III.26.14–15); and the first two steps are aimed at achieving that necessary prior condition. And it is in discussing this stage that, reasonably again, Epictetus makes ²⁰ III.2.2: tritos estin ho peri t¯en anexapat¯esian kai aneikaiot¯eta kai hol¯os ho peri tas sunkatatheseis. See also Disc. I.4.11, I.7.26. ²¹ Diogenes Laertius gives two definitions of ‘dialectic’ for the Stoics (VII.42 = Long and Sedley 31A5), one as ‘knowledge of how to carry on question and answer discussions correctly’, the other as ‘knowledge of what is true, what is false, and what is neither true nor false’. ²² See Diogenes Laertius VII.46–7 (SVF 2.130 = Long and Sedley 31B), where the term aneikaiot¯eta recurs (DL explicates it as meaning ‘reason which is strong against what is plausible, so as not to give in to it’); but nothing seems directly to correspond to Epictetus’ anexapat¯esian. Below (2.9), in explaining his third step, Epictetus mentions also ametapt¯osia (proof against being argued out of anything you have once accepted) as one of the concerns of this stage—and in VII.47 Diogenes Laertius explains knowledge itself (epist¯em¯e) as ‘a standing condition in the receipt of impressions that cannot be changed (ametapt¯oton) by argument’.

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special reference to training in logic (2.6–7). In order to deeply and firmly implant this determination to assent correctly, what we need to do is improve our understanding of reasoning itself, by studying and mastering Stoic logical theory. This brief examination of Epictetus’ account of the stages one must follow in making moral progress shows, then, that, according to Epictetus, the intensive study of logic is necessary for achieving the good life. But it ought properly to be postponed to late stages in one’s selfimprovement, when one is already educated, and trained, sufficiently so that one can derive from it the good that it promises. It is in this light that we should understand Epictetus’ not infrequent complaints (mentioned above) about his pupils’ excessive attention to, indeed fascination with, logical studies. He does not at all mean that these are useless for moral improvement and moral training, or dispensable; he only means that teenage boys would do better to focus their attentions elsewhere, since they are not yet ready, morally speaking, for this sort of work, anyhow not at the level of real intensity. They should concentrate, first, on the first two topoi in Epictetus’ three-stage model for moral progress. However replete, then, with rhetorical appeals to self-improvement Epictetus’ Discourses (including here the excerpts from them making up the Enchiridion) may be, we should bear in mind the special circumstances from which they derive. They are ancillary discussions addressed to his own pupils, teenage boys and young men, who are studying the classic Stoic texts with him. Their moral improvement, on Epictetus’ own account of it, is to be derived from their philosophical studies themselves, and the application of those to their daily lives—not from these pep talks. Unlike Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus remains fully aware and fully committed, when it comes to offering his assistance in their moral improvement, to the classic Stoic position that moral improvement simply is a matter of increased and deepened understanding of the truths of Stoic theory, and of the bases in philosophical reason on which they rest.

2 Epictetus and Logic Paolo Crivelli E PI C T E T U S ’ AT T I T U D E TO LO G I C Epictetus’ attitude to logic is ambivalent. In some passages he is rather dismissive: he seems to care neither for the teaching nor for the practice of logic. In other passages, however, he displays a more positive attitude to logic. In a recent study, Jonathan Barnes convincingly argued that Epictetus’ genuine attitude to logic is the more positive one. For in those passages where Epictetus has been interpreted as attacking logic, he is really criticizing some young people of his day who identified the study of philosophy with technical exercises in logic. Such a criticism of single-minded logicians is of course perfectly compatible with a respectful attitude to logic, and with admitting that the subject, if studied and practised in the appropriate measure and manner, is an essential component of a philosopher’s upbringing and intellectual activity. More importantly, Epictetus’ criticism strongly suggests that (contrary to what one might at first expect and is often assumed by historians of philosophy) the study of logic and of its technical aspects was widespread in the first century , and that Epictetus’ strong interest in moral questions was more the exception than the rule in the Stoicism of his day.¹ T H E RO L E O F LO G I C I N H U M A N L I F E : ( I ) C O N T RO L OV E R O N E ’ S A S S E N T Epictetus’ most important discussion of the role of logic in human life is closely linked to his well-known distinction of three areas (topoi) in ¹ Cf. Barnes (1997: 33–8; 55–7).

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which a person who aims to become noble and good should exercise: (1) the area of desire and dislike; (2) the area of impulse and repulsion; and (3) the area of assent.² If one exercises in these three areas, one will attain three corresponding good results: (1) exercise in the area of desires and dislikes will bring it about that one does not desire things one cannot attain or dislike things which are unavoidable, so that one will avoid the passions that derive from frustrated desires and dislikes; (2) exercise in the area of impulse and repulsion will bring it about that one’s actions (which are driven by impulse and repulsion) are morally appropriate; and finally (3) exercise in the area of assent will bring it about that one will assent to what is true but withdraw assent from what is false or obscure. Exercise in the area of assent is, it turns out, exercise in logic: T 1 [The third area is] about changing arguments, arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking, hypothetical arguments, lying arguments. (Diss. III.2.6)

Indeed, as we shall see, the topics mentioned in T 1 are a rather refined part of formal logic. Commentators disagree on how these three areas of exercise relate to the three parts of philosophy which were traditionally distinguished within the Stoic school (i.e., logic, physics and ethics): some think that the three areas of exercise are to be identified with, or at least very closely correspond to, the three traditional parts,³ whilst others believe that the three areas of exercise are independent of the three traditional parts of philosophy.⁴ In fact, while one can straightforwardly identify or associate the third area of exercise with that traditional part of philosophy which is logic, it is much harder to associate any of the two other areas of exercise with that traditional part of philosophy which is physics. It therefore seems reasonable to give up the identification or association, and assume that the three areas of exercise are independent of the three traditional parts of philosophy. The three areas of exercise are ordered by Epictetus according to their degree of importance. In fact, the order in which they are given is an order of decreasing importance: the most important is area (1), the area of exercise in desires and dislikes; second in importance is area (2), the ² See Diss. I.4.11; III.2.1–2. The word ‘topos’ is well attested in the Stoic school: Diogenes Laertius (VII.39) informs us that according to Apollodorus the three parts of philosophy (i.e., logic, physics and ethics) should be called ‘areas’, whilst other Stoics preferred a different terminology. ³ See Hadot (1978: 69–70). ⁴ See Barnes (1997: 34).

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area of exercise in impulse and repulsion; third and last in importance is area (3), the area of exercise in assent. In particular, the exercise that falls within area (3), i.e., exercise in logic, should be undertaken only for the sake of the preceding two areas: T 2 The third area belongs only to those who are already making progress, and it deals with certainty about them [sc. about points covered by the other two areas], so that even in dreams or drunkenness or depression no representation will sneak up to one untested. (Diss. III.2.5)

Epictetus then goes on chastising contemporary philosophers who put last things first and practise only logic while ignoring exercise in the other two, more important, areas. In T 2 we have an extremely idealistic description of the wise man as someone who, even in dreams, drunkenness or depression, will not assent to an untested representation. Such idealistic descriptions of the wise man are not rare in Stoic philosophy. What is particularly interesting in T 2 for our present purposes is that the ability to assent only to what has been properly tested, an ability acquired through the study of logic, is supposed to provide certainty in topics which bear on the other two areas. In particular, logic is supposed to provide certainty in the sense of unassailability: given that the beliefs concerning the first two areas which the wise man already has are true, the ability to test new representations will allow the wise man to recognize those new representations which are false and therefore reject them, so that he will not give up the true beliefs he already has (of course, if the wise man gives his assent to some new representation which is true, he will have no reason to give up the true beliefs concerning the first two areas which he already has, because a truth does not conflict with a truth).

T H E RO L E O F LO G I C I N H U M A N L I F E : ( I I ) P ROV I D I N G A N D J U S T I F Y I N G P RO O F S In other passages Epictetus recognizes different ways in which logic should provide certainty to the beliefs which concern the first two areas. At the end of the Handbook we read: T 3 The first and most necessary area in philosophy concerns the use of theorems, e.g., not to tell lies. The second concerns proofs, e.g., why is it that we should not tell lies? The third confirms and articulates the proofs themselves, e.g., why is this a proof? For, what is a proof? What is

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consequence? What is conflict? What is truth? What is falsehood?⁵ Now, the third area is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. And the first is the most necessary and the area in which we should take our rest. But, as for us, we do the opposite: we spend our time in the third area and all our efforts are concerned with it. We completely neglect the first area. Hence we tell lies, and we are ready to show how it is proved that we should not tell lies. (Ench. LII.1–2)

T 3 offers a distinction of the areas of philosophy which seems neither to coincide with nor to correspond to the more usual one, which is attested in T 2. In particular, T 3’s first area, which has to do with acting on moral principles, seems to correspond to what is more usually regarded as the second area (or, maybe, to a combination of the usual first and second areas), whilst T 3’s second and third areas, which have to do (respectively) with the finding of proofs and with the confirmation and articulation of proofs, seem to coincide with the usual third area. But, apart from the mismatch between the distinction of areas drawn in T 3 and the one drawn elsewhere, T 3 indicates that logic is important because it provides one both with the proofs of ethical propositions and with the means of confirming and articulating those proofs. T 3, it should be noticed, does not imply that logic should have anything more than a defensive role: for in ancient logic proofs were often regarded as a method for confirming what had already been found out by whatever means, i.e., a method of corroborating the results by connecting them in a deductive system.

T H E RO L E O F LO G I C I N H U M A N L I F E : ( I I I ) E N A B L I N G T H E V I RT U O U S M A N TO TA K E PA RT I N D I A L E C T I C A L D E B AT E S A third way in which in Epictetus’ view logic has an important role in human life is to allow someone to take part in a dialectical debate: T 4 Most men are unaware that the study of changing arguments and hypothetical arguments, and moreover of arguments which conclude in virtue ⁵ The concepts of consequence, conflict, truth and falsehood are relevant to the definition of a proof. For the conclusion of the proof must be a consequence of its premises (see D.L. VII.45); the conclusion is a consequence of the premises just in case its negation conflicts with their conjunction (see D.L. VII.77); and both the premises and the conclusion of a proof must be true.

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Here Epictetus helps himself to a fifth indemonstrable whose major premise is a disjunction with three members: Either the virtuous man should not enter dialectical debates, or he should enter them but perform poorly, or he should master logic. It is not the case that the virtuous man should not enter dialectical debates. It is not the case that the virtuous man should enter dialectical debates but perform poorly. ∴ The virtuous man should master logic.

The crucial assumption of this argument is that the virtuous man should enter dialectical debates and perform successfully—an assumption which would of course be granted by a Stoic thinker. As with the goals previously attributed to logic, in this case we cannot say that logic is attributed an active role in the sense of allowing it to establish new results: rather it is a discipline which should enable those who master it to perform well in a certain type of social situation.

T H E T H R E E F O L D A N C I L L A RY RO L E O F LO G I C The texts we have examined so far enable us to see that Epictetus reserves for logic an ancillary role in life. This ancillary role is displayed in three main functions: (i) the assessment of new presentations in order to allow one to preserve one’s previously acquired correct moral beliefs; (ii) the provision of proofs for moral propositions and of the means of assessing proofs; and (iii) the capacity to take part successfully in dialectical debates. It is not clear whether this list of the roles ascribed by Epictetus to logic is complete—if for no other reason, because only about half of Epictetus’ Discourses has been handed down to us. It is also worth remarking that the role attributed to logic by Epictetus is, roughly speaking, ‘passive’: the purpose of logic is not to enable one to

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expand one’s knowledge in some area or other, but to preserve one’s true beliefs which are relevant to morality or organize in proofs those pieces of knowledge which one has independently acquired, or to enable one to take part in dialectical debates in which one’s theses will be subjected to scrutiny. Because of this ‘passive’ role, logic must be studied after one has already obtained the views it is supposed to enable one to defend.

S TO I C S A N D PE R I PAT E T I C S O N T H E A N C I L L A RY RO L E O F LO G I C Ancient logic was dominated by two rival traditions: the Peripatetic tradition, which goes back to Aristotle, and the Stoic tradition, which goes back to the Megarians and the ancient Stoa and was propelled to an astonishing level of sophistication by Chrysippus. Very roughly, Peripatetic logic and Stoic logic complement one another. A modern logician would say that the main bulk of Peripatetic logic is a fragment of predicate logic, and that the main bulk of Stoic logic is a form of propositional logic. There is no scholarly agreement about the relationship between the two logical traditions: it is far from clear how much the early Stoic logicians, and in particular Chrysippus, knew Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ work on logic, and the relationship between the two traditions is also unclear for the imperial period. One result, however, on which there is a substantial consensus is that one of the points on which late Peripatetic logicians disagreed with Stoic logicians has to do with the position or role of logic within philosophy as a whole: as we learn from the introductions to the commentaries on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics,⁶ the Stoics claimed that logic is one of the three parts of philosophy (alongside physics and ethics) whilst the late Peripatetics insisted that logic is not a part, but an instrument of philosophy. Since, as we have seen, Epictetus claims that logic plays an ancillary role with respect to other areas or disciplines, should we infer that Epictetus was adopting a Peripatetic rather than Stoic position with regard to the question of the position or role of logic within philosophy as a whole? ⁶ See Alex. Aphr. in APr. 1.3–4.29; Ammon. in APr. 8.15–11.21; Olymp. Proll. 14. 18–15.27; Phlp. in APr. 6.19–9.20; Elias in APr. 134.4–138.13 Westerink; Anon. de Arte Logica apud Olymp. Proll. et in Cat. X–XI; Schol. in Arist. 140a 25– b 22.

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But this inference would surely be rash. The view that logic serves a purpose within human life is already present in early Stoicism. Indeed, it has the most authoritative Stoic pedigree one can hope for because it is attested in a papyrus fragment of a work of Chrysippus:⁷ T 5 a consequence of this, in most cases, is that wise men are unerring and faultless (to use Aristotle’s words),⁸ and do everything well: for this reason a great deal of attention is given to assent, in order that it should not occur but in connection with an apprehension. For, in the first place, philosophy is either care for the correctness of discourse or science of this or a discipline dealing mostly with discourse: for, being acquainted with the parts of discourse and with their construction, we shall use it in an expert way. By discourse I mean that which by nature belongs to all rational beings. And if dialectic for us is the science of discussing correctly . . . (PHerc 1020.col. I)⁹

In T 5 Chrysippus seems to be arguing that dialectic, i.e., logic, is important for the wise man because it enables him to grant his assent to apprehensions while avoiding granting it to those representations which are not apprehensions. Thus, the picture of the role of logic offered by Chrysippus in T 5 is very similar to the one offered by Epictetus in T 2: logic is useful because it enables one to exercise control over one’s assent, which is the first useful aspect of logic which we saw to be recognized by Epictetus. Again, Diogenes Laertius reports that according to official Stoic doctrine logic is useful because of proofs: T 6 And they say that the study of syllogisms is extremely useful: for it displays proof, which contributes a lot to the correct disposition (diorth¯osin) of doctrines, and a scientific¹⁰ grasp (epistatikon katal¯emma) displays order and memory. (D.L. VII.45) ⁷ For the attribution of PHerc 1020 to Chrysippus, see Baldassarri (1985/87: II.42). ⁸ My translation relies on the text as presented by Hülser (1987/88: I.90), who in turn depends on some recent papyrological work by M. Capasso. However, here (col. I.3–5) I opt for the earlier reconstruction of the text offered by von Arnim: ‘anexapat¯etous einai kai anamart¯etous kat’ Aristotel¯en’ (the last two words in Hülser’s edition are ‘kat’ axian te z¯en’). For there are some striking Aristotelian parallels which are extremely unlikely to be a coincidence: at Top. VI.4 132a31–4 Aristotle uses the word ‘unerring’ (‘anexapat¯eton’) in refuting the suggestion that not erring should be peculiar to those who have knowledge, whilst at Pol. VI.4 1319a 3 he mentions good men being faultless (‘anamart¯etous’). ⁹ Cf. D.L. VII.46–7. ¹⁰ For my rendering of ‘epistatikos’ by ‘scientific’, see LSJ s.v. ‘epistatikos’, I.5. Baldassarri (1985/87: III.19) opts for ‘stable’ (‘salda’).

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What for our present purposes is most worth noting about T 6 is that, according to official Stoic doctrine, that part of logic which is the study of syllogisms is ‘extremely useful’ because ‘it displays proof’. Thus, the picture of the role of logic offered by T 6 is very similar to the one offered by Epictetus in T 3: logic is useful because it enables one to construct proofs which may, of course, bear on other areas of philosophy. The idea that logic is useful because ‘it displays proof’ matches the second useful aspect of logic which we saw to be recognized by Epictetus. In my translation, the phrase ‘correct disposition’ translates the ancient Greek noun ‘diorthosis’, which I understand by analogy with its medical sense of ‘making straight in the setting of a limb’.¹¹ If this rendering is correct, we also have a confirmation of the suggestion that the main role of a proof is that of arranging appropriately an area of knowledge whose main points have already been established independently of proof. This is confirmed by the last sentence of T 6, which tells us that ‘a scientific grasp displays order and memory’: a scientific grasp is that understanding of a subject which is achieved in science by means of proof, and its main virtues are the order in which the pieces of knowledge are organized and the aid to memory which such an order provides. Finally, Diogenes Laertius reports that according to official Stoic doctrine logic is necessary for being able to engage in dialectical debates: T 7 And they say that without it [sc. logic] it is not possible ask questions and answer them in a methodical way. [ . . . ] To discuss in relation to the arguments propounded and to answer what was asked [ . . . ] are peculiar to a man expert in logic. (D.L. VII.47–8)

T 7 shows that for the Stoics an important role for logic is to enable one to take part in a dialectical debate. This idea corresponds pretty closely to the second useful aspect of logic which we saw was recognized by Epictetus (in T 4). Thus, there is substantial evidence which indicates that the ancient Stoics were ready to justify the study of logic by pointing out that it is useful for other ends, more or less the same ends acknowledged by Epictetus.¹² Thus, in claiming that logic should be studied because it ¹¹ See LSJ s.v. ‘diorth¯osis’, 1. ¹² There is further evidence confirming that for the Stoics logic has an ancillary role. For example, the Stoic images about the relations between the various parts of philosophy suggest that logic will either defend the doctrines that pertain to other areas (logic is like the wall of an orchard or like the shell of an egg) or endow those doctrines with unity and compactness (logic is like the bones and sinews which support and sustain an animal’s body).

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is useful for other ends Epictetus was repeating solidly traditional and official Stoic tenets. So the characterization of the difference of the Peripatetic and Stoic views on the role and position of logic within philosophy as a whole, in terms of the contrast between conceiving logic as a part or as an instrument of philosophy, is rather misleading: it should not induce us to think that the Stoics did not attribute an ancillary role to logic.¹³ The essence of the disagreement between Stoics and Peripatetics is of a different nature—but we cannot go into it in the present context.¹⁴ All that we need to note for our present purposes is that Epictetus’ attribution of an ancillary role to logic was well within the tradition of official Stoicism.

T H E LO G I C A L P RO B L E M S I N W H I C H E PI C T E T U S ’ C O N T E M P O R A R I E S E X E RC I S E D As we have seen, Epictetus informs us that his contemporaries dedicated a lot of effort to ‘changing arguments, arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking, hypothetical arguments, lying arguments’ (Diss. III.2.6). What are these topics? The last topic is easy to recognize: lying arguments are obviously connected to the famous Liar Paradox, to the solution of which Chrysippus dedicated much energy. The penultimate topic on our list is harder to identify: however, it probably can be identified with arguments which involve the speech-act of making a hypothesis, as opposed to those arguments which involve only the speech-act of asserting. In order to get clear about the difference between the types of logic involved, one should think of the difference, in modern logic, between ‘axiomatic systems’, in which each of the sentence-like expressions written down is asserted, and ‘systems of natural deduction’, where some of the sentence-like expressions written down are merely assumed whilst others are asserted.¹⁵ The first two topics on Epictetus’ list are much harder to identify: what are ‘changing arguments’ and ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’? Let us begin with the hardest item: ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’ (‘ta er¯ot¯esthai perainontes’). ¹³ Cf. Ierodiakonou (1998: 37–8). ¹⁴ For a plausible reconstruction of the difference, see Ierodiakonou (1998: 38–53). ¹⁵ For this reconstruction of hypothetical arguments, see Barnes (1997: 85–98).

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These arguments are not mentioned elsewhere outside Epictetus’ works, and Epictetus himself mentions them precisely three times.¹⁶ We can however plausibly identify an example of an argument which concludes in virtue of the asking in Sextus Empiricus (P. II.231). The argument, which Sextus classifies as a sophism, is the following: It is not the case that both I asked you something before¹⁷ and it is not the case that the stars are even I asked you something before The stars are even

This argument is an instance of Chrysippus’ third indemonstrable because ‘by means of a negated conjunction and one of the items in the conjunction it concludes the contradictory of the remaining item’ (D.L. VII.80). Thus, the argument should be valid, and recognized as such by the Stoics. Moreover, on the assumption that when I began asking you to grant the premises of the above argument I had not yet asked you anything, the major premise is true when I ask you to grant it: the conjunct ‘I asked you something before’ is false, so the whole conjunction ‘Both I asked you something before and it is not the case that the stars are even’ is false, and its negation, which constitutes the major premise, is true. So, the major premise is true when I ask you to grant it, and you should therefore grant it at that time. When I come to ask you to grant the minor premise, I have already asked you to grant something because I asked you to grant the major premise. So, at this moment, the minor premise ‘I asked you something before’ is true. Again, at this time you should grant it. So, the conclusion should also be true and should be granted—but it is absolutely unclear whether the number of the stars is even. Something has gone wrong. What is particularly important for our purpose is that the analysis of the argument I offered is essentially the same as that offered by the Stoics as reported by Sextus, who attributes to them the following remark: T 8 After the negated conjunction has been asked [meta . . . to er¯ot¯eth¯enai], the minor premise ‘I asked you something before’ having become true because before the minor premise the negated conjunction has been asked [dia to er¯ot¯esthai], the premise of the negated conjunction becomes false because the falsehood within the conjunction has become true. (P. II.234)

¹⁶ See Diss. I.7.1; III.2.6; 21.10. ¹⁷ Here ‘before’ translates ‘pr¯oton’: for this rendering, see LSJ s.v. ‘proteros’ B III.3 c.

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In this Stoic analysis, the reason why the conclusion is reached has to do with premises having being asked: it would be perfectly natural to describe this argument by saying that it reaches its conclusion in virtue of the asking, and it is highly plausible that the argument should be one of the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’ mentioned by Epictetus. Two objections might be raised against this conclusion. The first is that it would be awkward for the Stoics to use the verb ‘to conclude’ (‘peirainein’) to describe such an argument: for the adjective ‘conclusive’ (‘perantikos’), obviously connected to this verb, is a technical term of Stoic logic and expresses an argument’s validity.¹⁸ There are two answers to this objection. First, it is not clear that Sextus’ argument would not have been described as ‘conclusive’ because it is an instance of the third indemonstrable. Second, we have independent evidence¹⁹ that the Stoics used the verb ‘to conclude’ (‘peirainein’) to describe arguments whose validity is dubious: the ‘amethod¯os peirainontes’ arguments. I suspect that in these cases the verb ‘to conclude’ (‘peirainein’) was used to mean ‘to reach the conclusion’ rather than ‘to be valid’. Thus, the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’ are arguments which reach their conclusion in virtue of the asking. The second objection against my suggestion that the argument reported by Sextus should be an example of the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’ is that Sextus describes this argument as being ‘from the genus of the changing ones (ek tou genous t¯on metapiptont¯on)’ (P. II.234). Thus, Sextus’ argument would seem to be one of the ‘changing arguments’ rather than of the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’. The reason why it would be classed among the ‘changing arguments’ is straightforward: the argument reaches its conclusion because of the change in truth-value of one or more of its premises (at the beginning of the argument the minor premise was false, but when the time for its being asked came it became true). The verb ‘to change’ (‘metapiptein’) is a technical term of Stoic logic for expressing the change in truth-value of a proposition.²⁰ This objection can be answered by assuming that the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’ constituted a subclass of the ‘changing arguments’, the subclass which consists of those ‘changing arguments’ whose change ¹⁸ See D.L. VII.77; S.E. M . VIII.120. ¹⁹ See Alex. Aphr. in APr. 21.30–1. ²⁰ See D.L. VII.76; 65; Alex. Aphr. Fat. 177.7 ff.; in APr. 180.28–181.10; Simp. in Ph. 1299.36–1300.11.

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of truth-value is due to the fact that one or more of the premises mentions a premise’s being asked. There is a hint which confirms that this solution might be correct: in all cases in which Epictetus mentions that the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’,²¹ this is immediately after he has mentioned ‘changing arguments’.²² Epictetus might be mentioning first the genus (of ‘changing arguments’) and then a species (of ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’). The list of Chrysippus’ works handed down to us by Diogenes Laertius contains two works whose titles are About Changing Arguments and Arguments Changing in Relation to the Adverb.²³ It would seem that our argument from Sextus should be one of those which were dealt with in the second of these works: for the change of truth-value which plays a crucially important role in the argument turns on the adverb ‘before’. This, of course, confirms that it should be a ‘changing argument’ but does not contradict its being also one of the ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’. ²¹ See n.16 above. ²² The converse does not hold: at Diss. I.7.17–20 Epictetus discusses ‘changing arguments’ without mentioning ‘arguments which conclude in virtue of the asking’. ²³ See D.L. VII.195–6. The two works are indicated by Diogenes Laertius as spurious, but this is irrelevant for our present purpose: what counts is not whether the works were written by Chrysippus, but that they belonged to the Stoic canon. I am following the traditional rendering of ‘pros t¯en mesot¯eta’ in the title of ps.-Chrysippus’ second work as ‘in relation to the adverb’. It should however be mentioned that, as Barnes (1997: 142–4) shows, the evidence for attributing to the Stoics a usage of ‘mesot¯es’ in which it means ‘adverb’ is less than secure, so that we cannot confidently say that our argument from Sextus was dealt with in ps.-Chrysippus’ second work.

3 Epictetus and Stoic Theology Keimpe Algra

I Although the Discourses of Epictetus contain many references to god, it has often been claimed that this god differs substantially from the one familiar from earlier Stoicism. We may probably forget nineteenthcentury attempts to establish a direct link between Epictetus’ teachings and the New Testament, which were successfully exploded by Bonhöffer. Nor should we spend much time on impressionistic claims about the indirect influences of Christianity or the Zeitgeist showing themselves in allegedly innovative features which on closer view are not present in Epictetus at all, such as a commitment to the idea of divine omnipotence, or the conception of an incorporeal, even transcendent, or quasi-transcendent god.¹ What I want to focus on instead is the more sober claim—one which does in fact appear to have a solid basis in the available evidence—that the Discourses seem to exhibit a ¹ On god’s alleged omnipotence, see Jagu (1946: 120): ‘Nous avons déjà vu que Dieu est l’organisation du Tout, ce qui revient à dire qu’il est tout-puissant.’ Yet this inference from god’s being the formative cause of the cosmos to his being omnipotent is in itself invalid, whereas the Discourses clearly show that Epictetus followed Chrysippus in pointing out that at the level of the physical structure of the cosmos there are things which god cannot accomplish (cf. I.1.8; II.5.27; III.24.28–9; IV.1.100; IV.11.9–12; comparable view in Seneca, Prov. 5.8); see also Mansfeld (1979: 161); Algra (2003: 172). On god’s alleged incorporeality, see Jagu (1946: 121), who refers to II.8.1, where Epictetus argues that god is not to be equated with sarx, agros or ph¯em¯e —which, however, should rather be taken to mean that god is not to be identified with a (our?) body, or with commonly valued things like possessions or fame.

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rather strikingly theistic conception of god, that is: a conception of god as a person, who sees us, who speaks to us, who helps us, and to whom prayers can be meaningfully addressed. Certainly, there are also traces of what we might call a pantheistic conception of the Stoic deity in Epictetus, for example where god is referred to as ‘the kosmos’ or ‘nature’ (I.4.18; III.24.94). Yet even in such passages pantheism often merges into theism, witness Epictetus’ use of such formulae as ‘the will of nature’ (Ench. 26).² All in all, the prominence of theistic language in the Discourses is indeed striking. To what extent should this language be taken to reflect a substantial departure from mainstream Stoic theology? With regard to this question, basically three positions can be discerned in the scholarly literature. Bonhöffer, for one, believed that Epictetus did not depart from mainstream Stoicism at all. He claimed that the tension between pantheistic and theistic elements which we find in Epictetus was something that had been inherent in Stoic theology all along—with pantheism representing the ‘echt Stoische Anschauung’ and theistic traces to be regarded as concessions to popular religion.³ In this he was not followed by what I would call the mainstream of twentieth century Epictetan scholarship, which in general classified Epictetus as an exceptional case. In an article which would prove to be influential in the tradition of French scholarship, M. J. Lagrange claimed that Epictetus differed from the early Stoics insofar as he exhibited a ‘sentiment religieux envers Dieu, un Dieu très parfait et presque personnel’.⁴ This, he argued, is not merely a matter of style or emphasis. On the contrary, it reflects a completely different world view: ‘qu’on lise les fragments des anciens stoïciens et les dissertations d’Épictète; c’est sortir d’un mauvais lieu pour entrer dans un temple,—et dans un temple chrétien plutôt que dans un temple païen’.⁵ In a similar vein A. Jagu speaks of ‘des formules qu’un Chrétien ne pourrait pas désavouer’.⁶ In his book Épictète et Platon he explicitly contrasts Epictetus’ theism with the ‘dieu ² In addition, we find elements of polytheism as well, but, as in early Stoicism, this talk of plural gods is to be taken as referring to the various manifestations of the single Stoic god—which is why Epictetus can use ‘god’ and ‘the gods’ interchangeably. For polytheistic elements, see e.g. I.1.17 on Aeolus; I.12.24–5 on Zeus and the Moirai; II.20.32 on Demeter, Kore, Pluto. ³ On pantheism as ‘echt stoische Anschauung’, see Bonhöffer (1890: 80). On theism as ‘Anpassung an die populäre, anthropomorphistische Gottesvorstellung’, see Bonhöffer (1894: 244). ⁴ Lagrange (1912: 6). ⁵ Lagrange (1912: 6). ⁶ Jagu (1989: 2177).

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impersonnel et corporel du Stoicisme authentique’.⁷ Comparable views have been expressed by Souilhé, Germain and Radice.⁸ A third approach has been taken by Anthony Long in his monograph Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002). Long seems to side with the French scholars just referred to insofar as he implies that Bonhöffer had something of a tin ear for the personalistic elements that were peculiar to Epictetan theology. However, in line with the general tenor of his book, he himself prefers to see these typical features as a matter of personal commitment or attitude rather than as a substantial shift away from orthodoxy. In his view we are dealing with a personal religious commitment which has been shaped to a large extent by Epictetus’ admiration for Socrates—the subtitle of the book is significant—but which leaves the substance of Stoic theology intact.⁹ In this essay I want to take a fresh look at the evidence. I do appreciate Long’s point that religion or theology is never a matter of mere doctrine, and that next to dogma also personal commitment or religious fervour may be a distinctive and individuating factor, and I shall in due course address some issues of style and presentation in relation to the type of discourse of which Epictetus avails himself. However, issues like personal commitment, religious feeling or style are hard to pin down with precision. Moreover, I believe that the ⁷ Jagu (1946: 118). ⁸ In his introduction to the Budé edition of the Discourses (Epictetus 1948) Souilhé remarks that ‘alors qu’un Sénèque ou un Marc-Aurèle, comme du reste tous les maîtres du Portique, appellent la loi souveraine qui est au fond des choses Dieu, tout en lui conservant son caractère d’abstraction impersonnelle, Epictète laisse dans l’ombre ce caractère et tend constamment à personnifier la loi souveraine’. Germain (1964: 99) (in a chapter significantly entitled ‘Epictète le pieux’) makes the following observation: ‘c’est l’originalité d’Épictète d’avoir enseigné que ce langage ne devait pas être pris pour une métaphore, que nous devons vivre dans la conviction que Dieu est, littéralement, notre père. Par conséquent, nous avons le droit de nous dire ‘‘fils de Dieu’’.’ See also Radice (1982: 98), according to whom Epictetus’ theology ‘fondi filosoficamente quella diffusa e profonda sensibilità religiosa, grazie alla quale l’autore può conferire a Dio le note e gli atteggiamenti propri di un essere personale. Da qui viene l’immagine del Dio-Persona in Epitteto.’ But he adds a qualification (ibid.): ‘solo l’immagine, però, e non il concetto, essendo egli ben lungo dal poter fondare teoreticamente una teologica personalistica’. ⁹ Long (2002: 156): we are dealing primarily with a difference of ‘language and emphasis’ and Epictetus ‘will certainly have thought that he had Stoic authority for everything that he attributes to God’. One of the main themes of Long’s book is the Socratic allegiance of Epictetus, and it is this Socratic allegiance which the author appears to hold responsible for the personalistic shades in Epictetus’ theology (2002: 166–7; 170–1; 176, against Bonhöffer); yet he also refers to Epictetus’ sense of ‘what was essential and provable in the Stoic tradition on nature—God’s unqualified providence and special concern for human beings’ (2002: 151).

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underlying substantial theological issues—in particular the relation between pantheism and personalistic theism in Stoicism in general and in Epictetus in particular—are still in need of further clarification. Accordingly, my main focus will be on the issue of substance, i.e. of doctrinal agreement or disagreement between Epictetus and mainstream Stoicism. We may perhaps note, to begin with, that a substantially unorthodox position is not what one would prima facie expect in Epictetus. Referring to the fifth book of the Discourses, Aulus Gellius claims that the doctrines we find there basically agree with what we find in the books of Zeno and Chrysippus, and there is no reason to assume that he means this to apply to the fifth book alone.¹⁰ In principle this might be just an all too cavalier judgement on Gellius’ part, but there is more. It has often been observed that there are few if any traces of the so-called ‘Middle Stoics’ in Epictetus, and the Stoics he refers to as being relevant to his own classroom practice are Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Antipater. In general, one is therefore tempted to go along with Von Arnim’s colourful characterization of Epictetus’ working procedure: ‘aus der Rüstkammer der altstoischen Lehre holt er diejenigen Sätze hervor, die ihm als unentbehrlich fur eine Vernunftgemäße, Gott wohlgefällige Lebensführung erscheinen. Diese wenigen Sätze wird er nicht müde, immer von neuem, mit der ganzen Eindringlichkeit seiner volkstümlichen beredsamkeit, in immer neuen Wendungen einzuschärfen.’¹¹ I think what Von Arnim had in mind can be illustrated rather neatly by looking at the way in which Epictetus deals with a well-known Chrysippean passage on the human foot which would seek to be covered with mud, if it had a mind, i.e. if it knew what its owner had in store for it. Epictetus himself provides what appears to be the Chrysippean original at II.6.9–10:¹² ¹⁰ Aulus Gellius XIX.1.14 = Epictetus fr. 9 Oldfather: ‘librum [ . . . ] Epicteti philosophi quantum Dialexe¯on, quas ab Arriano digestas congruere scriptis Zenonis et Chrysippi non dubium est’. ¹¹ Von Arnim (1909: 129). ¹² This text is printed as a fragment in SVF III.191. Note, first, that Von Arnim prints toiout¯on eklektikon epoi¯esen (following some of the MSS) instead of epoi¯esen tout¯on eklektikon (the reading preferred by the subsequent editions of Schenkl and Oldfather), but the two readings are equivalent ad sententiam. Second, the way in which the fragment is presented in SVF is slightly confusing: although Von Arnim prints the whole passage as a quotation, i.e. between inverted commas, he notes in his apparatus that only the last sentence (on the foot) is actually Chrysippean. This caveat is dutifully taken over by later editors such as Oldfather and Schenkl, but insofar as I can see it lacks any foundation.

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Therefore Chrysippus well says ‘as long as the consequences are not clear to me, I cleave ever to what is better adapted to secure those things that are in accordance with nature; for god himself has created me with the faculty of choosing things. But if I really knew that it was ordained for me to be ill at this present moment, I would even seek illness; for the foot also, if it had a mind, would seek to be covered with mud.’ (transl. Oldfather)

However, we can also see how he ‘recycles’ and appropriates this Chrysippean text (without however mentioning its origin) elsewhere, in II.5.24: For I will say that it is natural for the foot to be clean, but if you take it as a foot, and not as a thing detached, it will be appropriate for it to step in the mud and trample on thorns and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body; otherwise it will no longer be a foot.¹³

Of course such examples of Epictetus’ use of early Stoic material do not in themselves preclude occasional differences in emphasis or perspective. Yet there is nothing to suggest large-scale originality or heterodoxy on philosophically crucial points either. The evidence which I shall be examining here may serve to show that Epictetus’ theology constitutes no exception in this respect, and that scholars have too often presupposed too much of a rift between Epictetus and early Stoicism in theologicis. It can be shown, on the one hand, that early Stoicism was not as exclusively pantheistic as it is often supposed to be, whereas on the other hand the kind of personalistic theism that we may attribute to Epictetus does not appear to have been all that radical or unheard of after all. In what follows I shall try to substantiate these claims by a comparative study of some relevant aspects of the theologies of the early Stoics on the one hand and of Epictetus on the other. It is to early Stoic theology that we shall first turn.

II As I indicated in the previous section, scholarly discussions of the theology of the Stoics in general, and of Epictetus in particular, have often been couched in terms of the labels ‘pantheism’ and ‘theism’. In general these descriptive labels serve as useful landmarks in the ¹³ For what may be another example of such free use of a motif from an early Stoic source, see below, n.26.

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philosophy of religion. Yet they should be used with caution insofar as they represent rather ‘thin’ concepts: not every philosopher or historian of religion will naturally have the same conception of what counts as ‘pantheism’ or ‘theism’. In practice the range of application of either term appears to be broad enough to warrant the conclusion that we are dealing with characterizations of belief structures that do not necessarily exclude each other. Pantheism need not be thought to be incompatible with, and may indeed merge into, theism. Thus in the Hindu texts of the period of the main Upanisads, the one Reality of Brahman could alternatively be described as a non-personal power, or as a personal Lord and creator—a situation which, as we shall see, in some respects resembles what we encounter in Stoicism.¹⁴ Theism on the other hand may come in degrees: even within the (mono)theistic Christian tradition, for example, the conception of god presupposed by the tradition or the faithful is often more strongly personalistic than the conception endorsed by systematic theologians or Christian philosophers. It is hard to avoid the impression that scholars dealing with Stoicism have not always been sensitive to the non-absolute character of the distinction between theism and pantheism, or to the fact that there are different kinds, or degrees, of theism. Insofar as pantheism is taken to involve either the assumption of the identity of god and world, or the assumption that god is present in the cosmos and only there, the early Stoics were pantheists. The relevant evidence is too well-known to need to be discussed here.¹⁵ Let me just signal that early Stoic pantheism seems to have come in two forms, depending on whether what we might call a monistic or alternatively a dualistic perspective was predominant: god could be claimed to be identical with the world,¹⁶ but he could also be thought of as the active principle, or formative pneuma, which is at work in the cosmos.¹⁷ Especially when focusing on the former perspective, we may indeed be tempted to speak, with Jagu, of a ‘dieu impersonnel et corporel’.¹⁸ However, the second, dualistically conceived form of pantheism could easily merge ¹⁴ On these various aspects of Hinduism, see e.g. the overview in Smart (1997: 8). ¹⁵ See Excurs V (‘Der stoische Pantheismus’) in Bonhöffer (1894: 243–9). ¹⁶ Both Zeno and Chrysippus are said to have claimed that the cosmos is the ‘substance’ of god’ (DL VII.148) and an even more straightforward identification of cosmos and god is ascribed to Chrysippus (Cicero ND I.39), and to be found in some reports of the common Stoic view in Arius Didymus as well (fr. 29 Diels = SVF II. 428; fr. 31 Diels = SVF II.527). ¹⁷ Aetius I.7.33 = SVF II.1027. ¹⁸ See above, n. 8 and text thereto.

