Practical Wisdom

“‘But I would have that which seems best to me happen in every case, no matter how it comes to seem so.’

You are mad; you are beside yourself. Do you not know that freedom is a noble and precious thing? But for me to desire at haphazard that those things should happen which have at haphazard seemed best to me, is dangerously near being, not merely not noble, but even in the highest degree shameful.

For how do we act in writing? Do I desire to write the name ‘Dio’ as I choose? No, but I am taught to desire to write it as it ought to be written. What do we do in music? The same. And what in general, where there is any art or science? The same; otherwise knowledge of anything would be useless, if it were accommodated to every individual’s whims.”

(Discourses, 1.12)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“When an official came to see him, Epictetus, after making some special enquiries about other matters, asked him if he had children and a wife, and when the other replied that he had, Epictetus asked the further question, What, then, is your experience with marriage? — Wretched, he said. — To which Epictetus, How so? For men do not marry and beget children just for this surely, to be wretched, but rather to be happy. — And yet, as for me, the other replied, I feel so wretched about the little children, that recently when my little daughter was sick and was thought to be in danger, I could not bear even to stay by her sick bed, but I up and ran away, until someone brought me word that she was well again. — What then, do you feel that you were acting right in doing this? — I was acting naturally, he said. …

This is the way, said the man, all, or at least most, of us fathers feel. — And I do not contradict you either, answered Epictetus, and say that it is not done, but the point at issue between us is the other, whether it is rightly done.”

(Discourses, 1.11)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“If we philosophers had applied ourselves to our own work as zealously as the old men at Rome have applied themselves to the matters on which they have set their hearts, perhaps we too should be accomplishing something. I know a man older than myself who is now in charge of the grain supply at Rome. When he passed this place on his way back from exile, I recall what a tale he told as he inveighed against his former life and announced for the future that, when he had returned to Rome, he would devote himself solely to spending the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, ‘For how little is yet left to me!’ — And I told him, ‘You will not do it, but when once you have caught no more than a whiff of Rome you will forget all this.’ …

Well, now, what did he do? Before he reached Rome, letters from Caesar met him; and as soon as he received them, he forgot all those resolutions of his, and ever since he has been piling up one property after another. I wish I could stand by his side now and remind him of the words that he uttered as he passed by here, and remark, ‘How much more clever a prophet I am than you.’”

(Discourses, 1.10)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“If what is said by the philosophers regarding the kinship of Nature and people be true, what other course remains for us but that which Socrates took when asked to what country he belonged, never to say ‘I am an Athenian,’ or ‘I am a Corinthian,’ but ‘I am a citizen of the universe’? For why do you say that you are an Athenian, instead of mentioning merely that corner into which your paltry body was cast at birth? …

As soon as you have had your fill to-day, you sit lamenting about the morrow, by which means you shall be fed. Man, if you get it, you will have it; if you do not get it, you will depart; the door stands open. Why grieve? Where is there yet room for tears? What occasion for flattery? Why shall one person envy another? Why shall we admire those who have great possessions, or those who are stationed in places of power, especially if they be prone to anger? For what will they do to us? …

How did Socrates feel with regard to these matters? … ‘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.’ …

We, however, think of ourselves as though we were mere bellies, entrails, and genitals, just because we have fear, because we have appetite, and we flatter those who have power to help us in these matters, and these same people we fear.”

(Discourses, 1.9)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Was not Plato a philosopher? Yes, and was not Hippocrates a physician? But you see how eloquently Hippocrates expresses himself. Does Hippocrates, then, express himself so eloquently by virtue of his being a physician?

Why, then, do you confuse things that for no particular reason have been combined in the same man? Now if Plato was handsome and strong, ought I to sit down and strive to become handsome, or become strong, on the assumption that this is necessary for philosophy, because a certain philosopher was at the same time both handsome and a philosopher?

Are you not willing to observe and distinguish just what that is by virtue of which men become philosophers, and what qualities pertain to them for no particular reason?

Come now, if I were a philosopher, ought you to become lame like me? What then? Am I depriving you of these faculties? Far be it from me! No more than I am depriving you of the faculty of sight.

Yet, if you enquire of me what is humanity’s good, I can give you no other answer than that it is a kind of moral purpose.”

