How is it then that some external things are described as natural and some as unnatural? It is because we regard ourselves as detached from the rest of the Universe.
For the foot, for instance, I shall say it is natural to be clean, but if you take it as a foot and not as a detached thing, it will be fitting for it to walk in the mud and tread upon thorns and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body: or else it will cease to be a foot. We must hold exactly the same sort of view about ourselves.
What are you? A man. If you regard man as a detached being, it is natural for him to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy.
But if you regard him as a man and a part of a larger whole, that whole makes it fitting that at one moment you should fall ill, at another go a voyage and risk your life, and at another be at your wit's end, and, it may be, die before your time.
Why then are you indignant? Do you not know that, just as the foot spoke of if viewed apart will cease to be a foot, so you will cease to be a man?
For what is a man? A part of a city, first a part of the City in which gods and men are incorporate, and secondly of that city which has the next claim to be called so, which is a small copy of the City Universal.
For the foot, for instance, I shall say it is natural to be clean, but if you take it as a foot and not as a detached thing, it will be fitting for it to walk in the mud and tread upon thorns and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body: or else it will cease to be a foot. We must hold exactly the same sort of view about ourselves.
What are you? A man. If you regard man as a detached being, it is natural for him to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy.
But if you regard him as a man and a part of a larger whole, that whole makes it fitting that at one moment you should fall ill, at another go a voyage and risk your life, and at another be at your wit's end, and, it may be, die before your time.
Why then are you indignant? Do you not know that, just as the foot spoke of if viewed apart will cease to be a foot, so you will cease to be a man?
For what is a man? A part of a city, first a part of the City in which gods and men are incorporate, and secondly of that city which has the next claim to be called so, which is a small copy of the City Universal.
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.5
I was apparently born with an instinct for an objective moral order, since I can remember asking questions about right and wrong from my first conscious moments. It didn’t seem proper to me that an angry old lady was yelling at my parents about a broken washing machine.
My mother called me “the little philosopher” just after I was born, because I gazed out into the world with an intense yet calm wonder. Would that I had maintained that demeanor!
My deepest regret is that I did not follow through on that promise. The world yelled at me rather loudly, and I sadly submitted. As soon as they put me in school, that socially mandated prison system for children, I enslaved myself to “the rules.”
Which rules? Whose rules? If you are still with me, I suspect we could be very good friends.
Even when I began to think for myself, I would make excuses for myself about what was “natural”, and my willingness to accept the stark simplicity of the human good remains a work in progress.
No, the natural is not merely what is easy, or convenient, or gratifying, or popular at the moment. The natural can nether be reduced to relativism, nor considered as some ideal theory. Who I am is the fullness of my identity as a creature of reason and will, placed smack-dab in the middle of my circumstances.
If I treat anything in my life in just an isolated way, I might believe it is best to preserve it at all costs, to lock it away, safe and sound. What I am forgetting is that it is meant to be used, and by being used it is also meant to become battered and bruised. What use is my hand, if it doesn’t develop a few good calluses? What use is my heart if I don’t let it get broken? It is impossible to grasp without strain, and it is impossible to love without loss.
I was not put on this Earth to acquire and consume, or to maintain myself in some pristine condition. I am here to spend myself, to put anything and everything in the service of my power to understand and to love, and then to be content when the last little bit of me has been totally exhausted. To be a worn man, in the service of virtue, is not a failing, but a triumph.
I will feel pain, I will grow weaker, and I will, sooner or later, pass away. For the grasping man, this sounds like a terrible burden, an existential crisis; for the Stoic, or for any man of character, it is a beautiful opportunity to live without hesitation. When I look at the Universe from a moral perspective, there is no such thing as waste.
I try to no longer think like a Kierkegaard, or a Sartre, or a Heidegger, wallowing in anxiety and dread. I know who I am, why I am here, and that it is right for me to fade away, then to be transformed into something new. Once I choose virtue as my end, I am happy to be drained by life, to let my body be expended in the service of the soul.
I have, over the years, developed a love of hats and caps, and to this day I must remind myself not to simply let them hang on the coatrack or in the closet to look pretty. I must wear them, I must let them get frayed, tattered, and faded. Then they have developed character—so it is with a man. The hat should be exposed to the elements, and a man should jump into the fray, to find himself by losing himself.
I am not a creature in seclusion; I am part of a society, not just of this or that tribe, but of a universal community, bound together by the power of the Divine. Each of us has our place in this harmony, and each of us will one day make room for the next citizen. In an odd way, it was reading Epictetus that helped me to finally understand the grand scheme of Augustine’s City of God.
I was apparently born with an instinct for an objective moral order, since I can remember asking questions about right and wrong from my first conscious moments. It didn’t seem proper to me that an angry old lady was yelling at my parents about a broken washing machine.
My mother called me “the little philosopher” just after I was born, because I gazed out into the world with an intense yet calm wonder. Would that I had maintained that demeanor!
My deepest regret is that I did not follow through on that promise. The world yelled at me rather loudly, and I sadly submitted. As soon as they put me in school, that socially mandated prison system for children, I enslaved myself to “the rules.”
Which rules? Whose rules? If you are still with me, I suspect we could be very good friends.
Even when I began to think for myself, I would make excuses for myself about what was “natural”, and my willingness to accept the stark simplicity of the human good remains a work in progress.
No, the natural is not merely what is easy, or convenient, or gratifying, or popular at the moment. The natural can nether be reduced to relativism, nor considered as some ideal theory. Who I am is the fullness of my identity as a creature of reason and will, placed smack-dab in the middle of my circumstances.
If I treat anything in my life in just an isolated way, I might believe it is best to preserve it at all costs, to lock it away, safe and sound. What I am forgetting is that it is meant to be used, and by being used it is also meant to become battered and bruised. What use is my hand, if it doesn’t develop a few good calluses? What use is my heart if I don’t let it get broken? It is impossible to grasp without strain, and it is impossible to love without loss.
I was not put on this Earth to acquire and consume, or to maintain myself in some pristine condition. I am here to spend myself, to put anything and everything in the service of my power to understand and to love, and then to be content when the last little bit of me has been totally exhausted. To be a worn man, in the service of virtue, is not a failing, but a triumph.
I will feel pain, I will grow weaker, and I will, sooner or later, pass away. For the grasping man, this sounds like a terrible burden, an existential crisis; for the Stoic, or for any man of character, it is a beautiful opportunity to live without hesitation. When I look at the Universe from a moral perspective, there is no such thing as waste.
I try to no longer think like a Kierkegaard, or a Sartre, or a Heidegger, wallowing in anxiety and dread. I know who I am, why I am here, and that it is right for me to fade away, then to be transformed into something new. Once I choose virtue as my end, I am happy to be drained by life, to let my body be expended in the service of the soul.
I have, over the years, developed a love of hats and caps, and to this day I must remind myself not to simply let them hang on the coatrack or in the closet to look pretty. I must wear them, I must let them get frayed, tattered, and faded. Then they have developed character—so it is with a man. The hat should be exposed to the elements, and a man should jump into the fray, to find himself by losing himself.
I am not a creature in seclusion; I am part of a society, not just of this or that tribe, but of a universal community, bound together by the power of the Divine. Each of us has our place in this harmony, and each of us will one day make room for the next citizen. In an odd way, it was reading Epictetus that helped me to finally understand the grand scheme of Augustine’s City of God.
—Reflection written in 6/2001
IMAGE: Raoul de Presles. The City of God (c. 1470)
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