Let the Pyrrhonist and the disciple of the Academy come and maintain the contrary! For my part I have no leisure for these discussions, nor can I act as advocate to the common-sense view.
If I had some petty action concerned with a plot of land, I should have called in another to be my advocate, how much more in a matter of this concern.
With what argument, then, am I content? With what is appropriate to the subject in hand.
How sensation takes place, whether through the whole body or through particular parts, I cannot render a reasoned account, though I find difficulty in both views. But that you and I are not the same persons, I know absolutely and for certain.
How is that? When I want to swallow a morsel I never lift it to your mouth, but to mine. When I want to take a piece of bread, I never take rubbish instead, but go to the bread as to a mark. And even you who make nothing of the senses, act just as I do. Which of you when he wants to go to the bath goes to the mill instead?
What follows? Must we not to the best of our power hold fast to this—that is, maintain the view of common sense, and guard ourselves against all that upsets it? Yes, who disputes that?
But these are matters for one who has the power and the leisure: the man who trembles, and is disturbed, and whose heart is shaken within him, ought to devote his time to something else.
If I had some petty action concerned with a plot of land, I should have called in another to be my advocate, how much more in a matter of this concern.
With what argument, then, am I content? With what is appropriate to the subject in hand.
How sensation takes place, whether through the whole body or through particular parts, I cannot render a reasoned account, though I find difficulty in both views. But that you and I are not the same persons, I know absolutely and for certain.
How is that? When I want to swallow a morsel I never lift it to your mouth, but to mine. When I want to take a piece of bread, I never take rubbish instead, but go to the bread as to a mark. And even you who make nothing of the senses, act just as I do. Which of you when he wants to go to the bath goes to the mill instead?
What follows? Must we not to the best of our power hold fast to this—that is, maintain the view of common sense, and guard ourselves against all that upsets it? Yes, who disputes that?
But these are matters for one who has the power and the leisure: the man who trembles, and is disturbed, and whose heart is shaken within him, ought to devote his time to something else.
—from Epictetus, Discourses 1.27
Often the impressions will not make immediate sense to me, and then it is my job to untangle them, to uncover the causes behind the effects.
Yet there is sadly another quick-fix response I might take up: if I deny the reality behind the impressions to begin with, can’t I get away with dodging my responsibilities altogether?
You may think I am joking, but I remain convinced that many of the extreme skeptics are playing an elaborate game. Some are genuinely confused, and they deserve our encouragement; others are simply making excuses for themselves.
Do I not prefer my situation? Let me then call into question its very existence! I know full well how painful it can be, and it is an easy step to succumb to denial. If I repeat it often enough, I might actually believe it.
Bart Simpson, that lovable imp, is the master: “I didn’t do it.”
Epictetus chastises the Academics and the Pyrrhonists for good reason. I can present all sorts of clever arguments about why experience must be of something real, or how the difficulty of interpretation is not to be confused with a rejection of objectivity, and yet I am painting myself into a corner by trying to prove what need not be proven.
As Aristotle observed, all demonstration must begin with self-evident principles, unless we wish to be forever passing the buck. I too have a great fondness for abstract reflection, though when it becomes divorced from daily living it is no more than a fascinating fiction.
Once I begin to doubt away the very building blocks of my very awareness, simultaneously affirming what I claim to deny, I have drifted off in a mental vacuum. Let me be careful that my exercise of doubt, which ought to ensure certainty, doesn’t end up removing certainty altogether; the proverbial baby shouldn’t be thrown out with the bathwater.
Epictetus has little interest in studying the subtleties of sense or the mysteries of consciousness, not because these aren’t worthy subjects, but because he knows that what little time he has is better directed to the exercise of the virtues. He is happy to leave the speculation to others, just as he would rely on a lawyer to handle a pesky lawsuit.
Indeed, why speak of the theory in one way, while pursuing the practice in quite another? No sane man ignores the evidence of his senses by making a meal of a stone or holding a conversation with a fencepost, as if any one experience were interchangeable with any other. If I question the existence of my body while I am scratching an itch, you are best advised to think me a fool.
What am I to do with the fellow who insists he knows that nothing can be known, or is certain that nothing is certain, or affirms that opposites can be true simultaneously? I can wish him well, but there are no reasonable grounds to engage with him.
Often the impressions will not make immediate sense to me, and then it is my job to untangle them, to uncover the causes behind the effects.
Yet there is sadly another quick-fix response I might take up: if I deny the reality behind the impressions to begin with, can’t I get away with dodging my responsibilities altogether?
You may think I am joking, but I remain convinced that many of the extreme skeptics are playing an elaborate game. Some are genuinely confused, and they deserve our encouragement; others are simply making excuses for themselves.
Do I not prefer my situation? Let me then call into question its very existence! I know full well how painful it can be, and it is an easy step to succumb to denial. If I repeat it often enough, I might actually believe it.
Bart Simpson, that lovable imp, is the master: “I didn’t do it.”
Epictetus chastises the Academics and the Pyrrhonists for good reason. I can present all sorts of clever arguments about why experience must be of something real, or how the difficulty of interpretation is not to be confused with a rejection of objectivity, and yet I am painting myself into a corner by trying to prove what need not be proven.
As Aristotle observed, all demonstration must begin with self-evident principles, unless we wish to be forever passing the buck. I too have a great fondness for abstract reflection, though when it becomes divorced from daily living it is no more than a fascinating fiction.
Once I begin to doubt away the very building blocks of my very awareness, simultaneously affirming what I claim to deny, I have drifted off in a mental vacuum. Let me be careful that my exercise of doubt, which ought to ensure certainty, doesn’t end up removing certainty altogether; the proverbial baby shouldn’t be thrown out with the bathwater.
Epictetus has little interest in studying the subtleties of sense or the mysteries of consciousness, not because these aren’t worthy subjects, but because he knows that what little time he has is better directed to the exercise of the virtues. He is happy to leave the speculation to others, just as he would rely on a lawyer to handle a pesky lawsuit.
Indeed, why speak of the theory in one way, while pursuing the practice in quite another? No sane man ignores the evidence of his senses by making a meal of a stone or holding a conversation with a fencepost, as if any one experience were interchangeable with any other. If I question the existence of my body while I am scratching an itch, you are best advised to think me a fool.
What am I to do with the fellow who insists he knows that nothing can be known, or is certain that nothing is certain, or affirms that opposites can be true simultaneously? I can wish him well, but there are no reasonable grounds to engage with him.
—Reflection written in 4/2001
Not quite topical, but I sent my younger brother one of your posts and now he's wading his way through the dialogues of Epictetus (with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius waiting when he's done).
ReplyDeleteSo your blog has officially acted as a gateway drug for stoic philosophy...
That's the spirit! First one's always on the house . . . ;-)
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