(Discourses, 1.8)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Most people are unaware that the handling of arguments which involve equivocal and hypothetical premisses, and, further, of those which derive syllogisms by the process of interrogation, and, in general, the handling of all such arguments, has a bearing upon the duties of life. For our aim in every matter of inquiry is to learn how the good and excellent person may find the appropriate course through it and the appropriate way of conducting themselves in it. …

For what is the professed object of reasoning? To state the true, to eliminate the false, to suspend judgement in doubtful cases. …

[Therefore] one must learn in what way a thing follows as a consequence upon certain other things. …

There has consequently arisen among us, and shown itself to be necessary, a science which deals with inferential arguments and with logical figures and trains people therein. …

Why are we still indolent and easy-going and sluggish, seeking excuses whereby we may avoid toiling or even late hours, as we try to perfect our own reason? — If, then, I err in these matters, I have not murdered my own father, have I? — Slave, pray where was there in this case a father for you to murder? What, then, have you done, you ask? You have committed what was the only possible error in the matter. Indeed this is the very remark I made to Rufus when he censured me for not discovering the one omission in a certain syllogism. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘it isn’t as bad as if I had burned down the Capitol.’ But he answered, ‘Slave, the omission here is the Capitol.’”

(Discourses, 1.7)

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“‘Shall we assume, then, that … the bad is akin to the bad; the good to the good; and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad?’

They said they thought it was so: each was akin to its counterpart.

‘In that case, boys,’ I said, ‘haven’t we fallen back into those first statements of ours about friendship, which we rejected, since one unjust man will be a friend to another unjust man, a bad man to another bad man, no less than one good man to another good man?’

‘It would appear so,’ they said. …

‘Then I don’t know what more to say.’

With that I was intending to provoke another of the older men into speaking. Just then, like evil spirits, Lysis’s and Menexenus’s tutors came over with the boys’ brothers, called to them, and told them to come home; it was already late. …

However, I did say, just as they were leaving, ‘Lysis and Menexenus, we’ve now made utter fools of ourselves, an old man like me and you, since these people will go away and say that we think that we’re friends of one another – for I consider myself one of your number – though we were not as yet able to find out precisely what a friend is.’”

(Lysis, 222c-223b)

“‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Now that we’ve got as far as this, boys, let’s be careful not to be deceived.’ …

‘Let’s consider the following case: medicine, we say, is a friend for the sake of health.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is health a friend too, then?’

‘Of course.’

‘If it is a friend, it is so for the sake of something.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that something is a friend, if it is to be consistent with what we admitted earlier.’

‘Of course.’

‘And that too, in its turn, will be a friend for the sake of a friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, aren’t we bound to get tired going on like that and give up, or else arrive at some point of origin which will not refer us to yet another friend, but which will constitute the first thing that is a friend, for the sake of which we say that all the others too are friends?’

‘We are.’ …

“Admittedly, we do often say that we value gold and silver highly, but that hardly comes any nearer the truth. What we value most highly is that thing (whatever it may reveal itself as being) for the sake of which both gold and everything else that is procured are procured. Shall we settle for that?’

‘Of course.’”

(Lysis, 219c-220a)

The Philosophy Garden: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“‘That’s why we’d say that those who are already wise, whether they are gods or men, no longer love wisdom, and that those who are so ignorant that they are bad do not love wisdom either, because no bad or stupid man loves wisdom.

So, we’re left with those who possess that bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been rendered foolish or stupid by it, in that they still believe they don’t know what they don’t know.

Consequently those who are still neither good nor bad do, in fact, love wisdom; whereas all those who are bad, as well as all those who are good, do not, because, as we decided earlier in our discussion, neither is opposite the friend of opposite, nor like of like. Don’t your remember?’

‘Of course,’ they said.

‘So now, Lysis and Menexenus,’ I said, ‘we’ve done it! We’ve discovered what a friend is and what it is not. We say that in the soul, in the body and anywhere else, it is what is neither bad nor good that is the friend of the good because of the presence of bad.’

The two of them agreed wholeheartedly, admitting that it was so.”

(Lysis, 218a-218c)

The Philosophy Garden: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“‘Have you come across the writings of our wisest men, which say that like must always be friend to like? These are, of course, the men who discuss and write about nature and the universe.’

‘That’s true,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘are they right?’

‘Possibly,’ he replied. …

[But] ‘We think that the closer one wicked man gets to another wicked man and the more he associates with him, the more he becomes hated by him, because he wrongs him; and it is, of course, impossible for wronger and wronged to be friends, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. …

‘Well then, in my opinion, Lysis, this is what people mean when they say, in their cryptic way, that like is friend to like: friendship exists only between good men, whereas the bad man never achieves true friendship with either a good or a bad man. Do you agree?’

He nodded assent.”

(Lysis, 214b-214d)

The Philosophy Garden: Stoicism and Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.