Episode 124: The Stoic Life with Epictetus

0:00 Mark: The Partially Examined Life will be doing a live performance of our episode 125 on Hannah Arendt. You can attend in person in Pittsburgh on Saturday, September 26th at 6:30pm at Duquesne University. This is part of the two day event Uncommons Theory and Public Space, which is the 2015 Pittsburgh Continental philosophy Network conference. We plan on live streaming both Saturday's episode recording and a Friday Q and A session. Look for More information at partiallyexaminedlife.com. You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a philosophy podcast by some guys who at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it.

Our question for episode 124 is something like how does a wise person live? Or what is freedom? And we read the Enchiridion aka the Manual of Epictetus from around 125 AD. You can join the discussion, get the texts, lots More information@PartiallyExaminedLife.com this is Mark Linsenmayer in Madison, Wisconsin.

1:02 Seth: This is Seth Paskin Indifferent in Austin, Texas.

1:06 Wes: This is Wes Alwan in Boston, Massachusetts.

1:08 Dylan: This is Dylan Casey in Middleton, Wisconsin.

1:11 Alex: This is Alex Vasila in Brooklyn, New York.

1:13 Mark: Well, welcome Alex, our guest. Why don't you tell the folks who you are?

1:18 Alex: I'm the head researcher behind Modern Day Philosophers podcast with Danny Lobell.

1:23 Mark: I liked if you just stopped just behind Modern day philosophers as if they all call upon you.

1:28 Alex: Yeah, I'm just, I, I'm. I have access to the dead souls of most philosophers, but only at a certain point. Like enlightenment guys as modern. I mean, not like the pre Socratics. They're lost even to my powers. I am Dr. Strange from Marvel Comics. I should mention that. I can summon the dead.

1:43 Mark: What do we got a comedian here or something?

1:46 Alex: Yeah, and I am a comedian if we want to admit it that way. And I'm happy to be on board. We've been talking about doing this for a while.

1:54 Mark: Yes, I got your okay to be on here before actually getting Danny's. Yeah, but this is the topic you picked and this is finally when we're getting around to it. And this is one of the ancient wisdom traditions. And looking at this, we should have done this as like episode three. This is, this is foundational and it's easy to read.

2:12 Alex: Yeah. The reason why I latched onto this as a college student was I was like, this is in a bullet point. I can read this very quickly and get back to whatever else I wanted to do.

2:20 Wes: Yeah. I was reading in the introduction to my version which is the Nicholas P. White translation. He mentioned that actually you'd get far more exposure. You know, students used to get far more exposure to the Stoics and Epicureans, and now usually they just get exposure to Plato. But it's such an obvious influence. So just while reading this, I thought of Shakespeare, for instance. The whole there's nothing good and bad, but thinking makes it so. Which is sort of a summary of the Stoic position and other parts of Hamlet, where Polonius, for instance, is giving advice to his son.

Neither a borrower nor lender be all that type of stuff. It's interesting coming back to this after all these years, because it's such an obvious influence culturally, I think, during the Renaissance especially. And that's where we come to it. So it's very familiar, even though it's rare that we read the Stoics these days.

3:10 Alex: Yeah. When I was researching the Stoic philosophers a little. One of the ways in which Stoic philosophy still applies, even if we don't realize it, is whenever we refer to somebody as brave. Usually what we mean is, oh, he took so much bad and wasn't affected by it. He was stoic in the face of horror or whatever. I hadn't even processed that, like, oh, that's what we mean when we say, oh, somebody stood up to their problems. They took it how they. It was within their control, as Epictetus would say. I think the fact that students get exposed to mostly Plato, but not this guy is interesting because if you read the Enchiridion, he really, really looks up to Socrates. So it has like a built in segue if they wanted to talk about both of them.

3:49 Dylan: Yes. Socrates seems to be the patron saint of the Stoics, at least for Epictetus.

3:54 Alex: He's like their Led Zeppelin of sorts.

3:56 Dylan: Yeah.

3:56 Wes: And there are interesting relationships here between ancient skepticism, which comes out of the Socratic. I know only that. I don't know that sort of profession, and Stoicism. Stoicism, in a way is like the normative version of that. So whereas the skeptic and you know, we get this in Descartes and Augustine, the idea that you can know only your own thoughts. Here, it's this idea that you ought to restrict the domain of what we consider good and bad to the realm of our own thoughts, and not even all our thoughts or feelings, because pain and pleasure, of course, we might normally think of as good or bad. But I think the Stoic is discouraging us from even seeing pain and pleasure.

4:33 Alex: Yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole time reading this was, I don't know how much of this you could really enact in yourself, because at a certain point, pain feels bad and pleasure feels good. So when he's like, okay, take a situation where this happens to you. Well, only feel this much about it because the rest is out of your control. A lot of I think, is just saying, oh, it would be great and much easier if we could. It almost feels like narcissistic, say, like, I am going to control every one of my feelings. Despite that I am a tiny human with a finite monkey brain. I'm going to do it. I'm going to take control. It's very lofty. Although it talks about itself as practical, it seems a little bit fantastic to me.

