Epictetus, Fragments 2

The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys. 

Epictetus, Discourses 2.11.4

Is there, then, no standard here beyond opinion? It is impossible surely that things most necessary among men should be beyond discovery and beyond proof? 
 
There is a standard then. Then, why do we not seek it and find it, and having found it use it hereafter without fail, never so much as stretching out our finger without it? 
 
For it is this standard, I suppose, the discovery of which relieves from madness those who wrongly use personal opinion as their only measure, and enables us thereafter to start from known principles, clearly defined, and so to apply our conceptions to particulars in definite and articulate form. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.11 
 
But where do I look to find this elusive measure? What can I ever know beyond how I feel at the moment? How am I expected to distinguish black from white in a world so full of grey? Why am I worrying about problems that obviously have no solutions? 
 
While the philosophers should busy themselves with a pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful, however imperfect our perceptions might be, the sophists will assure us that we have no need for such abstractions. In the most refined manner, they offer us an excuse for dodging our responsibilities, by drawing into question the very contrast between right and wrong. 
 
Wherever you find relativism, you will also find skepticism, for a rejection of objective meaning relies upon denying a knowledge of what is real. But while we should always be wary of hasty absolutes, and carefully develop a healthy sense of doubt, there is a grave danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 
 
In almost every case I have encountered, subjectivism, so prevalent in modernity, is a form of psychological escape, not an argument of philosophical discipline. Observe the blatant contradictions in the usual platitudes: How can I know that nothing can be known? How can everything be relative, if there no absolute by which it is judged? How can I make a supposedly objective claim that all awareness is merely subjective? 
 
Despite the pedantic objections, there is no profound mystery, no metaphysical complexity, in establishing a measure for life. Any sort of proof is built upon self-evident first principles, the immediate facts presented to us in every act of experience. From the moment I am conscious, it is not only apparent that I am a being who thinks, but also that there is content to the world I am thinking about. The effect of an appearance proceeds from a cause within nature. 
 
I don’t need to be a rocket scientist, or even a phenomenologist, to make some sense of this. Who I am, and what I am meant for, are inherent in my human identity. How odd it would be to say that the meaning of life is to have no meaning! It makes for inscrutable poetry, but not for sober philosophy. 
 
If it is my purpose to understand, then let me roll up my sleeves and get to work; the task is for each and every moment, in the most commonplace situations, not just for putting on a splendid show at the podium. What shall be my rules for daily living? How am I to treat my neighbor? When do I know if my efforts have been successful? 
 
The intellectual is inclined to wind himself up, and to get all tied up in knots, which really is a sort of madness, a frenzy of wishing for the reality to conform to his preferences and moods. We are made to be in harmony with Nature, not to hide away in the narcissism of our opinions. 

—Reflection written in 8/2001 

IMAGE" Albrecht Dürer, The Doubting Thomas (c. 1510) 

Jacob's Ladder 11

Giorgio Vasari, Jacob's Dream (1558) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 22

Frederick Taubes, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1944) 

Netherlandish Proverbs 15

"The herring hangs by its own gills." 

You must accept responsibility for your own actions. 

Epictetus, Discourses 2.11.3

Can you then point us to anything beyond your own opinion which will enable us to apply our conceptions better? Does the madman do anything else but what he thinks right? Is this criterion then sufficient for him too? 
 
“It is not.” 
 
Come, then, let us look for something beyond personal opinion. Where shall we find it? 
 
Here you see the beginning of philosophy, in the discovery of the conflict of men's minds with one another, and the attempt to seek for the reason of this conflict, and the condemnation of mere opinion, as a thing not to be trusted; and a search to determine whether your opinion is true, and an attempt to discover a standard, just as we discover the balance to deal with weights and the rule to deal with things straight and crooked. This is the beginning of philosophy. 
 
“Are all opinions right which all men hold?” 
 
Nay, how is it possible for contraries to be both right? 
 
