Epictetus, Discourses 1.17.2

“Yes,” says one, “but the more pressing need is not logic but the discipline of men's thoughts and feelings,” and the like.

 

If you want to hear about moral improvement, well and good. But if you say to me, “I do not know whether you argue truly or falsely,” and if I use an ambiguous word and you say to me “Distinguish,” I shall grow impatient and say to you, “This is the more pressing need.” 

 

It is for this reason, I suppose, that men put the processes of logic in the forefront, just as we put the testing of the measure before the measuring of the corn. And if we do not determine first what is the bushel and what is the scale, how shall we be able to measure or weigh anything? 

 

So in the sphere of thought if we have not fully grasped and trained to perfection the instrument by which we judge other things and understand other things, shall we ever be able to arrive at accurate knowledge? Of course, it is impossible. 

—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.17

 

“Don’t get me wrong, having logic classes is great, but we really need to ask how necessary that material will be for our students to become successful professionals and good citizens.” 

 

Not a single curriculum committee meeting can pass without someone making such a statement, as a seemingly friendly way of telling the humanities faculty they are not so important. I have even learned to predict at which point in the agenda it will inevitably make its appearance. 

 

There can be both great benefit as well as great harm in it. It is certainly true that intellectual musings divorced from the development of character are of no use whatsoever, and fancy scholars should surely take note. At the same time, increasing the virtues is quite impossible without also rigorously forming the intellect, and those who reduce education to a mere business for profit are called to reconsider. 

 

How can I choose to do what is good, if I do not first understand what is good? How can I judge between right and wrong, when my power of judgment lacks order and discipline? All the best intentions in the world are wasted without the direction of a sound mind, and I will be hopelessly lost in a flood of particular cases in the absence of any universal laws. 

 

Simply put, theory lacking practice is dead, while practice lacking theory is blind. For a rational animal, there is no worthwhile living without excellence in reasoning. Time and time again, my neglect of this rule has left me profoundly miserable. 

 

A “successful professional?” I then need to correctly and precisely define both success and professionalism. A “good citizen?” Yes, I see how loaded those terms are, and how critical it is that I am working from a thorough account of what my human vocation entails. 

 

Please don’t smirk, or roll your eyes at me, or brush off such matters as being petty and irrelevant. Nothing could be more relevant than this, to get a handle on who I am and where I should be going. The moral concern is at the heart of every other concern, as it sets the ultimate standard for every decision I will make.

 

Weights and measures are such a wonderful analogy. How can I sell you a pound of ham, without a norm for what constitutes a pound? How can you pay me for driving a mile, if we can’t agree on the distance involved? 

 

And how can we say that all we need is love, when we have no tools for identifying the essence of love? It is the mind that offers these tools to the heart. 

—Reflection written in 1/2001

IMAGE: The glory of the British pre-decimal days . . .