5:09 Seth: So the general structure that underlies this is something like this, that all the sensations that we can have of the external world, and presumably also of our own body, our impressions or appearances, and we react to those things. So somebody says something bad about us, or lightning strikes our car and we get angry or frustrated or sad or what have you, or we respond, or somebody praises us and we feel good about ourselves. And what Alex was just talking about is that Epictetus says you need to be able to control your reaction to those impressions and appearances.

And implicit in that is that the emotional response that you do have is somehow based on a judgment. So somebody says something bad about you and you get upset, it's because you care about that person's opinion, or you think that that person has influence. And if they say something bad about you, other people are going to think. Somehow that thought process goes on in your head, and then that makes you upset. So this whole manual is about how to recognize this structure of impression, judgment and reaction in order to be able to focus on the judgment aspect of it and control that.

6:23 Wes: Yeah, there's a good statement of this in section five.

6:25 Seth: Yep, that's the one I'm thinking of.

6:27 Wes: Yeah. What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgment about the things. For example, death is nothing dreadful, or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates. It's an interesting argument. But instead, the judgment about death, that is dreadful, that is what is dreadful. It's the same kind of language you hear today in cognitive psychology, form of therapy. These kinds of ideas probably have broad contemporary appeal, but it's interesting here we get this perennial distinction between things in themselves and appearances. But in this case, it's being exploited for a practical upshot to that. There's a way of living that comes

7:03 Dylan: out of that not only is there no denial at some level of the practicality of things in themselves, but that we're sort of embedded in a world full of things that are behaving in certain ways. And part of our rationality is to learn how they behave so as we can make good choices with regard to them, so we can understand something about them in the world. And then there's the issue of judging how we ought to react to them. And as we were just talking about, Epictetus is all about having a minimal amount of emotional involvement in those judgments to not care too much, especially if there are things that we can't control.

7:39 Alex: It's interesting that you bring up cognitive behavioral therapy because, like, you can see how there's a similarity between a lot of those principles of, like, okay, I'm going to try to make myself feel better by putting this in perspective of appearances and whatever. But Epictetus clearly goes so much further and, like, more psychotic than any doctor would tell you to do. Like, I don't think it was in our text, but I did some reading on him. There's a passage where he's describing how to react if something really, really tragic is happening to your family.

He goes, imagine your son is sick. And like, on his deathbed. To ready yourself to be able to deal with this once daily, you should whisper in the child's ear, you're going to die tomorrow. Whisper yourself just so you feel better that you've processed it. You know, don't think of the dying child that you're whispering death threats to. Good night.

8:28 Unknown speaker: Well, the.

8:29 Mark: In here, the thing that was initially extremely chilling to me, which then I read another translation I felt a little better about it was section. So the whole book is pretty short, and it's 52 sections, and they're almost 52 aphorisms. Some of them are like a paragraph long or two. Paragraph. One of them, 33, is.

8:46 Alex: Some of them could fit on the most. They could be the most unsettling bumper stickers if you really want them to be.

8:52 Mark: Yeah, they're usually a few sentences. So here's all of sentence number three here. With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are Human. And thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.

9:22 Alex: I like that. He says, you only kiss things that are human. Stop kissing the dog. It's weird.

9:28 Wes: This is one of the things that stayed with me from. I think the last time I read Epictetus was at Saint John's. This idea of using generalization as a strategy to obtain this sort of detached state of mind that he's advocating. I had this idea that he had said something about, if your wife dies, don't think, oh, you know, woe is me. My wife died. Just think a wife died. This idea of generalizing beyond the particulars and thinking of our attachments as. Not to particular human beings, but as these generalized attachments to human beings in general. I couldn't find that wife passage in here. So maybe I read it in something else. But this, to me, is one of the most interesting things about Epictetus.

10:09 Dylan: In my translation, what Marx has rendered as human was mortal. I didn't know the difference. I didn't look at the Greek in it to know if Dobbin was sort of trying to soften the blow or something like that.

10:22 Mark: Right, right. Keep in mind when you have a relationship with somebody that they're mortal, that they could die. Which that seems like very much in accord with lots of other things he says in here.

10:31 Alex: Exactly.

10:31 Mark: Like whatever endeavors you embark on, a lot of shit comes with them. And you're signing up for the shit.

10:37 Dylan: Well, is it the shit, or is it that the fact is that human beings are mortal entities and they're going to die, and so that if you imbue that with a choice, a judgment, that you have to have them forever, that's what's damaging to you. And that's the thing that you have to remind yourself of in order to not have those judgments harm yourself, to drive you crazy.

10:59 Wes: So, yeah, I see you guys are seeing this as primarily in terms of remembering that the things you're attached to are frail or mortal or could go away.

11:07 Dylan: Well, in that particular case, I think

11:09 Wes: was one, I think is right. I think this idea of. This generalization idea is also behind this idea.

