Stoicism On Fire

Keep in mind that you should always behave as you would do at a banquet. Something comes around to you; stretch out your hand and politely take a portion. It passes on; don’t try to stop it. It has not come yet; don’t let your appetite run ahead, but wait till the portion reaches you. If you act like this toward your children, your wife, your public positions, and your wealth, you will be worthy one day to dine with the gods. And if you don’t even take things, when they are put before you, but pass them by, you will not only dine with the gods but also share their rule. It was by acting like that that Diogenes and Heracles and others like them were deservedly divine and called so. (Ench. 15)

Epictetus uses a banquet as a metaphor in this lesson. However, this banquet appears different from anything we moderns would attend. The Greek word Epictetus used is συμποσίῳ. The title of Plato’s famous Symposium is derived from that same Greek word, and it provides a model for this metaphor. To make his point in this lesson, Epictetus asks us to imagine we are guests at such a banquet. However, to apply this lesson in our life, we must first understand the metaphor.

A Greek banquet or symposium during the time of Plato was slightly different from those of Roman times. Epictetus’s students would have been familiar with the latter. However, those distinctions don’t affect the metaphor or the lesson. Let’s set the scene for such a banquet to help us understand this lesson.

The host, a person you know, has invited you to a banquet. When you arrive, you’re led to a room filled with pillow-covered sofas. Participants are reclined on those sofas eating food, drinking wine, talking about important topics, and possibly delivering speeches.

The room has a predetermined seating arrangement, so you recline on your assigned sofa and engage in conversation with others you know at the banquet. Occasionally, someone might deliver a speech, read a poem, or bring up a topic of political concern for discussion. While this is going on, servers enter the room with platters of food and pitchers of wine. The servers approach each reclined guest in a predetermined order and offer them a portion of what they are serving. You know the proper etiquette for a banquet, and that means you must wait for each server to come to you to take your portion.

The preceding lessons in the Encheiridion focus on the distinction between what is up to us and not up to us. As a banquet guest, many things are not within your power—they are not up to us. So, let’s begin by determining what is and is not in our power in this banquet metaphor.

* Guests don’t choose the date or time of the banquet.

* Guests don’t choose who is invited.

* Guests don’t choose their seating location.

* Guests don’t choose what, if any, entertainment is provided.

* Guests don’t choose what food and wine are served.

* Guests don’t choose the portions of the dishes being served.

* Guests don’t choose the order in which the dishes and drinks are served,

* Guests don’t choose the order in which they will be served.

The host makes all of those decisions. Therefore, Epictetus is reminding us of the only thing within our power. As guests at the banquet of life, the only thing up to us is the choice to reach out and take a portion of each item as it is offered. Interestingly, even though the items served at a banquet are indifferents, Epictetus encourages us to reach out and take a portion of those items offered to us.

We are beginning to see why Epictetus chose an ancient banquet as a metaphor for this lesson—many of the circumstances and events in life are not in our power. Moreover, one of the essential aspects of Epictetus’ training program is understanding what is in our power and choosing only those things which are up to us.

Nevertheless,

If you want your children and your wife and friends to survive no matter what, you are silly; for you are wanting things to be up to you that are not up to you, and things to be your own that are not your own. You are just as foolish if you want your slave to make no mistakes; for you are wanting inferiority not to be a flaw but something else. But if your wish is not to be frustrated in your desires, this is in your power. Train yourself, then, in this power that you do have. Our master is anyone who has the power to implement or prevent the things that we want or don’t want. Whoever wants to be free, therefore, should wish for nothing or avoid nothing that is up to other people. Failing that, one is bound to be a slave. (Ench 14)

There's nothing new in this chapter of the Encheiridion for those following the Exploring Encheiridion series. That is the nature of the Encheiridion, which Arrian created as a handbook a Stoic prokopton could keep readily available as a primer for Stoic doctrines. Therefore, many of the lessons are repeated in different forms. Nevertheless, as I was preparing for this podcast episode, I was struck by a question that inspired me to take this episode in another direction. The question is this: Why would anyone with a conscious or unconscious allegiance to the modern secular worldview consider Stoicism a viable way of life. Consider some other passages we’ve already covered in this Exploring Encheiridion series:

