Epictetus, The Handbook 55: Not a Something, but a Someone

Women from fourteen years upwards are called 'madam' by men. Wherefore, when they see that the only advantage they have got is to be marriageable, they begin to make themselves attractive and to set all their hopes on this.

We must take pains then to make them understand that they are really honored for nothing but a decent and modest life.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 40 (tr Matheson)

Some of us like to think that all the attitudes of the past must of necessity be burdened by sexism. I once had to ask a student to re-read this passage four times before he realized that Epictetus might actually be saying something very positive about women.

The Stoic will always move beyond the accidents of gender, race, age, wealth, or social status, all those things we like to argue about so much, to the very core of what it means to be a human being, a creature of reason and choice. Measure any person by the fulfillment of his nature, to live with wisdom and with virtue.

Epictetus is telling us that women should not simply care for their appearance to make them a good prospect for marriage. In modern terms, we might say that this only reduces her to an object to be desired and possessed by a man. What should she worry about instead, and what makes her worthy of respect? Nothing is more important than her moral character. In this most essential of ways, a woman should be absolutely no different than a man. These are the very qualities any Stoic believes will define our human excellence.

People of poor character, from any time or any place, are the ones who make human dignity dependent upon externals. I believe we still continue to do this when we get our relationships, which should rightly be about the exercise of friendship, confused with the exercise of sexual pleasure and power. I was very confused by a woman, of very progressive values, I knew in college, who regularly told me that sex was about pleasure, and marriage was about social and financial security. She said she would pursue one now, and the other later. Each, she argued, was a way to exercise her own freedom and power, because each would help her to get what she wanted.

When I was finally blessed to meet the woman I would marry, I never thought about her as something that would give me pleasure, or something that would help me exercise power. She was not a something, but a someone. I never thought of her as a means of getting me anything at all, but as someone to whom I could give my love. I believe it makes all the difference to respect people for who they are, and not what external conveniences they might have.

A man is hardly worthy if he is rich, and a woman is hardly worthy if she is attractive. That is the thinking of shallow minds. Men and women are both worthy when they seek to live with decency and modesty. 

Written in 7/1999

Image: Statue of a Roman Woman (early 2nd c. AD)