Chapter 15: On those who cling stubbornly to their judgments.
There are some who when they hear these precepts—that a man must be steadfast, and that the will is by nature a free thing and not subject to compulsion, whereas all else is subject to hindrance and compulsion, being in bondage and dependence—imagine that they must abide without swerving by every judgement that they have formed.
No—first of all the judgement arrived at must be sound.
For I would have the body firmly braced, but it must be the firmness of health and good condition; if you show me that you have the firmness of a madman and boast of that, I shall say to you, “Look, man, for someone to cure you.”
This is not firmness, but the opposite.
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.15
I find this chapter to be both comic and tragic. I laugh at how stubborn we can be, and I cry at how stubborn we can be. If I could only recognize the inflexibility in myself as quickly as I draw attention to it in others.
Just as I may struggle to distinguish love from lust, or courage from recklessness, it seems so easy to cross that line from constancy into obstinacy. My confusion, however, comes from assuming that an increase of sheer willpower will somehow make things better, when all along the quantity of my resolve can only be as good as the quality of my understanding. I learn too late how a greater determination in doing what is wrong can never help me with making anything right.
As I was growing up in the 1980’s there was surge of self-help movements, most of which promised to make us boatloads of cash, and all of which treated self-confidence and perseverance as if they were ends in themselves: “If you can dream it, you can achieve it!” Few seemed to ask whether it was worth desiring to being with.
Now I was still bright enough to know that money wouldn’t bring me happiness, but I did let that yuppie ideal of boundless ambition creep into my thinking; this merely served to encourage the worst aspects of my Irish temperament.
So if something didn’t go my way, I was tempted to dig in my heels, to present my spunky demands, even if it involved little more than yelling and screaming. If you pushed, I wanted to push back harder, and when I failed, as I inevitably did, I would go off to sulk in the corner, convinced all the more of the righteousness of my cause. Yes, this is a particular weakness of adolescence, but the bigger problems arise when we remain perpetual teenagers.
How much grief I could have saved myself by grounding my perseverance in prudence! It is only good to be strong if you can first be wise, and no amount of force will help if I lack a sense of direction. Stoicism teaches us to remember why nothing in life becomes beneficial or harmful, expect through the presence or absence of understanding. The heavy hand and the steadfast heart require the vision of an informed conscience.
It is one thing to insist that I want it, and quite another to know why I should want it. The value of the choice is dependent on the merit of the judgment, and no amount of stubbornness can change that. As the diseased body calls for a dose of medicine, so the pigheaded soul calls for the remedy of philosophy. Only the fool will never change his mind.
I find this chapter to be both comic and tragic. I laugh at how stubborn we can be, and I cry at how stubborn we can be. If I could only recognize the inflexibility in myself as quickly as I draw attention to it in others.
Just as I may struggle to distinguish love from lust, or courage from recklessness, it seems so easy to cross that line from constancy into obstinacy. My confusion, however, comes from assuming that an increase of sheer willpower will somehow make things better, when all along the quantity of my resolve can only be as good as the quality of my understanding. I learn too late how a greater determination in doing what is wrong can never help me with making anything right.
As I was growing up in the 1980’s there was surge of self-help movements, most of which promised to make us boatloads of cash, and all of which treated self-confidence and perseverance as if they were ends in themselves: “If you can dream it, you can achieve it!” Few seemed to ask whether it was worth desiring to being with.
Now I was still bright enough to know that money wouldn’t bring me happiness, but I did let that yuppie ideal of boundless ambition creep into my thinking; this merely served to encourage the worst aspects of my Irish temperament.
So if something didn’t go my way, I was tempted to dig in my heels, to present my spunky demands, even if it involved little more than yelling and screaming. If you pushed, I wanted to push back harder, and when I failed, as I inevitably did, I would go off to sulk in the corner, convinced all the more of the righteousness of my cause. Yes, this is a particular weakness of adolescence, but the bigger problems arise when we remain perpetual teenagers.
How much grief I could have saved myself by grounding my perseverance in prudence! It is only good to be strong if you can first be wise, and no amount of force will help if I lack a sense of direction. Stoicism teaches us to remember why nothing in life becomes beneficial or harmful, expect through the presence or absence of understanding. The heavy hand and the steadfast heart require the vision of an informed conscience.
It is one thing to insist that I want it, and quite another to know why I should want it. The value of the choice is dependent on the merit of the judgment, and no amount of stubbornness can change that. As the diseased body calls for a dose of medicine, so the pigheaded soul calls for the remedy of philosophy. Only the fool will never change his mind.
—Reflection written in 9/2001
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