“Well, then, not all opinions, but our opinions?” 
 
Why ours, rather than those of the Syrians or the Egyptians, or the personal opinion of myself or of this man or that? 
 
“Why indeed?” 
 
So then, what each man thinks is not sufficient to make a thing so: for in dealing with weights and measures we are not satisfied with mere appearance, but have found a standard to determine each. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.11 
 
If you wholeheartedly embrace the vocation of teaching, you will face many frustrations along the way, and you may be tempted to throw in the towel on account of the poor wages, the endless paperwork, or the clueless bureaucrats.
 
For me, however, the greatest annoyance has been what I call the “cult of opinion”, a whole generation of young people who are convinced that a proposition is true just because they happen to believe it, and that the premises should be cherry-picked in support of a preferred conclusion. 
 
The psychologists call it “confirmation bias”, and while I am grateful for their insights, I fear that only an appeal to philosophy, in its most practical sense, can help us to escape from the quagmire. It is one thing to observe how we get trapped in our subjective habits, but quite another to establish an objective foundation for the sound judgments we so desperately need. 
 
I remind myself how this is nothing new, even if the fashion of the age makes it easier to be at the mercy of our prejudices. If I do not make the effort to think for myself, I will become a slave to my passions, or to the clever manipulation of someone else’s thinking. 
 
However distorted our reasoning, we will act with the confidence that we are right, so no good will come from condemning the person, or even from attacking the conclusion. The hope lies rather in examining the argument, and ultimately to revisit the first principles that stand behind it. Despite some initial protests, I have always been grateful to someone for challenging me to explain why I hold something to be true. 
 
This is also why I regularly try to teach Plato’s Meno, where the distinction between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme) is so critical to arriving at any meaning and purpose. If you cannot ground it, it is likely to fly away. Whatever the art or the field of study, success or failure depend upon an understanding of the causes. 
 
Since not all propositions can be equally true, how are we to decide? I regularly find my students falling back on appeals to the authority of this or that “-ism”, as if the conformity to a crowd can excuse us from doing our own work. 
 
There are the religious zealots, who insist they are saved because the heretic is damned, or the political demagogues, who prop up an ideology by so desperately hating the fellow across the aisle. Perhaps you feel comfortably smug, but that doesn’t make it true. 
 
Philosophy has to start when we finally admit to the failure of assumptions. Most of what passes for debate is like a marketplace where no one can agree on a common set of weights and measures, or a bar where the patrons bicker over the match on the television without having ever actually read the rulebook. 
 
It may be too late to call upon the philosopher after the pantry is bare and the bombs are falling. 

—Reflection written in 8/2001 

Abandoned Places 69

IMAGE by Dmitry Kokh 

Nature 71

IMAGE by Randy Olson 

Dhammapada 420

Him I call indeed a Brahmana whose path the gods do not know, nor spirits, nor men, whose passions are extinct, and who is venerable. 

IMAGE: Ma Yuan, Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring (c. 1200) 

Epictetus, Discourses 2.11.2

“Why!” says he; “do I not know what is noble and what is shameful? Have I no conception of them?” 
 
You have. 
 
“Do I not fit my conception to particulars?” 
 
You do. 
 
“Do I not fit them well then?” 
 
There lies the whole question and there fancy comes in. For, starting with these admitted principles, men advance to the matter in dispute, applying these principles inappropriately. 
 
For if they really possessed this faculty as well, what would prevent them from being perfect? You think that you apply your preconceptions properly to particular cases; but tell me, how do you arrive at this? 
 
“I have such a conviction.”  
 
But another has a different conviction, has he not, and yet believes. as you do, that he is applying his conception rightly? 
 
“He does.”
 
Is it possible then for you both to apply your conceptions properly in matters on which you hold contrary opinion? 
 
“It is impossible." 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.11  
 
People will, of course, be offended if you suggest that they can’t distinguish between right and wrong, though they are not ashamed to admit that they can’t solve a quadratic equation or play sweet jazz on the saxophone. 
 