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into theism, and our sources show that this is indeed what happened. Seen as an immanent formative principle, god could be labelled, as Zeno put it, not just ‘craftsmanlike’, but actually ‘a craftsman’,¹⁹ or even a ‘father’.²⁰ As such he is not merely rational, but also providential and happy.²¹ Indeed precisely because god’s rationality—or, for that matter, the rationality of the cosmos—was thought not to differ in kind from human rationality, god, qua rational and providential governing principle, could be viewed as a ‘person’ with purposes and intentions. Hence providence could be identified as ‘the will of Zeus’.²² This rational god, who orders everything for the best, was himself conceived of as someone who is ipso facto virtuous and happy and also as such an example to be followed. Indeed the Stoic Zeus is said to be virtuous and wise and he and the sage benefit each other whenever the one encounters a movement of the other.²³ In a similar vein Zeus is compared to the sage (or rather the other way round) in respect of his eudaimonia.²⁴ Quotations from Chrysippus’ On Zeus (Peri tou Dios) and On the Gods (Peri The¯on) respectively show that the question whether all virtuous acts are ipso facto also praiseworthy could be applied not only to virtuous humans, but also to god and his virtuous activities.²⁵ Finally, in a quotation from the third book of Chrysippus’ On Nature we are told that: ¹⁹ Cicero ND II.58: ‘ipsius vero mundi, qui omnia complexu suo coercet et continet, natura non artificiosa solum, sed plane artifex ab eodem Zenone dicitur’. Cf. DL VII. 137: d¯emiourgos t¯es diakosm¯ese¯os, and VII.147, quoted in the next note. ²⁰ Cf. DL VII.147: einai de ton m¯en d¯emiourgon t¯on hol¯on kai h¯osper patera pant¯on. ²¹ DL VII.147: Theon d’ einai z¯oion athanaton, logikon, teleion kai noeron en eudaimoni¯ai, kakou pantos anepidekton, prono¯etikon kosmou te kai t¯on en kosm¯oi. ²² Cf. Calcidius In Tim. 144 (= SVF II.933). For a comparison between the anima mundi and ourselves in this connection, see Cicero ND II.58. ²³ Plutarch, Comm. Not. 1076a (= SVF III.246): o¯pheleisthai te gar homoi¯os hup’ all¯el¯on ton Dia kai ton Di¯ona, sophous ontas, hotan hateros thaterou tunchan¯ei kinoumenou. The context in Plutarch is polemical, and we are not dealing with a direct quotation, but the reference must be to a kind of mutual beneficence experienced through cosmic sumpatheia, on which see also Comm. Not. 1068f (= SVF III.627). Seneca Ep. 109.1–14 offers a more pedestrian explanation of the sense in which the wise benefit each other—namely insofar as they actually enjoy each other’s company and stimulate each other in conversation and joint inquiry, although he winds up this passage by claiming that the wise are benefited by each other in a more general sense as well, namely insofar as the mere discovery of another wise man is in itself a desirable event (Ep. 109.13: ‘invenire autem sapientem sapienti per se res expetenda est’). ²⁴ Stobaeus Ecl. II.98.17 ff. Wachsmuth (= part of SVF III.54). ²⁵ The relevant fragment from the Peri tou Dios is to be found at SR 1038e–1039a (= SVF III.211); the one from the Peri The¯on at SR 1039a (= SVF III.212); on these fragments see further Algra (1990).

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as it befits Zeus to glory in himself and in his way of life and to be haughty and, if it should be said this way, to carry his head high and plume himself, and to boast since he lives in a way worth boasting about, so does this befit all good men, since they are in no way surpassed by Zeus.²⁶

The structural resemblance between human and divine rationality to which these texts testify, and which is to be explained at a physical level by the fact that our inner daim¯on is part (an apospasma) of the cosmic god,²⁷ works both ways: not only does it allow a certain degree of personalistic theism in thinking and speaking about god, it also provides the basis for the claim that the virtuous and happy (eudaim¯on) person leads a life in which what the Stoics call ‘the god inside’, our own daim¯on, is in agreement with the ‘will of the orderer of the universe’.²⁸ Adjusting one’s mind to divine rationality also means taking on the virtues of god—the Stoic version of the idea of homoi¯osis the¯oi (becoming like god).²⁹ We are here dealing, in other words, with the physical, or rather theological, basis of Stoic ethics. ²⁶ Epictetus may have been re-applying this theme at II.8.26, where he points to the famous statue of Zeus in Olympia and asks us to take account of its facial features and of the way the god looks, even if Epictetus’ Zeus appears to be slightly more modest than Chrysippus’. ²⁷ For a fuller discussion of the relation between human intellect and god as conceived by the (early) Stoics, see Tieleman (2003a: 189–203). ²⁸ DL VII.88: einai d’ auto touto t¯en tou eudaimonos aret¯en kai euroian biou, hotan panta pratt¯etai kata t¯en sumph¯onian tou par’ hekast¯oi daimonos pros t¯en tou hol¯on dioik¯etou boul¯esin. Note, by the way, that the notion of an ‘internal deity’, or of the divinity of the rational soul, appears to have had a wide appeal among Greek philosophers. Cf. e.g. Socrates in Xenophon Mem. IV.3.14; Plato Rep. 589e; Tim. 90a; Aristotle EN 1177a13. A useful collection of material in Haussleiter (1957). ²⁹ I think Long (2002: 170–1) may be slightly too sceptical about the early Stoic pedigree of this idea as found in Epictetus (pointing instead to the famous passage in Plato Tht. 176a–b). Although we may find (Long 2002: 170) that ‘when God is conceived pantheistically, as physically present in all beings, it is hard to understand what properties he could have that constitute the paradigm of virtuous human character—trustworthy, high-minded, and so forth’, the evidence quoted in the text shows that the early Stoics did not share this puzzlement. And although it is true that, for all we know, Epictetus appears to be the only Stoic who uses the exact Platonic term homoi¯osis, the idea as such appears to have become rather common stock at an early date. See e.g. Epicurus Ep. Men. 135, Plutarch Non posse 1019c, and Baltes (2003) for Epicurean adaptations. On the idea of ‘godlikeness’ in Plato and Aristotle, see Sedley (1999). On the Stoic side we may point not only to the claims concerning the adjustment of the inner daim¯on to the cosmic god, but also to such evidence as Cicero ND II.153 who speaks of a vita beata par et similis deorum. According to Musonius (fr. 17 Hense) man is a mim¯ema theou anyway—a claim which has been taken to support Pearson’s conjectural reading ‘ek gar sou genomestha theou mim¯ema lachontes’ in the fourth line of Cleanthes’ Zeus hymn, a reading taken over in the collection of Long and Sedley, and presupposed by Long (2002: 153). For an overview of various attempts

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All this may serve to show that Stoic pantheism could to some extent merge into theism, especially where a more strictly physical perspective gave way to a perspective focusing either on god’s providential activity (god as demiurge and father) or on the resemblance and affinity between man and god (god as a virtuous example). In this connection it may be helpful to note that Stoic pantheism does not so much involve god being completely ‘physicalized’—i.e. reduced to a being that is describable in exclusively physical terms—but rather the reverse: the physical world is being deified, insofar as it is thought to display the workings of a divine mind.³⁰ This is precisely the point at which Spinoza—who is also usually labelled a ‘pantheist’—radically parts company with the Stoics. In the famous appendix to the first part of his Ethica he argues that the introduction of the wrongheaded ideas of cosmic teleology and providence has been the result of an all-too-human view of how god, i.e. the cosmos, actually works.³¹ Yet, even if Chrysippus and other early Stoics were to some extent committed to a personalistic conception of god, this personalism had its limits. The Stoic god may well be like humans in being rational, yet he is unlike them, or at least unlike those of them who are not sages, in being perfectly rational and nothing else. Hence his attitude towards the world, and towards us, is characterized by rationality alone, not by emotions.³² There is no room for favouritism, no do-ut-des relation, no divine love, no divine anger. At the level of the world at large, god’s providential care consists in one thing only, namely in the world being structured as rationally and perfectly as it could possibly be. For to remedy the crux in this fourth line and for an assessment of Pearson’s conjecture, see now Thom (2005: 54–66). ³⁰ Note that the most important (kinds of) arguments employed by the Stoics to prove the existence of god presuppose a theistic conception of god. Thus the various versions of the argument from design end up with the idea of god as a divine creator of the cosmos, comparable to a human artisan, or a divine mind permeating the cosmos, comparable (though superior) to a human mind, or a divine inhabitant next to the human inhabitants. Similarly, in making use of the idea of a scala naturae, the various versions of the argumentum ex gradibus entium try to establish the existence of god as an entity that is superior (or indeed perfect), yet in some relevant senses comparable to human beings. On the other hand purely physical arguments (working along strictly pantheistic lines) appear to play a minor role. Within the context of the sustained Stoic account of Cicero ND II we find them in II.23–8, 30b–32 and 39–41. On the question of the provenance of this material (some of it goes back to Cleanthes) and for further references, see Mansfeld (1982). ³¹ On Spinoza and Stoicism, see now Long (2003: 369–79). ³² Of course in its turn the wise man’s attitude towards god should be exclusively rational as well; thus Stoicism leaves no room for anything like fear of god.

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mankind in particular, this providential rationality shows itself in the fact that each individual has been endowed with reason, and is thus in principle equipped to cope with anything that may happen to him. So, although the cosmos is claimed to be structured as it is hominum causa, god does not interfere with the lives of individual humans otherwise than by letting them share in the general providential scheme and in divination as a means to reveal that scheme,³³ and by endowing them with rationality, and hence, with the seeds of virtue.³⁴ God does not provide us, directly and individually, with good health, good crops or other personal favours.³⁵ This view also affects the conception of the koin¯onia which the Stoics supposed to exist between man and god. It is not a bond of a traditional kind, such as can occur between ordinary humans, but merely a koin¯onia qua rationality. Hence the relationship between god and man is like the relationship between sages: they benefit each other in a very specific, though primary, sense, namely through their rationality alone. It appears, then, that the way the Stoic god relates to us as individual human beings differs both from the personalism of Jewish or Christian theology and from what we encounter in traditional Greek (poly)theism. Accordingly, the Stoics had to re-interpret the relation between god(s) and men as traditionally conceived by Graeco-Roman theism. The notion of being a ‘friend’ of the gods, for example, was now taken to refer exclusively to one’s being one in mind with god.³⁶ More ³³ On ta di’ oneirat¯on bo¯eth¯emata see Marcus Aurelius I.17.20 and IX.27.3. ³⁴ Compare the way in which in ND II.164–7 the Stoic spokesman Balbus substantiates his claim that ‘etiam singulis a dis immortalibus consuli et provideri solet’ (II.164). This claim is supported by references to the existence of great men (being great, i.e. virtuous, thanks to god) and to the overall importance of virtue (‘magnis autem viris prosperae semper omnes res, siquidem satis a nostris et a principe philosophiae Socrate dictum est de ubertatibus virtutis et copiis’, II.167). Admittedly Cicero’s account also contains some examples of gods directly interfering with the lives of men: the epiphanies listed in ND II.6 and briefly referred to again at II.166. However, these examples are mainly Roman, and probably due to Cicero himself rather than to an original Stoic source, although they may well have been triggered by Stoic interpretations of the Dioskouroi (who figure in some of the examples) as good and inspiring daimones (cf. Sextus M X, 86 = SVF II.1014). ³⁵ Of course from a Stoic perspective such things are indifferents. This, I surmise, is also part of the background to the claim that ‘magna di curant, parva neglegunt’ (Cicero ND II.167). What really counts is the divine gift of rationality, all the rest is indifferent. ³⁶ Stobaeus Ecl. II.7 (p. 106 W; SVF III.661). There are parallels in other philosophers offering a rationalized theology; see e.g. Plato Euthyphr. 10a–11a; Rep. II.365e; Leg. 716c–d; 885b8–10; 909b4–5. For an Epicurean re-interpretation of ‘affinity’ and

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famous examples can be found in Seneca who argues that the traditional notion of the exchange of beneficia—i.e. of the do-ut-des relation of reciprocity—between god and men, in particular our part of the deal, should be revised: we do not honour the gods by bloody offerings, but by our right and virtuous intention (Benef. I.6.3). God seeks no servants, and the proper cult of god is to know him, and to imitate him (Ep. 95.47 and 50).³⁷ Mainstream Stoicism, to conclude, did allow some form of theism, but we should be aware of the nature and limitations of the personalism which this particular brand of theism involved.

III Let us now turn to Epictetus. To what extent is his use of theistic language to be taken au pied de la lettre, and to what extent does it reflect a stronger theism than the restricted and qualified form which we find in early Stoicism as well? Of course I cannot deal with each and every relevant passage. What I shall do instead is single out a number of significant examples, which show, at least to my mind, that the surface structure of theistic language represents an orthodox core. I shall begin, in this section, with some features of Epictetus’ conception of the way in which god relates to man: the idea of god’s seeing us, his speaking to us, his punishments, his help. I shall then, in the next section, turn to Epictetus’ conception of the way man communicates with god, i.e. to his conception of prayer. Let us begin with the idea of god seeing, or supervising us, which indeed constitutes a recurrent theme in Epictetus.³⁸ It is only in I.14—in the treatise entitled ‘That the deity oversees all men’—that Epictetus sets out to explain what this is actually supposed to mean. God’s contact with us is first (I.14.1–10) described in terms of universal cosmic sumpatheia. As we have seen, there is evidence that this form of actual ‘alienation’ as applied to the relationship between man and god, see Philodemus Piet. cols. 37–9 in the edition of Obbink (Philodemus 1996). Of course the ‘mercantile’ do-ut-des relation of traditional cult had in itself never really excluded forms of personal and ‘internalized’ piety, on which see Festugière (1954: 1–37). ³⁷ What we get in return are the benefits of virtue; this is arguably the point of the theistically formulated phrase in Seneca Ep. 41.2: ‘A holy spirit dwells in us, one who marks our good and bad deeds and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so we are treated by it.’ ³⁸ See, e.g. I.14; I.30.1; III.11.4 and 7; III.13.4.

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physical ‘sympathetic’ contact between god and rational human beings was already envisaged by the early Stoics. In what follows (I.14.12–15) Epictetus goes on to explain that what in fact ‘sees’ us is our daim¯on, i.e. god in us, the apospasma of the cosmic god.³⁹ In other words, it is in virtue of our own rationality, which is part of god, that we are never alone, and, in a sense, always ‘watched’.⁴⁰ Also these claims—that our ‘rational self ’ is a part (an apospasma) of the cosmic god and that we have an internal daim¯on—appear to be orthodox: at any rate they are made also in Diogenes Laertius’ account of common Stoic views (DL VII.88 and VII.143, where in connection with our psuch¯e the term apospasma is used).⁴¹ Although god’s ‘seeing’ us should not be taken as a mere metaphor—after all god does somehow physically connect ³⁹ I.14.12–15: epitropon hekast¯oi parest¯esen ton hekastou daimona kai pared¯oken phulassein auton aut¯oi kai touton akoim¯eton kai aparalogiston [ . . . ] ho theos endon esti kai ho humeteros daim¯on estin, kai tis toutois chreia ph¯otos eis to blepein ti poieite? ⁴⁰ I am here glossing over the difficulty that Epictetus sometimes speaks of this inner daim¯on as our rational self, and at other times as a kind of alter ego or superego or independent guardian spirit. The latter perspective would of course further facilitate talk about god seeing or helping us. On these two ways of describing the daim¯on in us, see the excellent analysis of Long (2002: 165–8). According to Long, the latter perspective, which appears to ‘pluralize’ the person, should be seen as a metaphor or, better, ‘as a way of articulating the idea that in listening to and obeying one’s normative self one is at the same time in accordance with the divinity who administers the world’. A further point which may have facilitated this way of speaking is that, despite the psychological monism to which the Stoics were committed, one’s rational normative ‘self ’ could in a sense be taken to be always there (i.e. even if we fail to be fully rational sages), namely, insofar as it represents the natural capacity of every human being (however exceptional full rationality may be in practice), whereas irrational impulses were regarded as unnatural perversions (diastrophai) of this normative self. ⁴¹ Long (2002: 163–6) may be right in seeing a difference between Chrysippus on the one hand and Posidonius and Epictetus on the other in that the former merely seems to equate the internal daim¯on with one’s rational self (which may or may not be virtuous), whereas the latter two identify this daim¯on with one’s normative self, i.e. the voice of correct reasoning. He explains this difference by reference to Platonic influences on both Posidonius and Epictetus. However, the difference may be one of emphasis rather than substance (see the previous note; note also that the undoubtedly monistic Epictetus can at II.8.13 speak of ‘defiling’ the daim¯on with impure thoughts, thus implying that the daim¯on itself can lose its purity). Moreover, I am not sure whether a commitment to a Platonic or Platonizing psychology in itself succeeds in explaining the choice for ‘normative’ rather than just ‘rational’ self. After all Platonism does not involve the claim that reason as such makes no mistakes. Moreover, Posidonius’ ‘Platonism’ should not too readily be taken for granted: for an alternative interpretation of Posidonian psychology along more or less ‘orthodox’ Stoic lines, see Tieleman (2003b: 198–287). However, these controversial issues need not bother us here: they do not affect the point that interests me in the present connection, namely, the relation between god and man as envisaged, or so it seems to me, by both Chrysippus and Epictetus.

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with us⁴²—and although it may be true that Epictetus shows a more fervent commitment to this idea than we find in the fragments of the early Stoics,⁴³ it is not obvious that we are dealing with a more personal relation between god and man than is implied by early Stoic theology. A connected issue is god’s help, to which Epictetus refers on several occasions. As an example we may take IV.1.98, where god is referred to as a safe fellow-traveller, that is: a guide, on the path of people’s life. If someone attaches himself to god, we are told, he will travel safely. In the immediate sequel, in IV.1.99–100, Epictetus then asks what ‘attaching oneself ’ actually means. The answer is: Whatever god wills, he himself also wills, and whatever god does not will, he also does not will. How then shall this be done? Why, how else than by observing the choices of god and his governance?

God’s guidance, in other words, does not involve any particular act or intervention on his part, but rather the right attitude on our part. His ‘help’ is really something we should obtain ourselves, by becoming rational. This idea also underlies the claim made by Epictetus at I.29.4: ‘This is the law which god has ordained, and he says: if you wish any good thing, get it from yourself.’ Elsewhere, in IV.9.16–18, Epictetus is even more explicit: the help (or else: the destruction) comes from within (es¯othen h¯e bo¯ethia). And he goes on by claiming: ‘you have but to will a thing and it has happened, the reform has been made; as, on the other hand you have but to drop into a doze and all is lost’. If you do not see the value of this principle ‘and go on looking for anything else greater than these things, not even a god can any longer save you’. Here the god who can save us is clearly our ‘inner’ god, i.e. reason. Once again the personalistic language appears to express an underlying theory which is in line with Stoic orthodoxy.⁴⁴ We may recall the early Stoic ⁴² But see Tieleman (2003a: 189–203) for the early Stoic background of this particular aspect. ⁴³ This point is stressed by Long (2002: 166), but given the fragmentary nature of the early Stoic evidence and given the specific type of discourse which we witness in the Epictetan texts (on which see the final section of this paper) it is difficult to assess its strength. ⁴⁴ At the same time it should be noted that Epictetus rates this form of divine care through our own rationality high enough to oppose the view which states that god extends his cares to humans only in a general way (I.12.5). And see Long (2002: 186–7) for a slightly more literal interpretation of divine care for individuals. I fully agree with Long’s stress on what he calls (2002: 187) the ‘theonomic’ aspect of Epictetan ethics; the difference between our interpretations is one of emphasis: where he stresses divine care, I stress the fact that this care works through our own rationality.

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idea that god ‘benefits’ the wise—a claim which refers to the concept of o¯phelia, which is usually connected with the effects of the good, i.e. virtue. Here, as well as in Epictetus, the benefits obtained from god appear to be of a moral, or even spiritual, nature, and they come to us through our own rationality.⁴⁵ The idea of god speaking to us is also prominent in Epictetus. However, here as well it appears that the theistic language should not be taken at face value. When Epictetus speaks of god giving specific commands, what god actually is supposed to ‘say’ often appears to be simply what happens to us, as when god is said to give signs that it is time to stop living (cf. e.g. I.29.29), or when he is said to tell us to take on certain duties (I.29.44 ff.). In other passages god is said to ‘talk’ to us in more general terms, and in a sense to reveal the structure of the cosmos or the basic rules of human life.⁴⁶ But a straightforward conversation between god and us does not appear to be what Epictetus envisages in these cases either. God’s ‘talking’ to us rather seems to be a kind of shorthand for his reaching us through the medium of the logos of his messengers, the philosophers.⁴⁷ Here again we are not dealing with a mere metaphor, for god does in a way communicate through what we might call the effects of his providence. But neither are we dealing with the kind of personal god-to-man conversation which we witness, for example, in the Homeric poems, or in the stories about the prophets of the Old Testament. Next, shouldn’t Epictetus’ repeated talk of divine punishment be taken to suggest that god may actively and directly intervene in any way ⁴⁵ To my knowledge the only early Stoic text which, at least when taken literally, suggests something resembling divine illumination in the sense of an act on the part of god presupposing a passive human subject, is the prayer which ends Cleanthes’ Zeus hymn, and which asks for god’s help in becoming virtuous (ll. 34–5: ‘grant that they obtain the insight on which you rely when governing everything with justice’). But in this case the question is precisely whether and to what extent the tradional formulae in this text are meant to be taken literally by those who read the hymn as a philosophical hymn. Thom (2005: 27) merely asserts that the text may be taken literally, without indicating how such a reading could be made sense of from a philosophical perspective. In general, in early Stoicism, what god is supposed to give is rationality, one’s ‘normative self ’ (on which see above, n. 36) as a potential for happiness and virtue. The way we use this, is ‘up to us’. ⁴⁶ Cf. Cleanthes Hymn (SVF I.537), ll. 20–1 on the fool’s failing to see or ‘hear’ god’s law. ⁴⁷ Cf. III.1.36: tauta moi Epikt¯etos ouk eir¯eken [ . . . ] alla theos tis pote eumen¯es di’ ekeinou. And III.13.11–12: ho de logos ho t¯on philosoph¯on hupischneitai kai apo tout¯on eir¯en¯en parechein [ . . . ] taut¯en de t¯en eir¯en¯en tis ech¯on [ . . . ] hupo tou theou kek¯erugmen¯en dia tou logou.

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if we do not obey him? Let us first of all note that the idea of divine punishment as such is not altogether absent from the remains of early Stoic texts either. Thus we have two fragments from Chrysippus’ On the Gods (Peri The¯on) recorded by Plutarch (SR 1050 A = SVF II.1176) in which evil is said to befall the wicked ‘by way of punishment’ (kolase¯os charin). Yet, although these words might seem to suggest a specific intentional act of punishment on god’s part, Chrysippus is careful to choose language (ta duschr¯esta sumbainein, aponemetai kata ton tou Dios logon) which does not suggest any direct intervention of god. In fact it is a plausible guess that what he has in mind is what will happen to us as a consequence of our evil moral disposition, i.e. as a consequence of what we actually inflict upon ourselves. In that case Epictetus’ approach appears to be similar. Although he does speak of punishments, these punishments invariably consist in the wretched state we will be in if our reason, our internal daim¯on, does not get the better of us.⁴⁸ Here as well, in other words, the theistic and personalistic language of punishment (kolasis) appears to be in need of interpretation. Finally, it has sometimes been claimed that Epictetus brings in a novel element by characterizing the relation between man and god as one between ‘father’ and ‘son’.⁴⁹ Here as well caution appears to be called for. In some contexts Epictetus uses this term ‘father’ simply to refer to the idea of god being the provident cosmic cause of things being as they are. As such god has provided us both with life and other external goods—and, most importantly, with the only thing that really counts: reason.⁵⁰ This, however, is a sense in which the word ‘father’ was applied to god by the early Stoics as well, witness the Zeus hymn of Cleanthes, which uses the word ‘father’ in addressing god, and the report in Diogenes Laertius VII.147 (quoted above, notes 20 and 21).⁵¹ Moreover, we need to ask what kind of father–son relation is ⁴⁸ Cf. I.12.22: tis oun h¯e kolasis tois ou prosdechomenois? to hout¯os echein h¯os echousin. See also III.7.36; III.24.24; IV.1.130. See also Seneca Ep. 41.2 (quoted more fully above, n. 33) on the internal daim¯on: ‘As we treat this spirit, so we are treated by it.’ ⁴⁹ Cf. Germain (1964: 99): ‘Sauf erreur issue des lacunes de la tradition, c’est l’originalité d’Épictète d’avoir enseigné que ce langage ne devait pas être pris pour une métaphore, que nous devons vivre dans la conviction que Dieu est, littéralement, notre père. Par conséquent, nous avons le droit de nous dire ‘‘fils de Dieu’’.’ ⁵⁰ Cf. III.24.3, where god is said to be patrik¯os proistamenon, and possibly also IV.1.102. ⁵¹ Note that this way of talking may also have been indebted to the idea that we, as rational beings, are the ‘seed’ of god. Cf. Sextus M IX.101 (SVF I.113) with Tieleman (2003a: 190).

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being implied in these cases. The answer is that we are dealing with the detached kind of fatherhood that could also be attributed to the wise or, more generally, to philosophers. Thus, according to Epictetus, the Cynic Diogenes deserved to be called a ‘father’ because he went about scattering insight (thus in a sense imitating god) by means of his insults, just as Socrates was scattering reason by questioning people, and Zeno by teaching them (III.22.81–2). In other words, apart from referring to god’s general providential care, Epictetus talk of god’s fatherhood does not imply any specific and personal concern for human individuals. Conversely, when certain human individuals are called ‘sons’ of god, this is because they, on their part, exhibit a special attitude towards god, rather than the other way round. We are told, for example, that Heracles was traditionally believed to be a ‘son of god’ because he had nothing dearer than god, which means that he was following reason in the first place.⁵² This allowed him to go around ‘purging’ the world as a kind of proto-Cynic or proto-Stoic philosopher (II.17.45). In the previous section I have pointed out that Stoic theology required a re-interpretation of the traditional notion ‘friend of god’. In Epictetus we find a similar re-interpretation of personalistic talk of ‘father’ and ‘son’. It turns out that it refers to a relation between god and man that does not go beyond anything the early Stoics—or Seneca,⁵³ for that matter—were committed to as well: god is a providential source of goods and of reason, and as such he is what, or whom, we should love and follow.

IV This brings us to the final item to be discussed: prayer. There are numerous examples of prayer—i.e. of humans addressing god—in Epictetus’ texts. In particular the small prayer by Cleanthes which we find at the end of the Encheiridion is quoted, or recycled and paraphrased, many times throughout the Discourses. Prayer—or at any rate its most common form: petitionary prayer—is a manifestation of theism par excellence insofar as it can be seen as a form of addressing god in a personal way and asking him to bestow some favour. Nonetheless ⁵² See II.16.44: ouden philteron tou theou: dia touto episteuth¯e theou huios einai. See also, e.g., IV.3.9: eleutheros gar eimi kai philos tou theou, hin’ hek¯on peith¯omai aut¯oi. ⁵³ On Seneca’s talk about god as a ‘father’, see Sevenster (1961: 36–40).

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many brands of theism have difficulty in accommodating this kind of prayer—for example because it appears to be incompatible with God’s general and unfailing providence or with the immutability of his being and his will. In several respects petitionary prayer appears to be difficult to square with the orthodox Stoic conception of god as well. First of all, given the identifcation of god with fate and providence, how could god’s will (theistically speaking) or the structure of what he brings about (pantheistically speaking) ever be changed?⁵⁴ Seneca, NQ II.35 expresses what for a Stoic would seem to be the most strict and rigid answer to this question: What use are expiations and precautions if the fates are immutable? Allow me to support that rigid sect of philosophers who accept such practices with a smile and consider them only a solace for a troubled mind. The fates perform their function in another way and they are not moved by any prayer.

So much by way of a first objection: why would god change his mind and interfere with our life? Second, on a Stoic line of thought the things people ordinarily pray for in petitionary prayers (health, wealth, etc.) are indifferents, which have little or no value at all: the only thing that counts is rationality and virtue. All in all, then, there appears to be little room for petitionary prayer for someone who takes Stoic theology seriously. Nevertheless recourse to prayer as such does not appear to be exceptional either within the Stoic tradition as a whole or in Epictetus.⁵⁵ As I noted, Epictetus’ favourite prayer is an early Stoic specimen: a prayer by Cleanthes, whose Zeus hymn, we may recall, ends as a prayer as well. We find non-critical references to, or examples of, Stoic prayer in Marcus Aurelius (IX.40) and—despite the misgivings expressed in ⁵⁴ Related problems involved would be the following: why would god need to be asked to grant benefits; what would it mean for god to be ‘moved’ by prayer; shouldn’t god, who is perfectly virtuous, also be unaffected by anything (apath¯es)? ⁵⁵ It has sometimes been claimed that Epictetus advocates the use of prayer for very specific circumstances only. Cf. Lagrange (1912: 18): ‘Il est en effet malaisé de concilier ces textes avec le système, mais on peut du moins constater que dans Epictète la prière est une exception pour les circonstances les plus difficiles.’ See also Germain (1964: 100): ‘il ne semble pas, pourtant, qu’Épictète ait recommandé d’en faire une méthode quotidienne: sa confiance dans la régularité d’une Providence générale ne le poussait sans doute pas à lui demander des actes particuliers’. But I know of no evidence for these claims and the frequency of prayer within the Discourses themselves seems to point in a different direction.

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the text just quoted—in Seneca.⁵⁶ A more in-depth study of Stoic attitudes towards prayer would no doubt prove rewarding, but cannot be offered within the confines of this paper. Let me just note that whereas Seneca’s attitude does not always appear to be consistent—he sometimes at least gives the impression of condoning petitionary prayer even for indifferents—Epictetus (following, or so it seems, Cleanthes) does not appear to envisage the kind of traditional prayer that asks for ordinary favours.⁵⁷ The bounties god is asked to confer are of a moral, intellectual, or even ‘spiritual’ nature. We are dealing, in other words, with prayers for rationality or virtue.⁵⁸ Even so, we are thus still left with the first objection recorded above: even if we are supposed to pray for rationality only, the very act of doing so presupposes the possibility of god’s direct intervention, at our request, in our life. This would be hard to square with god’s supposed immutability (as fate) and his general providence, and it would seem to contradict the quintessentially Epictetan claim that our final good is ‘up to us’. As an element of personalistic theism it would thus constitute an anomaly within the context of Stoicism. On closer view, however, the form and the context of most prayers which are to be found in the Discourses show Epictetus to be immune to this objection. He does not appear to regard such prayers for rationality in the strictly theistic fashion as requests made to an external god to bestow rationality, or as one French scholar put it as a request for god’s ‘intervention dans l’esprit’.⁵⁹ Arrian’s Epictetus introduces the little prayer by Cleanthes at the end of the Encheiridion by telling us that he wants us ‘to have these thoughts at our command upon every occasion’. As such the status of the prayer is no different from that of the quotations from Euripides (‘whoso has rightly with necessity complied, / we count him wise, and skilled in things divine’) and Plato (‘Well, Crito, if so ⁵⁶ Compare the sequel of the passage just quoted in the text, NQ II.37 (‘quod nos quoque existimamus vota proficere salva vi ac potestate fatorum’); see also Benef. IV.4.2. For a brief, but excellent analysis of Seneca’s conception(s) of prayer, see Sevenster (1961: 44–9). A full survey of the relevant material is available in Richards (1964). ⁵⁷ Epictetus I.29.48 tells us that when we are in dire straits, complaints and even an implicit request for help from god are misguided. That the prayers of ordinary men and of the Stoic differ in this respect is implied in IV.6.32–7, esp. 36: tosaut¯es oun diaphoras ous¯es t¯on epithumoumen¯on, t¯on erg¯on, t¯on euch¯on ktl. ⁵⁸ That one should only pray for what is good, virtue or rationality, is something we also encounter in other ancient ‘rational theologies’; see e.g. Xenophanes fr. B 1.15–16; Xenophon Mem. I.3.2; Plato Leg. 687e. See also the famous passage in Seneca Ep. 10.4 (‘roga bonam mentem, bonam valetudinem animae, deinde tunc corporis’). ⁵⁹ Lagrange (1912), 19–20.

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it is pleasing to the gods, so let it be’) which are also provided in the same context. Apparently pronouncing, or internalizing, this prayer has a kind of therapeutic effect: saying ‘lead me, o Zeus’ is in fact a way of telling oneself that one should follow the cosmic ordering, come what may. This interpretation gets further support from III.24.95–102 where a string of short prayers is introduced to exemplify the mental attitude of a person who has first been described as ‘a person who bears in mind who he is, and whence he has come, and by whom he was created, and who centres his attention on this and this only, how he may fill his place in an orderly fashion, and with due obedience to god’. The series of prayers which then follows is capped, as in the Encheiridion, by the general admonition to ‘have these thoughts ready at hand by night and by day’ (III.24.103). The function of the prayer here appears to be precisely to help the subject to ‘bear in mind who he is, and to centre his attention on this and this only, how he may fill his place in an orderly fashion’. This seems to be confirmed by what we find in the sequel (III.24.114–15), which admonishes us to ‘keep these thoughts always at hand’ (III.24.115: tauta ech¯on aei en chersin). However, as the referent of ‘these thoughts’ (tauta), the prayers have in the meantime been replaced by the question ‘am I not wholly intent upon god and his commands and ordinances?’ (III.24.114). The prayers, in other words, appear to be functionally equivalent to the kind of self-admonition we encounter so often in Epictetus, even in ‘non-religious’ contexts which do not invoke god: Are you not willing to come to your own rescue? [ . . . ] How much easier is the work of rescue in this case [ . . . ] only talk to yourself, the man most likely to be persuaded, to whom no one is more persuasive than yourself. (IV.9.13)⁶⁰

The idea that petitionary prayer can, or even should, figure as a form of self-address, is not unheard of within traditions of theology or the philosophy of religion. Versions of it are to be found in Kant’s Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, but also in the work of various modern philosophers of religion and theologians.⁶¹ I ⁶⁰ See also IV.1.111: ‘Do not say to yourself that they are necessary, and they will not be—this is what you ought to practise from morning till evening.’ ⁶¹ See the material collected in Heiler (1923: 200–19); defence of this conception of prayer in Miles (1959); see also Philips (1965) for a Wittgensteinian account of prayer as part of a different (religious) language game making no ontological, scientific or other non-religious claims; analysis of this view in Alhonsaari (1973: 33–61); critique in Swinburne (1993: 95–6).

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know of no explicit defense of this view by any Stoic,⁶² but to my mind the examples I have just adduced hardly admit of any other interpretation. Moreover, this interpretation of prayer coheres well with the interpretation of Epictetus’ conception of divine ‘help’ which I have offered earlier in this paper. In Stoicism such a conception of prayer would no doubt have been facilitated by the conviction that our rational self, or our normative self, is part (an apospasma) of the cosmic god, and even more so by Epictetus’ tendency to speak of this ‘normative self ’ as if it were an independent external factor.⁶³ In fact, just as the physical connection between god and the human ‘self ’ ensures that talking about god’s ‘seeing’ us is more than a mere metaphor, so also does it ensure that prayer is more than just a different ‘language game’. All the same, there is no indication that Epictetus wanted us to take the idea of petitioning god as an external factor literally. To my mind this clearly sets Epictetus’ theology apart from the theism of the Christian tradition. From early on, and for various reasons, Christians have shown an interest in Epictetus’ texts, witness for example the Christianizing versions of the Encheiridion now newly edited by Gerard Boter.⁶⁴ Yet, the fact that there is a crucial difference between the ways in which the relation between man and god was conceived by Christian theism on the one hand and by what one might call Epictetan quasi-theism on the other, has been righty highlighted by later Christian thinkers, such as Blaise Pascal. In his famous 1655 discusion with De Sacy at Port-Royal-les-Champs he maintains on the one hand that Epictetus was right, from a Christian point of view, in advocating complete submission to god.⁶⁵ But in what follows Pascal clearly highlights the other side of the coin: Aussi, comme il étoit terre et cendre, après avoir si bien compris ce qu’on doit, voici comme il se perd dans la présomption de ce qu’on peut. Il dit que Dieu a donné à l’homme les moyens de s’acquitter de toutes ses obligations; que ces ⁶² I have offered a brief defence of this position in Algra (2003: 173–6); see further Sevenster (1961: 44–9) for an interpretation of Seneca’s position along similar lines. ⁶³ On which see above, n. 40. ⁶⁴ Boter (1999). ⁶⁵ Cf. the following passage in the edition of Courcelle (1960: 13): ‘Epictète, lui dit il, est un des philosophes du monde qui ait mieux connu les devoirs de l’homme. Il veut, avant toutes choses, qu’il regarde Dieu comme son principal objet; qu’il soit persuadé qu’il gouverne tout avec justice; qu’il se soumette à lui de bon coeur et qu’il le suive volontairement en tout, comme ne faisant rien qu’avec une très grande sagesse; qu’ainsi cette disposition arrête toutes les plaintes et tous les murmures, et préparera son esprit à souffrir paisiblement les évenemens les plus fâcheux.’ There is an English translation of the Entretien in Caillet and Blankenagel (1948).

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moyens sont en notre puissance [ . . . ] que l’homme peut, par ces puissances, parfaitement connoître Dieu, l’aimer, lui obéir, lui plaire, se guérir de tous ses vices, acquérir toutes les vertus, se rendre saint, et ainsi compagnon de Dieu.⁶⁶

This charge of arrogance, or of overestimating human possibilities, recurs in the Pensées, and it was shared by many others in the early modern period.⁶⁷ What these critics saw, more clearly perhaps than some of Epictetus’ modern commentators, is that in Epictetus’ philosophical system there is no room for such a thing as grace as a free act of god, nor for any other specific divine intervention in the lives of individuals.⁶⁸ In Epictetus our happiness, our virtue, our rational attitude is up to us. I think we are allowed to conclude that Epictetus’ approach to prayer does not betray any commitment to a particularly strong or un-Stoic form of theism. Even when he prays for rationality, he is not praying for an act of illumination or grace on god’s part.

V Even if the preceding observations lead us to the conclusion that in theology there is no substantial rift between Epictetus and orthodox Stoicism,⁶⁹ we are still left with the question of emphasis or personal style. For we may still ask why personalistic theistic overtones are so much more prominent in the Discourses than are the pantheistic or polytheistic perspectives. Or, to put it differently, Epictetus’ theistic language appears to figure as the preferred ‘interface’ between orthodox Stoic theology on the one hand, and his audience on the other. How should we explain this? ⁶⁶ Courcelle (1960: 15–17). ⁶⁷ For similar comparisons between the Stoic (or Epictetan) position and Christianity in Pascal, see Pensées 92; 130; 136 (‘Stoïques. Ils concluent qu’on peut toujours ce qu’on peut quelquefois [ . . . ] Epictète conclut de ce qu’il y a des chrétiens constants que chacun le peut bien être’); 262; 401 (following the numbering of the Gallimard edition of Le Guern). See further the excellent overview of the afterlife of Epictetus in Long (2002: 259–74, esp. 263–4 on the charge of arrogance). ⁶⁸ On this particular issue see now the excellent overview in the ‘Epilogue’ on the afterlife of Epictetus in Long (2002: 259–74). ⁶⁹ I believe that this picture of substantial continuity could be further worked out by examining other aspects of Epictetus’ theology, such as his attitude towards polytheism and the way he deals with the question of the theodicy. On traces of polytheism see above, n. 2. On one of the aspects of the question of the theodicy (god’s being constrained by the laws of physics and the rules of logic), see above, n. 1.

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Of course we cannot rule out the possibility that Epictetus simply was much more of an esprit pieux than any of the other Stoics, and that what I called the ‘interface’ of theistic language represents the way he himself experienced, or preferred to think of, the Stoic god, as some scholars—among them Anthony Long—have claimed.⁷⁰ However, I would venture to suggest yet another factor which may have contributed to the overall theistic tenor of the Discourses, namely, the particular function of these texts.⁷¹ The Discourses do not represent the nitty-gritty of everyday scholastic practice. They represent a ‘type of discourse’ in its own right, fulfilling different needs on the part of the students, next to the lectures which examined technical matters and explained the basic texts of the founding fathers of the school. Clearly, according to Epictetus studying and explaining the old masters was not all there is to being, or becoming, a Stoic. As the Encheiridion famously puts it (ch. 49): But what then is it that I want? To learn nature and to follow her. And having heard that Chrysippus does this, I go to him. But I do not understand what he has written. I seek, therefore, the person who interprets Chrysippus. And down to this point there is nothing to justify pride. But when I find the interpreter, what remains is to put his precepts into practice; this is the only thing to be proud about.

