I ask you, where am I to escape death? Point me to the place, point me to the people, among whom I am to go, on whom it does not light, point me to a charm against it.
If I have none, what would you have me do? I cannot escape death: am I not to escape the fear of it? Am I to die in tears and trembling? For trouble of mind springs from this, from wishing for a thing which does not come to pass.
Wheresoever I can alter external things to suit my own will, I alter them: where I cannot, I am fain to tear any man's eyes out who stands in my way. For man's nature is such that he cannot bear to be deprived of what is good, nor can he bear to be involved in evil.
And so the end of the matter is that when I cannot alter things, nor blind him that hinders me, I sit still and moan and revile whom I can—Zeus and the other gods; for if they heed me not, what have I to do with them?
“Yes, but that will be impious of you.”
Well, how shall I be worse off than I am now?
In a word, we must remember this, that unless piety and true interest coincide, piety cannot be preserved in a man. Do not these principles seem to you to be urgent?
—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.27
Epictetus has a wonderful way of describing a train of thought, especially when he shows how a foolish oversight in our primary conceptions is the source of so many later frustrations.
I try to run away from death, only because I did not rightly consider the purpose of living. I grow angry with the world for not doing as I demand, only because I did not discern what was properly my own. I grumble at my neighbors and curse God, only because I looked to a loss that was no loss at all.
I do sympathize with the anxiety of the Existentialist, but with the Stoic I dig deeper to find how Nature provides a ready-made cure for all my worries. A man cannot create his own essence from nothing, though he can certainly discover it in what Providence had previously given him, and he had carelessly overlooked.
Wherever I have determined something to be good in my judgment, so the inclination of my will follows, since I can hardly detest what I perceive to be of benefit or desire what I perceive to be of harm. Any ambiguity in the matter is the result of attempting to hold on to opposing premises, and ultimately the belief of greater force will always win out.
If, for example, I have reasoned that adultery is a vice, and yet I remain drawn to my neighbor’s wife, this is due to my far deeper conviction that pleasure is to be preferred over loyalty. I can’t have my cake and eat it too, in which case my attachment to my passions has me gobbling it up instead of letting it be.
Sloppy thinking about first principles is therefore what leads me to assume conflict and strife in my affairs, and I thereby succumb to irritation and resentment. The impressions will only appear to be at war with one another when I fail to rightly relate my circumstances back to my character, and when I continue to treat events as somehow being good or bad in themselves.
I think of how often I have shaken my fists at the world, or even questioned the intelligibility of the world, because conditions didn’t go my way. I think of how often I have hated God, or even denied there could be a God, because I didn’t get what I happened to prefer. All it has ever taken to get beyond such presumptions is a recognition of the measure of my good—then the impressions fall into their rightful places.
There can’t be any happiness where I don’t cling to my virtues, and there can’t be any piety where I separate my welfare from the dignity of the whole.
Epictetus has a wonderful way of describing a train of thought, especially when he shows how a foolish oversight in our primary conceptions is the source of so many later frustrations.
I try to run away from death, only because I did not rightly consider the purpose of living. I grow angry with the world for not doing as I demand, only because I did not discern what was properly my own. I grumble at my neighbors and curse God, only because I looked to a loss that was no loss at all.
I do sympathize with the anxiety of the Existentialist, but with the Stoic I dig deeper to find how Nature provides a ready-made cure for all my worries. A man cannot create his own essence from nothing, though he can certainly discover it in what Providence had previously given him, and he had carelessly overlooked.
Wherever I have determined something to be good in my judgment, so the inclination of my will follows, since I can hardly detest what I perceive to be of benefit or desire what I perceive to be of harm. Any ambiguity in the matter is the result of attempting to hold on to opposing premises, and ultimately the belief of greater force will always win out.
If, for example, I have reasoned that adultery is a vice, and yet I remain drawn to my neighbor’s wife, this is due to my far deeper conviction that pleasure is to be preferred over loyalty. I can’t have my cake and eat it too, in which case my attachment to my passions has me gobbling it up instead of letting it be.
Sloppy thinking about first principles is therefore what leads me to assume conflict and strife in my affairs, and I thereby succumb to irritation and resentment. The impressions will only appear to be at war with one another when I fail to rightly relate my circumstances back to my character, and when I continue to treat events as somehow being good or bad in themselves.
I think of how often I have shaken my fists at the world, or even questioned the intelligibility of the world, because conditions didn’t go my way. I think of how often I have hated God, or even denied there could be a God, because I didn’t get what I happened to prefer. All it has ever taken to get beyond such presumptions is a recognition of the measure of my good—then the impressions fall into their rightful places.
There can’t be any happiness where I don’t cling to my virtues, and there can’t be any piety where I separate my welfare from the dignity of the whole.
—Reflection written in 4/2001
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