I, for one, never properly learned the game of poker, and I spent a number of years thinking I could just pretend, which ended rather poorly. I am now happy to proclaim my incompetence at cards, and yet I still feel a bit of a twinge whenever the content of my character is questioned. 
 
Why might that be? Of all the abilities a man can possess, only virtue is essential, as the fulfillment of his very nature, while all of the others are quite accidental. 
 
Regardless of my preferences, I could live perfectly well without the skill to rebuild an engine or coach a professional football team, but I would fail miserably at being human if I could not practice prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. However smart, or charming, or funny I may become, it means nothing without the talent of simply being a good person. 
 
Even when we haven’t thought it through, we sense this instinctively, and so we cling to the idea that we must remain righteous, sometimes at the risk of becoming self-righteous. 
 
Is it possible for me to lack a conscience? No, I am always working from certain principles, which only leaves the question whether they are truly sound principles, and if that conscience is indeed properly informed. 
 
And when we disagree with others about those principles, we often start to bicker, a response that hardly seems fitting for someone who has his moral house in order. 
 
If I really know how to attain the good, why am I doing such a bad job at it? I may be assured in my beliefs, but it remains to be seen if they are reasonable: to “feel strongly” about something does not necessarily mean that I am judging it correctly. 
 
We end up with an unintelligible relativism, where a confidence in our opinions takes the place of a certainty in our understanding. I demand the freedom to speak my mind, and you condemn my words as abhorrent; hence the fellow who shouts the loudest, or eventually breaks the most bones, proclaims himself the winner. No one can be right when everyone is right. 
 
Lately, I have been hearing much chatter about “my” truth and “your” truth, which, regardless of how sensitive we should be to different points of view, falls into the contradiction of making the objective assertion that all truth is subjective. Without a standard we can both share, or at least a few common definitions to begin a discussion, we cannot avoid falling into a death spiral. 
 
Fighting over a game of cards, or some tribal tenet, is a surefire sign that I ought to reconsider how my precious conceptions fit with the plain facts of nature. 

—Reflection written in 8/2001 

IMAGE: Jan Steen, Argument over a Card Game (1665) 

Stockdale on Stoicism 57

Like all good squeeze-play systems, political prisons are meant to destroy the man who chooses the "middle way," who decides to be "reasonable," to "meet them half-way." 

For hours on end, my commissar would plead with me to follow that track: "You are an American, you are pragmatic; come, let us reason together." 

It is only when he can get you to level with him in some small way, to drop your guard and betray an emotional dependence on his good will, that he can get his crowbars of fear and guilt behind your armor and begin to twist.

Political prison extortion is one grand leverage game. The inmate is well served to chant the rules he must live by under his breath: "Show no fear." "Never trigger shame." "The credibility of your defiance must be maintained." "The prison onslaught must be contained." "Never level with a jailer." 

One soon learns that to survive with self-respect, he has to divest himself of the remnants of his student-body-president personality: the willingness to be open, to interact, to respond in interesting ways. 

With time and care, many prisoners create a new independent personality that even under torture is difficult to manipulate. In Stoic terms, having external needs makes one vulnerable and vulgar.

The condition and characteristic of a vulgar person is that he never looks for either help or harm from himself, but only from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is that he looks to himself for all help or harm.

I do not suggest that I understood all this while in prison or that the Enchiridion was familiar enough to use as a text on how to face the challenge. But, remembering my experiences in prison, I have since come to think that the Enchiridion has all the right answers. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character 

IMAGE: Nikolai Yaroshenko, A Prisoner in His Cell (1878) 

Henry David Thoreau 16

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (19 August, 1851) 

Owls 19

IMAGE by Hassan Ibrahim 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 21

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1833) 

The Mother Road 15

IMAGES by Bob Waldmire (1992) 

Epictetus, Discourses 2.11.1

Chapter 11: What is the beginning of philosophy.  