The important thing for the student of philosophy is not merely to study the ‘classics’ but also, and especially, to internalize their teachings. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the teacher. The teacher should not be anybody, but he should be ‘of a certain age, and lead a certain life, and have God as his guide’.⁷² Otherwise he will be like one who has ⁷⁰ In this connection some scholars have drawn a contrast between the more ‘religious’ Epictetus on the one hand and the more (though not exclusively) pantheistically oriented Marcus Aurelius on the other, for whom ‘the deity seems much more remote and impersonal, shrouded in mystery’; see Rutherford (1989: 227); see also Long (2002: 177–8); a slightly more positive assessment of Marcus’ ‘piety’ was offered by Arnold (1911: 124). Yet this contrast is for our purposes less telling than one might think, for in many respects it is Marcus who takes most freedom in adapting the core tenets of Stoicism—think, for example, of his general resignation, often verging on downright pessimism, and his tendency towards other-worldliness—on which see the interesting comparison between Epictetus and Marcus in Rutherford (1989: 225–55). In other words, a contrast between Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius does not necessarily represent a contrast between Epictetus and mainstream Stoicism. ⁷¹ For a full discussion of the protreptic and largely non-technical nature of the Discourses, see now Long (2002: 38–67). ⁷² The quotation is from III.21, a treatise entitled ‘Against those who enter lightheartedly upon the profession of lecturing’. Here Epictetus argues against those who

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all the ingredients of the mysteries ready, but who is unable to celebrate them in the proper way. Students and teachers, in other words, will have to internalize Stoic philosophy, and the Discourses represent precisely the kind of protreptic and dialectical texts that may help them to do so. They may be regarded as a kind of sermons which show the relevance of Stoicism to human life, or perhaps we should say: which show how Stoicism could and should be lived. This means that we are basically dealing with a particular, rather untechnical, brand of ethics.⁷³ It is only natural that in such a context the theological input remained restricted to precisely those two aspects of the Stoic god that were particularly relevant in connection with the attempt to persuade the students to acquire the right mental attitude and the proper lifestyle. These are: first, god as a source of general providential care, and, second, god as an example, as that to which our rationality, our personal daim¯on, should adapt and conform itself. As I have indicated earlier, precisely these two aspects of the Stoic god—his being a providential force and an ethical exemplum—called forth a more theistic approach in early Stoicism as well. On the other hand, given their general purpose, it is equally natural that the Discourses virtually ignore the more technical—i.e. more strictly physical and ‘pantheistic’—aspects of traditional Stoic theology, such as god’s pneumatic nature, or the way in which he physically governs the various cosmological processes—aspects which do figure prominently in the sources on which our picture of early Stoic cosmo-theology largely depends.⁷⁴ The same goes for other, more properly theological issues, advertise themselves by claiming: ‘I will set forth to you the doctrines of Chrysippus as no one else can; his language I will analyse so as to make it perfectly clear; possibly I will throw in a bit of the vivacity of Antipater and Archedemus.’ To this Epictetus replies: ‘Is it for this reason that the young men are to leave their fatherlands and their own parents—to come and listen to you interpreting trifling phrases? Ought they not to be, when they return home, forbearing, ready to help one another, tranquil, with a mind at peace, possessed of some such provision for the journey of life, that, starting out with it, they will be able to bear well whatever happens, and to derive honour from it?’ ⁷³ Note that in the Discourses such ethical technicalities as the intricate subdivisions of the virtues which we find in early Stoicism, especially in Chrysippus, have as little place as the technicalities of logic or physics. ⁷⁴ For the difference between properly theological issues and more technical ‘physical’ matters, see Plutarch’s quotation from the third book of Chrysippus’ On the Gods (SR 1052a) which claims that a discussion of the manner in which some gods (i.e. the lesser cosmic gods: sun, moon, etc.) are perishable is ‘rather a topic for physics’ (phusik¯oteron). Long (2002: 149–52) suggests a different explanation for the predominance of the theistic over the pantheistic perspective in Epictetus: he claims that Stoic physics in the

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such as the way in which traditional polytheism could be incorporated into the Stoic system—a subject which is prominent, for example, in the overview of the second book of Cicero’s De natura deorum and in the polemical debate between Stoics and Epicureans of which Cicero, Philodemus and Plutarch bear witness, but which had no role to play in the context of Epictetan philosophical protreptics.

VI Let me sum up my conclusions. I have tried to show that insofar as the substance of the matter is concerned, Epictetus’ theology does not significantly outstep the limits of Stoic orthodoxy. His theism could draw on early Stoic examples, and is seen to be subject to the same limitations—limitations which set it apart from more strongly personalistic forms of theism, such as can be found, for example, in the Christian tradition. The differences in tenor and emphasis between Epictetus and the surviving texts of earlier Stoics may to some extent be due to Epictetus’ personality, to his esprit pieux, and to the Socratic slant in his thinking. In addition, however, they may to a large extent be explained by taking into account the specific nature and purpose of the Discourses.⁷⁵ technical sense had more or less atrophied after Posidonius—due both to intrascholastic lack of agreement on the details and to the rise of scepticism outside the school. This is surely an overstatement: there is the evidence of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, Cleomedes, and Arrian’s work in meteorology. One would therefore rather prefer the slightly more nuanced view offered elsewhere in the same book (Long 2002: 20), namely, that Epictetus’ reticence about the technicalities of physics reflects ‘his own personal view of what Stoicism chiefly had to offer its own students’. ⁷⁵ I would like to thank Anthony Long, Jaap Mansfeld, Teun Tieleman and the participants of the Epictetus conference in Larnaca (2001), in particular Michael Frede, for their helpful and stimulating comments on earlier versions of this paper.

4 The Philosopher as God’s Messenger Katerina Ierodiakonou

I Not only do Epictetus’ Discourses provide us with invaluable information about Stoic philosophy and its development in Imperial times; they also contain a great number of interesting remarks about how Epictetus conceives of the role of the philosopher. These remarks are quite diverse, ranging from comments about the philosopher’s garb and his everyday routine to more general views about the philosopher’s tasks and aims. In this paper I want to focus on Epictetus’ conception of the role of the philosopher as someone who has been assigned by God a divine mission, namely the mission of being his messenger (angelos). There are two passages in Epictetus’ Discourses which explicitly present the philosopher as God’s messenger. There is first a passage in which Epictetus, after giving advice to a young man about his effeminate appearance, says: But once you have heard these words go away and say to yourself, ‘It was not Epictetus who said these things to me—how could he?—but some kindly God speaking through him. For it would not have occurred to Epictetus to say these things, because he is not in the habit of speaking in this way to anyone. Come then, let us obey God, that we rest not under His wrath.’ But is it that if a raven gives you a sign by his croaking, it is not the raven that gives the sign, but God through the raven, whereas if He gives you a sign through a human voice, you will pretend that it is the man who is saying these things to you, so that you may remain ignorant of the power of the divine spirit, because He gives signs to some men in this way, and to others in that, but in the greatest and

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most decisive matters He gives His sign through a most noble messenger (dia kallistou angelou)? (3.1.36–7)¹

The second passage in which Epictetus specifically talks about the philosopher as a messenger sent by God is a passage portraying the true Cynic as the true philosopher: In the next place, the true Cynic, when he is thus prepared, cannot rest content with this, but he must know that he has been sent by Zeus (apo tou Dios apestaltai) to men, partly as a messenger (angelos), in order to show them that in questions of good and evil they have gone astray, and are seeking the true nature of the good and the evil where it is not, but where it is they do not come to think of; and partly, in the words of Diogenes, when he was taken off to Philip, after the battle of Chaeroneia, as a scout (kataskopos). For the Cynic is truly a scout, to find out what things are friendly to men and what hostile; and he must first do his scouting accurately, and on returning must tell (apangeilai) the truth, not driven by fear to designate as enemies those who are not such, nor in any other fashion be distraught or confused by his impressions. (3.22.23–5; cf. also, 3.22.38; 69)

The view that philosophers have a divine mission can also be found in other passages in Epictetus’ Discourses, in which the philosopher is presented as a witness (martus) summoned by God, or as a man who has a divine vocation (kl¯esis), or has been assigned by God a certain post. For instance, when Epictetus describes the role of the man who has been educated in philosophy, he says: ‘In what role are you now mounting the stage?’ As a witness (martus) summoned by God (hupo tou theou kekl¯emenos) who says: ‘Go and bear witness for me; for you are worthy to be produced as a witness by me. Is any of those things which lie outside the range of the moral purpose either good or evil? Do I injure any man? Have I put each man’s advantage under the control of any but himself?’ What kind of testimony (marturian) do you bear for God? ‘I am in sore straits, O Lord, and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and is this the way in which you are going to disgrace the calling which He gave you (t¯en kl¯esin h¯en kekl¯eken), in that He bestowed this honour upon you and deemed you worthy to be brought forward in order to bear testimony (marturian) so important? (1.29.46–9; cf. also, 3.24.112–13; 3.26.28; 4.8.32) ¹ The translations of texts from Epictetus’ Discourses are, unless otherwise stated, by W. A. Oldfather from the Loeb edition with small changes. Long’s translations are from his (2002) book.

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Also, being God’s messenger and witness, the philosopher is said to be wholly devoted to the service of God, and is thus portrayed by Epictetus as God’s servant (diakonos/hup¯eret¯es): But in such an order of things as the present, which is like that of a battle-field, it is a question, perhaps, if the Cynic ought not to be free from distraction, wholly devoted to the service of God (t¯e diakonia tou theou), free to go about among men, not tied down by the private duties of men, nor involved in relationships which he cannot violate and still maintain his role as a good and excellent man, whereas, on the other hand, if he observes them, he will destroy the messenger, the scout, the herald (k¯eryx) of the gods, that he is. (3.22.69; cf. also, 3.24.65; 3.26.28; 4.7.20)

And again: These are the terms upon which now He brings me here, and again He sends me there; to mankind He exhibits me in poverty, without office, in sickness; He sends me away to Gyara, brings me into prison. Not because He hates me—perish the thought! Who hates the best of his servants (hup¯eret¯on)? Nor because He neglects me, for He does not neglect any of even the least of his creatures; but because He is training me, and making use of me as a witness to the rest of men. When I have been appointed to such a service (hup¯eresian), am I any longer to take thought as to where I am, or with whom, or what men say about me? Am I not wholly intent upon God, and His commands and ordinances? (3.24.113–14; cf. also, 3.22.82; 95; 3.24.98; 4.8.32)

But what exactly is the mission of philosophers as God’s messengers, witnesses, and servants? Which divine message are philosophers supposed to convey and what are their credentials that make Epictetus think they can in principle achieve this divine task? Moreover, is it the first time in the history of philosophy that such a role is ascribed to philosophers? And why is it so important for philosophers in Epictetus’ time to think of themselves as God’s messengers? These are the questions which I want to address in what follows.

II To start with, let me first inquire into the nature of the philosopher’s divine mission and the qualifications which the philosopher should ideally possess in order to carry it out. In the second passage mentioned above (3.22.23–5), Epictetus claims that the philosopher has been given by God the task of showing human beings what is truly good and what

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is evil, since they have gone astray and seek the good in all the wrong places. However, in order to show human beings what is truly good and what is evil, the philosopher first needs to find out for himself the truth and to acquire a solid grasp of the divine administration of the world. As Epictetus says, using a military metaphor,² the philosopher should be like a scout (kataskopos: 3.22.24; 38; 69) who is sent out to inquire where the enemies are situated, i.e. which things actually harm human beings. Indeed, Epictetus uses this metaphor again, when he portrays Diogenes as a scout sent to find out for men what is truly good and what is evil: Diogenes, who before you was sent forth as a scout (kataskopos) has brought us back a different report. He says, ‘Death is not an evil, since it is not dishonourable’; he says, ‘Ill repute is noise made by madmen.’ And what a report this scout (kataskopos) has given us about toil and about pleasure and about poverty! He says, ‘To be naked is better than any scarlet robe; and to sleep on the bare ground,’ he says, ‘is the softest couch.’ (1.24.6–7)

In particular, Epictetus refers to Chrysippus as a philosopher who has a firm grasp of what precisely the divine or natural order of the universe is, what place therein human beings have, and how to distinguish between things good and evil (1.10.10). For this reason Chrysippus is often called ‘an interpreter (ex¯eg¯et¯es) of nature’, in the sense that he comprehends and explains to others the truth about nature, or for that matter about God’s will (1.17.13–19; Ench. 49). But if the divine message concerns the understanding of the cosmic order, and hence of what is truly good and evil, in what sense is the philosopher more equipped than anyone else to deliver it? There are many passages in the Discourses in which Epictetus stresses that, though all human beings have been endowed by God with reason, it is only the philosopher who undertakes to discover the truth by making correct use of this faculty to understand the good and the evil: A man has received from nature measures and standards for discovering the truth (epign¯osis t¯es al¯etheias), and then does not go on and take the pains to add to these and to work out additional principles to supply the deficiencies, ² As Long points out (2002: 120, 168–9), Epictetus often uses military metaphors. In particular, there is an elaborate military metaphor in which God is portrayed as the general, men whose judgements are out of line with God’s management of the world as military rebels, and dutiful world citizens as obedient soldiers in God’s army (3.24). There is a similar metaphor in Aristotle (Met. 1075a13–15), comparing God to a general and the world in its order to an army.

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but does exactly the opposite, endeavouring to take away and destroy whatever faculty he does possess for discovering the truth. What do you say, philosopher? What is your opinion of piety and sanctity? ‘If you wish, I shall prove that it is good.’ By all means, prove it, that our citizens may be converted (epistraphentes) and may honour the divine and at last cease to be indifferent about the things that are of supreme importance. ‘Do you, then, possess the proofs?’ I do, thank heaven. (2.20.21–2; cf. also, 1.6.19–22; 1.16.18–21)

Hence, although humans differ from other animals exactly in that they possess reason, which in principle helps them not just to survive but to live a life worth living, most remain ignorant of the truth, knowledge of which is required for living well, because they do not attend to or follow the divine spirit (daimonion/daim¯on: 3.1.37; cf. also, 2.8.11–14) which God has given each one of them as their share of divine reason: But who tells you that your capacities are the equal of Zeus’s? Yet, for all that, He has presented to each person each person’s own divine spirit (daimona), as a guardian, and committed the person’s safekeeping to this trustee, who does not sleep and who cannot be misled. To what better and more caring guardian could He have entrusted us? So when you close your doors and make it dark inside, remember never to say you are alone, because you are not; God is inside and your own divine spirit (daim¯on) too. (1.14.12; trans. Long)

But the philosopher does listen to his reason, and having thus discovered the truth, assumes as his task ‘to follow God’ (1.12.5; 1.30.4; 4.7.20) as well as to convert the others (cf. epistraphentes: 2.20.22). It is, therefore, for this reason that Epictetus presents the philosopher as someone who has been providentially sent by God to bring His message to ordinary human beings, and it is in this sense that the philosopher is God’s most noble messenger. In his conception of God, the cosmic order, and the position of humans in it, Epictetus seems to follow standard doctrines in Stoic theology: God is one of the two principles, the other being matter, in terms of which the Stoics account for the world we live in; as the active principle, God has providentially organized the world in a rational way; since humans share in reason and are in principle capable of understanding the natural order, they can flourish by living their lives in accordance with nature. Modern scholars, however, have indicated that in some respects Epictetus goes beyond standard Stoic orthodoxy. For instance, Epictetus’ theology is clearly characterized by a warm personalistic tone which has no parallel in the writings of early Stoic philosophers. Also, Epictetus uses a doctrine of God as the basis for presenting and justifying his moral theories, whereas the notion of

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‘appropriation’ (oikei¯osis), which is the traditional starting point of early Stoic ethics, plays almost no role in his thought. Finally, Epictetus’ references and allusions to each person’s divine spirit can be interpreted as talking not about a guardian spirit looking after us, which perhaps is Chrysippus’ understanding of it, but about the voice of correct reason in us, our normative self.³ Concerning the role of the philosopher, in particular, what is a striking difference between Epictetus and the early Stoics is his emphasis on the fact that the philosopher is not someone who merely understands God’s message and conveys it to others; rather, he is someone who tries to explain God’s will by himself actually following it in his everyday life, not only in theory (log¯oi) but also in practice (erg¯oi): But what is it I want? To learn from nature and to follow her. I seek, therefore, someone to interpret her; and having heard that Chrysippus does so, I go to him. But I do not understand what he has written; I seek, therefore, the person who interprets Chrysippus. And down to this point there is nothing to justify pride. But when I find the interpreter, what remains is to put his precepts into practice; this is the only thing to be proud about. If, however, I admire the mere act of interpretation, what have I done but turned into a grammarian instead of a philosopher? The only difference, indeed, is that I interpret Chrysippus instead of Homer. Far from being proud, therefore, when somebody says to me, ‘Read me Chrysippus,’ I blush rather, when I am unable to show him such deeds (erga) as match and harmonize with his words (logois). (Ench. 49; cf. also, 1.17.13–19; 3.22.45–6; 3.24.110)

In fact, the role of the philosopher as God’s messenger demands foremost that he show complete devotion to his mission to such a degree that even the most mundane of his actions come to be regulated in accordance with the philosopher’s divine role: Do you think you can practice philosophy and act as you do now? Do you think you can eat and drink and get angry and irritated in just the same way? You have to stay up at night, work hard, overcome certain desires, leave your family, be despised by a little slave, be jeered at by everyone, come off worst in everything, in office, in rank, and at court. Review all this, and then come forward, if you make that decision—if you want to give up those things in exchange for serenity, freedom, and tranquility. Otherwise, don’t approach; don’t be like a child, now a philosopher, next a tax-collector, then a rhetorician, then one of Caesar’s bureaucrats. These things are not consistent. You have to ³ Cf. Bonh¨offer (1996); Long (2002: 142–7, 180–9). Especially on the issue of how Epictetus understands the divine spirit, cf. Rist (1969: 261–70); Long (2002: 163–8).

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be one person, either good or bad. You have either to work on your governing faculty or on externals, toil either over your inside or your outside. That is, you must take up the stance of a philosopher or of a layman. (3.15.10–13: trans. Long)

Thus, the life of the philosopher is a life of contemplation and tranquility, but also a life of discipline and hardship. Nevertheless, the philosopher does not complain; for, according to Epictetus, he knows that it is God himself who sends him such hardships in order to exercise him (gymnazei) (1.24.2; 3.22.56; 3.24.113).⁴ And if someone who claims to be a philosopher does not manage to live the hard life of a messenger of God, Epictetus claims that there is nothing wrong with philosophy itself, or for that matter with God’s message, but only with this particular person’s understanding of what the philosopher’s role is (4.8.4–9). On the other hand, the true philosopher knows well that if he achieves his divine mission, it is not him, that is the messenger or the interpreter, whom we should admire, but what he interprets, namely God’s will (1.17.29). Thus, there really is no reason to boast of being a philosopher, since it is not the philosopher as a person who counts, but the role he performs, his deeds, which actually deliver God’s message. This is the reason why, according to Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher Euphrates of Tyre did not introduce himself as a philosopher; in fact, people began to wonder why he was always consorting and living with philosophers, if he himself was not a philosopher. Euphrates, Epictetus claims, did not want to be recognized as a philosopher by what he said or by how he appeared, for instance by wearing the philosopher’s garb and beard, but by the way he behaved in everyday life. That is to say, he wanted to be recognized as a philosopher by the way he did ordinary things like eating, drinking, or walking. For what obviously mattered to him as a true philosopher, at least the way Epictetus portrays him, was the understanding and the spirit from which he performed even ordinary things like that (4.8.17–20).⁵ And Epictetus has a similar story about Socrates, to whom he refers more than to any other as the ideal model of a philosopher;⁶ when people asked him to introduce them to philosophers, he used to take them and introduce them to philosophers without being irritated, but on the contrary being pleased, for not being ⁴ For Epictetus’ athletic metaphors, cf. Long (2002: 120, 169). ⁵ Cf. Frede (1997). ⁶ On Epictetus’ portrayal of Socrates as the paradigmatic philosopher, cf. Gourinat (2001); Long (2002: 67–96).

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himself taken for one. For it was clear to him that it is much more important to be and act as a philosopher than to claim to be one (4.8.22–24; Ench. 46). Still, the true philosopher who actually acted as God’s messenger, whether he were to be perceived as such or not, would have a special position among humans. For instance, Epictetus portrays Socrates as having said the following in the course of his trial: Man, in every species nature produces some superior individual, among cattle, dogs, bees, horses. Pray do not say to the superior individual, ‘Well, then, who are you?’ or if you do, it will get a voice from somewhere and reply to you, ‘I am the same sort of thing as red in a mantle; do not expect me to resemble the rest, and do not blame my nature because it has made me different from the rest.’ (3.1.22–3)

The philosopher, therefore, is a superior human being who is clearly distinguished from ordinary humans, just as the red stripe on a mantle distinguishes a Roman senator from other Roman citizens. For the philosopher lives a life which exhibits his understanding of the divine order of things in everyday matters, even when faced by difficulties. And it is this way of life, a philosophical life, which is supposed to convey the divine message to ordinary human beings who, for whatever reasons, are unable to devote themselves to philosophy.

III Having discussed the nature of the philosopher’s divine mission as well as the requirements which, according to Epictetus, are necessary for its achievement, it is time to turn to the question concerning the history of the idea of the philosopher’s role as God’s messenger. There is a particular passage in the Discourses which throws some light on the subject; Epictetus here talks about how one should engage in philosophical discussion with the young, drawing his evidence from what earlier philosophers have done: Nay, it may be that not even wisdom is all that is needed for the care of the young; one ought also to have a certain readiness and special fitness for this task, by Zeus, and a particular physique, and above all the counsel of God advising him to occupy this office, as God advised Socrates to take the office of examining and confuting men, Diogenes the office of kingship and castigation, and Zeno that of instructing men and laying down doctrines. (3.21.18–19)

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It thus seems that all the philosophers whom Epictetus admires were, according to him, given by God a specific task in philosophy. And it is Socrates, in particular, that Epictetus refers to again and again in connection with the philosopher’s divine mission. For instance, in the following passage Epictetus presents Socrates’ speech towards the judges in his trial in this way: ‘If you tell me now,’ says he, ‘ ‘‘We will acquit you on these conditions, namely, that you will no longer engage in these discussions which you have conducted hitherto, nor trouble either the young or the old among us,’’ I will answer, ‘‘You make yourselves ridiculous by thinking that, if your general had stationed me at any post, I ought to hold and maintain it and choose rather to die ten thousand times than to desert it, but if God has stationed us in some place and in some manner of life we ought to desert that.’’ ’ This is what it means for a man to be in very truth a kinsman (sungen¯es) of the gods. (1.9.23–6)

Reading these passages what of course comes to one’s mind is Plato’s reference to Socrates’ divine mission in the Apology (20e8–21a8; 23b4–c1; 33c4–7). The story is well-known: Socrates says that his friend Chaerephon asked the Delphic oracle if there is any man wiser than Socrates, and the oracle responded that no one is. Socrates’ interprets the oracle as indicating that God wanted him to continue in his search for knowledge and to examine other persons’ claim to wisdom. Modern scholars, however, have been puzzled about Socrates’ divine mission. They wonder, for instance, whether this is another example of Socrates’ notorious irony, and whether Plato ever intended what is said about the oracle to be taken seriously. They also wonder whether Socrates’ philosophical activity can be adequately explained simply as a matter of accepting the oracle’s simple statement that no one is wiser than Socrates; for, although this is naturally understood as endorsing Socrates’ own quest for wisdom, Socrates presents his divine mission as one of converting others to the pursuit of truth and the perfection of their souls, rather than their material well-being.⁷ However, it is not my aim here to examine whether Socrates actually thought of his philosophical activity as a mission assigned to him by God. Rather, what I am interested in is that Epictetus, probably under the ⁷ On Socrates’ mission and the Delphic oracle, cf. Brickhouse and Smith (1989: 87–100); Reeve (1989: 21–32); Stokes (1992); McPherran (1996: 208–46). A different account about Socrates and the Delphic oracle is given by Xenophon (Apol. 14), who most probably knew Plato’s version. Xenophon’s account is discussed by Vander Waerdt (1993).

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influence of Plato’s Apology, interprets Socrates in this way, and decides to generalize and talk about the divine vocation of all philosophers.⁸ But is it only Socrates’ example which influenced Epictetus in his belief that true philosophers are God’s messengers? For philosophers after Plato, even though they tend to see in Socrates the paradigmatic philosopher, do not take up the suggestion that Socrates was following a divine vocation. Hence, if it is not a certain philosophical tradition, what other tradition could have influenced Epictetus in his understanding of Socrates’ role and that of the true philosopher in general? It is of course tempting to associate the image of the philosopher—as God’s messenger (angelos), an ‘angel’, as God’s witness (martus), a ‘martyr’, as God’s servant (diakonos), a ‘deacon’, as someone sent (apostellein) by God, an ‘apostle’, as someone who has been converted, tries to convert others and is constantly tested by God—with Judaism or Christianity. But we should be hesitant to make hasty inferences about the influence of the Old or the New Testament on Epictetus. Scholars have long noticed that the Discourses share common words and phrases with the Scriptures, which are relevant to the issue of the philosopher’s role, especially with the New Testament and here in particular with St Paul, for example: the words ‘kl¯esis’ (vocation: 1.29.49/Eph. 4: 1; I Cor. 7: 20) and ‘s¯ot¯eria’ (salvation: 3.23.11; 26/Rom. 1: 16); the verb ‘epistrephein’ (to convert: 2.20.22/Luke 22: 32; Acts 3: 19); the phrases ‘kyrie ele¯eson’ (Lord have mercy on us: 2.7.12/Matthew 20: 30; 31; 17: 15); ‘charis t¯oi the¯oi’ (thank God: 4.4.7/Rom. 7: 25; 6: 17; I Cor. 15: 51; II Cor. 2: 14; 8: 16; 9: 15); and ‘epign¯osis t¯es al¯etheias’ (knowledge of the truth: 2.20.21/Heb. 10: 26; I Tim. 2: 4; II Tim. 2: 25; 3: 7; Titus 1: 1). Nevertheless, such striking similarities in the vocabulary have been convincingly explained by the fact that both Epictetus and the authors of the Scriptural texts use the common conversational language of the day, which reflects a common way of thinking about things in this period.⁹ Epictetus is not the only pagan philosopher in late antiquity who attributes to philosophers the role of the mediator between human beings and the divine. Dio of Prusa, a contemporary of Epictetus and a Stoic philosopher, says that his life, too, was guided by an oracle; when ⁸ It is quite interesting that both Diogenes and Zeno, the other two philosophers who are admired by Epictetus as paradigmatic philosophers, are also presented in the doxographic tradition as having been influenced by the oracle in their decision to become philosophers (cf. Diogenes Laertius 6.20–1; 7.2). ⁹ cf. Bonh¨offer (1911); Sharp (1914).

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he was banished by Domitian from Italy and Bithynia, he claims to have decided to consult Apollo who advised him to continue his honourable wandering until he came to the end of the earth. Encouraged by this advice, he put on a humble garb and began to wander everywhere. Many thought he was a tramp or a beggar, but some took him for a philosopher; and so he acquired this title. Moreover, since people came to him for advice and asked his opinion about what is good and what is evil, he was forced to think about such questions and to talk about them in public (Or. 13.9–12).¹⁰ In addition to this story, there are more passages in Dio’s Orations in which he repeats his belief in his divine mission as a philosopher (e.g. 1.55; 12.5–8; 32.12–13; 21; 34.4–5; 45.1). Furthermore, the Neopythagorean Apollonius of Tyana, another contemporary of Epictetus, is portrayed by Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius (5.37) as someone who believed that philosophical understanding requires divine inspiration; and this can be attained, according to Apollonius, both by an ascetic life and by certain ritual practices which were sometimes regarded as magic. For being able to get in touch with the divine and to acquire some understanding of its workings was supposed to endow one with extraordinary powers, which Apollonius was thought to have. For instance, he is said to have foreseen the future, to have cured patients in miraculous ways, to have appeared in distant places at the same time, to have brought a dead man back to life, and to have been resurrected.¹¹ Though he understandably was sometimes accused of being a charlatan, Philostratus tries to defend him and present him as a true philosopher and divine man, not different from Socrates and Anaxagoras (1.2). Finally, in the second half of the second century the Platonist Maximus of Tyre firmly believes that the philosopher’s body is inhabited by a divine spirit (daim¯on/daimonion) which reveals to him what is hidden (Or. 8.8; 10.10), so that he can become a messenger (angelos: Or. 11.9) and spokesman of God (hupoph¯et¯es: Or. 11.6). Maximus discusses, in particular, Socrates’ daimonion (Orations 8 & 9), following the Platonist tradition in Epictetus’ times of works like Plutarch’s On Socrates’ Daimonion and Apuleius’ On Socrates’ God.¹² ¹⁰ On Dio’s visit to the oracle, his relation to philosophy, and in particular to Socrates, Diogenes, and the Stoics, cf. Jones (1978); Moles (1978); Trapp (2000); Brancacci (2000). ¹¹ On Apollonius’ practice of theurgy, cf. Frede (1998: 33). ¹² On the Platonist texts about Socrates’ daimonion and their influence on later thinkers, cf. Trapp (1997: 67–9).

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Hence, in spite of the clear dogmatic and stylistic differences between these philosophers and Epictetus, it seems that there is a common motif in the thought of various philosophers of Imperial times, all of whom present the true philosopher as someone who has been sent by God to carry out a divine mission. It may be that Plato’s Socrates provided the example, but it is also important that, for reasons which obviously are related to the particular time in which Epictetus lives, the idea of Socrates’ divine mission comes to be taken up again, having been of hardly any interest or use to Epictetus’ predecessors.¹³

IV How, at this time, does the need arise for the philosopher to conceive of his position as assigned to him by God? This brings us to our final question about what it concretely means for a philosopher in Epictetus’ time to think of his role as that of God’s messenger. So, let us look once more closely at what Epictetus himself has to say concerning the role of the philosopher, picking up some of the themes already discussed. Epictetus claims that the theories of previous philosophers are a dead letter, if there is no one to show how they can be put into practice. Indeed, it seems that the discussions and disagreements among philosophers at the end of the Hellenistic period left the pessimistic impression that philosophical disputes do not lead anywhere, in the sense that they do not lead in a convincing way to guidance and concrete advice on how to attain a good life. Epictetus suggests that, in order to remedy this problem, philosophers should, in their theories and especially with their lives, live up to their divine mission and deliver by their practice God’s message to human beings. It is then up to the ordinary man to grasp the philosophers’ interpretation of God’s will and to follow their example. In fact, Epictetus explicitly says in the Discourses that philosophers are sent by God as examples (paradeigmata) to the uninstructed: ¹³ There seems to be, however, a crucial difference between Socrates’ conception of his divine mission and the way Epictetus sees the role of the philosopher as God’s messenger. For Socrates was mainly concerned with the moral improvement of his own fellow citizens, the Athenians, whereas Epictetus’ philosopher adheres to the Stoic cosmopolitanism of Imperial times and interprets his divine mission as encompassing the whole of mankind (e.g. 1.9.1; 2.10.3; 3.24.66). On Epictetus’ cosmopolitanism, cf. Stanton (1968); Schofield (1991: 57–92; 141–5); Long (2002: 233–5).

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Does God so neglect his own creatures, his servants, his witnesses, whom alone he uses as examples (paradeigmasin) to the uninstructed, to prove that he both is, and governs the universe well, and does not neglect the affairs of men, and that no evil befalls a good man either in life or in death? (3.26.28)

This also is the reason why Epictetus himself makes frequent use in his lectures of particular episodes taken from the lives of paradigmatic philosophers, like for instance Socrates or Diogenes; and he repeatedly stresses that they should be treated as examples for other men to follow (e.g. 4.1.152; 159; 170; 4.8.31; 4.5). Hence, Epictetus’ conception of the philosopher as God’s messenger accommodates the need of his time to look to philosophy for a realistic alternative to the life of ordinary human beings in their attempt to pursue happiness. For the philosopher, according to this view, understands the natural order of things and tries to live in accordance with it, so that by his example he shows the layman how not to be distracted by irrelevant trivialities and how to free himself of his failings. Epictetus uses the medical analogy according to which the philosopher’s lecture room is a doctor’s surgery (iatreion), where humans seek to be cured from their misguided desires and false beliefs. But the cure is feasible only when the doctor knows how to apply his medical knowledge, i.e. when the philosopher actually knows how to deliver God’s message: But you are opening up a doctor’s surgery although you possess no equipment other than drugs, but when or how these drugs are applied you neither know nor have ever taken the trouble to learn. (3.21.20; cf. also, 2.21.15; 3.23.30)

The central feature, therefore, of the role of the philosopher as God’s messenger is to cure human beings from their weaknesses and help them to attain a good life; in other words, the role of the philosopher turns out to be the salvation of human beings (s¯oteria): Does a man, then, differ in no way from a stork?—Far from it; but in these matters he does not differ.—In what way, then, does he differ? Seek and you will find that he differs in some other respect. See whether it be not in his understanding what he does, see whether it be not in his capacity for social action, in his faithfulness, his self-respect, his steadfastness, his security from error, his intelligence. Where, then, is the great evil and the great good among men? Just where the difference is; and if that element wherein the difference lies be saved (s¯ozetai) and stands firm and well fortified on every side, and neither his self-respect, nor his faithfulness, nor his intelligence be destroyed, then the man also is saved (s¯ozetai); but if any of these qualities be destroyed or taken by storm, then the man also is destroyed. (1.28.19–21; cf. also, 2.9.8–11; 4.1.161–5)

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It is important to stress that the notion of salvation here used refers to a person’s salvation through understanding and appropriate attitude and behaviour, rather than to salvation as a matter of purely intellectual conviction. Yet this notion of salvation is a secular notion. For the conversion to philosophy, or a life in accordance with the philosophical precepts, is made possible by the example of the philosopher who, although he is God’s messenger, is not himself a divine power. For it may be that divine providence makes the philosopher an intermediary between God and human beings in the sense that he is someone whose choices, desires, and wishes are the same as God’s (sunormein/sunoregesthai/sunthelein: 2.17.23; 4.7.20), someone who is of one mind with God (homognomonein: 2.16.42; 2.19.26), someone who has communion with God (sunanastroph¯e: 1.9.5/koin¯onia: 1.9.5; 2.19.27), someone who seeks to become like God and is an imitator of God (eksomoiousthai/z¯el¯ot¯es: 2.14.12–13), someone who is kinsman of God (sungen¯es: 1.9.1; 22; 25), someone who is even God’s son (1.9.6), but he still is not God himself: Let one of you show me the soul of a man who wishes to be of one mind (homogn¯omon¯esai) with God, and never again to blame either God or man, to fail in nothing that he would achieve, to fall into nothing that he would avoid, to be free from anger, envy and jealousy—but why use circumlocutions?—a man who has set his heart upon changing from a man into a God, and though he is still in this little body, this corpse, has communion (koin¯onias) with Zeus as his purpose. Show him to me! But you cannot. (2.19.26–7)

As this last passage makes clear, however, it is not at all easy to perform the role of the true philosopher. But Epictetus does not lose heart; he often talks about the progress (prokop¯e: 1.2.33–7; 1.4.1–32; 2.11.1–6; 4.12.19–21) which humans can actually make and constantly encourages them to follow the example of those philosophers who really are God’s messengers: And even if you are not yet a Socrates, still you ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates. (Ench. 51)

V To conclude, there is no doubt that on Epictetus’ view no divine revelation or religious faith in our sense is needed to save one’s soul or

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to help other human beings save theirs. For Epictetus insists that, just by relying on our ordinary cognitive abilities, we can attain the kind of understanding of the world in the light of which we have the right attitude towards things. When Epictetus presents the philosopher as God’s messenger, he certainly follows a tradition of philosophers from the first century  onwards who are more interested in questions about God and the soul; but this does not mean that he diverges from the main dogmas of Stoic rationalism. For to follow God, according to Epictetus, means that we should pay attention to the God in us, i.e. to our reason, in order to determine what is the right thing for us, namely how we are to live in accordance with nature. But when salvation later becomes a matter of divine revelation and faith, the well-being of human beings is not entrusted to philosophers any more. Philosophers, therefore, lose their role as God’s interpreters and messengers, and philosophy becomes primarily an intellectual exercise in the service of aims and ends not determined by philosophy itself, but for instance by religion.

5 Epictetus on Cynicism Malcolm Schofield

1 RO L E S F O R PH I LO S O PH E R S Among the authorities Epictetus invokes, Socrates, Zeno and Diogenes figure prominently—above all Socrates. Sometimes Zeno and Diogenes are mentioned solely in what one might call their own right, as in various of the anecdotes Epictetus tells about Diogenes (e.g. II.3.1, III.2.11–12, IV.1.30–1, 114–16), or as when Zeno is mentioned as a Stoic author (IV.9.6) or source for Stoic doctrine (I.17.6–11) along with Cleanthes and Chrysippus, or cited for one of his key doctrines (I.20.14–15, IV.8.12), or for one of his encounters with Antigonus (II.13.14–15). Sometimes by contrast their names are coupled with Socrates’, interchangeably as it seems, doubtless to enhance the rhetorical force of the point being made (Socrates and Zeno, III.24.38, Ench. 12; Socrates and Diogenes, II.16.35, III.24.40, IV.9.6). In one particularly intriguing passage, however, Epictetus explicitly distinguishes between three different kinds of paradigmatic role performed by these three philosophers respectively. He is warning his audience against supposing that they can turn themselves into professional teachers of philosophy overnight, simply by rehearsing the the¯or¯emata they have learned (III.21.18–19): It may be that not even being wise suffices for taking care of young people. There is a need in addition for a certain readiness and fitness for this task, in heaven’s name, and a particular physique, and above all it has to be the case that god is advising one to occupy this position, as he advised Socrates to take on the job of cross-examination, Diogenes the job of kingship and castigation, Zeno the job of teaching and formulating doctrine.

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The reference to ‘a particular physique’¹ is of course potentially disconcerting news for academics inured to the sedentary life of the twenty-first-century teacher of philosophy: I shall return to the point in due course. For the moment I shall focus on Epictetus’s tripartition.² It is immediately obvious that Epictetus is not thinking of Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno as authors or proponents of distinct although no doubt related philosophies, as they would standardly be presented in modern accounts of Greek philosophy. The implication is rather that there is one philosophy—or one thing, philosophy—but that these three thinkers each adopt a different mode of communicating it to others: a different mode of what one might roughly and in generic terms call ‘therapy’. For, although philosophy must involve argument and instruction, its ultimate purpose is care of the soul, as the reference at the beginning of our passage to the care of young people reminds us, and as Epictetus’ admonition in the immediate sequel emphasizes (III.21.20–2): You are opening a doctor’s surgery without any resources other than medicines. Where or how these medicines are applied you do not know, nor have you taken any trouble to find out. ‘See’, you say, ‘he has these eye-salves: so have I.’ So have you also the capacity to put them to use? Do you know at all when and how and for whom they will be beneficial? No? Why, then, do you gamble where the stakes are so high, why do you take things so easy, why do you put your hand to a task that is altogether inappropriate for you?

The blue litmus test for a philosopher, passed I take it by Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno, is indicated in Epictetus’ dramatization of the self-assessment his failed physician is invited to make (III.21.23): He [sc. the person who calls me a philosopher] has gone off the rails. For I do not have desires different from what I did before, nor do I have impulses towards different things, nor do I assent to different things, nor in sum have I changed in any way from my former condition in my use of impressions.

When pursuing his medical analogy elsewhere, Epictetus associates the three modes of or elements in therapy identified in the passage on Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno with three styles of philosophical discourse: cross-examination, protreptic, didactic (III.23.33). He seems to imply that these are established genres, not just the way Socrates, ¹ At III.22.51 Epictetus bids the aspiring Cynic ‘take a mirror, look at your shoulders, inspect your loins, your thighs’. ² See now the excellent discussion of this topic in Long (2002), 52–64.