When you kiss your little child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being. Then, if one of them dies, you will not be troubled. (Encheiridion 3)

Don’t ask for things to happen as you would like them to, but wish them to happen as they actually do, and you will be all right. (Encheiridion 8)

Never say about anything, “I have lost it”; but say, “I have returned it.” Has your little child died? “It has been returned.” Has your wife died? “She has been returned.” “I have been robbed of my land.” No, that has been returned as well. (Encheiridion 11)

These statements by Epictetus contradict what all moderns, those raised in the West at least, are taught from childhood. When a person views these statements from the perspective of modernity, they will likely ask: How can anyone past or present assent to ideas like this? What kind of worldview could possibly support such apparently odd and counterintuitive ideas? Therein lies the conundrum moderns face when moderns encounter the Stoic texts. We are confronted with words like God, logos, and providence from the ancient Stoic worldview and likely lack the necessary knowledge to understand the meaning of these words within the context of Hellenistic Greek culture and the holistic philosophical system known as Stoicism.

If moderns have any familiarity with words like God, logos, and providence, it likely comes from religious training or college professors who mocked these ideas. Therefore, secular-minded, enlightened, educated moderns might feel justified in rejecting those ideas. In fact, moderns may feel compelled to reject them as antiquated, pre-Enlightenment ideas. Unfortunately, that judgment of Stoicism is based on a modern worldview with some underlying assumptions and consequences moderns may have never considered. I know that was true for me. As I’ve previously said on this podcast, I was a hardcore atheist when I started studying Stoicism. It took me almost a year to overcome the misconceptions and cognitive biases of my modern worldview.

Worldviews are essential because they guide our beliefs and actions in ways that may evade our conscious awareness and circumspection. Jean-Baptiste Gourinat wrote about this in a paper titled Stoicism Today in 2009. He discussed the connection between Stoicism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—CBT—which is partly derived from Stoic principles. He wrote:

Cognitive therapy is based on three hypotheses: (1) one’s behaviou...

If you want to make progress, don’t mind appearing foolish and silly where outward things are concerned, and don’t wish to appear an expert. Even if some people think you are somebody, distrust yourself. It is not easy, you can be sure, to keep your own will in harmony with nature and simultaneously secure outward things. If you care about the one, you are completely bound to neglect the other. (Ench 13)

After a short break from the Encheiridion, I start again with chapter 13. I will continue to work through the Encheiridion, chapter by chapter. However, I will take breaks from it occasionally to cover other topics or conduct interviews as I did recently with the authors of two new Stoic books.

Epictetus opens Encheiridion 13 with a familiar refrain, “If you want to make progress,” and then lists what a prokopton must do to progress along the Stoic path. So, what is Epictetus prescribing for us to make progress? He lists two things in this lesson:

* First, don’t mind appearing foolish and silly where outward things are concerned. Why? Because it’s difficult to keep our will (prohairesis)—that which is within our power and up to us—in harmony with Nature while simultaneously desiring and seeking externals—those things not within our power and therefore not up to us.

* Second, don’t wish to appear as an expert. Why? Again, if we desire to appear as an expert, we seek something not up to us.

Before we consider these two specific things Epictetus lists in this passage, let’s look at the overarching message. Some things are up to us, and others are not up to us. We learned that in Encheiridion 1. As a refresher, the things that are not up to us are external to us, like our health, financial status, other people’s opinion of us, etc. Obviously, our behavior can influence these externals; nevertheless, they are not entirely within our power. We can live a healthy lifestyle and still get cancer; we can work hard and save money and still end up broke and destitute during a widespread economic crisis; we can be kind, helpful, and act appropriately, and some people will still have a low opinion of us. On the other hand, our reasoning faculty (prohairesis) is entirely within our power; it is up to us. So much so, as Epictetus teaches in Discourses 3.3, not even Zeus can override this power granted to us by Nature.

Therefore, once again, Epictetus confronts us with the distinction between what is up to us and not up to us. We will continue to see this theme in the Encheiridion because it is central to Epictetus’ teaching and critically important for developing our moral excellence and progress toward well-being.