The beginning of philosophy with those who approach it in the right way and by the door is a consciousness of one's own weakness and want of power in regard to necessary things. 
 
For we come into the world with no innate conception of a right-angled triangle, or of a quarter-tone or of a semi-tone, but we are taught what each of these means by systematic instruction; and therefore those who are ignorant of these things do not think that they know them. 
 
On the other hand, everyone has come into the world with an innate conception as to good and bad, noble and shameful, becoming and unbecoming, happiness and unhappiness, fitting and inappropriate, what is right to do and what is wrong. 
 
Therefore, we all use these terms and try to fit our preconceived notions to particular facts. 
 
“He did nobly”, “dutifully”, “un-dutifully”; “he was unfortunate”, “he was fortunate”; “he is unjust”, “he is just.” 
 
Which of us refrains from these phrases? Which of us puts off using them until he is taught them, just as men who have no knowledge of lines or sounds refrain from talking of them? 
 
The reason is that on the subject in question we come into the world with a certain amount of teaching, so to say, already given us by nature; to this basis of knowledge we have added our own fancies. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.11
 
If I were to present this passage to my esteemed colleagues, they would immediately begin debating about a possible relationship between Epictetus and the innate ideas of Platonism, and whether there might be some trail of textual breadcrumbs connecting the Stoics with the Academy. I can even picture one fellow working it into the footnotes for his next scholarly article. 
 
While I am also interested in such technical questions, since I will never deny that I am a philosophy geek, this letter inspires me for very different reasons. I recognize how often my thinking jumps far ahead of what is justified, and why my immediate opinions, however comfortable they might feel, do not necessarily reflect the way things are. I attend to this letter because it reminds me that philosophy is indispensable as a guide for daily living. 
 
On the scholarly side of things, I will only suggest that Epictetus is speaking of an intrinsic disposition to understanding, more like a Peripatetic potency, or what Chrysippus called a “seed”, rather than any content of knowledge that precedes experience. By our very nature, we are inclined to seeking out meaning and purpose. 
 
On the personal side of things, that can also get us in quite a bit of trouble. It is our nature to understand, to distinguish the true from the false and the good from the bad, but we instinctively turn to concepts like duty, fortune, and justice, without first arriving at a clear definition of these terms. 
 
I cannot be expected to work through a mathematical proof, or to compose a piece of music, without the discipline of training, so why do I assume I can make life-altering decisions about right and wrong before I have clarified my first principles? As much as I make my demands about being happy, have I grasped anything about what it actually means to live with excellence? 
 
My natural impulses have pointed me in a vague direction, and now my deliberate judgments must focus in on the details of the map. Otherwise, I will find myself making sweeping claims about politics, economics, and all sorts of social schemes, while never having established what it even means to be human. If I am speaking of benefit or harm in my day-to-day business, I would be well advised to lay out some of the ground rules. 
 
My hunches give me a certain confidence, like a child who believes he already knows how to play baseball by watching a game on the television. No, an inspiration is just the beginning, not to be confused with the completion of the task. Philosophy, as the practical foundation for all of our estimation, is the necessary condition for anything worthwhile I will ever achieve in this life. 
 
Hasty conceits and flights of fancy are no substitute for a fixed measure. 

—Reflection written in 8/2001 

The Basel Dance of Death 18

Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Nobleman (1616) 

"Now come, you noble warrior.
You must attend to your manliness here
with Death, who spares no man.
Take leave, then you will be rewarded."

"I have frightened many men, 
who were bedecked in armor.
Now grim Death battles with me
and truly leaves me in great distress." 

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 63

LXIII. 