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Diogenes and Zeno happened to operate; and of course classificatory schemes of the same sort are familiar presences in Greek philosophy from Philo of Larissa on.³ One would suppose that the same philosopher might engage now in cross-examination, now in didactic, for example, depending on the circumstances, and especially on the attitude and condition of particular interlocutors. Our passage looks at the topic from an interestingly different point of view. It suggests that Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno each opted, whether exclusively or predominantly, for a distinctive way of functioning as a philosopher; that each of them took up a discrete role different from those chosen by the other two. What Epictetus seems to have in mind, in fact, is the assumption of a specific pros¯opon, to use the language of I.2, II.10, and so on, or assignment by god to a particular position (taxis) or place (ch¯ora) in the scheme of things (cf.II.4.3, III.1.18–19, IV.10.16), to use the Socratic language he borrows from the Apology (28E).

2 H I S TO R I C A L S PE C U L AT I O N S In talking of Socrates, Diogenes and Zeno in this way, Epictetus is not doing history of philosophy. These great names are simply his authorities and paradigms. The distinctions he draws between their different contributions to philosophy are made in passing, to lend weight to his warnings against thinking that becoming a teacher of philosophy is something any competent student of Stoicism can achieve without much effort. Nonetheless it is worth pausing to consider whether there is perhaps historical value in his interpretation of what his authorities were up to. Assume that for Socrates it was a fundamental truth and the guiding principle of philosophy (i) that the only thing worth caring for is the true self, the soul, not the body or any of the externals fortune may or may not send our way, and (ii) that the only things which are intrinsically good and bad are virtue and vice. Assume that Diogenes and Zeno each concurred in making these propositions the guiding principle of philosophy. Then it is historically plausible that the crucial differences between the three of them are to be found not in what they believed, but in the distinctive (not necessarily the only) methods they each employed to convert others to acceptance—practical as well ³ Philo’s scheme is preserved in Stob, Ecl. II.39.20–41.25. I discuss it in Schofield (2002).

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as intellectual—of what they were united as seeing as the key to the good life. No doubt the division of labour Epictetus specifies at III.21.19 is overly schematic. The Xenophontic Socrates, for example, imparts doctrines and engages in exhortation (although an exemplary elenchus is provided at Mem. IV.2). When it is appropriate for Epictetus’ Cynic to launch a rebuke in theatrical style, whose words does he borrow but Socrates’ in the Cleitophon (III.22.26)?⁴ In that very same mode exhortation can have much in common with elenchus. Thus Epictetus follows the tripartition at III.23.33 with a characterization of protreptic as the ability—very like the elenchus, but generic in style, not tailored like it to the individual case⁵—to show people just one thing (the elenchus is not similarly restricted in subject matter): the mach¯e (conflict) involved in wanting what conduces to happiness, but seeking for it elsewhere (i.e., not where they could find anything truly conducing to happiness). Nonetheless I shall argue that the schematic separation of roles at III.21.19 captures something real. Epictetus’ identification of the elenchus as the most distinctively Socratic method for achieving this object of course agrees with much recent discussion of Socrates.⁶ In most of the rest of this paper I shall be investigating what he has in mind in making ‘kingship and castigation’ the role Diogenes was especially if not uniquely suited to perform, and I shall be commenting inter alia on the historical plausibility of the characterization. But before we launch into Epictetus’ treatment of Diogenes and Cynicism in III.22, it is interesting just to register the attractions of the account of Zeno’s historical significance one might speculatively extract from III.21.19. For what Epictetus says there chimes well with the picture of Zeno as a Socratic which recent scholarship has painted.⁷ And, in characterizing his work as didactic and focused on the formulation of doctrine, it suggests the way Zeno himself may have conceived his own project in relation to the projects of Socrates and Diogenes. In one way or another Socrates and Diogenes devoted their energies to challenging the assumptions ⁴ Epictetus says they are Socrates’ words. In the Cleitophon itself it is Cleitophon who represents Socrates as adopting this mode of talking (Cleit. 407A–B). ⁵ For an Epictetan example of elenchus so interpreted see I.11, with my discussion in Schofield (2004), 449–51. Protreptic by contrast addresses ‘both one and many’—like a preacher’s sermon it is directed at each of us, but there is only one sermon for all of us. ⁶ The classic modern treatment is Vlastos (1983). ⁷ See especially Long (1988).

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being made by everyone around them, with their own moral and intellectual commitments generally emerging by contrast and unsystematically. Zeno may have seen a compensating need for a direct and explicit articulation of the Socratic vision (now glimpsed in part through Cynic spectacles), to be built upon the definitions later Stoics so prized, to be rooted in a theoretical account of nature, and to recapitulate all that was most valuable in previous thought, whether from Heraclitus or from Plato’s later dialogues. On that hypothesis, he will not have perceived himself as presenting a philosophy of human life different from Socrates’ or Diogenes’ (hence the difficulty we have in finding any palpable divergences between Zeno and the early Cynics where their views on the same topics are recorded), but as communicating that very same philosophy in a new form: the form of a system.

3 MORAL SPYING Nothing I have just said about Socratic method or Stoic doctrine should surprise anyone. Epictetus’ talk of ‘kingship and castigation’ in connection with Diogenes, on the other hand, probably sounds more mysterious. To be sure, many of the chreiai about Diogenes retailed in Diogenes Laertius and elsewhere constitute inter alia rebukes addressed to his interlocutor; and those which report encounters between Diogenes and Alexander the Great are designed to get us to see inter alia that it is Diogenes, not Alexander, who is the truer king, as a paper by Ineke Sluiter has most recently helped to bring out.⁸ We recall the story that when Diogenes was captured and put up for sale, and was asked what he knew how to do, he replied: ‘Govern men’ (D.L.VI.29). But why are kingship and castigation singled out as the most characteristic Diogenean activities? What is philosophical about them, and what makes them significant enough philosophically to rank alongside the elenchus and the formulation of doctrine? Are they conceived as two perhaps related activities, or is ‘kingship and castigation’ a sort of hendiadys? What precisely does Epictetus have in mind in using either expression? Our best chance of achieving satisfactory answers to these questions will be likely to materialize through a reading of Epictetus’ ⁸ Sluiter (2005), 143.

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long essay on Cynicism in III.22. Space does not permit discussion of the structure and main sections of the essay in sequence, so I attach a schematic analysis as an appendix (it divides the material up very differently from the scheme proposed by Margarethe Billerbeck in her 1978 edition and commentary).⁹ But as I hope to make clear, if we follow the principal stages of Epictetus’ argument, his characterization of Diogenes’ particular role as a philosopher in terms of kingship and castigation will become more intelligible. As III.21 is addressed to those thinking of becoming philosophy teachers, III.22 is presented as advice to an acquaintance of Epictetus inclining to the Cynic way of life. III.21 is at pains to explain how philosophy teaching is not something just anyone who has learned the principles of Stoicism can get into, but a demanding calling to be ventured upon only with god’s authorization. III.22 is yet more directly emphatic from the outset that anyone who thinks becoming a Cynic consists simply in wearing the kit and going round reviling people is grossly mistaken: the true Cynic is what he is only by divine appointment, and the demands of his calling are quite exceptional. They expose him to the maximal scrutiny imaginable. Like anyone living philosophically, he has to treat his body and all the vicissitudes to which life is subject as things that have nothing to do with his real self: the mind and its moral condition. What makes the Cynic in particular a marked man is that he has nowhere to hide should he fail to act on this imperative. For, in order to fulfil his calling, he lives his life in public, where any deviation from principle would be detected, whether involving concern for the body or external things like reputation, or (what Epictetus seems to suggest might be the more dangerous temptation) surrender to emotion. Other men can shelter behind the doors of their houses or their bedrooms: the Cynic’s only protection is his own aid¯os, self-respect.¹⁰ ⁹ Billerbeck (1978), 5–6. ¹⁰ I am here summarizing the main gist of III.22.1–18. D. R. Dudley (1937), 194–8, saw ‘idealization’ throughout III.22, and notably in this ascription of aid¯os to the Cynic. He persuasively suggested a deliberate attempt on Epictetus’ part to rewrite Cynicism in a way that would remove from it the stigma of anaideia, shamelessness, for which Diogenes was notorious. And certainly we find nothing much explicitly about masturbation and the belly, for example, in the pages of Epictetus on Cynicism. But since Cynicism from Diogenes on involved a concerted assault precisely on the appropriateness of conventional moral categories, a reconceptualization of aid¯os as the respect the Cynic must show towards himself (since he respects nothing else and therefore no external sanction) seems to me thoroughly Diogenean in spirit. Long (2002) has a good discussion

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What is it about the Cynic’s calling, properly interpreted, that requires so extraordinary a lifestyle? Epictetus does not tell us in so many words. But I suggest that we may reach an answer if we reflect upon the characterization of the Cynic he goes on to offer at III.22.23–5. Epictetus describes the Cynic as a divinely appointed spy or scout (kataskopos) who must then show mankind what he discovers as a messenger (angelos) or herald (k¯erux, 69) of the gods. As scout he is tasked by god with finding out where and how mankind may be in danger. But of course it is not god but humans who need the information: the mission is designed for their benefit. So the scout returns to them as divine messenger: the two roles coalesce if the scout does his job properly. He will find himself then having to make it clear to people that in matters of good and bad they have gone astray (hence the appropriateness of protreptic or, more particularly, castigation). He must not be driven by fear to designate as enemies those who are no such thing, or otherwise allow himself to be confused by his impressions. Scholarship has not had a great deal to say about this scouting metaphor. A learned and thoughtful article by Eduard Norden published in 1893¹¹ showed it probable that the metaphor goes back to the origins of Cynicism: he pointed out the occurrence of kataskopos in two book titles attributed to Antisthenes (D.L.VI.17, 18); and, following Epictetus (III.23.24), he drew attention to the story that when after the battle of Chaironeia Diogenes was captured and taken into the presence of Philip of Macedon, he identified himself as a ‘spy on your insatiable greed’ (D.L.VI.43; Plu. De Exilio 606C).¹² We are told that the reply earned him admiration and his release. Subsequent writers have not advanced discussion of kataskopos much further, as a glance at the relevant chapter in Giannantoni’s Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae will confirm. Giannantoni starts with texts that attest the scout/spy theme, but moves quickly on to talk about the whole range of ways in which the Cynic ‘mission’ was conceptualized.¹³ In the rest of this section, I shall try and identify the key ingredients which the ancient evidence invites us to find in the metaphor. of Epictetus’ idea of aid¯os (innovative within Stoicism), at 222–30: his preferred rendering is ‘integrity’. See also the fine study of R. Kamtekar (1998). ¹¹ Norden (1893) at 373–85. ¹² Although this anecdote was clearly pivotal in generating the conceit of Diogenes as spy, it leaves no obvious trace—except perhaps through its moral focus—in Epictetus’ account of Cynic scouting. ¹³ Gianantoni (1990), = IV.507–12.

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Military commanders use scouts to spy out the dangers and opportunities that may confront their forces if they attempt to advance into territory outside their control that needs reconnoitring—above all to discover whether the enemy is there. So a scout’s job is to gather and report information that will be for the general benefit of the army. But, while his mission is undertaken for the common good, its conduct is typically either a solo affair or one enterprised with no more than a handful of companions, and in any event without the degree of support and security which might underpin ordinary troop movements. Scouting is likely to be a risky and conceivably solitary business. We can perceive readily enough the risk a Diogenes takes in gathering moral intelligence which is to be for the common benefit. The Cynic stakes all on the viability of a life in which nothing is regarded as good or bad except the condition of the human mind. And to make it clear that this is what is at stake he lives his own life without external resources and in the public gaze. It is however a solitary existence, inasmuch as he ventures upon it without companionship or at any rate without the guarantee or expectation of companionship. ‘Look at me,’ Epictetus makes the Cynic say at one point, ‘I have no home or family, I am without a city, I possess no property, I don’t have a slave’ (III.22.47). So what we might call moral scouting, like military scouting, makes extraordinary demands of its practitioner. But Cynicism would not be Cynicism without paradox. And the message the Cynic brings back from his spying mission is that in fact there is no real risk—because life can throw nothing at us which at all affects happiness properly understood. Alexander needed the Macedonian infantry and the Thessalian cavalry to go where he wanted and achieve his desires: Diogenes went off where he decided to on his own in complete safety—at night as well as by day (Dio IV.8; cf. VI.60: ‘Nobody is hostile to me or at enmity with me as I take my path’). Or as Epictetus puts it at I.24.9: ‘There is no enemy nearby’, he says. ‘All is full of peace.’ How so, Diogenes? ‘Why, look!’, he says. ‘Have I been hit? Am I wounded? Have I run away from anyone?’ That is how a spy should be. But you come and tell us one thing after another. Go back again and observe more accurately—not blinded by cowardice.

Epictetus suggests that the only spy worth his salt is one who comes back safe and sound reporting that the world is indeed a safe place. He does not spell out the reason—which is of course that the only danger

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worth worrying about would be the danger that our happiness is in the hands of anyone or anything besides ourselves. At this point it is worth putting to ourselves the epistemological question: how do we know that what a spy reports is authentic intelligence? Here we might think there is an important contrast to be drawn between the moral and the military scout, although this is at most implicit in Epictetus. The information gathered by a military scout is the testimony of a witness: we cannot verify it directly and immediately, and we believe it to the extent that we judge it and him trustworthy (‘nobody sends out a coward as scout’—we know we couldn’t rely on his reports: I.24.3). The moral scout, on the other hand, gives us direct and immediate access to the truth he reports: he shows us through his own character and behaviour that what he says is true. As Epictetus puts it in III.22.46: ‘God has sent you someone to show in practice that it is possible [sc. to have nothing but live serenely]’. Or as he spells it out more expansively at I.24.6–8: He [sc. Diogenes] says: ‘Death is not an evil, since it is not dishonourable’; he says: ‘Bad reputation is a noise made by madmen.’ And what a report this spy has made about exertion, and again about pleasure, and again about poverty! He says: ‘To go naked is better than any robe with the purple, and to sleep on the bare ground is the softest couch.’ And he provides as proof of each point his own courage, his tranquillity, his freedom, and finally his body, radiant and hardened.

A trustworthy moral scout therefore discloses more than does a trustworthy military scout.¹⁴ Both provide valuable information for the common good, but the moral scout also reveals that the information he provides is true. We can, I think, go further, and propose that revealing moral truths to be truths is what the Cynic’s scouting most importantly consists in. For his contribution to the common good ought to be intimately related to what marks him out as a scout or spy: that is (as I have argued) the distinctive and distinctively demanding way of life he leads exposed to public view. And a life lived in the public gaze is uniquely suited to showing how things are. To put it another way, and incidentally one which may indicate the penetration of Epictetus’ insight into the ¹⁴ But Epictetus might have wanted to downplay this point: the proofs the Cynic scout presents are comparable to the evidence of moral and physical endurance which might enhance the credibility of a military scout who returns from his mission alive, fit and well.

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historical Diogenes’ philosophical project:¹⁵ the Cynic moral scout acquires his special authority not thanks to what he has dared to see and hear (like the military scout), but on account of what he has dared to be and to be seen to be (‘That is how a scout should be’, I.24.9). If the Cynic’s message is not just what he says but even more what he is, it becomes possible to explain the otherwise curious stress on the fine physical shape he presents for our inspection.¹⁶ It is not that the Cynic himself sets any store by the body. His plan of life has to include among its principles the maxim: ‘The body is nothing to me; its parts are nothing to me’ (III.22.21). But if he does not look in good physical shape ‘his witness (marturia) no longer makes the same impression’ (III.22.86).¹⁷ Epictetus goes on (III.22.87): For it is not enough for him to exhibit the qualities of his soul and prove to laymen that it is possible to be a fine and good person while having nothing to do with the things they admire. He must also show by the state of his body that a plain and simple lifestyle in the open air does not disfigure the body either.

Epictetus has Diogenes’ ‘radiance’ in mind (it is explicitly cited a line or two later: III.22.88); and he is thinking of Diogenes again when he next throws in some remarks about the need for the Cynic ‘to have lots of natural charm and wit—otherwise he becomes mere snivel, and nothing besides’ (III.22.90). As a generalization about Cynics, this makes excellent sense if compelling and attractive communication is the core of the role they are assigned in Epictetus’ scheme of things—or rather in his interpretation in the divine scheme of things.

4 K I N G S H I P A N D C A S T I G AT I O N Protreptic, elenctic, didactic: in a philosophical programme protreptic naturally comes first, on the assumption that one has to arouse a sense of a need for philosophy and virtue before a person is ready for therapy proper—in the shape of elenchus and instruction. The performance of ¹⁵ That is, if we accept some version of R. B. Branham’s view that ‘the chreia tradition suggests that Diogenes’ most brilliant invention was not a set of doctrines, but himself ’: Branham (1996), p. 87. ¹⁶ For some rather different reflections on this issue, see Long (1996), 36–9. As Long reminds us, Diogenes’ own concern with training the body is attested at D.L.VI.70–1. ¹⁷ The witness motif in Epictetus is well studied by A. Rivaud (who is interested in possible connections with the early Christian notion of martyr), in (1953).

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Diogenes as represented for example in Book VI of Diogenes Laertius is plausibly enough interpreted as protreptic so understood. And we can see now why Epictetus should have thought him particularly well-fitted for the crucial job of philosophical and moral evangelism: the challenge of what he says to people is reinforced and confirmed by what he is and what he is seen to be. What now needs explaining is why this job is described as ‘kingship and castigation’ at III.21.19. Epictetus sums up the message the Cynic delivers as the charge that in matters of good and bad humans have gone astray (III.22.23). He amplifies it as follows: they seek the essence of the good and the bad where it is not; as for where it is—that never enters their minds (ibid.). This remark suggests a division of protreptic into a negative and a positive phase. The suggestion is borne out by Epictetus’ subsequent elaboration of the Cynic message. First he supplies a sample denunciation of human folly in seeking happiness and security where they do not exist—in externals and the body (III.22.26–37). Then he imagines the Cynic confronted with the request to say where then the good does exist: ‘Tell us, messenger and scout.’ The reply? We must look within, and there we will find something that is naturally free—our good is located in the mind’s freedom (III.22.38–44). It should not surprise us by now that at this point the Cynic appeals to himself as paradigm (III.22.48–9; cf. IV.8.30–1, where he is made to describe himself as a ‘paradigm sent by god, in so many words): What do I lack? Am I not without pain, am I not without fear, am I not free? When has any of you seen me failing to get what I desire, or slipping up with regard to what I try and avoid? When have I held either god or man responsible [sc. for some disappointment]? When have I blamed anyone else? How do I face those before whom you stand in fear and awe? Do I not treat them as slaves? Who when he sees me does not think he sees his own king and master?

Time to go back again to the description of Diogenes’ role at III.21.19 as ‘kingship and castigation’. Given our summary of III.22.26–49, there is obviously some temptation to identify castigation as the denunciatory phase of the Cynic discourse (cf.III.22.26–37). But I think it more likely that ‘castigation’ characterizes Cynic philosophical rhetoric as a whole (as with the barrage of accusing questions I have just quoted from the positive phase at III.22.38–49). What of ‘kingship’, the other component of the formula at III.21.19? The question: ‘Who when he sees me does not think he sees his own king and master?’ suggests that kingship is a matter not of what is said, but of what the Cynic shows

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himself to be—subject to nothing, fearful of nothing, whether in his speech or in his living. In short, ‘kingship’ expresses (at least inter alia) the moral authority the Cynic philosophy commands, ‘castigation’ the dominant register of his discourse. In the concluding section of III.22 Epictetus offers what we might read as a sort of commentary on the lengthy model of Cynic discourse produced in paragraphs 26–49. It goes as follows (III.22.93–6): But above all, the Cynic’s mind (h¯eg¯emonikon) must be purer than the sun (otherwise he will have to be an easygoing gambler, castigating the rest of mankind while himself in thrall to some vice). See what this means. It is their bodyguards and weaponry that provide temporal kings and tyrants with their power to censure and punish those who do wrong no matter how bad they are themselves. For the Cynic, instead of the bodyguards and weaponry it is his conscience that gives him this authority. When he sees that he has lain awake in concern for humanity and exerted himself for them; that he has slept in purity and sleep has released him still purer; that he thinks his every thought as friend to the gods, as their servant, as one who shares in the government of Zeus, and has always to hand the verse: Lead thou me on, Zeus, and thou too Destiny

and: If this is how it pleases the gods that it should be, then let this be how it is:¹⁸ why then should he not have courage to speak freely to his own brothers, to his children, or in general to his relations?

This passage tends to confirm the suggestion that for Epictetus castigation is seen as a dominant characteristic of all Cynic discourse. It also confirms the hypothesis that by kingship he refers to the authority with which the Cynic speaks, and above all to the licence to parrh¯esia conferred by the consciousness of having a mind (h¯eg¯emonikon) that is ‘pure’, i.e. free from compulsion or compulsions of various sorts, and in tune with god’s providence. But the passage tells us something further as well. It indicates the underlying purpose for which the authority is exercised. As with a temporal ruler, the Cynic’s castigation is his way of discharging his responsibility to care for human well-being.¹⁹ As Epictetus says a little later, ‘he is not meddling in other people’s business when ¹⁸ Cf. Ench. 53. ¹⁹ It is the castigation, therefore, of someone who undertook all his exertions and hardships for the sake of the common good out of gentleness and humanity (III.24.64).

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he oversees (episkopei) human affairs—they are his business’ (III.22.97; cf. 17–18, 72). ‘Rebuking men in a kingly manner’ is how the Loeb translates basilik¯en kai epipl¯ektik¯en at III.21.19; and the Budé similarly has ‘réprimander d’une manière royale’. It should by now be becoming clear that adverbial renderings of basilik¯en will not do, even if we were to emend ‘in a kingly manner’ to ‘with royal authority’. ‘Kingship’ needs to be given its full weight, as emerges with particular clarity at III.22.77–85. This passage comes in a section (III.22.62– 85) where Epictetus considers a series of sceptical questions placed in the mouth of the young man to whom the body of III.22 is purportedly addressed, and we will need to approach it in context. The questioner asks the following. Will the Cynic rely on friends? Will he marry and have children? If not, how will he discharge his duty to help preserve society (koin¯onia)? Will he engage in political activity? The implication is that the Cynic’s solitary existence constitutes a renunciation of the obligations Stoicism enjoins on us as social and political animals. Epictetus needs to take it very seriously, since he devotes the second of the three topics of ask¯esis he lays down in III.2 and elsewhere to our impulses and to appropriate action, on which he comments: ‘I ought not to be unfeeling like a statue, but should maintain my relationships natural and acquired: as a religious person, as a son, as a brother, as a father, as a citizen’ (III.2.4; cf. e.g. III.21.1–5). His strategy for rebutting the sceptical questioner’s challenge has been well discussed in the literature.²⁰ He makes two principal moves. First (III.22.67–8) is to say that in a hypothetical city of the wise, there would be no need for Cynicism, i.e. for solitary moral scouting and consequent castigation of benighted humanity. So there would be no reason for anyone not to marry and have children in those circumstances. The suggestion is that the Cynic’s avoidance of marriage is not a matter of absolute principle, solely of what is appropriate to the role he has been allocated given the present condition of humanity. Epictetus’ second move contains two components. He argues that acquisition of a family would drastically curtail the time and energy available for the Cynic’s divine calling as moral messenger and scout and herald (III.22.69–76; we would be ‘robbing him of his kingship’ (III.22.75)). And then he proposes in thoroughly Socratic style that in exercising his royal duty ²⁰ See e.g. Dudley (1937), 193–4; Billerbeck (1978), 8–9; Gill (2000), 607–11.

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of overseeing (episkopein)²¹ human affairs (III.22.79; cf. III.22.72), the Cynic does more public good than those who marry, produce children, or engage in political activity as ordinarily understood. In fact the Cynic has made all humanity his children, and in his dialectic of happiness and unhappiness, slavery and freedom, he engages in a nobler politics (III.22.77–85). ‘Kingship and castigation’ therefore both is and is not a hendiadys. In a sense the Cynic’s job does consist simply in the protreptic, delivered with the authority of a king, with which his words and his life challenge us to a radical reorientation of our priorities. But at a deeper level, symbolized by the word order ‘kingship and castigation’, his protreptic activity is only the means by which he exercises the oversight of human affairs proper to kingship: ‘as servant of Zeus, the father we all have in common’ (III.22.82).

5 C Y N I C I S M A S PH I LO S O PH Y What might strike many of us as a fundamental problem needing to be tackled when we attempt to engage with Cynicism is the question: was Diogenes really a philosopher at all?²² When we reflect on the almost total absence of evidence in the sources for sustained argument or systematic development of a set of general ideas, we may well be inclined to give a negative answer.²³ I suggest that what Epictetus offers us is something modern scholars have not by and large succeeded in producing:²⁴ a deeply pondered interpretation of Cynicism which makes sense of Diogenes’ philosophical project as philosophy, and which deserves serious consideration as a historically viable account of what he saw himself as doing. Of course Epictetus’ picture is a selective one, designed to appeal to contemporary taste: nothing, as we have noticed, about masturbation and the belly, more about healthy ²¹ On episkopein as a key Cynic activity, see e.g. Billerbeck’s note on III.22.72, at (1978), 136–7, which draws on Norden (1893), 378 n.1. ²² Echoing the ancient worry: was Cynicism a philosophy or a project for living (D.L.VI.103)? ²³ The premise of this statement may be disputed: see e.g. Long (1999), 624–9. He argues that ‘Cynicism was built on systematic philosophical foundations’. As John Moles observes to me, it all turns on how much can or cannot be extracted from D.L.VI.70–2. ²⁴ But see Moles (2000), at 420–3, for an account congruent with the one I am attributing to Epictetus.

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living and natural charm. And it may contain other anachronisms: for example, we may wonder how far Diogenes explicitly conceived of his activity as something god had advised him—like Plato’s Socrates—to undertake (III.21.18–19), how far it was true of him even in aspiration that ‘he thinks his every thought as friend to the gods, as their servant, as one who shares in the government of Zeus’ (III.22.95). Moreover, if our conception of philosophy has no room for the idea of protreptic as a philosophical project,²⁵ then Epictetus’ argument that the Cynic’s paradigmatic life is such a project will not be able to get a purchase on us. But here Epictetus’ philosophical categories clearly have the historical edge over more restrictive modern rivals. Diogenes is above all a practitioner of the philosophical life. He makes philosophy compelling by exhibiting in the way he lives the moral truth that philosophy enables us to discover—in the Cynic lifestyle. By philosophy, of course, we have to understand Socratic pursuit of truth, conceived as the way to care for the soul. And Diogenes’ life gives him a special authority when it comes to protreptic—to getting people to see that and how we should care for our souls. His words of castigation point up the inconsistency between our desire for happiness and the false and therefore ineffective beliefs that guide our actual efforts to secure it, and supply argument pointing us to the right alternative. His life shows us how things could be different, how empty are the commonly accepted valuations of things, and above all how happiness is something entirely in our own hands.²⁶

A P PE N D I X : E PI C T E T U S I I I . 2 2 — AN OU T L I N E 1–12 Introduction

The right and the wrong idea about becoming a Cynic. ²⁵ A crude thought might be that protreptic is just moral rhetoric. It is moral rhetoric, of course, but what makes it a philosophical rhetoric is its demonstration of inconsistency between our desire for the good and false conceptions of how to achieve it, and the argument it presents for a true conception—which in Epictetus’ hands draws heavily on Stoic doctrine (see e.g. III.22.42–3). ²⁶ This paper was read subsequent to its original presentation in Larnaca at a seminar in Liverpool in February 2002. I am grateful to the participants both there and in Larnaca for reactions, as also to John Moles, who sent me extensive written comments, and to Andrew Mason, for helpfully mediating useful observations by the Press’s reader. Material from sections 1 and 2 has appeared in Schofield (2003), and from sections 3 and 4 in Schofield (2004).

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13–22 Exposition (1)

A public existence, requiring that you make your h¯eg¯emonikon pure and keep it so through your own aid¯os. 23–49 Exposition (2)

The Cynic is appointed moral scout/spy by god, and brings back the message that humans have gone astray in matters of good and bad (23–5). He must therefore be able to upbraid them for locating happiness where it is not (26–37) and to show them where it is (38–49). 50–61 Pause for reflection

Do you really have the qualities required? Is this truly your vocation? 62–85 Sceptical questions

Does the Cynic so described carry out the responsibilities laid upon humans as social and political animals? 86–99 Particular qualities the Cynic must possess

A good physique; natural charm and wit; and above all consciousness of a pure h¯eg¯emonikon: all needed if he is to be the authoritative paradeigma a Cynic is called to be. 100–6 Summing up

The Cynic puts up with any and every kind of abuse and degradation, concentrating all his energy and attention on the domain of prohairesis. 107–9 Envoi

Consider whether you have the equipment a Cynic requires.

6 Epictetus on proairesis and Self Richard Sorabji

1 PROAIRESIS I S S E L F Epictetus makes central to his Stoicism the concept of proairesis, which had previously been central for Aristotle, but not for Stoics. Moreover, he often says that you are your proairesis. I shall discuss two problems in Epictetus’ view that one is one’s proairesis. But first let us see where he says this. A more exact account of what he means by proairesis will emerge slowly. Epictetus’ claim is not unlike saying that you are your will, but proairesis plays only some of the roles of will, being connected with freedom and responsibility, but not with will power, and being an exercise of reason, rather than contrasted with it. Very roughly, your proairesis is your rational decision, or the tendency of your rational decisions, about how it is appropriate to act. But there is good proairesis and bad. The most famous context is that in which Epictetus imagines a discussion with a tyrant which runs as follows: ‘I will put you in chains’. ‘What are you saying, man? Me? My leg you will put in chains, but my proairesis not even Zeus can conquer.’

This exchange is developed at Discourses 1.1.23–4 and 1.18.17, with an analogous passage at 1.19.8. Other threats are handled elsewhere in a similar way. You say ‘my father is making preparations against me’, or ‘they’ will fasten on me, or disease and lameness will impede me, 3.18.3; 4.5.23; Handbook 9. In each case, the answer is that it is not you who will be hurt, because it is not your proairesis. Why complain that your crockery is broken? You

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are not your crockery, but your proairesis, Discourses 4.5.12. Why take trouble about your physical looks? You are not your flesh or hair, but your proairesis, 3.1.40.

2 F I R S T P RO B L E M , M O R E T H A N O N E PROAIRESIS The first problem is one of consistency. If in these eight passages Epictetus says that you are your proairesis, how can he go on to say that you can locate ‘I’ outside your proairesis in the flesh or in externals, 2.22.19–20? Again, he says that by valuing office or freedom from office, business or leisure, you can destroy your proairesis, 4.4.23. And he warns against selling your proairesis at 1.2.33. These passages raise two sorts of question. First, what is the ‘I’ that is outside my proairesis, or the ‘you’ which destroys its proairesis and survives its destruction, or the ‘you’ who sells its proairesis? This will become clearer, when we see later that Epictetus recognizes more than one you. But there is also the question why valuing flesh, externals, office, freedom from office, or selling something, is not itself described as an act of proairesis, rather than as an act of bypassing, destroying or selling proairesis. Let us start by quoting the first passage, 2.22.19–20. A living thing must incline to where I and mine are. If they are in the flesh, there must be the controlling force (to kurieuon), if in proairesis, there, if in externals, there. So if I am where my proairesis is, it is only so that I shall be a friend, a son and a father of the kind I should be.

If my concern is with the flesh or externals, why is that represented as bypassing my proairesis? Why is it not a case of my proairesis being a choice of the flesh, or of externals? After all, Aristotle, who first made proairesis a concept central to ethics, recognized bad proairesis, and so does Epictetus in passages several of which will be discussed below, 1.29.1; 2.1.6; 2.23.19; 4.5.32, and 1.17.26. For that reason, one may need to purify (ekkatharai, 2.23.40), or correct (epanorthein, 3.5.2) one’s proairesis. I think the solution must be that there is more than one kind of proairesis, just as there is more than one self. Epictetus does indeed say that in cases of duress, your proairesis is free and not compelled by anything else; rather, your proairesis compels (anankazein) your proairesis, 1.17.23–6. Here we have more than one proairesis in play.

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Similarly, at 3.19.2, nothing can impede (k¯oluein) or harm (blaptein) your proairesis, except your proairesis. Epictetus explains, 2.23.19, that it is a perverted (diastrapheisa) proairesis that impedes (empodizein) your proairesis. This gives us our clue for explaining 2.22.19–20. When you locate ‘I’ outside your proairesis in flesh or externals, I suggest, you locate it outside the unperverted proairesis. You cannot, presumably, escape locating it in proairesis in some way, because the choice of flesh or externals represents a proairesis, though a perverted one. The perverted proairesis might be a single decision, as it would probably be in a case of giving in to duress, or it might be a tendency contrary to the correct tendency in proairesis. The distinction of good and bad proairesis has some analogue in two uses of the term orexis (desire) which have been noticed in other Stoic sources. Sometimes orexis is desire for what appears good, sometimes for what is as a matter of fact good. This can now be used to explain the case of destroying or selling your proairesis, 4.4.23; 1.2.33, e.g. by valuing office or freedom from office. These bad choices are not described as proaireseis, but perhaps we can now assume that they are not so-called because they could only represent the perverted kind of proairesis, or a proairesis that is, in the terms of 2.23.40; 3.5.2, uncorrected and unpurified. That sort of proairesis they could represent. 3 S E C O N D P RO B L E M , M O R E T H A N O N E S E L F The second problem is that Epictetus seems to recognize more than one self, in which case the idea that proairesis is the self is going to need qualification. At least, he talks of you relating to yourself and of me relating to myself in various contexts in which it is not clear that he can be talking of the same self. Two of the passages that seem to recognize more than one self equate one of the two selves with proairesis. Thus at 4.12.12, Epictetus, again stressing the freedom of proairesis, says that God has entrusted (sunistanai) me to myself and subjected (hupotassein) my proairesis to me alone. And 1.2.33 in the same breath warns you to watch at what price you sell your proairesis, and tells you that you are the one who knows what you are worth to yourself and at what price you sell yourself. The double reference to selves occurs also at 2.8.21–3, where we are told that God entrusted (pisteuein), committed (parakatatithenai) and handed over (paradidonai) you to yourself alone. At 2.18.19, we find the

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exhortation, that you are to be pleasing to yourself (aresai autos seaut¯oi) and to become pure in the company of your pure self (meta katharou sautou). At 4.9.13, we are told that you have not convinced (peithein) yourself about what is good and evil, even though you keep company with (suneinai) yourself, and are the one most persuasive (pithanos), well-disposed (eunous), and akin (oikeios) to yourself. At 4.9.13, we hear that you are not willing to rescue yourself (bo¯ethein), by talking (lal¯esai) to yourself, even though you are most likely to persuade, and be peruaded by, yourself (peisth¯enai, pithanos). There is nothing very extraordinary about this. It is just common sense that a person is an entity with many aspects. For some purposes, one wants to pick out the total entity with a pronoun like ‘you’; for other purposes one wants to pick out an aspect, for example the proairesis. Where there is interaction between the totality and an aspect or between two aspects, one may use the pronoun in the same sentence or paragraph to pick out different things. Often, but not in Epictetus’ examples, one of the things picked out is merely the bodily aspect, as when we speak of having cut ourselves, i.e. cut a part of our body.

4 E PI C T E T U S ’ PROAIRESIS : D I V E RG E N C E S F RO M A R I S TOT L E A N D F RO M E A R L I E R S TO I C S We are now in a position to see that Epictetus’ concept of proairesis is bound to be different in many ways from that of his predecessor, Aristotle, even though Aristotle’s statement about proairesis, ‘such an origin [of action] is a human being (EN 6.2,1139b4–5)’ may remind us superficially of Epictetus’ equation of proairesis with the self. I have given my account of Aristotle’s concept of proairesis elsewhere.¹ I think that for Aristotle proairesis is a policy decision, e.g. a dietary policy decision, such as having a diet of fowl, that is based on prior deliberation about achieving what matters in life, e.g. health. The deliberation stops before action when it reaches a course of action which might be brought about through ourselves (di’ h¯em¯on, EN 3.3, 1112b15–27). And we only deliberate about things that are up to us to do, or not to do (EN 3.3, 1112a30–1, EE 2.10, 1226a20–30). It is not up to us to become healthy just like that, or to eat light food without more deliberation ¹ Sorabji (1973–4).

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about what food is light. But adopting a diet of fowl is up to us. At that point, deliberation stops and we refer the source of action (arkh¯e) to the leading part (h¯egoumenon) of ourselves, EN 3.3, 1113a5–7. Here Aristotle’s word already puts us in mind of the later Stoic term for what takes decisions, h¯egemonikon, the command centre. That the policy decision is made in advance of action comes out further when Aristotle points out that some people do not stick by (ouk emmenetikos, EN 7.10, 1152a17–19) their deliberation, and he is referring to the deliberation involved in proairesis. This, I think, is why the prefix pro is appropriate for Aristotle’s proairesis: the policy decision is taken in advance of action. At first sight, Epictetus’ concept may appear to have a lot in common. Aristotle’s point that proairesis is about what is up to us may seem close to, although it is not in fact the same as, Epictetus’ point that proairesis is itself up to us, 2.5.4–5; 1.22.10, and free, 1.17.23; 1.29.12. But Epictetus’ point is different in more than one way. He is saying that no one else can force you to make a choice, proairesis. Aristotle is less decided, about action (not choice) due to compulsion. In EE 2.8 and EN 5.8, I argued elsewhere,² he thinks, in contrast with Epictetus’ view about choice, that such action is not voluntary. In EN 3.1, 1109b35–1110a26, he decides that it is voluntary, but may deserve pardon (sungn¯om¯e). On the other hand, Epictetus’ own view of choice, proairesis, is qualified. He says that it is only by nature that that proairesis is free, 1.17.21; 2.2.3; 2.15.1 (the qualification is omitted at 1.17.23). And, accordingly, as Michael Frede has pointed out to me, he adds that you may need to make your proairesis free, 1.4.18; 3.5.7. There is another way in which you are expected to train your proairesis, e.g. 3.3.14–19; 3.8.1–5. You should learn to confine your choices, proaireseis, to what is up to you, in a much stronger sense than that envisaged by Aristotle. Epictetus would not have considered a diet of fowl to be up to you. The butcher might have none, or the tyrant might deny you any food at all. In these exercises, he tells his students to disregard death, the grandeur of consulship, other people’s conduct, the threat of disinheritance, or condemnation by Caesar. These things all depend on other people. The examples here of what is up to you and hence a proper object of choice, proairetikon, are only whether you are distressed, or bear things nobly. ² Sorabji (1980), ch. 17, 272–5.

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Further features of Epictetus’ concept have already emerged which constitute differences from Aristotle. Like Epictetus, Aristotle recognizes cases in which one proairesis opposes another proairesis, or at least another opinion. Following the commonest (but not the only) interpretation,³ some have taken Aristotle to mean at EN 7.3, 1147a31 that an opinion to the effect that everything sweet is pleasant, may be in potential conflict with a proairesis, according to which, for example, heavy food is not to be tasted. Even here, however, Aristotle wants to insert a qualification, in defence of Socrates’ view that right opinion, in this case the one forbidding such food, cannot be directly overruled. The opinion about how pleasant the food would be is only accidentally opposed, 1147a5–b3 to the dietary proairesis. Moreover, 1147b9–17, what is overpowered (reading periginetai at 1147b16) by the desire for pleasure is not the dietary proairesis itself, but only full attention to the fact that this food is, for example, heavy. This plea for imperfect attention is not made, I have argued, in Book 5 of the same work. Epictetus’ treatment of two proaireseis in conflict is different. In spite of his admiration for Socrates, as we have seen, Epictetus allows that one proairesis can compel, impede or harm (anankazein, empodizein, blaptein) another, 1.17.23–6; 2.23.19; 3.19.12. It can do so when—unlike the potentially conflicting judgements discussed by Aristotle—it is, 2.23.19, perverted. If we return to the case of duress, of which Epictetus says that no one else can compel you, and that it is only a case of your own proairesis compelling your proairesis, 1.17.23–6, it looks as if his concept of proairesis covers cases which Aristotle’s does not. Aristotle wavers, we saw, on whether giving in to duress is voluntary. But he certainly does not suggest that it is a proairesis in his sense of deliberate policy. Epictetus is calling it a proairesis, even if an unsatisfactory proairesis. There are other cases in which the subject matter of Epictetus’ proairesis looks, on the contrary, narrower than that of Aristotle’s. We have seen that Epictetus uses the adjective proairetikon for what proairesis can properly choose and that the range is very restricted. Aristotle’s chicken diet is not a proper object of choice, proairetikon, because its availability is not up to you alone. What would he call the choice of a chicken diet? Earlier Stoics had made a distinction different from that of Epictetus. A choice which is directed to the good, to what really matters, that ³ Sorabji (1980), ch. 17, 275–8; Sorabji (2000), 310–13.

