Epictetus, Discourses 1.11.6

Tell me, would you have liked, if you were ill, your relations and everyone else, even your wife and children, to show their affection for you in such a way as to leave you alone and desolate?

 

“Certainly not.”

 

Would you pray to be so loved by your own people, as to be always left alone by them when you were ill, because of their exceeding affection, or would you, if it were a question of being left alone, rather pray, supposing that were possible, to have the affection of your enemies? And if that is so, we are forced to the conclusion that your conduct was not that of affection.

 

Epictetus here arrives at something akin to the Golden Rule, which has its noble name for a very good reason. Whatever the time or the place, in any culture or tradition, those who genuinely reflect upon human nature will discover that each and every person shares in the same fundamental dignity, and that doing good for oneself must always be joined to doing good for another. 

 

The preferences and the circumstances may be different, yet in the end, a sincere man cannot help but recognize himself when he looks at his neighbor. We all have a common identity, defined by a mind that is made to understand what is true, and a will that is made to love what is good, from which we must learn that we are all made for one another. 

 

Such a principle is not the result of convenience or convention, arising instead from the order of Nature itself. That is why the Stoic, the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist, or the humanist can arrive at precisely the same conclusion. 

 

The official may have felt affection for his daughter, though he was certainly not putting it into practice. I can only imagine that his concern for his own feelings was overpowering any feelings he had for her, so that while he thought of his own comfort, her comfort did not enter his mind. He did not make that crucial connection, that helping her cope with her pain was just as important as coping with his own. 

 

When the lost love of my life begged me to stop smoking, it did not occur to her that she shouldn’t actually start smoking when I wasn’t around. When I picked up the cigarettes again, just to spite her, it did not occur to me that my malice had made my whole promise to her worthless. 

 

When she later asked me to love her without condition, it did not occur to her that she should avoid hooking up with different men. When I unleashed my nasty temper at her, it did not occur to me that this was not the love that she had asked for. 

 

While we are all prone to terrible errors of judgment, no one, absolutely no one, wishes to be abused, or to be treated as a mere object of utility and pleasure. We rightly ask to be respected. 

 

If I am expecting to receive such respect, why am I hesitant to provide it? I am the other, and the other is me. Right reason tells us this, and the willing heart follows through. 

Written in 12/2000