Now, let’s look at these two things not up to us Epictetus chose to highlight in this lesson. I will tackle the second item first because this episode will focus on the first.

Epictetus warns us not to wish to appear an expert. If some people have that opinion of us, that’s fine, but it’s not up to us. Because it’s not up to us, desiring that others think of us as an expert is not in accordance with the nature of things. As Keith Seddon points out in his commentary, this passage could have two different meanings.

When Epictetus warns against not wishing to appear knowledgeable about anything, he may mean this in a wholly general way – to have knowledge is one thing, but to have a desire to show it off and be regarded as a knowledgeable person is altogether something else, and is inappropriate for the Stoic prokoptôn – for placing one’s well-being (to however small a degree) on the satisfaction of this desire is to rely on something that is not in one’s power, something external and indifferent, and risks undermining one’s ‘good flow’ (euroia). But I suspect Epictetus means ‘knowledgeable’ to refer only to knowledge of good and bad, moral excellence, the indifferent and external things,

This interview of David Fideler covers his 2021 book titled, Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living. His book provides a detailed look at the life of Seneca as a Stoic prokopton. David's book is intended for a general audience, and it is an easy and enjoyable read. Nevertheless, he provides extensive notes for those wishing to dig deeper. This book is rather unique because it provides a solid introduction to the basics of Stoic philosophical theory through the life and writings of a single ancient Stoic: Seneca. Chapter 9, titled Vicious Crowds and the Ties That Bind is particularly insightful and relevant in our time of political and social divisiveness.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Seneca's life and works. I will also make a great gift to friends and loved ones who are curious about Stoicism.

A video version of this interview is available on YouTube

 

This interview of Kai Whiting and Leonidas Konstantakos covers their 2021 book titled, Being Better: Stoicism for a World Worth Living In. Their book provides a short (136 pages, excluding notes) yet highly informative introduction to Stoicism as a way of life. Being Better was written for a general audience, and it is the best book I've read for two types of people. First, for those new to Stoicism, Being Better provides an excellent introduction. It includes just enough philosophical theory and history to acquaint the reader with Stoicism. The second audience is the person considering Stoicism but is unsure it's right for them. After reading Being Better, readers will know if Stoicism is a philosophical way of life worth pursuing further.

Finally, I cannot think of a better book for those who want to give a short, easy-to-read, informative, and interesting book to a friend or family member who is curious about Stoicism.

A video version of this interview is available on YouTube

Our situation is like that at a festival. Sheep and cattle are driven to it to be sold, and most people come either to buy or to sell, while only a few come to look at the spectacle of the festival, to see how it is proceeding and why, and who is organizing it, and for what purpose. So also in this festival of the world. Some people are like sheep and cattle and are interested in nothing but their fodder; for in the case of those of you who are interested in nothing but your property, and land, and slaves, and public posts, all of that is nothing more than fodder. Few indeed are those who attend the fair for love of the spectacle, asking, ‘What is the universe, then, and who governs it? No one at all? (Discourses 2.14.23-25)

In this passage, Epictetus paints an unflattering picture of the mass of humanity. He suggests some of us treat the festival of life as a marketplace; we are distracted by the superficial endeavors of life. This chapter of the Discourses tells the story of a wealthy, influential Roman who was attending one of Epictetus’ with his son. Midway through the lecture, Epictetus instructs his students they must imitate God. With this, the father asked, “Where are we to start then?”