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is, good character and rationality, is a hairesis. But choices of most things, the indifferents, are called selections, eklogai, Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.104–5; Stobaeus 2.84.24–85.1; 2.79.12–17 Wachsmuth. Similarly, choices to avoid dispreferred indifferents are called disselections, apeklogai. As so often, Epictetus is perfectly well aware of older Stoic terminology, and ready to use both terms, e.g. 4.7.40, and he must have expected his students to know them. But if we ask what is central for him, in such of his thought as has been preserved, I think that more often than normally recognized, the old Stoic distinctions, though acknowledged, are not central. What is central for Epictetus is what is up to you in his strong sense, that nothing else could possibly interfere, and he does not make a point of using the word eklog¯e for choices of other things, even though he has the word available. Interestingly, at 4.10.30, Epictetus uses the word eklog¯e, in order to deny that he can select among things that are not up to him. At the point where his Stoic predecessors would have counselled careful selection, Epictetus denies that selection is available at all. In certain other cases, we have seen, Epictetus allows two different uses of the term proairesis. There is perverted or untrained proairesis which makes bad choices, and proairesis trained and unperverted. I am not sure, however, that the perfectly sensible selection of a diet of fowl could be brought under the heading of untrained or perverted proairesis. Once again, Epictetus’ Stoic predecessors would have made a distinction which Epictetus uses only very occasionally: it is all right to select a diet of fowl with the reservation, ‘if God wills’, so that you will not have set your heart on it. This talk of reservation appears briefly at Handbook 2.2, and in a passage to be discussed below, frag.177, but we cannot tell how important he would have felt it to be to apply it to Aristotle’s diet of fowl. The upshot for Aristotle’s diet of fowl is that, although it is clear that it would not be proairetikon, a proper object of proairesis for Epictetus, it is not clear whether in some other sense it would be an object of proairesis, and the unclarity is enough to illustrate again the lack of match between Epictetus’ and Aristotle’s concepts. There is another important contrast. We have a Stoic definition of proairesis preserved at Stobaeus 2.87 Wachsmuth. Proairesis is a choice (hairesis) before a choice (hairesis). This is not too far from the Aristotelian concept of proairesis, which is a (policy) choice made before the time for action. But the idea of two choices with a chronological priority for the proairetic one makes no sense for Epictetus’ concept,

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whether we think of his particular decisions or of his tendencies in deciding. Epictetus’ concept seems to have evolved at this point beyond both Aristotle and the Stoic who tried to define the term. And this is not perhaps surprising, given the well-known point made at the very beginning that the term, though perfectly well known to earlier Stoics, played no important role in their systems at all.

5 E PI C T E T U S ’ T E R M I N O LO G Y F O R S E L F - AWA R E N E S S A N D N E O P L ATO N I S T B O R ROW I N G Learning to attach importance only to the proairetikon involves a lot of self-interrogation. You have to question appearances: is what appears important really good or bad, as it appears? This is one reason why self-awareness was vital for Epictetus and other Stoics. Another relevance of self-awareness came from the Stoic theory of a natural sense of attachment (oikei¯osis). The attachment which newborn animals and infants feel towards their own physical persons is naturally extended to others, and underpins a sense of justice to other humans. The attachment to their own persons depends on an awareness of them, which is a kind of self-awareness. The newborn animal is aware of just how to use the parts of its own body. The Stoics had a large number of terms for self-awareness, and the Neoplatonists, for whom self-awareness was a matter of even greater centrality, borrowed them from the Stoics, and above all from Epictetus. I shall here consider six terms, three of which appear, epistroph¯e, prosokh¯e and parat¯ere¯esis, in the following single paragraph of Epictetus, 3.16.15. You have no fine habit, you offer neither attention (prosokh¯e), nor reflection (epistroph¯e) on yourself and watchfulness (parat¯er¯esis), [which asks] ‘how am I treating (khr¯esthai) the appearances which fall on me—as nature requires, or contrary to nature? How am I answering them—as one should, or not as one should? Am I saying (epilegein) to what is not a proper object of proairesis (aproaireta), ‘‘you are nothing to me’’?’

Epistroph¯e , which I have so far translated as ‘reflection’, was taken up by the Neoplatonists to describe a turning in on oneself, and a turning back to one’s source which is within oneself. In this context it is often

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translated ‘reversion’. The Neoplatonist idea was that bodies and bodily faculties cannot turn in on themselves, since body cannot interpenetrate body (e.g. Porphyry Sentences 41; ‘Simplicius’ in DA 173,3–7; ‘Philoponus’ in DA 466,18–29). Some Neoplatonists accordingly made reversion a prerogative of rational faculties. I am grateful to Carlos Steel for pointing out to me that the term is already applied to looking within yourself by Epictetus, as it is both here and in 1.4.18; 4.4.7; 3.22.38–9; and Handbook 10. Prosokh¯e is related to the term the prosektikon, the attentive, which the Neoplatonist ‘Philoponus’ tells us with approval, in DA 464,30–465,17; 466,18–29, was used by certain newer interpreters for an extra part of the rational soul responsible for awareness of one’s own cognitive activities. To preserve the unity of the person, we need a single faculty to be aware of one’s desires as well, and the same faculty is called suneidos, conscience, insofar as it is conscious of one’s desires. Some cognitions are higher and some lower, but, again to preserve unity, we need a single faculty of self-awareness, and only a higher one, belonging to the rational part of the soul, can be aware of both higher and lower cognitions. Among the Stoics, the term prosokh¯e was used for their selfinterrogations, including the practice of asking themselves, last thing at night and first in the morning, whether they had responded, or would respond, rightly during the day. Prosokh¯e had already been counted by earlier Stoics as a subordinate good, according to Stobaeus 2.73.4, Wachsmuth. Epictetus, besides the reference above, has a whole chapter on prosokh¯e, 4.12. But what is still more striking is that in a fragment preserved by Marcus Aurelius, 177 (27 in Oldfather’s Loeb), Epictetus uses the term prosektikon, to say that we must maintain our attention (prosektikon), on the topic of desires (hormai), in order to be sure that we indulge them only with reservation (hupexairesis). Marcus’ contemporary, the Middle Platonist Atticus, is also reported by Proclus in Tim. 2.306.1–2, Diehl, as speaking of the prosektikon, although it is possible that Proclus is using his own terminology to describe Atticus. Parat¯er¯esis is a term which, as Pauliina Remes has pointed out to me, is repeated by Plotinus at 4.4.8 (35 and 17–21). Parakolouth¯esis, tracking of appearances (phantasmat¯on), is an expression very fully discussed by David Hahm. Although it is used also by the Neoplatonists, it is associated by Hahm with the Stoics and especially

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with Epictetus.⁴ It stands for the interrogation of appearances, something which only humans can perform. At 1.6.13, Epictetus says that animals have only the use (khr¯esis) of appearances, as opposed to parakolouth¯esis. But on the other hand, for humans, the use, or, as I said above, treatment (khr¯esis), of appearances, when performed as nature requires (h¯os pephuken), 4.5.23, or the improved treatment of them, 3.21.23, or the correct (orth¯e) use, 1.1.7, is not contrasted with parakolouth¯esis. Suneidenai is a verb for being conscious already frequent in Plato, but only half of the occurrences there concern awareness of self. It is sometimes combined with the reflexive pronoun heaut¯oi, meaning to be conscious in oneself. The noun suneid¯esis is not in Plato, but is used among the early Stoics by Chrysippus, On Ends, who is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.85, as applying it to the newborn’s awareness of its own constitution (sustasis). Sometimes, but not always, suneidenai is used by Epictetus, with or without heaut¯oi, in connection with recognizing something bad or good about yourself, e.g. 3.22.94–6 and 2.23.15; Handbook 34. Connectedly, and increasingly from the first century , suneid¯esis came to be a word for conscience. It may be so used by St Paul of bad conscience at Romans 2: 15, and of good conscience at Acts 23: 1. Seneca uses the Latin conscientia of good and bad conscience in a similar way at Ep. 43.5. The noun suneid¯esis is used by Epictetus for conscience, if fragment 97 from Stobaeus is genuine, which says: Our parents handed us over as children to the caretaker who everywhere watched over our not getting hurt. But when we have become men, God hands us over to our innate conscience (suneid¯esis) as guardian.

We have seen that in the Neoplatonist ‘Philoponus’ the suneidos is the name given to the special faculty of self-awareness, when it is directed to our desires. Sunaisthanesthai is a verb for being aware frequently used by Aristotle, but not yet particularly for awareness of self. Although it is used for awareness of self in a report on Aristotle’s successor, Theophrastus, this report is by the Neoplatonist Priscian of Lydia, Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, pp. 21–2, and may represent only the usage which is standard in Neoplatonism. The verb is used by a Stoic near-contemporary of Epictetus, Hierocles, Elements of Ethics, col. 2, lines 3–38, for the animal’s awareness of its own person and constitution. Epictetus himself uses the ⁴ Hahm (1992).

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verb, and the noun sunaisth¯esis, regularly, usually for awareness of self. But, as a warning, it should be added that he can interchange the terms sunaisth¯esis and aisthanesthai for awareness of self, 1.2.30, and that the verb sunaisthanesthai can be used simultaneously for awareness of self and of another, as when Epictetus says of Hector, 3.22.109, that: he recognized (sunaisthanesthai) his own training [for war] and [Andromache’s] incapacity [for it].

I have been saying that the Neoplatonists borrowed their terminology for self-awareness particularly from Epictetus. But was it only the terminology that they borrowed, or did they borrow the Stoic ideas about self-awareness too? I am not aware of the Stoics yet having the idea that reversion (epistroph¯e) to oneself is also reversion to one’s source. But there is another important idea, that one turns within oneself because that is where one can find the truth. Charles Taylor, in his important book, Sources of the Self (Cambridge 1989, ch. 7), has suggested that the inward turn in philosophy, familiar to us from Descartes, started with Augustine. By the inward turn, he means the idea that we turn inwards because that is where truth lies. In fact, I believe that all the passages cited from Augustine are taken by Augustine from the Neoplatonist Plotinus. In one passage, Confessions 7.10.16, Augustine even tells us that he learnt the technique of turning inwards from the books of the Platonists. But does the idea that truth is to be found within go back earlier? The main purpose in the Stoics of looking within has so far been in order to interrogate misleading appearances and correct them. But there is at least one passage in Epictetus, I think, which expresses the idea central to Neoplatonism, that truths are to be found waiting within. Thus, at 3.22.38–9, Epictetus uses the verb epistrephein and recommends you to turn to yourself, in order to discover your true innate preconceptions about the good: Turn (epistrephein) to yourselves and discover what preconceptions (prol¯epseis) you have. What sort of thing do you imagine the good to be?

This would exactly suit the Neoplatonists. But perhaps we need to go back earlier still before Plato to the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus in the fifth century . Heraclitus says, fragment 101, Diels-Kranz, ‘I went in search of myself ’, and, fragment 45, ‘You would not by travelling every path find the furthest limits of the soul, so deep is its logos.’ If this logos includes the universal

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truth that he also calls logos in fragments 1 and 2, he will have anticipated the view that truth is there to be found within.⁵ ⁵ I am grateful to Michael Frede for discussion in Larnaca. My later views on parts 1–4 are developed in Sorabji (2006), ch. 10, and on part 5 in ch. 13 of that book and in Sorabji (2004), ch. 4 (d).

7 Death is a Bugbear: Socratic ‘Epode’ and Epictetus’ Philosophy of the Self Michael Erler

I The memory of Socrates, his death and his way of living, was of great importance for the Stoics from their beginnings down to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. There can be no doubt that the Stoics reflected on what Socrates said and what he did. Epictetus, of course, was a great admirer of Socrates and considered it beneficial always to remember everything, what he did and what he said.¹ However Epictetus’ hero was not the aporetic or ironic Socrates, but rather a kind of Socrates dimidiatus. He seems to share the taste of Plutarch, who describes Socrates as a man who ‘was the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all experiences and activities, universally admits philosophy’ (transl. Fowler).² In what follows I would like to add yet another example of this interesting approach of the Stoics, of using Socratic sayings and arguments, or the Socratic method, in order to support ideas of one’s own. I shall argue that some features of discourse II.1 of Epictetus gain a new profile if read in the light of the Phaedo. In particular Epictetus’ reference to Socrates’ warning in the Phaedo not to let the child inside man be frightened by ‘bugbears’ like death³ shows how Epictetus tries to explain an important aspect of the phenomenon ‘Socrates’, namely ¹ Cf. Diss. IV.1.169; Döring (1979); Döring (1974); Long (1988), 1–8; Wehner (2000), esp. 226–31. ² Cf. Plutarch, An Seni sit Gerenda Res Publica 796e. ³ Diss. II.1.15.

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that he accepted something as terrifying as death as confidently and calmly as one would expect from a Stoic and for reasons a Stoic could accept. Epictetus’ discourse II.1, which carries the title: ‘That confidence does not conflict with caution’ (hoti ou machetai to tharrein t¯oi eulabeisthai) helps us to understand from a Stoic point of view why Socrates was not arrogant, but offered yet another paradigm of how a philosopher should behave, one which Stoic philosophers should follow.

II Let us first remind ourselves of what Epictetus’ discourse II.1 is about: in this discourse Epictetus obviously addresses young philosophy students⁴ and asks them first to put their desires and emotions ‘in order’ and to live as nature demands, before they set out to study or rather practise rhetoric, logic and literature. Epictetus recommends that they should strive for a proper disposition and like Socrates ‘should be in the habit of testing themselves and in a practical way trying out some particular primary conception’. Death, hardship, disrepute and how to deal with them; ‘this is the proper exhibition of a young man come from school’.⁵ The pupils are asked to ‘let themselves be accounted a nobody and a know-nothing’.⁶ Practising how to die, how to be enchained, should be done with confidence (tharrount¯os) and ‘with trust in Him who has called you to face them and deemed you worthy of this position, in which having once been placed you shall exhibit what can be achieved by a rational governing principle’.⁷ The basis of all this is just one rule (kan¯on), namely that only judgement is in our power, and that everything else is not and is therefore morally indifferent. To be able to follow this rule means to be educated and thereby to achieve fearlessness and real freedom. Those who are not educated are in danger of being affected by events even though there is no need to be frightened.⁸ ‘Do all that you do with confidence (tharrount¯os).’ Philosophers will accept this as good advice. However, others might prefer to behave cautiously (eulab¯os) when threatened with the death-penalty, in order to ⁴ Cf. Barnes (1997), 57. ⁵ Diss. II.1.36. ⁶ Diss. II.1.36. ⁷ Diss. II.1.39. ⁸ Cf. Diss. II.1.22; for the kan¯on of Epictetus, see Newman (1989: 1498–1500); for freedom and Epictetus, cf. Gretenkord (1981).

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avoid what they think is dreadful and to be feared. Epictetus, however, thinks otherwise. In the discourse II.1 he sets out to defend what might seem paradoxical to some, that ‘we ought to do everything both cautiously (eulab¯os) and confidently (tharrount¯os) at the same time’.⁹ Epictetus is obviously attracted by the paradoxical character of this thesis. He occasionally uses paradoxa and analyses them in order to make ‘his point more forcefully’.¹⁰ Often he discusses paradoxa for didactic reasons,¹¹ for what at first sight seems paradoxical to the inexperienced might after a while turn out to be true, as can be shown by philosophers. Epictetus is convinced that paradoxa help to ‘dye in’ philosophical instruction by repetition—to use a metaphor borrowed from Plato by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius in this context¹² —in order to make their message part of a person and thereby practicable at any time and in any situation. In discourse II.1, therefore, Epictetus sets out to reveal that the paradox that ‘one ought to do everything both cautiously and confidently at the same time’ is no paradox at all. For, Epictetus explains, people who are afraid of death are mixing up objects of fear with objects of confidence. They show fear in relation to things which lie outside the province of moral purpose (aproairetika), like death—and they show confidence in relation to things which lie inside the province of moral behaviour (proairetika). Even worse, they think that to act with confidence and to act with caution in a way do exclude each other; for they consider caution and confidence to be contraries. Confidence and caution, however, must be part of the disposition of the person who is well educated and therefore free, and must be applied according to the basic rules of his philosophy. That is to say, part of this paideia is the knowledge of how to deal with ‘bugbears’ and how to deal with the little child within man. Now Epictetus explains in his treatise that both virtues, caution and confidence, indeed can and must be employed by the same person and at the same time. Epictetus sees no contradiction, for the two concepts cover different fields: ‘one ought to face with confidence that which is outside the province of the moral purpose, with caution that which is within the province of the moral purpose’.¹³ Death, for instance, belongs ⁹ Diss. II.1.2. ¹⁰ Newman (1989: 1505). ¹¹ Cf. Diss. I.25.32–3. ¹² Plato, Rep. 429b. Seneca 71.31; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations V.16; cf. Erler (1998: 364). ¹³ Diss. II.1.40.

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to the things which are to be confronted with confidence (tharralea), whereas the fear of death is avoidable and belongs in the camp of caution. Confidence, therefore, should be shown in the face of death, caution however in the face of fear of death, because the latter is the formation of a judgement about death, something which is in our power. Time and again Epictetus tells his pupils: practise these things and have them ready at hand, the knowledge of what you ought to face with confidence, and what you ought to face with caution.

III The prototype and paradigm for this approach toward ‘bugbears’, and for this way of dealing with the little child within man, is of course Socrates as presented in the Apology and in the Phaedo. For there he treats the child within himself and turns around the ‘bugbear’ death, just as Epictetus wants a Stoic hero to behave. In discourse II.1 Epictetus refers back to Socrates who ‘did well to call such things as death bugbears’.¹⁴ Since children are not experienced enough, they regard bugbears, bogy-women or masks made in their likeness as terrifying: like children and for the same reason—lack of empeiria and want of education, for that is what ‘child’ means—adults are affected by events, if we do not realize that these events are not terrifying at all. To avoid this, the ‘child’ or rather the child within ourselves needs instruction. ‘For when a child has knowledge, Epictetus says, he is no worse than we are.’¹⁵ In order to deal with the fear of death properly, and therefore in order to face death with confidence (tharrale¯os), Epictetus recommends the following: you might regard death as a bogy-woman as children do—or rather as a mask made in her likeness; that is what mormolukeia means as early as in Aristophanes:¹⁶ however this bogy-woman or mormolykeia ¹⁴ Diss. II.1.15. An anonymous referee points out that in the Phaedo, Cebes, not Socrates—as Epictetus seems to suggest—introduces the metaphor ‘child in man’. But in the Phaedo Socrates brings up the comparison of fearful man to a child (77d) and later accepts the metaphor ‘child in man’. In addition, it is not unusual for ancient readers of Plato’s dialogues to attribute to Socrates what actually has been said by one of his partners. It may be added that the metaphor ‘child in man’ is not the only one from the Phaedo which Epictetus appropriates (Long 2002: 159, 167). It is therefore plausible, I think, that here too Epictetus has the Phaedo in mind. For Plato and Epictetus, see Jagu (1946); Hershbell (1996); Hershbell (1989: 2156 f.). ¹⁵ Diss. II.1.17. ¹⁶ Cf. Aristophanes fragments 31, 130 Kassel-Austin.

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should not necessarily frighten us: ‘Turn the bugbear ‘‘death’’ about and learn what it really is. See how it does not bite.’ ‘For you will realize’, Epictetus adds, ‘that the body must be separated from the bit of spirit, either now or later.’ ‘To turn around what frightens you, to see what it really is.’¹⁷ Epictetus wants us to conclude: death in itself is not frightening. It is wrong opinion about death that causes fear. Now, the formation of a judgment on death is a matter we can control and therefore belongs to ‘the sphere of the moral purpose’.¹⁸ This judgement is up to us and therefore is to be treated with caution. Only when we are unlike children, or rather if the child within us is well educated,¹⁹ do we enjoy tranquillity of mind and freedom; otherwise we will be subject to fear and perturbation. Death as a bugbear; a child within man, who needs to be well educated in order to turn the bugbear around and to see what it really is: something which is not in our power and is therefore morally indifferent. Socrates’ dictum presupposes—or so Epictetus suggests—what is the basic tenet of Epictetus’ ethics: to judge what is in our power and what is not.²⁰ Small wonder that elsewhere Epictetus turns Socrates’ dictum into an exemplary meditatio: in the discourse on Cynicism Epictetus suggests that everybody who is challenged by difficult circumstances should say to himself the following:²¹ ‘So when anyone tries to terrify him by means of these things (possession, offices, honours), he says to him ‘‘Go and look for children; they are scared by masks; but I know that these are made of earthenware and have nothing inside.’’ ’ We see that Socrates’ comparison is transformed into a little meditation, the basis of which is the principle that one has to distinguish things which are within our control from things which are outside our control: this device helps to unmask externals and to reveal them to be indifferent. It helps to ‘bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and ethical behavior’.²² This disposition Epictetus calls confidence.

IV Now, it was Plato who—as far as I can see—was the first to make use in a philosophical context of the metaphor of the ‘child in man’ and how to ¹⁷ Diss. II.1.19. ¹⁸ Diss. II.1.12. ¹⁹ Diss. II.1.21. ²⁰ Diss. I.1, and the commentary by Dobbin in Epictetus (1998: 65–78). ²¹ Diss. III.22.106. ²² Newman (1989: 1506).

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deal with it. The commentators refer the reader of Epictetus to Phaedo 77e and compare Crito 46c. It is true that in the Phaedo it is not Socrates but Cebes who uses the simile. But in the Crito Socrates ‘will not give way to Crito, not even if the power of the multitude were far greater than it now is to frighten us like children with its threats of confiscation, bonds and death’ (transl. Allen).²³ It is in the Phaedo, however, that Socrates makes suggestions about how to deal with bugbears, and it is the context there—the discussion about what death really is, about how to confront it and when to use confidence and when caution—which, I think, is the background of what Epictetus has to say. Let us therefore turn to this dialogue and compare what Socrates has to say in the Phaedo with what Epictetus is talking about in discourse II.1. This seems to be promising, because both virtues, confidence and caution, are discussed in this dialogue as well. After all it was Socrates’ confidence before the court and in the face of death, and the question why he is not grumbling at leaving his friends (m¯e aganaktein epi tout¯oi t¯oi gegonoti), that causes the discussion about what a philosopher is, about how he should live, and finally about whether the soul is immortal. In the Apology Socrates addresses—but does not answer properly—the question of what the basis of this behaviour is: ‘Whether or not I am confident in the face of death is another story’ (trans. Allen).²⁴ It is left for the Phaedo to discuss the problem and to ask why Socrates behaved the way he did. As it turns out, confidence in face of death is the result of a proper philosophical life, of which Socrates is an exemplum,²⁵ for Socrates and his partners are convinced that philosophy aims at the separation of the soul from the body. Death is to be regarded as the last step in this development and therefore not to be feared but to be greeted. In his ‘true defence’ as it is called at the beginning of their conversation, in the Phaedo, Socrates establishes that philosophy is a practice of death, and that death is but a separation of the soul from the body.²⁶ It remains to be shown that the soul is deathless and imperishable, which not everybody is prepared to believe. The pre-existence of the soul is accepted readily. Simmias and Cebes cast doubts on its survival after death. Like children—it seems to Socrates—they are afraid that the wind will scatter the soul as it leaves the body. ‘And Cebes chuckled and said ‘‘Try to convince us then, Socrates, on the assumption that we are ²³ Cf. Crit. 46c. ²⁴ Cf. Apol. 34e. ²⁵ Cf. Phaed. 63e–64a. ²⁶ Cf. Phaed. 63d ff.

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afraid; or rather not as though we are afraid—perhaps there is a child inside us that is apprehensive in this way. So try to persuade him not to be afraid of the bogy death.’’ ‘‘You must sing charms—ep¯odai —over him’’, said Socrates, ‘‘every day, until you have charmed the fear out of him’’ ’ (transl. Bluck).²⁷ What is needed is argument and persuasion.²⁸ The following discussion makes it clear what is meant by ‘charming away fear’: it is Socrates’ dialectic and his efforts to prove the immortality of the soul; for only if that is true is the separation of soul from body plausible, and only then can it be shown that death is a bugbear which is not to be feared. And only then is it understandable why Socrates is so confident in the face of death. Socrates and Cebes are obviously alluding to a custom well known in their time. For what Cebes and Socrates obviously have in mind are those gruesome stories—aniles fabulae —which old wives and nurses told children in order to frighten them into obedience.²⁹ If you do not do such or such, Mormo or Lamia will come to eat you. Monsters like Mormo, bugbears or bogeys, are conjured up to serve as ‘Kinderschrecken’ in a way which Theocritus, for instance, illustrates in Idyll XV, where a mother tries to frighten her child in order to induce her to stay at home while she is away.³⁰ These monsters, or masks representing monsters, were instruments of the paideia which tried to discourage misbehaviour and to encourage right behaviour, or to offer consolation, by creating fear.³¹ Seen in this context it becomes clear that Plato kept the educative purpose of this tradition: encouraging a certain kind of behaviour. For Socrates hopes ‘to prove his contention, so far as possible, to himself, in order not to cause more distress to those present by lamentations’ (transl. Bluck).³² Cebes and Socrates, however, change the method. For in order to live a philosophical life one has to be confident in the face of death; and to achieve this one has to realize what death really is. That is to say that the charming away of Cebes’ fear will work only when the bugbear or the terrifying mask ‘death’ is not a bugbear at all. Just as in the Republic myths are rejected from education if they are told only to deter from injustice by causing fear of the gods, so bugbear stories told to frighten children into obedience are likewise rejected.³³ This is also the position ²⁷ Cf. Phaed. 77d–e. ²⁸ This aspect is addressed recently by Dalfen (1994). ²⁹ Heldmann (2000: 95 ff ). ³⁰ See Scobie (1979: 246). ³¹ Cf. Megara in Euripides’ Herakles 98–100; Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 66–71. ³² Phaed. 91b; cf. Dalfen (1994: 38). ³³ Rep. 381e; cf. Rep. 377c; Euripides, Hypsipyle, fragment 1.II.11–16 Bond = c.196–201 Cockle.

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of Chrysippus, who thinks it is wrong to make fear of the gods a deterrent from injustice, ‘being in fact not different from the bogy and hobgoblin with which women try to keep little children from mischief ’.³⁴ It seems therefore that Socrates’ Paramythia does not only address the logistikon of his partners. It also takes account of their alogon, their irrational part, which causes the fear, mistrust and disbelief that indeed play a major role in the Phaedo. The metaphor ‘Child inside man’ therefore illustrates a source of affections which is not part of the monistic concept of soul that Plato uses in the Phaedo.³⁵ It seems to me that it complements the famous metaphor of the ‘man within us’ which Socrates uses in the Republic to designate the rational part of man.³⁶ Both metaphors recall the alternative Plato offers in the Timaeus and which was taken up by Hellenistic philosophers. You may concentrate on the immortal and rational part of the soul, make it your true self and feed it by true wisdom: in which case the soul will gain intellectual excellence and will have the chance to achieve immortality. However, there might be those who choose otherwise. They have devoted their lives to the appetites or to competition and preoccupations which belong to the mortal part of the soul.³⁷ Now Plato’s Socrates, of course, prefers the first option. For education and eudaimonia can only be achieved if one focuses on the immortal soul, the inner man. Practical moral deliberation and the so-called political virtues are recommended, but are not dealt with extensively. This focus, however, changes as we switch to the Stoics and Epictetus.³⁸ They employ philosophical rules to bring their mortal self to perfection. Now, it is interesting to see that the metaphor of the ‘man within us’ did not inspire interpreters before late antiquity, but the metaphor of the ‘child inside’ man did. I will mention here only the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus (dealing with the problem how to behave in the face of death), Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.³⁹ One also might think of Lucretius, who three times refers to the child which needs the medicine of Epicurean philosophy in order to get rid of the fear of death.⁴⁰ The Socratic ³⁴ SVF 3.313 = Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis 15, 1040b. ³⁵ The importance of the context for the question why a monistic concept of soul is used in the Phaedo is rightly stressed by Robinson (1995: 30). ³⁶ See Rep. 588e–589a; cf. Markschies (1994). ³⁷ Cf. Tim. 90b–c; cf. Sedley (1997). ³⁸ Cf. Erler (2002). ³⁹ Cf. Pseudo-Plato Axiochus 364b; Seneca, Epistles 24.13; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI.23. ⁴⁰ See Lucretius, De Rerum Natura II.55–8; III.87–90; VI.35–8; cf. Erler (1997: 81 and n.11).

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epod¯e is replaced by Epicurean ratio, as Epictetus replaces it with Stoic meditation in order to create confidence in the face of death. But—one might ask—what about caution, which Epictetus is talking about in discourse II.1? We remember that it is the Stoic educated man, the pepaideumenos, who can apply confidence and caution at the same time. Now it seems to me to be of interest that not only confidence but also caution is of importance in the Phaedo as well. In this dialogue Socrates argues and illustrates that both virtues are needed if one is to be a philosopher, and that confidence in a way presupposes caution. It might help us to understand what discourse II.1 is about if we remind ourselves what Plato’s Socrates has to say about caution in the Phaedo. ‘Confidence’ is indeed one catchword of the dialogue Phaedo⁴¹ where it is used to characterize Socrates’ behaviour in the face of death. Even the myth at the end of the dialogue is being told, and should be repeated over and over again to oneself, in order that one not be afraid about one’s soul.⁴² Obviously Socrates is presented as the prototype of a philosopher who is confident, because he is convinced that his soul is immortal. Its immortality—it turns out—is the premise for a philosophical life and confidence in the face of death. Cebes and Socrates are convinced ‘that it should be proved that our soul is indestructible and immortal, if the confidence of a philosopher on the point of death is not to be merely unintelligent and stupid’ (transl. Bluck).⁴³ A lot of distrust, however, has to be turned into pistis, if one tries to prove it. For if one were afraid that the soul might perish when separated from the body there would be no good reason to be confident while facing death.⁴⁴ Socrates’ confidence, it seems, depends on his ability to prove the immortality of the soul, that is, it depends on how Socrates makes use of the logoi. It is in this context that misuse of logoi and caution come into play. For Socrates asks his partner to handle logoi with caution, in order not to become a misologos: ‘But first let us take care not to make a mistake—eulab¯eth¯omen ti pathos m¯e path¯omen—to become haters of reason’, Socrates advises Phaedo at the beginning of the famous excursus on misology, and at its end he says again: ‘So let us in the first place beware of this’ (transl. Bluck).⁴⁵ Like the word confidence, ‘caution’ is a catchword in the Phaedo. We learn that the two words are used in different areas: we are confident in matters like death and imprisonment, and we are cautious about logoi ⁴¹ Cf. Phaed. 63e; 78b; 87e; 88b; 95c; 114d; 115e. ⁴² Cf. Phaed. 114d–e. ⁴³ Phaed. 95a–c. ⁴⁴ Cf. Phaed. 69e–70b; 87e; 88b. ⁴⁵ See Phaed. 89c; 90d.

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and opinions. More than this: caution turns out to be the basis for confidence in facing death. For the misuse of logoi causes mistrust in logoi and this mistrust makes it impossible to persuade the child not to be frightened by the bugbear ‘death’. Socrates, of course, knows how to handle logoi. He is convinced that the soul is immortal, and he therefore is able to face death confidently. Cebes, too, is presented as a critical interlocutor who casts doubts if and only if he really has problems with an argument. It seems possible to persuade him not to be afraid of ‘bugbears’. Simmias, however, seems to be different. He often accepts theories without proof. He disagrees with the results of arguments even when he cannot see anything that is wrong with them. The reason for this is what seems to be a rather irrational mistrust in human ability: ‘I have no ground for doubt’, he says, ‘but . . . I am bound still to have doubts inside me, about what has been said’ (transl. Bluck).⁴⁶ Simmias stands for someone who, despite being educated in rational argument, needs to be persuaded that bugbears are not to be feared in order to make proper use of his ability, whereas Socrates illustrates how one has to deal with the child within oneself. Simmias rather resembles those students Epictetus is addressing, who know rhetoric and logic, but obviously are not able to ‘exhibit what can be achieved by a rational governing principle when arrayed against the forces that lie outside the province of the moral purpose’ (transl. Oldfather).⁴⁷ Learning for Epictetus means being able to make distinctions, recognizing that some things are in our power and others not, and knowing how to be cautious in the use of the impressions of the senses.⁴⁸ For Epictetus, Socrates once again represents the Stoic hero who is educated and therefore free.

V When we turn back to Epictetus’ discourse II.1, it becomes clear, I think, that the topos ‘child in man’,⁴⁹ and ‘bugbears’, and other central features are meant to recall Plato’s Socrates as he is presented in the Apology and the Phaedo and to suggest following him. The figure of ‘Socrates’ in the Phaedo legitimates Epictetus’ postulate that a philosopher should ⁴⁶ See Phaed. 107a. ⁴⁷ Diss. II.1. 39. ⁴⁸ Cf. Diss. 1.22.9–10 = 40 S in Long and Sedley (1987); on this theme see Bonhöffer (1890: 192). ⁴⁹ Cf. Renner (1905).

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do everything both cautiously and confidently at the same time. He should be able to handle logoi with caution (eulabeia) in order to avoid misologia, in order to charm away the fear of the bogy, death, and to become confident in the face of death. Epictetus’ philosophical hero is cautious in using the phantasiai, and confident in the face of death.⁵⁰ On the other hand, Simmias seems to be more inexperienced than Cebes, and therefore full of fear, just because he is not able to trust the argument and to handle logoi appropriately: his fear of the bogy, death, has not been charmed out of him. Obviously he lacks the knowledge and disposition which is necessary if we are to trust in logoi and their results. As the Phaedo shows and Epictetus teaches us: it is not enough to present good arguments. One also has to accept them, to make them part of one’s disposition. Even the argument Epictetus put forward in order to prove that the ‘bugbear’ death is not to be feared, because ‘the paltry body must be separated from the bit of spirit either now or later, just as it existed apart from it before’, recalls Socrates’ ‘true defence’ in the Phaedo, adapted to the Stoic system.⁵¹ D. Sedley has reminded us⁵² that ‘the Stoic’s pneumatic soul is capable of very much the same discarnate survival as Plato had defended in the Phaedo’ and ‘that this theory provides them with a new theoretical underpinning for Socrates’ confidence, in the Phaedo, that the soul can survive death intact and not disperse like a puff of wind’. It seems to me that, like the monistic psychological concept of the ‘Phaedo’, the metaphor ‘child within man’ and Socrates’ ‘epode’, which analyses the ‘bugbear death’ and should be practised over and over again, were obviously attractive for the Stoics and Epictetus. Finally Epictetus’ recommendation to his students ‘Do all these things with confidence, with trust in Him who has called you to face them and deemed you worthy of this position, in which having once been placed . . . ’ can be read as a Stoic adaptation of the famous passages in the Phaedo and in the Apology where Socrates affirms that one should not leave the place where one has been placed.⁵³ What Epictetus is ⁵⁰ Cf. Diss. I.27 and Dobbin’s comments at Epictetus (1998: 214–18); Döring (1979: 48 ff.). ⁵¹ Cf. Diss. II.1.17; cf. Plato Phaed. 63d ff. ⁵² Sedley (1993: 326), ‘the Stoics’ pneumatic soul is capable of very much the same discarnate survival as Plato had defended in the Phaedo’. ⁵³ Cf. Phaed. 62b. It might be asked how the metaphor can be reconciled with Epictetus’ theory of the self, according to which ‘morbid emotions’ like fear of death are caused not by an irrational faculty of the soul but by misjudgement of reason (Long

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trying to tell his students is: replace dialectic with the application of the Stoic kanon, and you will see that Socrates indeed is a Stoic avant la lettre. For he knows that one should deal with death with confidence, and should handle the means to judge what death is with caution. He therefore has educated the ‘child within himself’ and is free.

VI To conclude: we have seen that the metaphor ‘child in man frightened by bugbears’ is used in the Phaedo, but also by Epictetus, as a metaphor to designate the alogon. It stands for want of instruction, and the need for a disposition which enables one to be educated and to live a philosophical life. We recall that the young students Epictetus is addressing in discourse II.1, and Simmias as well, had problems in controlling the ‘child within themselves’, which prevented them from accepting philosophical reasoning and from confronting death with confidence as Socrates did. Both might know what rhetoric is or how dialectical arguments work. But they do not know how to use those abilities properly, because the child inside them, the alogon, hinders them from doing so. They both are still in need of virtue as the result of habit and practice.⁵⁴ What I hope to have shown is that in Epictetus’ discourse II.1 we are once again confronted with what could be regarded as an element of a interpretatio Stoica of Plato’s Socrates, and as a Stoic answer to the question why Socrates is able to face death so confidently (tharalle¯os) and why ‘he has every reason for not grumbling or complaining at leaving you and my masters here’.⁵⁵ It is necessary to control the ‘child within ourselves’ by controlling what is in our power: the logoi, as Plato’s Socrates would say, or the phantasiai, as Epictetus sees it. In both cases the result is paideia, ‘the only thing the soul takes with it to the other world’, as Plato argues, the only means that enables us to live a fearless and free life in this world, as Epictetus promises. 2002: 246). As I take it, in the metaphor ‘child in man’ Epictetus does not introduce an irrational faculty but describes what happens if the rational soul proves unable ‘to turn around a mormolykeion’, i.e. if it misjudges a situation. In the Phaedo, too, Socrates demands that the child in man should analyse the mormolykeion ‘death’ properly, and at the same time propagates a concept of rational soul which does not contain an irrational faculty. In both cases, it seems to me the metaphor can be reconciled with a soul that is purely rational. ⁵⁴ See Phaed. 82b. ⁵⁵ See Phaed. 69d.

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We saw that the Platonic metaphor ‘child within us and bugbear’ plays an important role in Hellenistic philosophy and in Epictetus. And it is interesting to see that it remains of importance even in late antiquity. For the late Platonists, however, singing charms over the ‘child within man’ forms part of the praeparatio philosophiae.⁵⁶ Epictetus’ discourse II.1—or so it seems to me—is an interesting document within the history of this tradition. ⁵⁶ I hope to deal with this in another paper.