If any strive to injure, or defame
Your honour, filching from you your good name;
Consider, he believes this blame your due,
That he doth only what he ought to do:
For 'tis a thing impossible, that he
Should so in sentiments with you agree,
As not to follow his own bent of mind,
And that to which his judgment is inclin'd.
Now if through carelessness he judge amiss,
He suffers most, and all the harm is his.
He truly suffers most, whose reason's light
Is clouded o'er, whom error doth benight;
He the affront to his own reason gives,
Who thinks wrong right, who falshoods truths believes.
Then why should his mistakes your soul torment?
His own mistakes are his own punishment;
He wrongs his judgment, not the truth, or you,
You still are guiltless, still what's truth is true;
Still 'tis a certain truth (whate'er he say)
That whensoe'er the sun appears, 'tis day.
And thus prepar'd, you patiently may bear
His rudeness, and unmov'd his slanders hear,
And calmly answer, that such things to him 
Fit to be done, fit to be said, may seem.

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 196

The great gifts of Fortune are waited on by fear. 

William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness 1

When I first came across this series of prints, I was still in college, and I was deeply confused about where my life would take me. In hindsight, a part of my problem was the very wording of my question, because I should have been more concerned about where I would take my life. 

I had long been told about the importance of hard work, and yet I did not bind my diligence to a sense of joyful duty. While they told me I could be successful if I put in the effort, I was not impressed by the prospect of riches and fame, only coming to appreciate intense labor once I discovered some deeper values worth living for. 

Please don't tell me a man is happy because he is rich, when it actually turns out that he is rich because he is happy. 

So much of Hogarth's work teaches us how virtue will raise us up, just as vice will drag us down, and it employs various images of prosperity and misery to drive the point home. This is a lesson worth learning, at any time or in any place, even if it is presented in an idealized manner. 

There is a danger, however, in treating the good fortune as an end in itself, instead of recognizing it as a consequence of a good character, an outward symbol for an inner commitment. As a child, I wondered what it meant to live "happily ever after" in the fairy tales, and if it was merely about defeating the dragon and winning the heart of the princess. Was the prince still a hero if he tried his best and fell in battle? 

I unfortunately know of far too many noble souls who have done precisely the right thing, only to never receive any earthly reward. I am hesitant to follow those who insist that hard work alone will bring us our happiness, without building upon the foundation of a healthy conscience. 

Our circumstances can be fickle, often unfolding in a way that has no connection to our merits, but what fascinates me about Hogarth's scenario is how both Thomas Idle and Francis Goodchild begin with exactly the same opportunities, and then end up making such radically different choices. In this particular narrative, no one has an unfair advantage, and no one has gotten a raw deal: it almost plays out like a moral experiment under identical conditions. 

The two apprentices are in service to one master weaver, and are asked to perform equal tasks. Nevertheless, Thomas is asleep at his loom, while Francis is at the top of his game. What may at first appear to be the trivial difference between having a good day and having a bad day is really grounded in the most basic judgments about what is "good" and what is "bad". 

One copy of The Prentice's Guide is neglected, while the other is well cared for. Thomas is more concerned with his beer and tobacco, and reading the latest novels, while Francis does not allow himself to be distracted, and keeps up with the local news. 

The Master does not look angry at Thomas—only disappointed. I know that look all too well, and I am now grateful that it eventually had some effect on me. 

The items in the frame are premonitions of their respective futures: to the left, a whip, shackles, and a hanging rope; to the right, a mace, a ceremonial sword, and a chain of gold. 

I have no problem with the cat being a cat, but I do frown upon Thomas not shooing the cat. 

What's that? You say Thomas is at least having some fun, and Francis just looks like a square? Yet regardless of what may come, Thomas is hung over, and Francis is smiling. Maybe it only sounds stuffy to someone who expects to receive and never intends to give. Be careful where you seek your contentment. 

Proverbs 23:21 

The Drunkard shall come to
Poverty, and drowsiness shall
clothe a Man with rags. 

Proverbs 10:4 

The hand of the diligent
maketh rich. 

William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness 1: The Fellow 'Prentices at Their Looms (1747)