The father now has Epictetus's undivided attention. I can only assume he did not know what that would entail. Epictetus acknowledges the father is wealthy and likely known to Caesar. Nevertheless, he informs the father he lacks what is most essential for happiness:

…you know neither what God is, nor what a human being is, nor what is good, nor what is bad. (Discourses2.14.19)

Next, Epictetus suggests most people behave like sheep and cattle, driven here and there by our appetites (desires). He argues that only a few love the spectacle of the festival of life. These few are the ones who inquire about the nature of the festival:

* The nature of the cosmos – “What is the universe, then, and who governs it? No one at all? And yet when a city or household cannot survive for even a very short time without someone to govern it and watch over it, how could it be that such a vast and beautiful structure could be kept so well ordered by mere chance and good luck?” (2.14.25-26)

* The nature of the divine – “So there must be someone governing it. What sort of being is he, and how does he govern it?” (2.14.27)

* Human nature – “And we who have been created by him, who are we, and what were we created for?” (2.14.27)

* The relationship between humans and the divine – “Are we bound together with him in some kind of union and interrelationship, or is that not the case?” (2.14.27)

Epictetus continues to elaborate on this small group of people who seek to understand this festival of life. He asserts, “they devote their leisure to this one thing alone, to finding out about the festival before they have to take their leave” (2.14.28). Our quest as philosophers is to discover as much as we can about this festival we call life before we take our leave from it. Like Socrates, the true philosopher is naturally curious and cannot be stopped from inquiring—it is in a philosopher’s nature to seek wisdom. It is part of our human nature to inquire about the nature of the cosmos and humankind. Epictetus tells us:

But God has brought the human race into the world to be a spectator of himself and of his works, and not merely to observe them, but also to interpret them. It is thus shameful for a human being to begin and end where the irrational animals do. Rather, he should start off where they do and end where nature ended with regard to ourselves. Now it ended with contemplation, and understanding, and a way of life that is in harmony with nature. Take care, then, that you don’t die without having contemplated these realities. (Discourses 1.16.19-22)

Seneca offers a similar list of inquiries. Seneca’s list is found in his work appropriately titled Natural Q...

The wise person is still not harmed by the storms of life—poverty, pain, and the rest. For not all his works are hindered but only those that pertain to others. He is himself, always, in his actions, and in the doing of them he is greatest when opposed by fortune. For it is then that he does the business of wisdom itself, which as we just said is his own good as well as that of others. (Letters 85.37)

Fortuna, for Seneca, is not an anthropomorphized divinity with malicious intentions. Instead, Fortuna (fortune) is a metaphor for those events in life which appear to hinder or help us achieve our desires and intentions. Fortuna is the slow driver in front of us, making us late for work or school, the overbearing boss, the unexpected bill, the life-threatening medical diagnosis, the termination letter from an employer, the breakup of a relationship, etc.

Alternatively, as Seneca points out, Fortuna may masquerade as an apparent good, tempting us to succumb to desires and aversions outside of our control. The appearance of good fortune may include lottery winnings, promotion, fifteen minutes of fame, a new lover, etc. As we can see, Fortuna can present herself as either an apparent good or an apparent evil when, in fact, she is neither.

Fortuna is a metaphor for the externals outside our control and serves as grist for our character's mill. As such, those external circumstances, which Seneca labels Fortuna, are indifferents that have no inherent ability to affect our moral character (virtue). Nevertheless, they are the very things and events that challenge us and allow us to develop our moral character toward excellence. Without the challenges offered by Fortuna, we lack the means to develop our excellence of character fully. As Seneca points out:

In fair weather anyone can be a helmsman. (Letters 85.34)

Our character is not challenged and developed when the seas of life are smooth and the winds are calm and steady, blowing in the direction of our wishes. Instead, our character is tested and can thereby develop most rapidly, at those times when the sea becomes turbulent and blustering winds threaten to shred our sail. Therefore, the storms of life that threaten to drive the bow of our ship under the waves are the events that serve to test and strengthen our character. In Seneca’s words:

To fashion a man [or woman] who can genuinely be called a [Stoic], a stronger fate is needed. For him, the way will not be flat: he must go up and down, he must be tossed by waves, and must guide his vessel on a stormy sea. He must hold his course against fortune. Many things will happen that are hard and rough—but things he can soften and smooth out himself. Fire proves gold; misery, brave men [and women]. (On Providence 5.9)

When Fortuna stirs up a storm in your life and appears intent on driving your ship onto the rocks or into the depths, keep this truth from the Stoics in mind: Fortuna is not your enemy; she is your teacher. You can choose to welcome her into your life and learn the lessons she offers, or you can ignore the lessons of Fortuna, resist fate, and suffer the psychological consequences. We learn that Fortuna is not an existential threat by trusting the benevolence of a providential cosmos and focusing our attention on what is up to us.