8 Epictetus on Freedom: Parallels between Epictetus and Wittgenstein Myrto Dragona-Monachou

I N T RO D U C T I O N Socrates was considered by Epictetus to be the martyr of freedom. Epictetus, the ‘new Socrates’ of the Hellenistic age, was called ‘the apostle of freedom’. Socrates defended the freedom of conscience and speech with his life and death as a right of man and a duty to philosophy, Epictetus viewed freedom as the essence of a human being, a gift of god and a ‘principle to live by’ (Pohlenz 1966: 151). Unlike Aristotle, who used the words ‘free’ and ‘freedom’ only twice in the Nicomachean Ethics, Epictetus uses these words about 130 times in the Discourses and the Encheiridion (Epictetus 1961: XVII) and devotes a long treatise to it, the only one to have survived after those of Antisthenes and Cleanthes which are lost to us. Epictetus assures us that there are things which are in our power unconditionally (ta eph’ h¯emin), constituting the sphere of our autonomy. And, unlike the Early Stoics, he extensively uses the term prohairesis, denoting the autonomous inner disposition and attitude, volition, moral choice, moral purpose, moral character and so on, and, particularly, basic free choice.¹ Moreover, he connects eleutheria ¹ See Dragona-Monachou (1978–9: 270 n. 27) for various translations of Epictetus’ prohairesis: intention, decision, propositum, voluntas, consilium, mens ratione utens et voluntate (Schweighauser), Wille (Enk), libre arbitre (Courdaveaux), moral purpose (Oldfather), volont´e (Brehier), personne morale (Souilh´e-Jagu), will, choice, preliminary choice, moral choice, etc. Here I use as alternatives Long’s recent rendering of prohairesis as ‘volition’ and that of ‘moral choice’ in distinguishing it from Aristotle’s ‘deliberate

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with ta eph’ h¯emin. In fact, freedom is the most fundamental tenet, the core concept of Epictetus’ Stoicism. A. A. Long (1971: 191–2) noticed some years ago: ‘The personal experience of Epictetus, for much of his life a slave, must account for part of his preoccupation with freedom. In spite of this bias and his philosophical naivet´e, Epictetus is the Stoic who most ably demonstrates how autonomy of the personality can find a place within the causal nexus.’ Recently Long (2002: 27)² remarked: ‘FREEDOM, underwritten by the theology we have just observed, has nothing to do with liberty in a social and political sense. The freedom that interests Epictetus is entirely psychological and attitudinal.’ Hannah Arendt (1968: 148),³ acknowledging the primacy of political freedom and tracing its decline back to late antiquity and particularly to the inner freedom of Epictetus, a ‘reversal of the current ancient political notions’, observed that ‘man would know nothing of inner freedom if he had not first experienced a condition of being free as a worldly tangible reality’ (Beiner 1984: 349). Epictetus is not particularly interested in civil, social and political freedom, given his time and place, but the primary sense of freedom is the basic core of his sometimes metaphorical use of the term for a personal, inner experience. Epictetan freedom has been variously interpreted in the course of time, most often in the context of the debate between freedom and determinism. It has been extensively and convincingly argued by Susanne Bobzien, in her excellent book Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (1998b) and in her article ‘Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relation to Ethics’ (1997), that ‘there is no evidence that Epictetus’ concept of that which depends on us had anything to do with the choice between alternatives, let alone free (causally undetermined) decision or agent causality’ (1998b: 334–5), and that his freedom ‘is a moral quality . . . not connected primarily with actions but is linked to persons and their character dispositions or states of mind’ (1998b: 342). Bobzien delineates carefully the differences and the similarities between Epictetus and the Early Stoics and asserts that ‘Epictetus shows no signs of any critical awareness of the problem of compatibilism’ (1998b: choice’. In fact prohairesis is for Epictetus ‘pre-choice’ or ‘choice before choice’ (Long 2002: 218), particularly with reference to radical choice of attitude. ² See Long (2002: 210–32) for an excellent account of Epictetus’ prohairesis, of ‘what is up to us’ and freedom. ³ Cited by Beiner (1984: 349).

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338), usually ascribed to Chrysippus, who faced a problem of freedom and causal determinism in the realm of physics and psychology, posed in terms of responsibility. She distinguishes Stoic determinism ‘from ancient theories of logical determinism, fatalism and necessitarianism’ and she acknowledges that ‘the Stoics appear to stand at the beginning of the long tradition of compatibilist determinist positions’ (1998b: 1). She considers Epictetus’ motivation chiefly ‘prudential and pragmatic’, oriented ‘towards a future perspective’ and intended ‘to minimize frustration’ and provide ‘a guidance to action’ (1997: 80). She does not see in Epictetus any ‘two-sided potestative eph’ h¯emin implying alternative possibilities’, i.e., an indeterminist freedom to do otherwise, noticing that ‘there is no evidence that Epictetus considered whether in the same circumstances the same person, with the same desires and beliefs, can do otherwise’ (1998b: 335). Bobzien does not regard Epictetus’ prohairesis —which she sees as a precursor of a concept of will, but without being a separate faculty—as ‘causally undetermined’ (1998b: 335) and argues that, for Epictetus, ‘everything is predetermined’ (1998b: 337). In considering the ‘prevalent interpretation of the Stoic theory of freedom to be unfounded’ (1998b: 343),⁴ she does not notice any great difference between Epictetus’ use of freedom and that of the Early Stoics but only ‘a shift in emphasis’ (1998b: 341) and a tighter connection of it with that which depends on us (1998b: 331) and with terms ‘that are connected with tranquility of mind, such as ataraxia, apatheia, ak¯olutos’ (1998b: 342). Bobzien does not find a concept of indeterminist freedom in Epictetus and argues that he is not concerned with the free-will problem as it was posed later, although she acknowledges that his vocabulary paved the way towards a libertarian position (1998a: 160–4). I share Long’s (2002: 230) opinion that ‘the question of where Epictetus stands in regard to free will has been explored with great effectiveness by Bobzien’ (1998a). I quite agree with most of her masterly interpretation of Stoic determinism in general, and Epictetus’ views of the eph’ h¯emin in particular, and I share her reservations about some misleading comparisons between ancient and modern theories of freedom (1998b: 14). I believe, however, that Epictetus’ ⁴ See Bobzien (1998b: 335 n.10, and 343 nn. 36–8, parallel to 1997: 85 nn. 33–5) for a somewhat severe criticism of Dobbin (1991) regarding prohairesis and of Long, (1971), Inwood (1985), Long and Sedley (1987) and others for connecting eleutheria with the ‘real freedom of the will’.

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view of eleutheria—though not necessarily concerned with the freewill problem as expounded by Alexander of Aphrodisias, in whose work Stoic compatibilism is represented by Philopator (Bobzien 1998b: 372–4)—allows and deserves further discussion in the light of some modern theories and interpretations. Certainly Epictetus is not the sort of compatibilist that Chrysippus was; rather he was an ethical determinist or a reconciliationist between freedom and divine providence, although, on the basis of his discourse 4.1, we cannot be sure if any conventional label can fully represent him. This discourse is a panoramic view of the Greek concept of philosophical freedom, and can be seen as anticipation of some modern versions of it; it is a thoughtful, rich and multidimensional account of inner freedom both negative and positive, though it can hardly have any important bearing on the assessment of the concept of freedom ensuing from the consideration of Epictetus’ prohairesis and the eph’ h¯emin. Bobzien herself acknowledges that she has not given ‘a detailed analysis of Epictetus’ philosophy of freedom through self-restriction’ (1997: 79). Thus, my survey of Epictetus’ use of the word eleutheria, made from a different perspective from hers, may be seen as complementary to Bobzien’s masterly scholarly research. More specifically, it is the object of this paper to try to answer some questions about Epictetus’ concept of freedom and assess it as far as possible in modern terms, despite the risk of falling into anachronisms in applying sophisticated modern categories and classifications to the view of an ancient thinker who had a very complicated and entirely personal doctrine. Epictetus’ view, without excluding versions of negative liberty, seems to me to anticipate in some respects certain modern versions of positive freedom, such as that of Gibbs (1976: 23–4) and in particular some intimate reflections of Wittgenstein. The difficulties for a coherent interpretation of Epictetus’ freedom may be due to the subject itself, given the elusiveness of the concept and the various conceptions of freedom, to the debate on the emergence of the free-will problem and to the somewhat aphoristic character of many Epictetan passages treating freedom in various contexts. A cursory analysis of his long treatise on freedom may not give us a more consistent and clearer account of it than his other occasional references. It shows, however, that Epictetus was familiar with almost all previous Graeco-Roman conceptions of freedom, and that he was in a position to evaluate them and endorse what appeared to him to be the ‘true’ one amounting to peace of mind, tranquility and philosophical liberation, according to fundamental tenets of Stoicism.

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E PI C T E T U S ’ C O N C E P T I O N O F F R E E D O M Freedom is considered an ‘essentially contested concept’ (Gallie 1955–6: 176), carrying vastly different meanings along its long history. Modern freedom is regarded by many historians of ideas as a ‘new kind of freedom’ (Davis 1995: 1). Even though there is a certain consensus regarding its focal meaning, conceptions of it are numerous. There are hundreds of definitions of this ‘ambiguous concept’ (Tim Gray 1991: 1) and ‘more than two hundred senses’ of this ‘protean’ word with its ‘porous’ meaning (Berlin 1975: 121). Freedom has been regarded as a ‘perplexingly polymorphous’ notion and it is said that to investigate it ‘is to enter a labyrinth of concepts and principles’ (Gibbs 1976: 9–26). The fact, moreover, that the Greeks had a single word to cover the meaning of both ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ makes Greek freedom more ambiguous and intricate (Cranston 1967: 45). Freedom can be approached from various perspectives. It has been discussed as a political, metaphysical, ontological, logical, psychological, social, legal and moral notion, and as such it has been contrasted with slavery, tyranny, necessity, predestination, fatalism and determinism of various kinds: causal, teleological, theological, logical, psychological, metaphysical, moral and now genetic determinism. In its relationship to responsibility, various conceptions of freedom are distinguished according to the context, cultural, scientific or philosophical (Clark 1973: 1–29). The most prevalent modern distinction is that between negative and positive liberty established by Berlin (1975: 118–72), somewhat challenged in its positive aspects by John Gray (1984a: 321–48), Gerald MacCallum (1967) with his ‘triadic’ conception of freedom, and others. Freedom is basically regarded as autonomy and optionality (Feinberg 1998: 754), and distinctions are drawn between freedom of movement, intentional freedom, communal freedom and fully virtuous freedom (Flathman 1987: 15–24). Freedom is also viewed as absence of impediments, as availability of choices, as effective power, as status, as self-determination and self-mastery, and so on (Tim Gray 1991: 17–83). In a more sophisticated sense, it has been spoken of as prescriptive and non-prescriptive, optative, conative, elective, and as natural freedom (Gibbs 1976: 9–26). In sum, freedom is an extremely ambiguous notion and those ‘writing about it conceive of liberty in their own way’ (John Gray 1984a: 5).

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There is great controversy regarding the so-called ‘free-will problem’, the notorious problem or ‘pseudo-problem of freedom of will’ (Schlick 1966: 54–6). Freedom is usually opposed to determinism, and philosophers are divided into compatibilists and incompatibilists. The former hold that free will is compatible with determinism and the latter that it is incompatible with it. The incompatibilists are divided into hard and soft determinists (soft determinists sometimes being considered compatibilists or reconciliationists) and libertarians, who hold that men are free and fully responsible agents, while the ‘no-freedom’ theorists are called ‘pessimists’ (Strawson 1998: 746–51). This speculation is a feature of modern philosophy in particular, but is also relevant to ancient Greek politics and philosophy, in the context of which freedom was generally understood in political, civil and social senses as the status of not being a slave or bondsman (Mulgan 1984: 8, 23–4), and in psychological, philosophical and moral ones as self-mastery, autonomy and personal freedom. Although the problem of free will was somewhat anticipated, in psychological discussions of voluntary action and responsibility in poetry and rhetoric, and in discussions of moral accountability for the attribution of praise and blame in the philosophy of the classical period, it was not initially posed and debated as a philosophical or scientific problem. This is the reason why philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle have been regarded by ancient authors and modern scholars both as libertarians and as determinists, whereas the philosophers of the Hellenistic period are more adequately classified. There is a long debate regarding the origin of the problem of free will as a philosophical problem. I shall mention here only Pamela Huby’s (1967: 353) opinion that ‘this problem as an attempt to reconcile the belief in human freedom, which is essential if men are to be able to act morally, with determinism, the belief that every event is fully determined in all its details by the sum of its precedent causes’, came into being in the fourth century  and was probably ‘discovered’ by Epicurus,⁵ while ‘the Epicureans and the Stoics took the problem’ very seriously. Huby recognizes that Aristotle approached the problem in terms of the voluntary, the involuntary and prohairesis, that he discussed ethical determinism, ‘being aware of most of the elements of the determinist argument’ (1967: 357), that in a certain way he affirmed libertarianism, but that he did not seem aware that there was here a real difficulty. ⁵ Apart from the doctrine of the swerve see particularly Lucretius, De rerum natura II.256–7 on the freedom of the will.

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She wonders if Epicurus reacted to Stoic determinism, which implies that the Stoics were the first to be aware of the problem of free will, but, being convinced that Chrysippus was the first Stoic to deal with it, she argues that ‘the Stoic view is more likely to be derived from the Epicurean than vice versa’ (1967: 359) and concludes that it seemed to her ‘more probable that Epicurus was the originator of the free will controversy, and that it was only taken up with enthusiasm among the Stoics by Chrysippus, the third head of the school’ (1967: 358). Her view is the exact opposite of that of Pohlenz, to whom I shall come shortly. It is true that Aristotle faced a certain problem of free will posed in terms of the voluntary and responsibility, in a way anticipating contemporary discussions in the analytic philosophy of mind and the philosophy of action (Dragona-Monachou 1981a: 286–98). W. F. R. Hardie (1968: 274–8) reacted to Huby’s verdict by arguing that ‘Mrs Huby treated Aristotle with considerable severity’. He finds Aristotle’s treatment of responsibility ‘acute and original’ (274) and considers him to be advocating a sort of reconciliationism or a somewhat ‘perplexed libertarianism’ (1968: 278), which shows the difficulty of labelling ancient philosophers in terms of contemporary categories. One should not forget that Cicero (De fato 39) regarded Aristotle as a determinist. Hardie pointed out rightly that ‘freedom in Mrs Huby’s article is freedom as understood by indeterminists’, and concluded that ‘Aristotle did not discover the problem, but he anticipated some of the moves which have been made by modern philosophers in their discussions of the problem’ (1968: 278). In fact, as I have also argued, Aristotle’s treatment of the voluntary and the involuntary anticipates some modern discussions in the context of analytic philosophy (Dragona-Monachou 1981a). Other scholars, however, trace this problem back to Augustine, Pelagius, and even Maximus the Confessor and others. Susanne Bobzien (1998a), as noted earlier, also understanding freedom and particularly freedom of decision as it is understood by indeterminists and more specifically by libertarians, argues for the ‘inadvertent conception and late birth of the free-will problem’ dating it in the second century . She considers the ‘discovery’ of this problem ‘as the result of a mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity . . . absorbing Epictetan, Middle-Platonist and Peripatetic ideas’ leading ‘eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the ‘‘free-will problem’’ in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him’ (1998a: 133).

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There is considerable consensus that the problem of freedom and determinism begins with the Stoics. Max Pohlenz (1966: 128 ff.), noting that during the Classical period the Greeks did not raise the question of whether anything lies in our power or not, since till Zeno’s time morality presupposed man’s freedom of decision and Zeno’s teaching about assent ‘ensured the autonomy of the logos in the face of both the outer world and the personal instincts’, remarks: ‘Nevertheless, Zeno was the first man on Greek soil to see in this a problem and ask the fundamental question: Is man, when he decides, really free? . . . Zeno was the first to see the contrary idea that might be raised against the hitherto unquestioned belief that man is free to decide.’ He explains that this was ‘the idea of strict causality, which links all things together in a causal relationship’, and argues that, although the Greeks were familiar with the idea of causality, ‘Zeno was the first to follow up the implications of the idea of causality right through to the end’. In fact, Zeno’s teaching on assent shows that he must have been aware of such a problem, but I do not share Pohlenz’s conjecture that the Stoic idea of determinism might be explained through ‘the non-Greek origin of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the Stoic school’ (1966: 133). Pohlenz does not dwell on Cleanthes, who, I believe, played an important role in the determinism–providentialism debate (SVF I.155), as recorded by Calcidius (Dragona-Monachou: 1973), and is attested to have written a treatise on freedom. In any case, according to Pohlenz, ‘Epicurus had not by himself arrived at the defence of man’s freedom to decide, an attitude that was not of central importance for his system. Instead, he considered it necessary because he believed it was threatened by Zeno. And Zeno is the one who first recognized the problem’ (1966: 132). Pohlenz acknowledges, however, that it was Chrysippus ‘who formulated the problem quite clearly’ by asking: ‘Is man’s ability to decide freely compatible with the principle of causality when it is carried to its logical conclusions?’ (1966: 129). He finds Chrysippus’ solution satisfactory ‘even if at the moment of a particular decision man can only act in one way’ (1966: 131) because of the latter’s distinction between the prokatarktikon and the autoteles aition, which was regarded in antiquity as a sort of ‘compromise between the causality idea and the consciousness of freedom’ as ‘the indispensable condition of all morality’ (1966: 131). Mulgan is of the same opinion regarding the origins of the problem (1984), asserting that ‘it was only with the Stoics that the link was made between voluntary action and freedom’, and seeing Stoic ‘philosophical freedom’ as ‘the capacity to act autonomously’. He points

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out the ‘antisocial’ character of this ‘personal or philosophical freedom’, saying somewhat misleadingly, ‘Only when the more radically antisocial philosophers had divorced the concept of freedom from its traditional social context and used it as a metaphor . . . was freedom applied psychologically, to the absence of internal interference’ (1984: 23–4). I do not find that such interiorization of freedom betrays antisocial tendencies. Finally, Berlin (1976: 39) also considers the problem of freedom to have been at least ‘as old as the Stoics’ and not felt to be a problem before the Stoics. All the above mentioned thinkers, except perhaps Huby, ascribing the problem of freedom and determinism to Stoicism in general, do not address the problem of free will from a libertarian perspective, implying the ability to do otherwise, as Bobzien does in making the following point: The earliest unambiguous evidence for the awareness of any kind of ‘free-will problem’ occurs in Alexander of Aphrodisias. It resembles the problems modern philosophers discuss in that it is concerned with a theory of universal causal determinism which contains a principle of the type ‘same causes, same effects’ and in that it involves a concept of indeterminist freedom without invoking a concept of the will. (1998a: 136)

Bobzien recognizes Epictetus’ contribution both to the libertarian terminology and to the late Stoic version of compatibilism as represented in Alexander’s On Fate by a late Stoic, probably identified with Philopator on the basis of evidence from Nemesius (1998a: 160–73). Similar views have been put forward in the last chapter of her book, ‘A Later Stoic Theory of Compatibilism’ (1998b: 358–412). This late variety of Stoic compatibilism endorses an un-predetermined, if not indeterminist, concept of the eph’ h¯emin as a decisive step in Stoic speculation. Bobzien is right in arguing that it is in Alexander’s treatise that we do have an interesting debate on free will, with a ‘two-sides potestative eph’ h¯emin’ clearly attested and known from [Plutarch] and other authorities (Dragona-Monachou 1994: 461–73). Certainly, the problem of freedom versus determinism is early Stoic, but as an explicit problem of free will in the modern sense it is posed by Alexander who is not, however, a very reliable authority on Stoicism (Dragona-Monachou: 1973). I largely agree with Bobzien’s view on the late beginnings of the free-will problem as implying an indeterminist eph’ h¯emin and with her account of the influence of Epictetus on its formulation (1998a: 160–6). Epictetus’ view of inner freedom, particularly as it is found

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in his discourse 4.1, is not directly related to the free-will problem as such and is too personal and complicated to be easily accommodated in ancient and modern categories and models. I believe, however, that it may cast some light on this speculation. E PI C T E T U S O N F R E E D O M I N T H E DISCOURSES Having dealt with the Epictetan concept of prohairesis and its relationship to the Aristotelian (Dragona-Monachou 1978–9), with freedom and slavery in Epictetus (Dragona-Monachou 1997) and with the relationship of providence to fate (Dragona-Monachou 1973) elsewhere, I shall confine myself here to giving a selective account of Epictetus’ view of freedom as it occurs in the Discourses and the Encheiridion and attempt a cursory analysis of his long treatise dealing exclusively with it. I shall not dwell on relevant Early Stoic views, because I do not see that Epictetus deviates substantially from orthodox Stoic teaching, except for the prominent role he assigns to the divine providence instead of to fate and the emphasis he gives to the prohairesis, a concept occurring rarely in Early Stoicism and hardly at all in Chrysippus’ fragments. I shall focus here on his use of the word ‘freedom’ and not on that of eph’ h¯emin and proairesis, since both these states of mind are said to be unconditionally free. Bobzien is right to remark that, unlike Chrysippus who deals with what depends on us in the context of physics and psychology, Epictetus sets this problem in the context of ethics, which is his main concern, and ‘he singles out as things that depend on us only those types of things which are in our power under all possible circumstances and with absolute certainty’ (1998b: 332), thus both emphasizing and at the same time restricting the realm of freedom in a principled way. The fact that Epictetus was not concerned with the free-will problem as such does not mean that he had not realized that there was not a problem in the realm of decision and action, or a tension between what was up to him and the world, adopting in practice a sort of reconciliationism like that of Cleanthes (Dragona-Monachou 1971), rather than a compatibilism of a Chrysippean type between responsibility and fate. It might be worth mentioning that his fervent belief in providence constituted an argument for the existence of god (Dragona-Monachou 1976: 209–30). Regarding externals Epictetus realizes that it is not in man’s power to change them, that it cannot be and it should not be, since they are

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administered by divine providence. The only thing a human being can do is to accept them voluntarily, or groan and resent and in the last resort be dragged along by them. Man is free to adopt this or that attitude to them, to choose alternative dispositions towards them. This is perhaps his only alternative course of action or inaction. His is the freedom to dispose his state of mind in harmony with nature and be happy, or to complain and resist and thus be wretched and miserable. There are passages in the Discourses supporting the assumption that Epictetus was aware of the possibility of making alternative choices, if not of the capacity of man to do so, and that he deliberately took a quietist or reconciliationist stand towards externals by choosing what is natural for human beings. He says: Mindful, therefore, of this ordaining we should go to receive instruction, not in order to change the constitution of things—for this is neither vouchsafed us nor is it better that it should be—but in order that, things about us being as they are and as their nature is, we may, for our own part, keep our wills in harmony with what happens. For, look, can you escape from men? And how is it possible? But can we, if they associate with us, change them? And who vouchsafes us that power? What alternative remains then or what method can we find for living with them? Some such method as that, while they will act as seems best to them, we shall none the less be in a state conformable to nature. (1.12.17–19)⁶

He also remarks: Hence the philosophers well say that if the good and excellent man knew what was going to happen, he would help on the processes of disease and death and maiming, because he would realize that this allotment comes from the orderly arrangement of the whole . . . But as it is, seeing that we do not know beforehand what is going to happen, it is our duty to cleave to that which is naturally more fit to be chosen, since we are born for this purpose. (2.10.5–6)

Epictetus tries to explain and perhaps justify the reason why ‘the gods have put under man’s control only the most excellent faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely, the power to make correct use of external impressions’ but not the other things. He strangely enough attributes this restriction of human power not to the gods’ unwillingness but to their inability to make men unhampered by externals, given men’s earthly predicament and commitments. The gods, however, ⁶ In this paper I use Oldfather’s translation for the Loeb Classical Library (1959), sometimes slightly modified.

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endowed man with ‘a certain portion of themselves’ which is truly free and unhampered, the ‘faculty of choice and refusal’, the faculty ‘which makes use of external impressions’ so that they would never be really ‘thwarted and hampered’ (1.1.7–13). As an implicit case of choosing alternative courses of action, and moreover of deciding between unpleasant alternatives, i.e., of exercising the power to do otherwise, we might consider the case of an athlete who had to choose between amputation and death, and who decided ‘as a man’, i.e., according to his ‘proper character’ and as he was ethically determined, to die and not go on living amputated (1.2.25–9). This sort of ethical determinism is not incompatible with freedom. Sometimes, though not often, Epictetus speaks in terms of necessity, in an apparently deterministic temper. He brings forward the case of a man who wants something that does not happen, and does not want something that happens, trying in a way to escape what is inevitable, with the result that he becomes unhappy and wretched, whereas if he ‘gives up wanting anything but what god wants’ no one can prevent or compel him ‘any more than anyone prevents or compels Zeus’ (2.17.17–22). At other times his spirit seems somewhat libertarian. He says: ‘he is free for whom all things happen according to his moral purpose and whom none can restrain’, provided that this freedom does not amount to ‘insanity’, to the desire to have things as one ‘at haphazard’ wishes them to happen, because ‘freedom is a noble and precious thing’, not prone to be ‘accommodated to every individual’s whims’. Humans need instruction, he says, ‘not in order to change the constitution of things—for this is neither vouchsafed us nor is it better that it should be—but in order that, things about us being as they are and as their nature is, we may, for our own part, keep our wills in harmony with what happens’ (1.12.17). This seems rather a reconciliationist attitude. In a similar spirit, he says that it is a gift of god that man is ‘accountable’ only for what is ‘under his control’ (1.12.32) and, in a more libertarian temper, he declares that man’s volition is thoroughly in his power and no one, ‘not even Zeus himself has power to overcome it’ (1.1.24). Yet one need not and should not think what he must do in particular situations, says Epictetus, since he should have decided beforehand once and for all how he is going to act and what sort of attitude to adopt, and should have formed his judgments and general principles in such a way as to be ready to apply them immediately without the need to think them out in particular dilemmas (4.1.132–43). Similar instances of a sort of capacity to ‘do otherwise’ are implicit at 4.1.140: 151. It is said there that a philosopher’s convictions

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about good and evil, right and wrong, and so forth, and his subsequent attitude to life and death should have been formed in principle as soon as he decides to attend philosophical lectures; he need not deliberate what to do in any particular situation but should remain steady in his radical decisions for ever. Thus, the philosopher has in a certain way decided what to do once and for all. As noted above, from the first discourse it becomes clear that Epictetus divides things into those which depend on us and those which do not. The former amount to the proper use of external impressions by man’s reasoning faculty, his logos, but all other things are not under his control (1.1.7–8). His perception of which things are man’s own doing, and which are not, is stated explicitly in the first chapter of the Encheiridion where the core of Epictetus’ teaching in the realm of human freedom is summarized: Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own. Remember, therefore, that if what is naturally slavish you think to be free, and what is not your own to be your own, you will be hampered . . . while if you think only what is your own to be your own, and what is not your own to be, as it really is, not your own, then no one will ever be able to exert compulsion upon you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, will find fault with no one, will do absolutely nothing against your will, you will have no personal enemy, no one will harm you, for neither is there any harm that can touch you. (Ench. 1.1–3)

The difficulty of assessing the meaning of Epictetus’ concept of freedom is well attested by Pohlenz’s (1966: 152–3) introductory remarks to this passage: The problem of freedom of will does not exist for him, because for him it is obvious that men can freely decide and he does not need to ask whether synkatathesis . . . is determined, since he takes it for granted that man is himself always responsible for the state of the logos on the basis of which he decides. There is therefore something which ‘remains within our power’ (eph’ h¯emin estin).

So, the following questions arise. Does man’s responsibility for the state of his logos amount to his being free to decide in libertarian terms? Is freedom of decision self-evident on the basis of a free eph’ h¯emin?

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Bobzien, disputing various interpretations of the indeterminacy of assent and considering choice of alternatives crucial to the matter, would not answer such questions in the affirmative, as she writes: ‘Rather, it seems that the theoretical, abstract question of the compatibility of fate and that which depends on us has completely dropped out of sight in Epictetus’ extant works . . . It is likely that . . . Epictetus himself believed that, in the end, everything is predetermined’ (1997: 83). In fact, Epictetus did not often speak of fate; he did not have a theoretical interest in causal determinism and freedom, but he nowhere explicitly asserted that ‘everything is predetermined’ because this would have included even his moral choice, which he considered by definition free. That he was not theoretically interested in the problem of free will in terms of the relation between freedom and physical or logical determinism can be assumed from his comments on the notorious Master Argument, dealing with the relationship between the possible, the true and the necessary (SVF II.283) and raising questions of necessity, fate, free will, and chance, for which he is our main source. After having stated this argument (2.19.1–4), he remarks: ‘If then someone asks me ‘‘but which pair of these do you yourself maintain?’’ I shall answer him that I do not know, but I have received the following account.’ He refers to the views of Diodorus, Panthoides, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and adds: ‘What then is your opinion?’ He then answers in a sceptical temper: ‘I do not know, and I was not made for this purpose—to test my own external impression upon the subject, to compare the statement of others, and to form a judgment of my own’ (2.19.5–6). From the sequel to this passage it can be assumed that Epictetus was aware of the logical implications of this problem, but was not interested in enumerating theories and citing evidence in order to show off or try to form a personal opinion about it, since he believed this was necessary only in questions of conduct, i.e., in what nowadays we may call practical and applied ethics. He was convinced that it is upon such matters that man has to form his own judgement (15–19). He says that one has only to observe a man’s actions ‘to find out to what sect of the philosophers he belongs’, without waiting to hear him ‘reciting the petty arguments’ of particular sects and doctrines (20–3). As a true philosopher he tries to render those coming to him ‘secure against restraint, compulsion, and hindrance, free, prosperous, happy, looking to god in everything both small and great’ (29), and to show them what things are under their control (32). Despite his interest in logic, which he considered necessary for the examination of terms, the clarification of

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concepts, the evaluation of impressions, and so on (1.7.8–19), Epictetus as a philosopher-teacher and ‘therapist’ (Xenakis: 1969) was content to feel free in the realm of his moral choice and to make his pupils free, and he did not deem it important to take sides in theoretical debates, to form a personal opinion on the problem of freedom as set by the Master Argument and on other problems of this kind. There are some other passages in the discourses that might literally admit of a libertarian interpretation, but moral good and evil, mental disposition and piety enter into play and turn his presumed negative conception of liberty into a positive one. Epictetus says: If I can change externals according to my own wish, I change them; but if I cannot, I am ready to tear out the eyes of the man who stands in my way. For it is man’s nature not to endure to be deprived of the good, not to endure to fall into evil.

Yet, when he cannot do so, it is urgent to maintain ‘piety and selfinterest conjoined’. (1.27.11–14) He usually defines freedom in terms of the democratic freedom recorded in a deprecatory spirit by Plato and Aristotle. Living, however, under Roman rule, he qualifies human wishes and desires in such a way and posits such moral presuppositions for attaining freedom that in the last resort freedom is reduced to knowledge and virtue. He says: ‘At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? ‘‘Nothing else.’’ Tell me, then, O men, do you wish to live in error? ‘‘We do not.’’ Well, no one who lives in error is free’ (2.1.23–4). Thus, he is not concerned with the conventional social and political labels of ‘free’ and ‘slave’ (DragonaMonachou 1997), considering that the institution of slavery functions according to the ‘wretched laws . . . of the dead, and not to the laws of the gods’ (1.13.5), and following ‘the teaching of the philosophers’ he considers only the educated to be free. Education is for him true liberation. In short, only the good and virtuous men, if not only the wise, as was the case in Early Stoicism, are free, because they have restricted their desires to what depends on them. Freedom as autonomy and self-mastery, ‘freedom through self-restriction’ as Bobzien (1997: 79) puts it, was for him, as it was for Plato, the philosophical freedom par excellence. Freedom for Epictetus is in fact much broader than the agency required by the problem of free will, much richer than that which depends on us and more complicated than the inner freedom of resignation, because sometimes this freedom leads to a sort of ‘right to resistance’ (Dragona-Monachou 1997). Most of these aspects have been

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developed in his longest treatise, dealing exclusively with his conception of freedom, its kinds and uses. E PI C T E T U S ’ D I S C O U R S E O N F R E E D O M The discourse begins with a version of negative liberty in Berlin’s sense, not alien to the definitions of Plato and Aristotle, but this concept of liberty is soon seen as a spurious one, since we have to do here, not so much with external impediments, with interference from other human beings, as with internal ones such as error, passions and bad inclinations. Epictetus says: ‘He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid’ (4.1.1). In fact, freedom here amounts to the power to attain one’s ends which are by definition good, to the capacity to do something worth doing, because no one wishes to live ‘deceived, impetuous, unjust, unrestrained, peevish, abject’, and so on, like the bad man who does not live as he wills and therefore is not free (2–5). In the last resort, freedom is reduced to virtue, knowledge and happiness, while slavery amounts to vice, ignorance and unhappiness. Thus, freedom for Epictetus becomes the capacity to do what is good, a version of positive freedom in Gibbs’s sense. It is only the good man who is free, while the bad man is a slave, a view shared by other Greek philosophers and particularly by the early Stoics who regarded only the wise as free. Social, civic and political freedom and slavery are irrelevant to this sense of freedom, since not even a man of authority is free if he has to do something against his will and lives under psychological or moral pressure. Slavery is nothing else than doing something involuntarily, irrespective of the lower or higher authority of the master (6–14). A man is not free if under the passion of love he is compelled to do things of which he would feel ashamed, or if he cannot overcome his fears (15–23). It is characteristic that in this discourse Epictetus makes clear that he is explicitly dealing with the use of the concept of freedom in various cases. He says: ‘Consider now, in the case of the animals, how we employ the concept of freedom’ (24). And it is interesting that Epictetus uses the concept of negative liberty as ‘physical freedom’ (physik¯e eleutheria) in the case of birds and wild animals; they do not submit to captivity but suffer everything in their efforts to escape, and even starve to death as soon as they are

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captured, because ‘such is their desire for physical freedom (physik¯e eleutheria) and a life of independence and freedom from restraint’ (25–30). The same concept of ‘physical freedom’ is relevant in the case of political freedom, analogous to Berlin’s negative liberty, which has nothing to do in this context with Gibbs’s ‘natural freedom’, the true freedom in his view (1976: 22–6), which proves to be an extreme form of positive freedom, amounting to power. However, a peculiarly ‘naturalist’ conception of freedom proper to man’s ideal nature and conducive to felicity might be ascribed to Epictetus on the basis of other passages dealing with ‘true freedom’, which, despite its similarity to Gibbs’s ‘eudaemonic freedom’ (1976: 129–31), due to its connection with virtue and the good as the perfection of human nature, is in fact quite different from the latter, which was vehemently criticized by Flew (1983: 45–59) for its Platonic premises and its oppressive political implications. In the sequel Epictetus brings forward Diogenes who was Epictetus’ second model of free personality after Socrates (DragonaMonachou 2004: 429–48, 443), who had seriously examined the matter of true freedom (32) and for whom ‘the one sure way to secure freedom is to die cheerfully’ (30), suicide as ultimate liberation being one of Epictetus’ obsessions (Dragona-Monachou 1981b: 56–65). In one of his rare references to genuine negative political liberty he mentions Diogenes’ warning to the Persian King that it is impossible ‘to enslave the Athenian State any more than he can enslave fish’ because, as happens with fish, ‘if he lays hold of them, they die’ (30–1). The desire for such a freedom is irresistible for the slave who connects freedom with happiness (euroia), equality, similarity and particularly (in a sense recalling the etymology of the Greek word eleutheria) with the power ‘to go where he pleases, to come whence he pleases, and go where he pleases’ (34). Epictetus, however, does not fail to remark bitterly that as soon as a man born a slave is emancipated, he immediately ‘falls into a slavery much more severe than the first one’, i.e. into moral and psychological slavery: he starts flattering people and indulging in his passions, so that even when he enters the highest offices ‘he serves in the handsomest and sleekest slavery’ (35–40). Men forget Socrates’ question ‘what each several thing means’, he says (41), and are unable to apply their preconceptions correctly to particular instances. They all ‘seek to live securely, to be happy, to do everything as they wish to do, not to be hindered, not to be subject to compulsion’ (46), but in fact they submit themselves to the gravest compulsions in their effort to secure the friendship of those in power, with the result that ‘neither

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those who are styled kings live as they will’ and therefore they are not free, having lost their moral freedom, another name for autonomy and dignity. In order to answer the question ‘what free men are left?’ Epictetus advises his interlocutors to ‘seek and find’ since ‘nature has given man resources to find the truth’ (51). If they cannot do that, at least they should accept the opinion of those who have examined the matter and have arrived at the conclusion that freedom is the greatest good and no unhappy man is free (52–3). What is important from the social and humanist viewpoint in this context is that Epictetus considers unimportant the ordinary method of acquiring slaves through ‘buying and selling and arrangements of that kind in the acquisition of property’ (53). The explicit depreciation of this practice can be taken to imply overt condemnation on his part of institutional slavery, but Epictetus is particularly concerned with moral and spiritual slavery as the predicament of the bad and unhappy man (Dragona-Monachou 1997). After having discussed what freedom as a moral quality and precondition of happiness is, and particularly what is not freedom but slavery, Epictetus proceeds to specify what freedom is as a value. Since freedom is ‘a great, noble and precious thing’, no abject and flattering man can be free, he says. And, since freedom is also something ‘independent’ (autexousion) and ‘self-governing’ (autonomon), whoever can be subject to hindrance and compulsion by another man’s power is not free; ‘whoever is wailing, complaining, in misery’, irrespective of any ‘deed of sale or purchase’, and despite his origin and social status, is not free even though he wears a ‘toga praetexta’ (56–7). Positive and negative aspects of freedom are not mutually exclusive in this context, or indeed perhaps anywhere in the discourses, but are complementary: two sides of the same coin. Freedom is a question of judgement; it has nothing to do with externals that are not under one’s control. Whoever is subject to compulsion, hindrance and unhappiness is not free but has many masters: all persons and things that control him (57–61). It is not wealth, power, property or kingship that make a man free ‘from hindrance and his own master’; it is only ‘the knowledge of how to live’ [h¯e epist¯em¯e tou bioun] that makes a man free; it is the elimination of the desire for things that are under the control of others, such as life, health, death, the body, and so on, i.e. all things that are morally indifferent (62–7). According to Epictetus that which man ‘has subject to his own authority’ (autexousion) is the region of his assent (synkatathetikos topos), choice and refusal of things that are under his control; these

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are absolutely free from hindrance and restraint and can be maintained even under the threat of death (68–71). Whatever someone admires from among the things that fall outside his moral choice (prohairesis) ‘deliver him into slavery’. In order to be free, one should not only not do but not even desire things that are not under his control, that are not truly his own but have to do with his body and his property (72–80). So, one should be ‘prepared and trained . . . to distinguish what is not his own from what is his own possession’, what is ‘subject to hindrance’ from what is not, ‘what is the nature of the good’ over which nobody has authority and which nobody can hinder ‘any more than one can hinder god’ (81–2). It is in order to make the right distinctions between the things that are one’s own and those that are not that one comes to philosophy, in order to learn what secures serenity, fearlessness and tranquillity by restricting desire and confining it only to things that are within the sphere of one’s moral choice and that therefore depend on oneself (83–5). What is important is judgement (dogmata). Judgements can destroy ‘the citadels and the tyrants within man’; external things themselves have no power to enslave him and hinder the exercise of his will, ‘subjecting him to compulsion against his will’. It is ‘by submitting his freedom of choice (horm¯e) unto god’, and by accepting the divine will, that man can ensure he is never hindered in the exercise of his will or subjected to compulsion against his will. Whatever god wills, the free man wills too. It is god who regulates his choice and desire. The man, therefore, who has adapted his will to the divine will cannot be hindered against his views or be compelled; he is as free as god himself (86–90). Freedom thus becomes for Epictetus voluntary subjection to the will of god, and this can be seen as a version of theological determinism or providentialism. Man should trust god much more than any other worldly authority, he advises, and ‘attach himself to god . . . observing the choices of god and his Governance’ (91–8). Since god gave man what is man’s own (ta prohairetika), subject to man’s authority (autexousion), unhampered and unhindered by anybody and anything, man ‘should not strive against god’ for the acquisition of external things but will what god wills and keep externals ‘in accordance with the terms upon which they have been given to him’. God brought man into the world as ‘a spectator of his governance, and to join with him in his pageant and holiday’. God ‘has no need of a fault-finding spectator’, of men distressed who ‘found fault with the deity, with chance, with their fellowmen’, of men dissatisfied with what is given to them. God gave man ‘high-mindedness, nobility of

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character, courage and the very freedom for which he is now seeking’ to use them ‘for as long as he who lent them to him wills’. Man should strive assiduously not to consider necessary things that are not truly necessary and his own, and cast them away from him, beginning with the more trifling ones and ending with his most beloved. Man should ‘purify his judgments’ and try not to be attached to things that are not his own and can be lost by him. Philosophy as liberation is true freedom (99–113). ‘True freedom’ (h¯e tais al¯etheiais eleutheria), then, is for Epictetus a divine endowment, liberation through pure judgement from all worldly attachments, and a freedom worthy of philosophy. This theonomic view of human freedom undoubtedly implies a version of theological determinism, but this does not seem to downgrade the value of freedom or to cut down human autonomy, given that a similar theonomic character of freedom as a natural right is not absent, explicitly or implicitly, from the first theories of natural rights and from the first declarations of human rights. In the sequel, Epictetus again brings forward the famous paradigms of free personalities who learnt from philosophy what true freedom is. Philosophy is liberation, and the real emancipation of man. Diogenes was set free for ever by Antisthenes, behaving like a master towards his nominal master after he was sold because ‘in every subject-matter, it is quite unavoidable that the man of skill should be superior to the man without skill’ and so ‘whoever possesses the science of how to live, how can he help but be the master?’ (114–22). Socrates and Helvidius, renowned examples of free personalities and conscientious objectors, who resisted all authorities in defence of their moral principles, and died for their ideas, also fared well ‘because the nature of man is gentle, and affectionate and faithful’. Despite his misfortune, man suffers no harm if ‘he bears it in a noble spirit’ (123–7). In sum, ‘the unhampered man, who finds things ready to hand as he wants them, is free’ in opposition to the slave ‘who is thrown into something against his will’. The man ‘who fixes his aim on nothing that is not his own’ or under his control is unhampered (128–30). In one of his very rare references to destiny (pepr¯omen¯e) in a personal rather than in a cosmic sense, here thinking of destiny as providential administration of the world rather than fate, Epictetus contends that ‘the road which leads to freedom, the only surcease of slavery, is to be able to say at any time with his whole heart’ the first verses of Cleanthes’ prayer to Zeus and destiny (SVF I.527), which Epictetus cites four times—once in a fuller version—and of which he is our sole source:

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I have discussed elsewhere Cleanthes’ hymn to Zeus (Dragona-Monachou 1971) and his view of fate in relation to providence (DragonaMonachou 1973). Bobzien has dealt with this prayer extensively and convincingly in connection with Epictetus (1998b: 344–57). Suffice it to say here that in these two verses and in this context fate is not distinguished from providence or predestination in theological terms. What is important here is that Epictetus, following Socrates’ example, saw himself as a missionary of god and his philosophy as a service to god. Moreover, he argued elsewhere that from the existence of the true philosopher, as a messenger and herald of god, one can infer the very existence of god (Dragona-Monachou 1976: 224–7). Philosophy has prepared a man to be capable of responding to crucial dilemmas immediately, without the need to deliberate over what to do; therefore, freedom to do otherwise is somehow meaningless for him. Since a philosopher has ‘studied the questions what things are good, and what bad’, what is to be preferred and what to be avoided, since he has thought about such matters and ‘considered them hitherto’, it is strange not to be able to decide immediately what to do in difficult situations such as when he is asked by a tyrant to say something unworthy. In such cases there is no need of inquiry and deliberation ‘but one would have been able to settle the question on the spot, by intuition, just as in a case involving sight’. The philosopher should not ‘talk differently in the school’ but he should also apply ‘what he thinks’ to matters occurring outside of the school and be trained to function as a philosopher in action (132–43). On the question ‘what has all this to do with freedom?’ Epictetus replies that it has to do with it, even though rich people who pretend to be free do not wish so. The free man should not excuse himself from doing the right thing by saying ‘I cannot do this; I am not allowed’. If he does so, he is not free, but the slave of his passions and ambitions, unable to refrain from doing things that he is not allowed to do. Yet, ‘when a man out of passionate love is under compulsion to do something contrary to his opinion, all the time seeing the better thing but lacking the strength to follow’, he might be excused, but slavery for profit or power over other slaves has no excuse (144–50). It is characteristic that Epictetus himself pretends not to be free yet, though he prays to the gods for freedom, since he still honours ‘his paltry body’, and so he cannot serve as an example of freedom.

