Musonius Rufus, Fragments 50

"Musonius," Herodes said, "ordered a thousand sesterces to be given to a beggar of this sort who was pretending to be a philosopher, and when several people told him that the rascal was a bad and vicious fellow, deserving of nothing good, Musonius, they say, answered with a smile, 'Well then he deserves the money.'"

 

Most everyone, except perhaps the most uptight fellow, will laugh at the joke, and yet most everyone will then also brush aside the uncomfortable truth behind it. I would propose that what is humorous is not merely the nonsensical, but rather a caricature of something that is quite profoundly sensible. 

 

For the Stoic, money, like any other external circumstance, is in and of itself an indifferent; it only becomes good or bad by how we choose to use it. It is easy for me to condemn rich people in general, and to ridicule the faux philosopher in particular, and yet the problem is not the presence or absence of wealth at all, but the deeper attitude within us that riches are somehow important for their own sake. 

 

The crafty beggar is actually being punished by receiving the donation, because all he will do with it is feed his own vices. In this sense, he deserves everything he gets, just as we all ultimately deserve everything we get. Whatever comes to us will be transformed, for right or for wrong, by the content of our character; the blessings and the curses are in the thinking. 

 

Yes, the joke is on the greedy and shifty man, and yet I wonder if the joke is also on me. Like so many other people, I find the story funny, and I do feel a bit satisfied to see the charlatan gets what’s coming to him. Nevertheless, shouldn’t I be looking back at the merit of my own judgments, instead of pointing a finger at someone else’s? 

 

If I take the time to be honest with myself, I might discover that my attitude is not all that much better. I may at first agree with those who complained about the gift, but that falsely comes from thinking that the money is like a reward. I may then seem to agree with Musonius in letting him keep it, but that falsely comes from thinking that the money is like a punishment. 

 

But it is neither a reward nor a punishment, is it? I am still giving it some inherent value. I am still stuck in the assumption that prosperity or poverty make or break our lives, and they really do nothing of the sort; it is virtue or vice that make or break our lives. 

 

I should also laugh at myself here, since I am also making possessions so significant. Stoicism will dig much deeper than I expect.