Our struggle with Fortuna is not a fight against external circumstances. Instead, it is a struggle with our desire for circumstances to be other than they are. As we learned from Encheiridion 8, the goal of Stoicism training is learning to wish for things to happen as they do. Again, this does not mean we wish for dispreferred outcomes in advance; that’s not what the Stoics taught. However, when those events occur, we need to use them to develop our character.

Stoicism teaches us to look for the lesson in the storms of life. Fortuna may use a storm to redirect our ship toward a destination we did not ori...

Everything suits me that suits your designs, O my universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me that is in your own good time. All is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O nature. All proceeds from you, all subsists in you, and to you all things return. (Meditations 4.23)

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a deeply spiritual person, and that fact comes across clearly in his Meditations. The American philosopher and religious scholar Jacob Needleman suggests the combination of “metaphysical vision, poetic genius, and the worldly realism of a ruler” within the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius inspire us and give us “honorable and realistic hope in our embattled lives.”[1] As a result, he argues,

[The Meditations] deserves its unique place among the writings of the world’s great spiritual philosophers.[2]

Needleman elaborates on the spiritual impact Marcus’ Meditations has on many of its readers,

Marcus is seeking to experience from within himself the higher attention of what he calls the logos, or Universal Reason, so too the sensitive reader begins to listen for that same finer life within his own psyche. That is to say, the reader— you and I— is not simply given great ideas which he then feeds into his already formed opinions and rules of logic. The action of many of these meditations is far more serious than that, and far more interesting and spiritually practical. In a word, in such cases, in many of these meditations, we are being guided—without even necessarily knowing what to call it—we are being guided through a brief moment of inner work. We are being given a taste of what it means to step back in ourselves and develop an intentional relationship to our own mind.[3]

The practice of Stoicism for Marcus was a means to find his place in the cosmos. He sought congruity with Nature and learned to love what fate had in store for him because he trusted in a providential cosmos. As David Hicks asserts,

The Stoicism in which Marcus believed is rooted in an all-encompassing nature. Everything in man and in the universe, everything that is or ought to be, everything fated and everything free, and the logos or rational principle that informs everything and ties everything together and is ultimately identified with the deity – all of this is found in nature, and there is nothing else.[4]

Stoicism provided Marcus with more than an abstract, intellectual understanding of human and cosmic Nature. The religious nature of Stoic philosophy differentiated it from other philosophies as well as organized religions. I covered the religious nature of Stoicism previously, so I will not address it fully here. However, it is important to understand that Stoicism was more than an intellectual endeavor for Marcus. Stoicism provided a rational form of spirituality for Marcus, and it offers the same for moderns. Stoicism is an alternative for those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. If you're uncomfortable with the dogmas of organized religion and the nihilism of atheism, Stoicism offers a middle ground. Stoicism provides a spiritual way of life guided by reason. Stoicism relies on our innate connection with the rationality permeating the cosmos to guide our human reason toward a relationship with the divine that inspires us to develop our moral character and thereby experience true well-being.

As Mark Forstater wrote in his insightful book The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius:

Until the time of Neoplatonism, Stoicism was the most highly spiritualised form of philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome.

Seneca’s writings reveal a committed Stoic, a pious soul, and an inspirational moral philosopher. Nevertheless, some of his actions and financial dealings have generated doubt about his genuineness. Seneca is a mixed bag if the historical record can be trusted. However, it is crucial to keep in mind that Seneca engaged in politics at the highest levels of the Roman Empire, which was the dominant world power of his time. Thus, he had powerful enemies, not the least of which was the infamous Emperor Nero. When I imagine a man like Seneca in our modern political game of character assassination, I can easily find room to believe much of his negative press was politically motivated. I’m not going to dive into the morass of conflicting scholarship about Seneca; However, I offer the following quote as a balanced opinion,

Naturally, we can have no more certainty that Seneca actually followed his own moral teaching than we can have about any person from antiquity. At best, the sources allow us to extract certain implications for a prominent individual like Seneca. But common opinion about his person seems very much affected, first, by the bare fact that he was a wealthy man, as if that alone would have made him selfish and hypocritical by definition, and, second, by a peculiar fusion of the tutor and counselor Seneca with the student and Emperor Nero, who is best remembered for his bad morality. Here it seems to matter little that our sources suggest that the emperors ‘good period’ was in fact precisely when he was under Seneca's influence.