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He therefore brings forward again, as truly free and detached persons, Diogenes and Socrates. Diogenes was free ‘not because he was born of free parents, for he was not, but because he had cast off all the handles of slavery’ and nobody and nothing could enslave him. He was detached from everything except for the gods and his real country, the universe and law. ‘This it was which allowed him to be a free man.’ Socrates, though not a ‘solitary’ man, was also free because he counted all his personal commitments as not his own, subject only to law, and because he wanted to preserve by all means the man of honour and reverence that he was. His behaviour during all his life, his resistance of tyrants and the mob without failing to perform his duties, and his attitude during his trial and his imprisonment have ever remained a sublime lesson of freedom (151–69). Detachment, but also respect for law and god, are other aspects of the Epictetan multidimensional freedom. Thus Epictetus advises his audience ‘to study these things, these judgments, look at these examples if they wish to be free, if they desire the thing itself in proportion to its value’. Freedom is bought at a great price. If for the sake of ‘what is called’ (nomizomen¯e) freedom men sacrifice their lives and cities perish, Epictetus asks: ‘for true freedom, which cannot be plotted against and is secure, will you not yield up to god, at His demand, what He has given?’ And he suggests than man should follow Plato’s precept to ‘give up everything that is not one’s own’; otherwise, one becomes a slave. In the last resort, according to Epictetus ‘freedom is not acquired by satisfying oneself with what he desires but by destroying his desires’ (170–5). And he comes to the end of his long treatise on freedom by advising his pupils to ‘keep vigils for the sake of acquiring a judgment which will make them free (dogma eleutheropoioun), devote themselves to a philosopher . . . approach him in the right fashion’⁷ (176–7). In this treatise we find both the negative and the positive senses of freedom and also the ‘physical’ (physik¯e) freedom mainly pertaining to animals and equivalent to the ‘so-called’ (nomizomen¯e) freedom for humans, i.e. the negative liberty in the political sense with which Epictetus is not much concerned, but sees as the focal meaning of freedom. Negative freedom as freedom from both external and internal impediments is for Epictetus a step towards the true philosophical freedom as self-mastery, detachment from all externals and submission ⁷ For a detailed analysis of this discourse from a more theonomic point of view, see Nestle (1967: 120–35).

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to law and to the will of god; it is eudaemonic freedom, equivalent to felicity. Epictetus cannot be regarded as libertarian in the modern sense, despite his unconditionally free prohairesis regarding the things that are under his control. For him, as an ethical determinist, having decided once and for all to side with the good, to do otherwise would imply making wrong choices and taking wrong decisions, i.e. groaning and complaining about things that are not under his control. As a philosopher, messenger and herald of god Epictetus himself should not change externals as administered by the divine providence. Thus he could perhaps be regarded as a reconciliationist, enjoying his inner freedom and accepting complacently the course of events. All these labels, however, are unimportant and perhaps superfluous. Freedom for Epictetus is in the last resort Stoic philosophy, as we can assume from the final part of his treatise. Freedom is to live according to nature, be detached from morally indifferent externals, trust god and obtain tranquillity and quietness. Anyway, we have here an explicit case of an inner moral rather than psychological freedom as ‘an inward space where the self is sheltered against the world’ (Arendt 1968: 146). Epictetus’ freedom is in fact the freedom of the ‘Prometheus bound’ and not that of the ‘Prometheus fire-giver’ (Despotopoulos 1963: 90). This aspect of Epictetus’ freedom is seen in similar terms by Fain (1958), who says: ‘There would seem to be two methods of freeing the prisoner: one would be to remove his chains; the other would be to present the prisoner with a copy of Epictetus.’ Berlin (1976), distinguishing Epictetus’ internalization of freedom by the elimination of desires, amounting to the sublimation of Stoic spiritual freedom like ‘a moral victory’, from ‘the fundamental sense of freedom’ notes ‘a danger of confusion and justification of oppression in practice in the name of liberty itself ’. Joel Feinberg (1998: 756) sees the Stoics as the ‘most influential spokesmen for the ‘‘actual wants’’ concept of freedom’ in developing ‘the techniques for changing desires so that they always accord with what happens’, without need for ‘any breathing space’. For Jason Xenakis (1969: 85–114), finally, freedom in Epictetus’ ‘negative and preventive ethics’, reduced essentially to an ‘ethics of freedom from psychological slavery’ (111), is compatible with causation and can be regarded as liberation. Epictetus, to sum up, living in an age of anxiety which rendered political and social freedom unimportant, spoke very eloquently about a freedom necessary for fulfilling his philosophical mission as a philosopher and living serenely as a truly free man. A sort of quietism,

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endorsing anti-theoretical tendencies and using therapeutic techniques in face of tricky philosophical problems and everyday angst, might be ascribed to him, not alien to the attitude to the world ascribed by scholars to Ludwig Wittgenstein, on account of his views of the will and the morally neutral world, and on the basis of some intimate reflections found in his Notebooks and some scattered meditations inserted in the margins of his philosophical works. It is not surprising some have spoken of the early Wittgenstein’s Stoicism. In this context I have drawn some parallels between some of Wittgenstein’s aphorisms and well-known late Stoics tenets (Dragona-Monachou 1980–1: 447–54, 467–81), some instances of which, particularly those echoing Epictetus’ relevant attitudes, I shall cite here without any comments or interpretation.

PA R A L L E L S B E T W E E N E PI C T E T U S A N D W I T TG E N S T E I N Irrespective of what Wittgenstein said in his Lecture on Free Will, we find some reflections about the will and the world in the Tractatus (1978), in the Notebooks (1979) and in the aphorisms published as Culture and Value (1980). Some of these ethico-religious aphorisms, in which Wittgenstein speaks as an ethical personality doing ethics and not philosophy, have such a Stoic hue that it has not gone unnoticed. Pierre Cavalier (1980: 180–5), for example, finds in some reflections in Wittgenstein’s Notebooks ‘the stoical presence’; he speaks of his ‘stoical happiness’ and ‘the full expression of his stoicism’ and notes: It is a stoicism that he certainly lived and one that expresses the essential trait of the Stoic: not to give way to hopes and desires for the material happiness of the temporal world, to treat what happens as a fate beyond one’s ultimate control. It is an attitude based, most profoundly, on not wanting. (181)

Cavalier bases his assessment mostly on Wittgenstein’s distinction between ‘willing’ and ‘wanting’, and does not refer to the Epictetan prohairesis, which perhaps would have better justified his assessment. He finds in him ‘a stoicism based on not wanting’ (182) and describes Wittgenstein’s attitude as ‘the stoical attitude of one faced with a world outside their ultimate control’ (184). Paul Johnston (1989: 170), however, observes that on account of his will ‘Wittgenstein is forced into a form of Stoicism’. We should not forget that, like Marcus Aurelius,

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Wittgenstein himself viewed his work as Thoughts addressed to himself (Ta eis heauton), confessing that ‘Nearly all my writings are private conversations with myself; things that I say to myself tˆete a tˆete’ (1980: 77e/1948). We read in the Tractatus that ‘the world is independent of my will’ (1978: 6.373). This view occurs also in the Notebooks (1979: 5.7.16) together with the views that: ‘my will penetrates the world’; ‘I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless . . . I can only make myself independent of the world’ (1979: 11.6.16); and ‘if everything that we want were to happen, this would still only, so to speak, be a grace of fate’ (1979: 5.7.16), which might be read as echoing Epictetus, if we see Wittgenstein’s will as analogous to the Epictetan prohairesis. Epictetus would have subscribed to Wittgenstein’s statement that ‘I will call will first and foremost the bearer of good and evil’ (1979: 21.7.16), as well as the assumption that the will is independent of the world but man depends on the world (i.e. on God). Wittgenstein says: We have the feeling of being dependent on an alien will. However this may be, at any rate we are in a certain sense dependent, and what we are dependent on we call God. In this sense God would simply be fate, or what is the same thing: the world—which is independent of our will. I can make myself independent of fate. There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. (1979: 8.7.16)

Epictetus’ and Wittgenstein’s happy man ‘must have no fear, not even in face of death’ (1979: 8.7.16). Stoic as well as Wittgensteinian happiness consists in living in accordance with nature, i.e., according to the divine will. Wittgenstein says: ‘In order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world . . . in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent’, i.e. ‘I am doing the will of God (1979: 8.7.16). And he considers the happy life harmonious ( 1979: 30.7.16) and achieved ‘through the life of knowledge . . . that can renounce the amenities of the world . . . [or consider them] graces of fate’ (1979: 13.8.16). Wittgenstein shares with Epictetus the same sort of voluntarism considering the will, similar to the Epictetan prohairesis, which is the moral person himself. He says: ‘If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I and which is the bearer of ethics’ (1979: 5.8.16). The will is thus for both Epictetus and Wittgenstein ‘an attitude towards the world’ (1979: 4.11.16). Some other Stoic tenets can also be detected, such as those of a world soul and a world spirit, of nature as a guide, of evil as error, and so on, and some particularly Epictetan doctrines, such as the value

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of the life of knowledge, philosophy as therapy, courage in the face of suffering, and so on. Wittgenstein (1980) also spoke of fate as the ‘unfathomed’ will of God in what are almost Stoic terms, recalling the ‘Master Argument’. This reflection is most illuminating for his attitudinal and prescriptive rather than cognitivist stand upon ethical questions, which is not alien to Epictetus’ perspective. He says: The use of the word ‘fate’: our attitude to the future and the past. To what extent do we hold ourselves responsible for the future? How much do we speculate about the future? How do we think about the past and the future? If something unwelcome happens:—do we ask ‘Whose fault is it?’ ‘It must be somebody’s fault’—do we say ‘It was God’s will’, ‘It was fate’? In the sense in which asking a question and insisting on an answer is expressive of a different attitude, a different mode of life from not asking it, the same can be said of utterances like ‘It is God’s will’ or ‘We are not masters of our fate’. The work done by this sentence, or at any rate something like it, could also be done by a command; including one which you give yourself. And conversely the utterance of a command, such as ‘Don’t be resentful’, may be like the affirmation of a truth. (1980: 61e/1947)

Concern with such matters is also evident in some other reflections. In both the Tractatus (1978: 5.1362) and in a shorter version in the Notebooks (1979: 27.4.15) Wittgenstein said that ‘the freedom of the will consists in the fact that future events cannot be KNOWN now’. As we know from his conversations with Bouwsma (Coveos 2000: 111–14), Wittgenstein considered the problem of the freedom of will, of the possibility of doing otherwise or not, as too serious to be treated as a matter of theoretical speculation; he did not see any conflict between freedom, the experience of uncompelled volition and causation, and the fact that our actions are embedded within the causal nexus. In the Notebooks (8.7.16) he says: ‘As for what my will is, I do not know yet.’ And he appears almost a hard determinist in saying: Life is like a path along a mountain ridge; to left and right are slippery slopes down which you slide without being able to stop yourself, in one direction or the other. I keep seeing people slip like this and say ‘How could a man help himself in such a situation?’ And that is what ‘denying free will’ comes to. That is the attitude expressed in this ‘belief ’. But it is not a scientific belief and has nothing to do with scientific convictions. (1980: 63e/1947)

Both Epictetus and Wittgenstein are convinced, though not on a scientific or theoretical basis, that they can feel free in virtue of their

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will, even though there are things in the world that do not depend on them, that they cannot change and perhaps they do not wish to change. This attitude is beyond libertarianism and causal determinism, unless one means theological determinism, for both philosophers. Perhaps it is better to ascribe to them a sort of quietism taking peace of mind and tranquillity as the end of life aspired to by the man who is doing philosophy. It has been argued that concerning the will Wittgenstein was basically influenced by Schopenhauer and Spinoza, and that ‘it was no part of his intention to contribute anything to either [ethics as a branch of thought and ethics as a branch of philosophy] except a quietus’ (Diamond 2001: 1810). I do not know how much Wittgenstein knew of Stoicism, and I have dealt with his ethical reflection elsewhere (Dragona-Monachou 1995a: 153–80). So I shall not attempt here any interpretation of Wittgenstein’s stoicism and ethics taking sides in the controversy between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘conventional’ interpretation. All I have done is to take some passages of the Tractatus, some reflections in the Notebooks, and some marginal remarks collected in Culture and Value, in their ordinary sense, as belonging to a ‘branch of thought’, without entering into the labyrinth of Wittgenstein’s philosophical intentions and their various, sometimes too sophisticated and conflicting, interpretations, while by no means considering these meditations nonsensical and fake. In drawing the parallel between Wittgenstein and Epictetus in a paper on Epictetus’ view of freedom all I wanted to show is that it is difficult to label Epictetus as a hard or soft determinist, not even a libertarian, since, not being obliged by any actual contemporary criticism—as was the case with the Early Stoics—to clarify his position, he tried to find the true meaning of freedom by looking into himself, and let the world proceed. C O N C LU S I O N The problem of free-will as a strict philosophical problem was not faced by Epictetus. He felt free on account of his prohairesis as a moral person, and at the same time he trusted god for those things that were not under his control. If we think of freedom as entailing alternative possibilities, Epictetus was not a libertarian. If we take into consideration freedom as an ‘actual sequence’ notion, i.e., as the sort of freedom that according to some philosophers ‘need not require genuine alternative possibilities’,

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but issues in action or choice that ‘possess certain features’ (Fischer 2001: 585), we can regard him as a ‘reconciliationist’. If we also bear in mind views which consider indeterminism to be incompatible with freedom (Hobart 1966), or free will, taken as responsibility, to involve determinism (see Foot 1966), we realize that the relationship between freedom and causal determinism is too complicated to accommodate Epictetus’ thought easily. It all depends on how one understands the problem of free will. Epictetus’ view of freedom, moreover, irrespective of his view of his prohairesis and the eph’ h¯emin, is too multidimensional to allow a definite assessment apart from its consideration as inner psychological and moral freedom. What is certain is that his passion for freedom, whatever this might be, is indisputable. It is the passion of a former slave liberated primarily by philosophy. In any case, I fully endorse Long’s view on Epictetus’ sense of free will which is in agreement with Bobzien’s reading: It is virtually certain that Epictetus’ concept of a free will, far from requiring the will’s freedom from fate . . . presupposes people’s willingness to comply with their predestined allotment. The issue that concerns him is neither the will’s freedom from antecedent causation nor the attribution to persons of a completely open future and indeterminate power of choice. Rather, it is freedom from being constrained by . . . external contingencies, and . . . by the errors and passions consequential on believing that such contingencies must influence and inhibit one’s volition . . . Consequently the free will that Epictetus promulgates is not a universal psychological datum but an arduous project that is equivalent to mastery of Stoic philosophy. (Long 2002: 221).

9 Epictetus on Moral Perspectives Julia Annas

I Epictetus tells us to reflect on two kinds of consideration. Firstly, I should remember that I am a human being, whose proper function is to reason; to the extent that I do this, and so share in universal reason, I am a citizen of the universe, and as such should think in terms of the entire moral community of which I am a part, not privileging my own interests just because they are mine, nor my own commitments just because they are mine. Secondly, I should remember that I am embedded in various social contexts. I have various social roles and relationships, and these involve me in obligations and duties, which I should carry out. As a social being, I have, when I reflect on it, a connected web of obligations which I should fulfil to the best of my ability. In Discourses II.10 these two themes are developed at some length, and self-consciously put together: Examine who you are. In the first place, a man, that is, a being in whom there is nothing more sovereign than his power of choice . . . Furthermore, you are a citizen of the universe, and a part of it; and no subservient, but a principal part of it . . . What, then, is the calling of a citizen? To consider nothing in terms of personal advantage, never to deliberate on anything as though detached from the whole, but be like our hand or foot, which, if they had reason, and understood the constitution of nature, would never exercise any impulse or desire, except by reference to the whole . . . Remember, next, that you are a son; and what is a person’s calling (epangelia) in his character (pros¯opon) as a son? To regard everything that is his as his father’s; to obey him in all things; not to revile him to another . . .

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Next know likewise, that you are a brother. In this character also you must be deferent, obedient, restrained in your language, never claiming against your brother anything that lies outside the sphere of choice . . . If, furthermore, you are on the council of any city, you should remember that you are a councillor; if a youth, a youth; if an old man, an old man. For each of these names, if rightly considered, always points to the acts appropriate to it. But if you go and revile your brother, I tell you, ‘You have forgotten who you are, and what your name is.’¹

However, is there not a problem here? How does the second kind of thought—that you are a son, a brother, a town councillor—not come into at least potential conflict with the first kind? First you are directed to think of yourself as a human being who should see yourself as one rational being among others, and thus to go beyond your own individualistic perspective in order to think of yourself as simply one member of the community of rational beings, one part of the cosmic whole. Then you are directed to recollect your actual social roles. But it seems, at least, that to refrain from pursuing what is beneficial from your own point of view must at least sometimes conflict with being a good son, brother and town councillor. For your own individual point of view will typically be that of a person embedded in a particular context, whose benefit and harm are perceived as linked with those of various people to whom you are committed by close relationships. To think of yourself as a member of the community of reason will, it seems, at least sometimes imply abstracting from the embedded perspective from which you act as a son, brother and so on, and hence sometimes coming to conclusions which conflict with the obvious duties of sons, brother and town councillors. We may well respond to this with some form of the following. When I reflect as a citizen of the universe, this perspective, namely that I am just one rational being among others, also reveals to me that, since I am in fact embedded in a particular set of social circumstances, it is all right for me to reason from that perspective. If I try, in everyday life, to reason as a citizen of the universe, I will think of myself simply as ¹ The Discourses of Epictetus, translation by Robin Hard, with introduction and notes by Christopher Gill (London: Everyman, 1995). The passage mentions being a human being and then a citizen of the universe, both explicated on the same level by the same group of concepts; then we have five social roles (son, brother, town councillor, youth, old person) which mix natural and acquired roles as is frequently the case in Epictetus (see, for example, II.14.8).

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one rational being among others; and then how can I think as a good son, brother, town councillor and so on? If the perspective of the citizen of the universe is not to be hopelessly impractical, then, it must allow room for reasoning from within the circumstances of being a son, and brother and so on. This sounds at first like a good answer, since it shows how the theory can allow of your having both perspectives—the purely rational one and the socially embedded one—and yet be practical, rather than just presenting us with two perspectives and no obvious way of relating them. This way of thinking of the relation of the two perspectives is in fact rather familiar. Many ethical theories contain some version of the position that there are these two perspectives: the everyday, embedded one in which you recognize that you have specific obligations to family and colleagues, and one reached by reflection, a perspective from which you recognize that you should be impartial between the interests of you, your family, colleagues and so on, and the interests of others to whom you do not have these specific relationships. These two perspectives are, in the theory, recognized as distinct perspectives from which to reason about your life. Such ways of thinking have a drawback. The two viewpoints in question have to be seen as distinct sources of reasoning which cannot form part of a unified deliberation. They must be taken to function at different times, or in some other way at different levels. The general idea is that accepting the theory allows everyday moral thought to carry on, deliberating from a socially embedded perspective formed by particular social and cultural circumstances. Nonetheless, this reasoning operates under permission from a more abstract viewpoint, which is available to the person from time to time, perhaps ‘in a cool hour’ when she reflects. We do not have to go into the many problems that emerge to see that this is not the way to explicate Epictetus. We can see this just from general considerations about ancient moral theory. For this, in the ancient way of thinking about it, is practical; it is theory to live by. Indeed, moral theory comes in when we reflect on the way we are living already; a moral theory will typically figure in a person’s deliberations as an improved version of the way she originally deliberated. This mundane but powerful point rules out the idea that such a theory might direct us to two perspectives which together make unified deliberation problematic. More specifically, we can see that the idea is ruled out by the way in which the Stoics, following Plato, use skill as a metaphor—a metaphor

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so deeply entrenched as to have become a technical term—to describe progress towards the moral life. In trying to live a better life, you are exercising skill in working on raw materials. You are trying to make your life the product of unified understanding rather than a life which just trickles on uncritically, or is driven by occurrent desires, or run by the expectations of others. Moral knowledge is a kind of practical knowledge, with the structure of a skill or expertise. ‘[A]s the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.’² Hence it is ruled out that morality could involve two viewpoints which cannot unproblematically be combined in practical deliberation. We can see that the issue of the practicality of Stoic ethics is complex. It is not just that the theory can be applied in some way or other; rather, it must be a theory which is livable in a direct way, applied in a way which is the direct production of the agent’s unified practical reasoning. Revealingly, Epictetus suggests at one point that it would be better for Epicurus, from an Epicurean point of view, if people other than Epicureans thought Epicureanism false.³ Epicurus, he alleges, denies that humans are linked by any bond of natural sociability; but ‘—these are things that you should have told your fellow-Epicureans: but should you not have concealed these things from other men, persuading them most of all and above all other things, that we have been born with a natural sense of fellowship, and that self-control is a good thing—so that everything can be reserved for you?’ However, Epictetus says, nature forced Epicurus to put forward his ideas, to live by them and to try to convince everyone to live by them, even though the result is worse for Epicurus than if the theory were held only by a few Epicureans, with others not living by it. For Stoics it constitutes an argument against a theory that it might be esoteric or self-effacing. ² Discourses, I.15.2. Cf. II.5, III.21.4. ³ Discourses, II.20. I will not here go into the issue of how fair or unfair Epictetus is being here to Epicurus. In this section he wants to show that Epicureanism is self-defeating, in the same way as Academic Scepticism. Epicurus’ theory is allegedly self-defeating in that it would be better, from the point of view of Epicurean theory, if others thought the theory false, and so, for example, recognized the value of other-regarding activity (which Epicurean theory, according to Epictetus, cannot recognize). It is significant that Epictetus does not regard it as feasible to recognize and incorporate this point into the theory. A theory that cannot be openly presented and recommended as practicable by all is taken to be a washout as a theory.

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II Epictetus’ problem about the two perspectives is not one that arises just for him. We see it in other later Stoics who also explore the ways in which Stoicism can be applied to daily life. Both Seneca and Marcus Aurelius see the issue as one of our belonging to two communities. We belong to the community of rational beings, but there is also, according to Seneca, another community ‘in which we are enrolled by an accident of birth—I mean Athens or Carthage or some other city that belongs not to all men but only to a limited number.’⁴ Marcus in an equally famous passage says that ‘As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome; as a human being, it is the universe.’⁵ Both see it in terms of our having a dual citizenship, in our actual community and in that of rational beings. Epictetus is particularly interesting in this regard, however, for at least two reasons. One is that we find more detailed treatment of the issue in him than in other Stoics, and thus we can gain more insight into the way a Stoic would face the problem. Another arises from the point that our embedded perspective involves two kinds of commitment. One is what we might broadly call unchosen roles and the duties and commitments that they bring: being a child, or a sibling, gives you a perspective that is yours whatever else you want, and whatever the quality of your moral choices. The other involves your choices to some degree: the kind of marriage you choose to have, your choice of career, the place in your life you give to ambition, money and so on. (Of course there will be big divergences between different societies as to the role played by choice in actual social roles. In the ancient world marriages were arranged, careers strongly constrained by social factors, and so on.) All Stoics who deal with the issue concern themselves with both kinds of embeddedness, but it is in Epictetus that we find the most thorough and intense engagement with the unchosen kind, particular family relationships, and the feelings of attachment which normally go with these. And these are particularly interesting in this case, because they present what looks like the most stubborn resistance to the idea that you can think about ⁴ Seneca, On the Private Life 4; from the translation by John Cooper and John Procopé, Seneca, Moral and Political Essays (Cambridge 1995). ⁵ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI.44; from the translation by Robin Hard, with introduction and notes by Christopher Gill (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1995); cf. III. 5, V.31. Although I shall not deal with it in this paper, Panaetius’ theory of our four personae has links with this issue.

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your life from the universal perspective of a citizen of the universe. With relationships and commitments that involve choice, you can choose whether to embark on them in the first place, or choose to fulfil moral rather than immoral commitments. But whether you, and indeed, he, are good or bad, your father stays your father, and you have duties to him that you have to no other person.⁶

III When you start thinking as a Stoic, you already, as we say, have a life. Typically, you have a family, a job, a set of commitments and relationships, some unchosen, some chosen. Starting from here, you try to acquire, and think in terms of, Stoic theory. Epictetus has his wellknown three-stage strategy for enabling you to do this.⁷ Stoic principles are very demanding; but they are applied to, and to be followed in, your everyday life. When you become a Stoic, you don’t cease to think and act as a son, brother, town councillor; rather, you now do your best to be a Stoic son, brother, town councillor. How does the perspective of universal reason enter into your mundane life as a son, brother and so on? It does so, I suggest, as an ideal that you aspire to live up to as you live your life. You live your life, necessarily, from a variety of embedded perspectives, in a way informed by various traditions and ideals. Epictetus encourages us to act within our roles in a way aspiring to Stoic ideals and guided by principles which in the fully virtuous person lead to the perspective of the ‘citizen of the universe’. It is clear, on the one hand, that merely fulfilling the obligations we have as a result of our existing roles and relationships will not do, even if the very ‘name’ of son or brother points us in the direction of what we should do.⁸ One reason here is that the traditional socially defined obligations that come with these roles might be morally inadequate, ⁶ Cf. Handbook 30. ⁷ Firstly you examine your desires and aversions, to weed out the bad and encourage the good. Secondly, you scrutinize your impulses to act, checking their appropriateness. Thirdly, you concern yourself with your assents to what you should do, scrutinizing your ethical beliefs for consistency and mutual support. See Discourses, III.2.1–5; cf. I.4.11; II.17.14–18; III.12. The second stage can be introduced in the context of social duties—cf. III.2.4. ⁸ One way of thinking of the improvement brought by aiming at a Stoic ideal is to see it as our being guided to true understanding of what the ‘names’ for our various social roles actually require of rational, and hence ethical, individuals.

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particularly in the case of unchosen roles like family roles. Epictetus, however, retains and even emphasizes the traditional deference demanded in his society of sons and brothers. What he takes to be the most important thought is that these obligations are recognized because of family and community feelings which are natural to us. Epictetus is keen to stress that, even though we are in fact naturally social animals, these feelings alone will never give the right kind of support for our relationships. He examines this point in his essay on friendship (II.22; cf. IV.5). Do you not often see little dogs fawning on one another and playing with one another, so that you exclaim, ‘Nothing could be more friendly’? But, to see what this friendship is, throw a bit of meat between them, and then you will know. And if you likewise throw a bit of land between yourself and your son, you will see that he will quickly wish you dead and buried, and you him . . . Throw a pretty girl between them, and the old fellow and the young one will both fall in love with her; or a bit of glory . . . At present, therefore, when you see friends or brothers who seem to be of a single mind, do not immediately pronounce upon their friendship, even if they swear to it, and even if they say that it is impossible for them to be apart from one another.’ Admetus’ father loved him, but he wouldn’t die for him; Oedipus’ sons were brought up together, but they killed each other over the kingdom [cf. Handbook 31]; Eriphyle was mother to Amphiaraus’ children, but she betrayed him to death for a necklace.

As long as you are not committed to living virtuously, natural affection cannot be guaranteed even to keep you from the worst betrayals of family and friends. It can also be weak and sentimental, as with the father in I.11 who loves his baby daughter but cannot bear to be there when she is dangerously ill. And length of time does not make it more reliable, as the above examples show. But, most fundamentally, our natural concern for others can never win against natural concern for ourselves. No amount of natural love for family or friends can get you to do something which is against what Epictetus here calls your ‘advantage’. So, if it is fame and fortune that you think is in your best interests, there will always be the possibility of your pursuit of fame and fortune leading you to disadvantage, or even betray, your nearest and dearest. Or at least you may waver in performing your duties when your cooperation is not reciprocated.⁹ Only a commitment to virtue can put your relations with others on the right basis, one in which they can be sure that you will not ⁹ The latter sort of case is considered at Discourses, I.15, III.21.4–6, Handbook 30.

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sacrifice them or their interests to some non-virtuous aim of your own. As Epictetus puts it here, only if what you see as being in your interest is virtue, the only thing which is truly good, will your pursuit of your own good never bring you into competition with others. My attempt to become virtuous does not compete with yours, and so the ties of natural affection will never be strained, because I will never want to achieve anything at your expense. Epictetus says that if you hear of people that they: sincerely believe that the good lies where choice does, and where impressions are correctly used, no longer take the trouble to enquire if they are father and son, or brothers, or companions who have associated with one another for a considerable time, but even if this is the only thing that you know about them, confidently declare that they are friends, and likewise, faithful and just. For where else can friendship be found than where there is fidelity and modesty, and a respect for what is honourable, and for nothing besides?¹⁰

The subject of this discourse is friendship, but what Epictetus says covers a wide range of social obligations. We cannot rely on natural feelings of love even to keep the peace between brothers; how much less can we rely on family feeling to keep the elderly cared for, or parents to treat their children fairly. Only the virtuous person can be relied on to do what is right, and this will not be at the expense of others. Although this thought is developed mainly with unchosen commitments in mind, we can see how it applies even more directly to those involving some element of choice. We certainly cannot rely on community feeling to keep town councillors honest and impartial. It is only the virtuous person who will undertake office, for example, in such a way as to act rightly rather than in his own, or some sectional, interest. It is also important, however, that there are right and wrong ways of going about making the good your aim. In III.3 Epictetus is saying that no one will resist a clear impression of the good, and hence the good is judged superior to any relationship (oikeiotes). My father is nothing to me, only the good.—Are you so hard-hearted?—Such is my nature, and such is the coin which god has given me. If therefore, the good is different from the noble and just, off go father and brother and country, and everything else of that kind. What! Shall I overlook my own good that I may have yours, and make way to you? Why should I? ‘I am your father.’ But not my good. ‘I am your brother.’ But not my good. ¹⁰ Cf. Discourses, III.24.58–61.

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Some modern theories, of course, think this an admirable attitude; they hold that the moral perspective consists precisely in this, that you can detach yourself from your actual socially embedded concerns and achieve a perspective which is impartial as regards them. But Epictetus thinks this a mistake. He continues: But, if we place the good in right choice, then the preservation of such relationships does in itself become a good, and, furthermore, he who yields up some of his external possessions attains the good. ‘My father is taking my money away.’ But he is causing you no harm. ‘My brother will get the greater part of the land.’ Let him have as much as he likes. Would he be taking any of your modesty from you, your fidelity, your sense of brotherly love?

We have to be careful here with the examples. Epictetus is not simply thinking of personal relationships as being on a level with external goods like money and land, though his expressions may at times suggest this.¹¹ The examples may also suggest that what is primarily at stake is the agent’s choice between money or land on the one hand, and virtue on the other. The point, however, is broader than this, as emerges from Epictetus’ work overall, in, for example, the frequent focus on public officials, whose everyday duties surely do not consist primarily of deciding whether to take advantage of the people they deal with. Virtue is not an aim to be gained in competition with your other aims; it is an overall aim to be achieved in and by the way you deal with your other aims. The cases where virtue is to be exercised in ways that lead to loss of money or other material advantages are merely the most dramatic examples of this. The point is that, given that our aim as Stoics is to achieve the good by becoming virtuous, this is to be found not in running away from our commitments, or by abstracting from our socially embedded roles and relationships. Rather, we seek the good from within those relationships, in a way best captured by what can be called aspiring to the Stoic ideal in our everyday life. Stoicism is marked by internal aspiration: you aspire to be virtuous in the way you live your everyday life, not in trying to forget about your everyday life and its mundane duties. Epictetus juxtaposes our character or role as a human being with our characters or roles as son, brother or town councillor because everyone’s life will involve being in some such embedded perspective, and, if they try to live better lives, especially if they do so as Stoics, what they will be ¹¹ Cf. Reydams-Schils (2002).

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doing is aspiring to live their embedded lives well, to be a Stoic son, brother or town councillor. It is a mistake to try to achieve the good by standing aside from your relationships and commitments and trying to become virtuous in a way that abstracts from them. Rather, these are the material you have to work on as you try to get nearer to virtue. Your job, family, everyday relationships have to be taken as the material on which to exercise the expertise that virtue is so often represented as being. You already have a life, and much of that is unchosen by you; it is up to you to make that life a good life, one formed by virtuous reasoning, or one which, in other terms, you live in a way that aspires to the Stoic universal ideal. ‘If . . . I am where my choice is, then only shall I be a friend, a son, or a father, such as I ought.’¹²

IV It can be objected to this project, and frequently has been, that living by Stoic ideals just comes down to altering your attitude to the circumstances of your life, and this seems self-protective and evasive. This is an objection which has been aimed particularly at Epictetus, because of the emphasis he puts on the difference between what is up to us and what is not, but it applies, if it applies at all, to Stoicism in any form. Surely, the objection goes, internal aspiration to an ideal, seeking to be virtuous from within your embedded perspective, is going to turn out inadequate as a moral ideal? For it is an attempt to make your life a good life; and surely this abdicates moral philosophy’s task of making life better for others as well as yourself? How can you do this by aiming at ideals from within your socially embedded points of view? Surely you are not really aiming at a moral ideal unless you do regard your present commitments as disposable, commitments that you should abstract from in order to reach the moral ideal, and commitments that can be changed so as to conform better to the ideal? Stoicism holds that we have a natural concern for others; moral development does not erase or minimize this, but rather transforms it, eventually extending it to all rational beings regardless of their actual relations with us. So in the life of a Stoic concern for others will almost certainly play a larger role than in that of a non-Stoic, and will have a ¹² Discourses, II.22.20.

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broader range. For a Stoic’s concerns will not be limited by the typically selfish and self-centred aims that people have who do not even try to be virtuous. It will not, however (and this is emphasized in the Stoic authors that we read), insist on dumping particular commitments for broader concerns, or always make a priority of reforming practices and changing institutions to make them conform directly to the theory. Rather, the Stoic will do what she can to do right by others and improve their circumstances within the range of options open to her in her life. Marcus Aurelius tells himself: You should not hope for Plato’s ideal state, but be satisfied to make even the smallest advance, and regard the outcome as nothing contemptible. For who can change the convictions of others? And without that change of conviction, what else is there than the slavery of men who grumble away while making a show of obedience? . . . The work of philosophy is simple and modest; do not seduce me into vain ostentation.¹³

Modern critics often object that Marcus did not use the imperial power to abolish slavery, make the empire more economically equitable and the like. Such ideas, however, are grossly unrealistic. For any emperor to try to abolish slavery would have been ‘Plato’s state’ indeed, something as impracticable as one political leader today trying to abolish third-world poverty.¹⁴ Perhaps Marcus could have done more than he did,¹⁵ but it is odd to criticize him for not adopting a quixotic aim. Moreover, this kind of criticism ignores the point that a Stoic can improve others only by getting them to think in a Stoic way, and this is, again, not something that can realistically be done just by imposing large political changes on them. Changing minds—or rather, encouraging minds to change themselves—is slower, but in the end the only source of genuine improvement. It sounds particularly odd to criticize Epictetus, who was a poor, personally powerless exile, and an ex-slave, for aspiring to live a Stoic life rather than put pressure on others to produce Stoic-approved results. But he did, after all, have a school attended by rich pupils who were going to be men of power and influence. Yet in the Discourses ¹³ Meditations IX.29. ¹⁴ Which is not to say that political leaders can make no impact on third-world poverty; precisely by doing what they realistically can do, they can (if there is the political will) make a great difference. The perspective of internal aspiration to a universalist ideal is a more realistic perspective for actually doing good for others than a perspective which regards all actual commitments as disposable in the interests of an impracticable ideal. ¹⁵ See Brunt (1998).

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we never find him trying to get his pupils directly to change public policy in a Stoic direction, or even to move beyond their social roles to help the more disadvantaged. There is a striking contrast with, for example, T. H. Green, who did use his teaching position at Oxford, in which he revived a type of eudaimonist theory, both to steer his privileged pupils towards more socially inclusive policies in future public life, and to get them to spend their summers doing volunteer work in the slums of London. But the difference here is surely brought about by the existence of different social possibilities. Large-scale social changes could realistically be envisioned in nineteenthcentury England which in Epictetus’ society would merely have been a romantic fantasy. For a Stoic in Epictetus’ position, trying directly to make the world conform to Stoic theory is unrealistic to the point of delusion—‘Plato’s state’ as Marcus sarcastically puts it. Epictetus himself makes a similar point drily in IV.6, where he addresses someone trying to be a Stoic who is annoyed at being pitied for worldly losses. Is he, asks Epictetus, going to convince the world that nothing external matters, and that the poor and powerless can be happy? [But it] is impracticable, as well as tedious, to undertake the very thing that Zeus himself could not do: to convince all mankind what things are good and what are evil. For has this been granted to you? Surely not. This alone has been granted to you, to convince yourself, and you have not yet done that. And yet you are now attempting to convince everyone else?

For Epictetus, one of the things that Stoicism teaches us is a sense of our own limitations, and the limitations that our circumstances put on us and our ability to change things. Our aspiration to virtue develops within the social roles that we have and that we cannot romantically think away. In the modern world those limitations are rather different, and so are the kinds of social change that we can realistically think of bringing about, or at least participating in bringing about. Organized ways of bringing about social change are available which were not realistic possibilities in the ancient world, and thus the limitations we have to bear in mind when trying to improve the lot of others are very different from those that Epictetus thinks of. When each of us today thinks of the life we have, we are likely to find more of it chosen, or involving elements of choice, than was true for Epictetus. And possibilities for guided social change are far larger than any that he could envisage.

