Epictetus, The Handbook 39: Right Promises

. . . Refuse to take oaths, altogether if that be possible, but if not, as far as circumstances allow. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

We think of “swearing” as simply the use of foul language, but to properly “swear” refers to the offer of a solemn oath, an affirmation, a promise, or a vow. Such statements are made upon the guarantee of a certain name or authority we claim to hold as sacred or dear.

Now just as we so freely make light use of obscene language, so too we often make light use of such words of promise. Think of how often we promise on God, on our country, on our friendship, or on our honor that something is true, or that our commitment is real. Now think of how often we truly mean it.

Epictetus isn’t telling us that we shouldn’t make promises, but rather that we should make those promises rightly, based upon our conviction, and not upon empty show. I can imagine the Romans saying “by Jupiter” just as often as we now thoughtlessly say “Oh my God.”

Words without commitment are lies, and we too freely use words loosed from their meanings. I should not think that a man who swears will necessarily mean what he says, but I should think that a man of character will certainly mean what he says. I remember the words of Aeschylus:

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

How easily one of my heroes, St. Thomas More, could have mouthed the words of the Oath of Supremacy and the Oath of Succession in 1534, and escaped with his life and his position intact. Like a clever child, he might just have crossed his fingers behind his back. Yet he knew that he could not swear upon the name of a king who was asking him to go against his own conscience. Conviction won out over words that day.

In right Stoic manner, a man should hardly have to appeal to the power of another to guarantee his own promise. When I was younger, men of the old school still told me that a man without his word had nothing. When I grew older, I began to see how lightly people spoke words of allegiance and loyalty, and how easily they broke them. This, in turn, helped me to take my own commitments far more seriously.

Engaging with Stoicism allowed me to give all of this a deeper context. If, as Epictetus says, I rule only myself, then I surely cannot sell out this responsibility for anything else. I am certainly going beyond the pale when I place greater weight in the name of something else than I do in my own conviction.

Historians will sometimes argue that the point of no return in Nazi Germany was not the party’s electoral victories, or all the legal machinations that followed, but when the officers of the Wehrmacht swore an oath not to their own conscience, or even to their country or its constitution, but to the person of Adolf Hitler. Under a Stoic light, it could be said that this was the moment when they surrendered the rule of themselves through the name of another.

I must always ask myself not only what I am promising, but also upon what grounds I am promising it. By all means, let us certainly show right reverence to our kings and to our gods. But let us also reserve the final authority of our own promises to our own character. I should hardly ever pass the weight of so great and noble a responsibility on to another. 

Written in 6/2009

Image: Hans Holbein, Sir Thomas More (1527)