The stereotyped image of Seneca as a pretentious hypocrite is amazingly widespread, often simply found ‘as a stock assertion dragged from one second-hand work to another’.[1]

As Stoics, I think we should take Seneca's writings at face value. They inspired multitudes in the past, and they do the same today. Many of the early Christian Church Fathers thought highly of Seneca and considered him a moral exemplar. Tertullian, a second-century Christian apologist, even referred to him as “our Seneca.” Regardless of the ambiguous historical record, Seneca’s writings reveal his deep philosophical thought and reverence for divine Nature.

Letters to Lucilius

Throughout his writings, Seneca refers to the relationship between the gods and us. In Letters 1.5, he calls this relationship a “kinship” and claims it is “sealed by virtue.” Later, in Letters 31, titled Our mind’s godlike potential,[2] he suggests a committed devotion to philosophy, as a way of life, raises us above our human nature toward our godlike potential. How? Through virtue, which he defines as:

[T]he evenness and steadiness of a life that is in harmony with itself through all events, which cannot come about unless one has knowledge and the skill of discerning things human and divine. (Letters 31.8)

Again, in Letters 53, Seneca argues that a mind committed to philosophy will be near to the gods and can experience the “tranquility of God.” He points out the tremendous power of philosophy to “beat back all the assaults of chance” and claims,

No weapon lodges in its flesh; its defenses cannot be penetrated. When fortune’s darts come in, it either ducks and lets them pass by, or stands its ground and lets them bounce back against the assailant. (Letters53.11-12)

In Letters 41, titled God dwells within us, Seneca covers the topics of Stoic physics and theology in some detail. First, he makes a clear distinction between the practices of personal religion and those of conventional religions. As I discussed in previous episodes, Stoicism was never a religion in the traditional sense, with altars, temples, and priests. Nevertheless,

If I were a nightingale, I would perform the work of a nightingale, and if I were a swan, that of a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, and I must sing the praise of God. This is my work, and I accomplish it, and I will never abandon my post for as long as it is granted to me to remain in it; and I invite all of you to join me in this same song. (Discourses 1.16.20-21)

Epictetus is typically considered the most religious of the Roman Stoics. As such, some attempt to portray him as an outlier among the Stoics. However, as A.A. Long points out,

In his conception of divine providence, creativity, and rationality, Epictetus is completely in line with the general Stoic tradition. His distinctiveness, in what I have discussed so far, extends mainly to the enthusiasm with which he commends obedience to God and to the warmth he infuses in his expressions of God's concern for human beings.[1]

We find this same “notable religious sensibility” in the philosophy of Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Marcus Aurelius,[2] and, as A.A. Long further notes, it is “broadly in line with traditional Stoicism.”[3] To a large degree, these religious sentiments result from the inherent “structural resemblance” between the rationality of humans and that of the divine logos, which allows for a “certain degree of personalistic theism in thinking and speaking about god”[4] in Stoicism. We see this language used frequently by Epictetus.

Likewise, over the history of the Stoa, God will “assume more and more spiritual and personal traits” and “religiousness will tend to permeate” Stoicism and move it toward theism without fully arriving there.[5] Nevertheless, it is essential to balance the religious sentiments of Epictetus with the realization that he never claimed nor adhered to any form of divine revelation; neither did he express a need for religious faith, in the forms those concepts are commonly understood today. For Epictetus, to follow God means “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.”[6] As Andrew Mason, Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, points out in the introduction of a beautiful little volume on The Philosophy of Epictetus:

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.[7]

A.A. Long sums up the difference between Epictetus and his predecessors in the Stoa by arguing he “proceeds from rather than to God.”[8] He points out,