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Nonetheless, we would be wrong to think of Epictetus’ own message as a conservative or quietistic one when he tells us to aim at becoming Stoics by and in being good children and good siblings. Nor, in spite of the increased role of choice in our everyday lives, have we ceased to be children, or siblings; some of the most important commitments in our lives are still unchosen. Abandoning your family responsibilities in favour of doing good to a greater number of people may well be (and in Epictetus’ time almost certainly was) romantic self-importance. Stoicism makes a hard demand, possibly harder than the demand to dispose of your social commitments for wider concerns—the demand that you live the ideal in your mundane, ordinary life, and make a difference there by the way you live it. At a banquet, do not say how people ought to eat, but eat as one ought . . . Sheep do not bring their fodder to the shepherds to show how much they have eaten, but digest their food internally, and produce wool and milk externally.¹⁶ Those who have settled this as being the philosopher’s work have it in their power never to be disappointed in their desire, or fall into what they want to avoid; but to lead personal lives free from sorrow, fear and perturbation, and preserve in society all the natural and acquired relationships of a son, a father, a brother, a citizen, a husband, a wife, a neighbour, a fellow-traveller, a ruler or a subject.¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁶ Handbook 46. ¹⁷ Discourses, II.14.8. Cf. I.15, III.13.21–3. Epictetus here distinguishes the natural from the acquired (epithetoi) relationships, but there is no suggestion that there is a large ethical difference between them. ¹⁸ I am grateful to the participants at the Larnaca conference, especially Michael Frede and John Cooper, for very useful discussion, and to Dory Scaltsas and the Municipality of Larnaca for arranging such a congenial and intellectually stimulating gathering.

10 A Notion of a Person in Epictetus Michael Frede

Epictetus uses the word ‘pros¯opon’ remarkably often, some eighteen times in what remains of his ‘Dissertations’; ‘pros¯opon’ is the word which in Latin was translated as ‘persona’, and both words, ‘pros¯opon’ and ‘persona’, from a certain point onwards came to be used also in the sense of ‘person’. Epictetus uses the word ‘pros¯opon’ not just remarkably often, but also in quite a number of different, though related ways. What is of interest, if one is interested in the notion of a person and its origin and history, are two of the ways he uses the word, namely in some sense or other of ‘person’. He does not use the word in the way we usually use the word ‘person’, either in ordinary discourse or in philosophy. In ordinary discourse we say such things as ‘The person I talked to on the telephone told me that the office is closed in the afternoon’ or ‘Only seven persons attended the meeting.’ I will call the notion of a person involved in this use of the word the ‘ordinary’ notion of a person. But, when in modern philosophy at least from Locke onwards and down to the present day one talks of persons, one is, as a rule, appealing to a certain reflective understanding of how one should think about human beings, namely not just as things or objects, to be studied by natural science, but as moral beings, to be studied by moral science. Locke, for instance, in this context defined a person as ‘a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it’ (Essay, II.27.11). Clearly this is not our ordinary notion of a person. But what our ordinary use and the philosophical use of the word have in common, is that a person in either use is always that same person. You now, and as long as you live, are the same person as the person you

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were when you were born. I will call this an absolute use of the word ‘person’. Epictetus, then, does not use the word ‘pros¯opon’ either in our ordinary or in a modern philosophical sense of the word ‘person’. But he does use it both in the sense of ‘the sort of person somebody is’ (cf. II.10.7; 8) and in the sense of ‘the person somebody is’ (cf. I.2, title; 7; 14; 28; 30; IV.3.3). What I am interested in is the notion of a person involved in his talk of ‘the person one is’. In order to understand this, though, we need to do quite a bit of preliminary work. Hence, before I proceed to discuss Epictetus’ notion, I should perhaps give some provisional explanation of what Epictetus seems to have in mind, when he talks about the person one is. The title of Diss. I.2 is ‘How one always might preserve accord with the person one is’.¹ The point Epictetus wants to make is this. People, in what they are doing, in thinking about what they ought to do, should always keep in mind who they are, the person they are, to make sure that what they do fits them, accords with the person they are. To be able to do this one has to know oneself, and one has to practise taking oneself into account in doing what one does. People, though, often are oblivious to themselves, to who they are, to their own person (I.2.14). For instance, if you are a father, being a father is part of the person you are. But fathers often, in what they are doing, do not think of, do not take into account, the fact that they have children and that the children might be affected by what they are doing. Hence what they are doing might not be in accord with the person they are. Similarly somebody might try to be a mathematician, to do mathematics, oblivious to the fact that he lacks the necessary natural talent for this, that he is not that sort of person to do mathematics, namely somebody with a natural talent for mathematics. Epictetus offers several examples of men who knew how to preserve accord with the person one is. One of them is Helvidius Priscus, a Roman senator, known to us independently for his Stoicism and his republican leanings (I.2.19–21). The Emperor Vespasian tells him not to attend the meeting at which the emperor wants to address the senate. Helvidius Priscus responds that Vespasian can have him struck from the rolls of the senate, but, that as long as he is a senator, he has to attend its meetings. Vespasian’s response is that in case he insists on attending he at least should not speak up at the meeting; otherwise he will have ¹ p¯os an tis s¯ozoi to kata pros¯opon en panti. I will try to justify this translation later.

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Helvidius Priscus killed. As a matter of historical fact Helvidius Priscus did get murdered. But to the emperor he responds that as a senator he has to say what he thinks, if he comes to the meeting. So Helvidius Priscus faces a stark choice. He has a choice between continuing to live peacefully in Rome and suffering exile or even death. Put in these terms, the choice is obvious; other things being equal, any reasonable person will prefer a peaceful life at home to exile or death. But to look at the matter in these terms is to fail to take oneself, the person one is, into account. Helvidius Priscus does take into account the person he is, and being a Roman senator is seen by him and by Epictetus as an important part of the person he is. This is why he is going to go to the meeting and speak his mind, even if this means exile or death. It is emphasized that the situation would be quite different, if the emperor had him struck from the rolls of the senate (I. 2.19). Then he no longer would be a senator and hence no longer the person he had been. And it would no longer be appropriate for him to go to the meeting, let alone to speak in the senate. It thus clearly is a mistake when some² translate the title of our text as ‘How may a man preserve his proper character upon every occasion?’ What is at issue here is not Helvidius Priscus’ character, though of course it is true that he is serious about being a Roman senator, and quite generally about the person he is, and not moved by threats of exile or death. But what is at issue here is the person Helvidius Priscus is insofar as he, among other things, is a Roman senator. The reason why he ought to go to the meeting, and thinks he ought to go, is that he is a Roman senator. Even if he were moved by the emperor’s threats, it still would be the case that, being a Roman senator, he ought to go. If he in fact does go, it is, of course, because he is not oblivious to the person he is, but these are two different matters. For the same reason a translation like J. Souilhé’s³ is inadequate; ‘Comment on peut toujours sauvegarder sa dignité personnelle.’ It is not the case that Helvidius Priscus thinks that he ought to go to the meeting and goes to the meeting, because in this way he maintains his personal dignity. He thinks that he ought to go to the meeting and goes to the meeting, because this is what is in accord with being a Roman senator and thus the person he is. This, in any case, is how Epictetus presents the matter. ² For instance, W. A. Oldfather in his Loeb edition of Epictetus; cf. R. Dobbin in his translation of Epictetus, Discourses Book I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). ³ In the Budé edition of Epictetus.

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Now we, too, talk of the person somebody is, or—for that matter—of the sort of person somebody is. We say, for example, ‘Given the person he is, Peter would never do such a thing.’ What we may have in mind in saying this might be the following: we know Peter to be absolutely reliable and trustworthy; he does not break promises; he is that sort of person. Hence we say ‘Given the person he is, he would not fail to do what he promised.’ Epictetus’ use of the word ‘pros¯opon’ in the sense of ‘the person somebody is’ and our use of this phrase have something in common, but also importantly differ. They have in common: (i) That being a certain sort of person is part of being the person one is. This is how the person I am and the person you are will differ. You, for instance, have a natural talent for mathematics and hence are this sort of person, whereas I have absolutely no talent for mathematics and hence am that sort of person. (ii) Both our use of the phrase ‘the person one is’ and Epictetus’ use of the word ‘pros¯opon’ in this sense differ from the way we generally use the word ‘person’. As I have already indicated, a person, both in the ordinary and in the reflective, philosophical sense we are familiar with, is something such that it always is the same person. But this does not hold for Epictetus’ use. As we just saw, Helvidius Priscus, if he were struck from the rolls of the senate, would no longer be the same person, but a different person. And the same holds for our use of ‘the person somebody is’. People change. Peter was not born as somebody who is absolutely reliable and trustworthy, keeping his promises. He only became like this, as he grew up. So he had been a different person before. And, for one reason or another, Peter may change again and become unreliable and untrustworthy. Thus we say such things as ‘he no longer is the person he used to be’ or ‘he has become a completely different person’. In this way of talking it is not the person a certain human being is, but the human being which has changed and thus has become a different person. This much the two uses have in common. But there also is a significant difference. When we talk of the person, or the sort of person, somebody is, we mainly think of the character or the personality-traits of somebody. This certainly is not what Epictetus primarily is thinking of. This is why I earlier was objecting to the translation of ‘pros¯opon’ in the title of I.2 as ‘character’. When Helvidius Priscus no longer is a senator, he is a different person, but his character will not have changed one iota. The sorts of person the individuals are which Epictetus holds

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up as examples in I.2 are a Roman senator mindful of his being a senator (12–18), another Roman senator (19–24), an athlete, more precisely a man who had won in the Olympic games (25–6), and a philosopher (29), that is individuals not sorted according to their character or personality-traits. In the rest of the Dissertationes sorts of person Epictetus mentions as such are a son (II.10.7) and a brother (II.10.8)⁴ and by implication a city-councillor, a young man, an old man and a father (II.10.10). Obviously being a beggar is being a sort of person. All these have nothing to do with personal character. It would rather seem that for Epictetus the person one is crucially also has something to do with one’s social role or status. In any case, there is this striking difference between our notion of the sort of person somebody is and Epictetus’ notion. We now have given a rough characterization of Epictetus’ notion of the person one is, in part by distinguishing one way in which he uses the word ‘pros¯opon’ from various ways in which we use the word ‘person’. Epictetus assumes that each of us is a person in the sense that one is the person one is. The person one is is something complex. One is the person one is by being this sort of person, that sort of person, any number of sorts of person, a mother, a sister, a councillor, a teacher or a philosopher. Each sort of person you are is relevant for how you live your life, as long as you are that sort of person. For in doing what you are doing you should take into account, where relevant, that you are that sort of person. For, if you do not take that into account, you let yourself down, do not take yourself seriously, and undermine yourself, perhaps for some superficial gain which is not balanced by the loss you suffer as a person. As Epictetus says repeatedly, for instance also in I.2 (11), you who know yourself should know how much you are worth to yourself and for how much you are willing to sell yourself. This is a very rough characterization of Epictetus’ notion. To understand the notion better and to get a sense of its complexity, it greatly helps to see it in historical context. It is an obvious fact, but one little attention has been paid to, that down to the end of the fourth century  nobody in extant Greek literature talks of human beings as ‘persons’. Neither Plato nor Aristotle in their voluminous works ever speak of human beings as ‘persons’ in any sense of the word, let alone in our ordinary or our philosophical sense of the word. The first time we clearly and unambiguously find something like the absolute, reflective ⁴ For the use of ‘pros¯opon’ and ‘persona’ in the sense of ‘sort of person’ see below.

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use of the word with which we are familiar from modern philosophy is in Boethius.⁵ In Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, ch. 3, Boethius defines a person as ‘an individual substance of such a nature as to be rational’. I doubt that this is Boethius’ invention. Yet we do not find this kind of notion of a person in earlier texts. We also find what looks like our ordinary use of the word ‘person’, but such use is rather late and quite rare. What we do find from the third century  onwards is that the Greek word ‘pros¯opon’ and then later the Latin word ‘persona’ come to be used in the sense of ‘sort of person’. Now I should note that very little literature, in fact hardly any philosophical literature, is left from the crucial period in which the various notions of a person evolved. We are fortunate, though, in that a large number of Cicero’s and Seneca’s works have survived. Both use the word ‘persona’ strikingly often. And since both draw on, or are heavily influenced by, Greek sources, also in their use of the word ‘persona’,⁶ there is just about enough material to try to reconstruct how we ever came to talk and think about human beings as persons. The way to begin, perhaps, is to look a bit more closely at the semantic development of the Greek word ‘pros¯opon’ and the Latin word ‘persona’ quite generally. ‘Pros¯opon’ originally means ‘face’, more precisely the face as you offer it to the sight of somebody who looks at you (cf. the formation of the German word ‘Antlitz’). It, on the basis of this, develops a number of secondary meanings, like ‘mien’ or ‘countenance’, but also ‘front’ or ‘fac¸ade’, ‘the part of something facing something else’. But the most important of these secondary meanings is that of ‘mask’, the mask worn by actors in a drama representing the characteristic features and mien of the character played. From this secondary meaning a series of further meanings evolved. The word came to refer to the figures or characters in a drama, that is to the dramatis personae, played by actors with the appropriate masks and costumes, the figure of King Oedipus, or the Persian King, or a guard, a nurse, a herald, a servant or slave, a paedagogue, or the figure of Socrates, as in Aristophanes’ Clouds. From there the use of the word naturally was extended to a ⁵ I am perfectly aware of the theological use of the word, in particular in Latin theology since Tertullian. But this is a complicated subject on which I have detailed views of my own which I cannot go into here. But given the way the word is used in Greek theology, for instance in John of Damascus, I doubt that the original theological use is the reflective philosophical use we find in Boethius; though Boethius’ treatise is theological, it tries to clarify theological questions in terms of philosophical concepts. ⁶ This is obvious at least in the case of Cicero, for instance from his De Officiis.

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figure or character as presented in any kind of account. Thus one can talk of the figure of Odysseus (pros¯opon) in Homer (Polybius, 12.27.10) or the figure of Pericles in Thucydides. The crucial step was to extend the use of the word to the role a real human being plays in real life or to the person or the sort of person somebody is, for instance ‘the person of King Eumenes’ (Polyb., 27.7.4) or ‘the person of a beggar’ (Teles, VI.52.3 Hense). Finally it came to mean ‘person’ in something like the ordinary sense, if not in the ordinary sense. Latin ‘persona’, perhaps from its very origins, meant ‘mask’, for instance a ritual mask, but then also the mask of an actor. And from there its semantic evolution ran parallel to that of the Greek word. It, too, finally came to be used to refer to persons in the ordinary sense or something like it. The parallelism for the most part seems to me to be due to the influence of Greek on Latin and in particular the fact that ‘persona’ was used to translate ‘pros¯opon’. It is sometimes suggested, though, that Latin had an influence on Greek which may explain why ‘pros¯opon’ from some point onwards came to mean ‘person’ in the ordinary sense. In the second century  Gaius in his Institutiones expounds Roman civil law under three headings, ‘persons’, ‘things’ and ‘actions’. It is clear that the distinction between ‘persons’ and ‘things’ goes back much further in Roman law. And it is often assumed that ‘personae’ in the context of Roman law just means ‘persons’ in the ordinary sense. F. de Zulueta, for instance, in his commentary on Gaius (page 23) says ‘Persona . . . to Gaius . . . meant simply ‘‘human being’’.’ Thus one might think that it was under the influence of Roman law that ‘pros¯opon’ came to mean ‘person’ in the ordinary sense. But this is wrong. To begin with, ‘person’ is never, even nowadays in its ordinary use, just another word for ‘human being’. Moreover, if one looks at Gaius’ Law of Persons, what he is actually discussing are the various status of human beings under Roman law and what the conditions for change of status are. So personae are sorts of persons, that is human beings as they are sorted into different categories for the purposes of Roman law. At this point I may note, quite generally, that, our dictionaries notwithstanding, ‘pros¯opon’ or ‘persona’ very rarely means ‘person’ in the ordinary sense. But one can easily see how the mistake arises. In fact I believe that the ordinary use evolved from the use of the sense of ‘sort of person’. Seneca (Ep. Mor. 18.15) says ‘in omnes personas hic exardescit affectus’. He is talking about rage. We might think that he is saying that people are prone to go into a fit against anybody, against any person. But the context shows that what Seneca means is that people get

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into a rage against any sort of person. Seneca quotes Epicurus as saying ‘Unbridled anger makes one crazy’. And he tells Lucilius, the addressee of the letter, that he should know how true this is. For Lucilius has had slaves and enemies. But, the point is, rage is directed not just against slaves and enemies, but against any sort of person. So a slave is a sort of person, and so is an enemy. But one can get enraged about any sort of person. Similarly Seneca in Ep. Mor. 94.1 talks about a part of moral philosophy which tries to formulate precepts, not for man in general (‘in universum . . . hominem’), but ‘propria cuique personae’. Again, it becomes clear from the context that this must mean, not precepts ‘specific for each person’, but ‘appropriate for each sort of person’. For he goes on to talk about precepts for people who are husbands or fathers, or masters of slaves. If, with this in mind, we check other passages in which ‘pros¯opon’ and ‘persona’ are used for human beings, it turns out that it is hardly ever used in the ordinary sense of ‘person’, but usually in the sense of ‘sort of person’. But however this may be, it should be clear, given the original use of both words, ‘pros¯opon’ and ‘persona’, that the word ‘person’, in some sense or other of ‘person’, is borrowed from the theatre, that its use for actual human beings is a metaphorical use. The question to ask, then, is what exactly the metaphor is supposed to be. This is difficult to answer, since there is so little evidence to go by. But it is crucially important for our purposes to have a clear view about this. At first one might assume that we are supposed to think of ourselves in real life as the dramatis personae of a large drama. Yet the little evidence we have unambiguously points in a somewhat different direction. The idea rather seems to be this. We are like actors (rather than the dramatis personae) in a drama. Actors have been given a certain dramatic part or role to play, and what matters is not the role they have been given, but that they play it well. Similarly we in real life have acquired a certain role to play, and what matters is not the role we have acquired, but that we play it well. It is clear from a number of passages that this is how Epictetus thinks of the metaphor (cf. e.g. Diss. I.29.45; frg. XI). I will just quote from the Encheiridion (17): Remember that you are an actor in a drama. It is the teacher who gives you whichever role he wants to give you . . . whether he wants you to play a beggar, so that you also play a beggar well, or a lame man, or a ruler, or somebody without office. It is your part to act the given role well. To choose your role is somebody else’s matter.

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This view goes back to the beginnings of Stoicism, that is to about the time when the word ‘pros¯opon’ first appears to have been used also in the sense of ‘person’. For we are told (Diogenes Laertius, VII.160) that Aristo of Chios, a student of Zeno, earlier in the third century , said that a wise human being is like a good actor who plays his part equally well whether he plays the role (pros¯opon) of Thersites or that of Agamemnon. We find the same view in Teles (dated to the third century  and classified as a Cynic). According to an epitome of his work he is supposed to have said in his ‘On Circumstances’: ‘Fortune (tuch¯e) is like a poet. She creates persons (pros¯opa) of many kinds, that of a ship-wrecked man or that of a beggar, a fugitive, a man of high repute or of no repute.’ He went on to explain that a good human being had to be able to play any role well which Fortune imposed on him, be it that of a rich man or of somebody who had become poor (p. 52, 2–5 Hense). Similarly, in ‘On Self-sufficiency’, Teles explained that just as a good actor has to play any role well which the playwright gives him, so also the virtuous man has to play well the role which Fortune gives him. But then Teles went on to refer to Bion of Borystheneia (earlier in third century ) who had said that Fortune like a poet sometimes gives one the role of the protagonist, say that of a king, sometimes that of a minor character, say that of a vagabond. If one has a minor role, one should not want to have the role of the protagonist. For one will do things which are not fitting. Some people are good at ruling, others at being ruled (p. 5, 2–6, Hense, 2nd edn, Bion F16A Kindstrand). Bion seems to have talked about persons, for an anecdote about him in Diogenes Laertius (IV.46, Bion F1A Kindstrand) involves a complex play on the ambiguity of the word ‘pros¯opon’. These testimonies take us back to the time when the word ‘pros¯opon’ first came to be used in some sense of ‘person’, namely the sense of ‘the sort of person one is’. They strongly suggest that the comparison made by the metaphor is that between human beings and the role or roles they have in real life, on the one hand, and actors on the stage and the dramatic parts they play in a drama. And the point of the comparison clearly is this. In the theatre what matters, as far as the actors are concerned, is not the role they play, but whether they play it well. One is not a good actor by playing the role of the king, as opposed to that of the servant, but by being able to play the role of the king, or—for that matter—any role one is given, well. Similarly in life what matters is not the role or status one has, say that of a king rather than that of a beggar, but whether one plays whatever role one has well. To think otherwise,

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Epictetus says (I.29.41), would be like an actor’s thinking that he is his mask, his cothurn, his costume. A good or wise person is one who will play any role he is given well. Thus the way the notion of a person seems to enter philosophy is as the notion of the sort of person one is by playing a certain role in life. It is a normative notion. It is part of the very notion that the role you play in life as such does not matter. It thus makes the worthiness of human beings independent of the role they play in life. But it also is part of the notion that whatever role you play carries with it certain demands. And we judge you, not by your role, but by whether you live up to the demands of your role. It is time to say something about the roles we are supposed to play in real life, that is to say the roles with reference to which we are this or that sort of person. We have already seen from the examples that the way human beings are sorted or categorized is largely according to their social role and status. This is what we should expect from members of an ancient society. Somebody who lives in antiquity is naturally going to sort the people living in one’s society, at least in the first instance, according to the role they have in this society, that is according to social roles. One is going to distinguish between slaves and free persons, between relatives and non-relatives, and among relatives different kinds of relative. One will distinguish between friends and those who are not friends. One will distinguish between rulers and ruled, and among the former different kinds of office-holders. One will divide people into rich and poor, into young and old, and so forth. Moreover ancient society attaches to each of these roles quite elaborate expectations and norms, expectations concerning dress, the way you wear your hair, posture, language, what one can say and what not, and, in particular, what it is appropriate for one to do or not to do. What is fitting and appropriate for men is different from what is fitting for women. What is fitting for slaves is not what is fitting for free citizens. One thing is fitting for young people, another for the elderly. You never contradict your father, you do not beat him, and you would not take him to court. Behaviour is highly regimented according to roles. Popular judgement as to the worth of a human being, and hence what we might call popular morality, is largely determined by two factors, by a ranking of people according to their roles and by how well somebody plays his role. Those who introduce the notion of a person clearly are revisionist in that they reject the ranking by roles. The very notion of a person thus understood as a result imposes a certain restriction on what can count

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as a role and hence as a sort of person. Being a tyrant for instance, or being treacherous, or having any bad-character-trait, cannot count, because that is not a role a good human being could play well. But what those who think of human beings as persons do retain is the idea that being a sort of person brings with it certain demands on one which one has to live up to, if one wants to live a good life, be a good human being. And this has the effect that living a good life, acting as you ought to act, does not amount to the same thing for everybody. It is relative to the sort of person you are. There is not a single set of rules which define, let alone decide, how one should act, which hold for everybody. There are, as we saw in the Seneca passage referred to above (Ep. Mor. 94.1) different precepts for each sort of person to provide guidance as to what one ought to do. Now this has the further effect that, since many, if not most, of the roles are relational, as social roles are bound to be, you are not going to treat everybody in the same way. Being a friend means that if you deal with somebody who is your friend, you are not going to treat him in the way you treat everybody else. Being a son means that you are not going to treat your father and your mother the same way as everybody else. This is what it is to be a good person. This is what living a moral life largely consists of, in practice. Now it seems to me that there is something rather attractive about this. We as a matter of fact do not want to treat everybody in the same way. Nor do we want to be treated by others like everybody else. Just imagine what it would be like if you were a husband and you treated your wife the way you treat everybody else, or the way you treated all other women, or the way you treated all other wives. No, we expect you to treat her like your wife, in the particular way which is responsive to the way she is your wife. The same, equally clearly, with being the father of young children. But there also are obvious problems. They in good part arise from the fact that each of us has quite a number of roles, in effect being many sorts of person. Suppose, for instance, that one sort of person you are is a judge, and another sort of person you are is a friend; unfortunately, as it happens, a friend of the accused. Cicero (De Officiis III.43) suggests that in such a case you lay down the role of a friend (‘personam amici’) the moment you act in the role of a judge. But things are more complicated, as Cicero himself sees, when he allows the judge to make certain concessions to his friend. We need some way to decide in the case of conflict of roles.

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The next great step in the history of the notion of a person, as far as we can see, is taken by Panaetius, a Stoic in the second century . And it goes some way towards dealing with such conflicts. Panaetius distinguishes four types of role or sort of person and ranks them in a certain order of precedence. We know of Panaetius’ personae theory mainly through Cicero’s De Officiis (I.107 ff.). The roles or sorts of person explicitly mentioned so far in the texts we have considered all are accommodated by the third and fourth type he distinguishes (I.115 ff.). The surprise results from the first two types. They are given to us by nature (I.107), whereas the third is a matter of fortune (tuch¯e) and time, for instance having some office or being rich or poor (I.115), and the fourth is a matter of our wanting to play this type of role, for instance be a philosopher or a lawyer (I.115). The first type of role given to us by nature is that of being a human being. And the crucial thing about this role is that in virtue of it we have a share in reason, are rational and guided by reason, and are thus superior to mere animals (I.105–7). What is surprising about this is that it should be considered as a type of role or sort of person, since one would assume that only human beings can have roles or be a sort of person, and that hence being a human being cannot itself be a role. At this point it will be useful to appeal to a piece of specifically Stoic doctrine which also helps to explain why the Stoics in particular were so ready to think of human beings on the analogy of actors on stage, playing a role in a drama. The Stoics believe that the world and everything in it, including the different human beings, are created by God so as to constitute the best possible world. The course the world takes, the course of events which unfolds in the world, is governed providentially by a Divine plan to the effect that what happens in the world is for the best. In this plan human beings play a special role. Whereas mere animals in what they are doing are guided by mere impulse, human beings are created in such a way as to do what they do for reasons, and moreover in such a way as to be able to do what they do for the right reasons. Obviously it is assumed that the world is a better world for there being beings in it which are able to do what they are doing for the right reasons, namely because they understand that this is the right thing to do, that the world is a better place for their doing this rather than something else. So human beings have been given a special role to play in the way the world unfolds. It is in this sense that being a human being is to play a role. One is supposed to act rationally. And this one can do well or badly, by doing the right thing for the right reasons or doing either the right thing, but for the

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wrong reasons, or the wrong thing. One acts well by doing the right thing for the right reasons. Otherwise one acts badly.⁷ Now the crucial significance and special status of the first type of role or person is somewhat hidden in Cicero’s account in a small subordinate clause. Cicero very much emphasizes the fact that as a human being you should behave like a human being and not like a beast. The subordinate clause says that everything that is good and fitting (‘honestum decorumque’) has its source in this role. That is to say, what makes a piece of behaviour a good and fitting action is that it is the right thing to do and done for the right reasons. That is what it is to act well, virtuously, wisely. So there is one universal imperative: whatever you do, do the right thing for the right reasons! But, needless to say, to be told that is not very helpful, if you do not know what the right and reasonable thing for you to do is. And this is where the other types of role or sorts of person come in. In thinking about what you as a rational being ought to do, you have to take into account the sort of person you are. With this we can turn to the second type of role, or sort of person, Panaetius distinguishes. To understand this type better we should take into account two further pieces of Stoic doctrine. There is a metaphysical doctrine, which also plays a role in Stoic epistemology, namely the view that any particular or individual of any kind is a member of this kind by sharing a common quality (koin¯e poiot¯es) with the other members of this kind, but is the particular individual it is by a quality peculiar to it (idia poiot¯es) which distinguishes it qualitatively from all other members of the same kind (cf. Simplicius In Cat. 48.15). So any human being qualitatively differs from all other human beings. Here the uniqueness and individuality of a human being for the first time is given a metaphysical status. The second piece of doctrine is that, according to the Stoics, Divine providence governs the world down to the smallest detail. It is not just that according to God’s plan there have to be human beings, there have to be the very individual human beings there are. Each has its role to play and accordingly is endowed with its own nature suited for the particular role it has to play. As a result different human beings have a different natural bodily constitution. Some are naturally physically ⁷ It is also relevant here that the Stoics do not think that we are the only rational beings which have been created. There also are divine beings or gods, like the planets who are rational and have their role to play. So being a human being in the first instance is a matter of being rational, but then also of behaving specifically like a human being.

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robust, others rather frail. Some naturally are good at running, others are not. Correspondingly different human beings by nature have a different temperament, a different psychological make-up. Some by their natural constitution easily panic, get into a fit, others are particularly clever or intelligent, or good at doing geometry. The relevance of all this for what one ought to do is obvious. One ought to do things, or try to do things, which are suitable for the particular human being one is, for instance eat the food appropriate for one, pursue things which one has a particular talent for. By contrast, one should avoid things not suitable for the particular human being one is. For not to do so would be to be unreasonable. I already briefly have talked about the third and the fourth type of role, or of sort of person, Panaetius distinguishes. We are familiar with these types from the texts which we had considered earlier. With this I can finally return to the notion of the person one is which I want to ascribe to Epictetus. It is clear that we do not find this notion in Panaetius, as Cicero reports his view. But it is easy to see how, from the kind of view we find in Panaetius, one naturally arrives at the notion of the person one is. It is essential to Panaetius’ view that each individual human being instantiates each of the four types of persona, that for each human being at least the first type of persona, namely one’s being a human being and hence a rational agent, should take precedence over all other roles, and that some roles are not easily combined, if at all, with other roles you might want to play. If, for instance, you have a weak voice and a serious congenital speech-defect, you should think twice about aspiring to be an orator. So Panaetius himself clearly is thinking about the different roles or sorts of person as they might be combined in one individual human being. Hence, given Panaetius’s view, it is easy to arrive at the notion of the person one is as the combination of the different roles one has or sorts of person one is. And this is exactly what Epictetus does. Epictetus does distinguish types of role or of sort of person, though not quite in the same way as Panaetius does. He starts out Diss. II.10 with the remark ‘Look at who you are. The first thing is that you are a human being . . . Consider, then, which things you are distinct from in virtue of your rationality. You are distinct from wild animals, you are distinct from sheep.’ This obviously is the first type of role distinguished by Panaetius, and, as in Panaetius, is supposed to take precedence over all other roles or sorts of person you are. Then Epictetus goes on to say (II.10.3): ‘Next, you are a citizen of the world and a part of it . . . You are able to understand and to follow the way God has arranged the world

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and to figure out what follows from this.’ This clearly is not the second type of persona we find in Panaetius. I do not here want to discuss the Stoic notion of world-citizenship. I take it that what Epictetus has in mind is this: we, being rational, and thus able to understand the natural order of things, have the role of maintaining this order in our lives in the light of our understanding of it. Epictetus then goes on to talk about being a son, a brother, a member of the council, that is the sorts of person which fall under Panaetius’ third and fourth type. So also Epictetus thinks of various types of sort of person as being instantiated in one individual human being. For the individual he addresses is supposed to be a human being, a citizen of the world, and a son. Moreover, he thinks of the first role as taking precedence over the others. It is an important part of Epictetus’ thought about persons, which unfortunately I have no time to address, that various roles or sorts of person do not mix (IV.2.10). You cannot, he says, be pleasant to be with in a company of people given to heavy drinking and at the same time modest, orderly, decent (IV.2.6–10). This is as if you wanted to play both the role of Thersites and of Agamemnon. So Epictetus is concerned with what we might call an integrated, coherent personality. This is what he praises about Socrates (I.25.31: hen ech¯on pros¯opon aei dietelei; cf. III.5.16). It is in this way that Epictetus in some places, like in I.2 or IV.3.3, comes to talk about the person one is. But, once one has this kind of notion of the person somebody is, it is easy to see how one also naturally would arrive at the kind of absolute, reflective notion of a person we find in Boethius, in the Middle Ages, in Locke and Kant, and down to the present day. On Epictetus’ notion of the person one is, the persons we are are different in that we are different sorts of persons. But the persons we are all do have something in common, and what they have in common is for each human being the source of its being the person it is. In each case it is part of the person somebody is that he, being a human being, is rational, a rational agent. Whatever else is part of the person one is only is part of that person, because in the first place one is rational. If, for instance, it is part of the person you are that you are a father, this is so because you have some rational understanding of what it is to be a father and of what this means as to how you should think about what you ought to do, and, in particular, as to how you should behave towards your children. Thus the role of being a father as a role, the person one is in being a father as a sort of person, presupposes one’s rationality. And thus in the light of this one might naturally come to talk of human beings as persons in

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our absolute reflective sense of the word just insofar as they are rational or rational agents. For it is only by being rational, that we can be any sort of person at all. And it is on this basis that we think we are justified in expecting a certain kind of behaviour from human beings. We call them ‘persons’ in this sense to mark the fact that, given that they are rational, we regard certain forms of behaviour as appropriate and others as inappropriate for them. I have now, very roughly and with some gaps, sketched a history of the notion of a person in antiquity in which Epictetus’ notion of the person one is plays an important role. But in conclusion I want to note that the fact that this history in late antiquity ends with the kind of notion of a person we find in modern philosophy, in Locke or Kant, does not mean that some notion of the person one is, like Epictetus’, no longer is of interest. It perhaps is true that we human beings as rational beings are persons and that as persons we have a certain dignity or intrinsic worth which demands that we treat ourselves and others with due respect. But even if this should be true, it does not seem very helpful, given its abstractness and generality. We want to know what in concrete terms it means to treat oneself and others with the respect due to a person, due to any person as such. It seems to me that the Epictetean notion in a way offers an answer to this question. In Epictetean terms you treat yourself with due respect, if, in doing what you are doing, you always take into proper account the person you are. You treat others with due respect, if, in doing what you are doing, where this affects others, you take them into account as the persons they are. If, for instance, you ask somebody to do something which, given the person he is, he cannot possibly do, you would fail to treat the person with due respect, if you do know, or should know, that he, for no fault of his own, is the sort of person who is not able to do this. Obviously it would be a major task to work out in detail an appropriate notion of the person somebody is. But this is not the task I set myself here. What I tried to do here was just to shed some light on how we came to think of human beings as persons.

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Index Alexander of Aphrodisias 115 Alexander the Great 75 alogon 106, 110 Antisthenes 77 Apollonius of Tyana 65 Arendt, H. 113, 134 arguments 20–31 changing 30–1 hypothetical 28 lying 28 which conclude in virtue of the asking 28–31 Aristo (Ariston) of Chios 12 n, 161 Aristotle 25–6, 88, 90–2, 117–18 Arrian 1, 10–11 aspiration, moral 148–9 Atticus 95 Augustine, St 97 Barnes, J. 20 Berlin, I. 116, 120, 127–8, 134 Bion of Borystheneia 161 Bobzien, S. 113–15, 118, 120–1, 132, 139 Boethius 157–8, 167 Bonh¨offer, A. 33 bugbear, image of 102–3, 110–11 in Plato 105–6 castigation 80–4 caution 100–2, 107–10 in Plato 107–9 child within man, image of 102–3, 110–11 in Plato 104–6 Chrysippus 10–11, 13, 26, 28, 31, 35–6, 38–9, 43 n. 41, 59, 61, 106, 114, 119, 121 Cicero 41 n. 34, 163–6 Cleanthes 45 nn. 45–6, 47–9, 119, 131–2 community actual 140–1, 144, 146–7 of rational beings 140–1, 144

compatibilism/incompatibilism 113–15, 117, 120–1 confidence 100–2, 107–10 in Plato 107, 109 cosmopolitanism 140–1, 166–7 Cynicism 57, 71–86 daim¯on, see spirit, divine debates, dialectical 23–4 Descartes, R. 97 Despotopoulos, C. 134 determinism 113–15, 116–20, 123, 125, 137–9 ethical 115, 117, 123, 125, 134 hard and soft 117, 137–8 theological 131, 138 dialectic, see logic Diamond, C. 138 didactic (as philosophical method) 72–3, 74–5 Dio of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom) 65 Diogenes Laertius 18, 26–8 Diogenes (the Cynic) 3, 47, 57, 63, 71–86, 128, 131, 133 Dragona-Monachou, M. 121 elenchus 72–4 eph’ h¯emin 112–15, 120–1, 124 Epicurus 118, 143 Euphrates of Tyre 62 example (paradeigma), philosopher as 67–9 Fain, H. 134 Feinberg, J. 134 freedom 87, 112–39 inner 113, 115, 126–35, 138–9 physical (phusik¯e) 127–8 positive and negative 116, 127–8 free will 114–15, 117–18, 120, 137–9 friendship 146–7 Gaius 159 Gellius, Aulus 35

180 Gibbs, B. 115, 127–8 God 32–55, 56–70, 71–3, 77, 98, 121–2, 130–4, 164–7 as father 46–7 as helping us 44–5 as punishing us 45–6 as seeing us 42–4 as speaking to us 45 in early Stoicism 36–42 in Wittgenstein 136–8 Green, T. H. 151 Hahm, D. 95–6 Hardie, W. F. R. 118 Helvidius Priscus 131, 154–6 Heracles 47 Heraclitus 97–8 Hierocles 96 Huby, P. 117–18 incompatibilism, see compatibilism interpreter (ex¯eget¯es), philosopher as 59, 61–2 Inwood, B. 13 n. 7 Jagu, A. 33–4 Kant, I. 50, 167–8 kingship (as characterization of philosophy) 80–4 Lagrange, M. J. 33 libertarianism 114, 117–18, 123–4, 138–9 Locke, J. 153, 167–8 logic 18–19, 20–31 ancillary role of 20–8 Long, A. A. 1, 15 n. 12, 34, 39 n. 29, 43 nn. 40–1, 44 n. 43, 53, 54 n. 74, 113–14, 139 Lucretius 106 Marcus Aurelius 1, 9–10, 19, 48, 53 n. 70, 144, 150–1 Master Argument 13, 125–6 Maximus of Tyre 65 messenger (angelos) of God, philosopher as 56–70, 77, 132, 134

Index Mulgan, R. 119–20 Neoplatonists 94–8 Origen 1 Panaetius 164–6 pantheism/theism 33–5, 36–42, 48, 52, 54; see also God paradoxa 101 Pascal, B. 51–2 Paul, St 65 Peripatetics 25–8 person (pros¯opon/persona) 73, 153–68 as dramatic role 158–9 as rational substance 157–8 as role in life 160–6 as ‘sort of person’ 159–60 as ‘the person one is’ 154–7, 166–7 in Epictetus 154–7, 166–7 in law 159 in modern philosophy 153–4, 167–8 in Panaetius 164–6 perspectives, moral 140–52 Philip of Macedon 57, 77 philosophy (as theme in Epictetus) 3 Philostratus 65 Plato 64–5, 109–11 Plotinus 97 Plutarch 38 n. 23 Pohlenz, M. 119, 124 Posidonius 43 n. 41 prayer 47–52 proairesis 2, 87–94, 112–15, 121, 130, 134, 138–9 proofs 22–3 pros¯opon, see person protreptic 72–4, 80–6 providence, divine 121–2, 131–2 quietism 134–5, 138 reconciliationism 115, 117–18, 121–3, 134, 139 relationships 140–52 chosen and unchosen 144–5, 152 n. 17 roles 71–3, 140, 153–68

Index salvation (s¯ot¯eria) 65, 68–9 sceptics, Academic 143 n. 3 scout/spy (kataskopos), philosopher as 57, 59, 77–80 Sedley, D. 109 self 87–98 self-awareness 94–8 Seneca 1, 9–10, 19, 42 n. 37, 46 n. 48, 49, 144, 159–60 servant (diakonos/hup¯eret¯es) of God, philosopher as 58, 65 Sextus Empiricus 29–31 Simplicius 1 skill (as metaphor for virtue) 142 Socrates 3, 62–3, 71–5, 99–111, 131, 133 Spinoza, B. 40 spirit, divine (daim¯on/daimonion) 39, 42 n. 37, 43, 46, 54, 60, 66 spy, see scout

181 Taylor, C. 97 Teles 161 theism, see pantheism topoi, Epictetus’ theory of three 2, 15–19, 20–3 training, moral (askesis) 15–19 vocation (kl¯esis) 57, 65 will 87, 114, 122–3, 130–1; see also free will in Wittgenstein 134–8 witness (martus), philosopher as 57–8, 65 Wittgenstein, L. 115, 135–9 Xenakis, J. 134 Zeno of Citium 38, 63, 71–5, 119