11:15 Mark: Yeah. The cups, the context.

11:17 Wes: Treating my attachment to this particular woman or thing.

11:21 Alex: It almost seems like a lot of what he's saying in terms of don't get attached to a thing, you will lose it is saying, well, there's plenty of them. You can have another kid. You can get another wife. Which I find creepy to say to someone who's lost a wife or child. But he's saying, like, if you love a cup, remember, you don't love that cup specifically. You love cups.

11:39 Wes: Yeah.

11:40 Dylan: Well, there's another aspect to this. In chapter 11, he says, under no circumstances ever say, I have lost something, only I returned it.

11:48 Seth: Yeah.

11:48 Dylan: Did a child of yours die? No, it was returned. Your wife died? No, she was returned. My land was confiscated? No, it too was returned. Now, the disposition there is a little bit like what Wes was talking about of the generalization aspect. But here it's emphasizing that the things that you thought were yours, they're really not yours.

12:07 Wes: Right.

12:07 Dylan: So it's not that they were taken from you, it's that they went back from where they were because the fact that they were around you and you were interacting with them was not an activity of possession.

12:18 Seth: Yeah. There's another aspect of the generalization too, where he says, the death of a child isn't universally bad thing because there are people who wouldn't care about it. It affects one person, but not another person. And something that doesn't affect everybody or isn't universal in some way is also. That's a flag that that's not something in your control and so not something that you should react to negatively. You guys know which part I'm talking about?

12:43 Alex: Not specifically, but I remember that sentiment being brought up.

12:48 Wes: Say it again, Seth.

12:49 Seth: It's that one way to judge whether something is bad or good is, is it bad to everybody or is it good to everybody? So something that seems really tragic is actually only tragic to the people that it directly affects and it has no effect on other people. And that that should be a signal to you that you should not react or you have a choice, I guess you could say, in how you react.

13:10 Alex: Yeah, I think there was a passage where he was saying, like, if you covet somebody's position, well, not everybody does that. It's just you. So therefore that's your problem. Not a common problem.

13:19 Seth: Exactly.

13:19 Alex: That you're jealous of a dude.

13:21 Mark: 26. The Will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't distinguish from each other. For example, when our neighbor's boy breaks a cup or the like, we are presently ready to say these things will happen. Be assured, then, when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected, just as when another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say this is a human accident. But if anyone's own child happens to die, it is presently, alas. How wretched am I. But it should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others.

13:51 Unknown speaker: Right.

13:52 Seth: Basically because I was completely indifferent to the pain and grief of another. I should be completely indifferent to my own pain and grief because I am a sociopath. That's ex. You know what? You just stole my closing.

14:05 Mark: But it does sound like it's a matter of having a broader perspective. This is a human act. This is just the fact that. Do you curse God? And I guess I think, like, if you hear that a bus full of kids got drowned or something, even if you don't know any of them, I think it's very legitimate to still want to curse God.

14:24 Alex: Yeah. To be bummed out about the human condition, that that kind of thing happens. That's why a lot of this, I think, is cool to read, but I think breaks down feasibly because how are you not going to be just affected by things where it's like somebody cuts you and it's like, well, I have. Situation. Have weak skin.

14:39 Wes: Well, it's possible to treat this as an ideal towards which you strive.

14:43 Dylan: I'm not so sure that that's how it all cashes out, though. There's a whole bunch of stuff in here about having integrity and demanding the best of yourself and having trust in yourself as well as I want to also try to jive it with part of Epictetus life. He was a slave, and then he was freed and went off to run a philosophy school in Greece. People sent their kids to him, and then after he retired from doing that, he took a wife and adopted a child and lived the rest of his life taking care of his wife and child, as if his activity of doing that school as fully as possible took all of his effort.

And then raising a child and having a wife also took all of his effort and work. And at least it prompts me to think about the fact that he thought as a stoic, that having commitments in his life were part of that activity. And there's also stuff in here about duty. So there has to be something jived with the way in which we're characterizing stoicism as being utterly unconnected. It seems that has to be to do with being connected in the right sort of way and understanding how to interact with things in the right sort of way. It's not that you don't have any connection at all, right?

16:00 Wes: Yeah, well, that's a question for me, but I thought your emphasis of freedom was important. There's a lot of in here about freedom and the idea in a way it's someone who didn't have freedom in the sense of liberty as a person who found a different sort of inner freedom. And that's what he's advocating. And the idea is that you can be free inwardly no matter what the external circumstances. If you are focused only on those things that are in your power, which is this sort of inward domain, who

16:31 Alex: is the ancient Greek character who has to is rolling a rock up a hill forever?

16:36 Dylan: It wasn't Tantalus, it was Sisyphus.

16:37 Alex: Oh, Sisyphus, Yeah. And then some versions of the story end with he just grows to find it really, really funny. So it's supposedly like he's conquered it by going, I have to do this forever. Oh, my God. So he's not at least affected by it as much.

16:50 Wes: He took the comedian's way out.

16:52 Alex: Yeah, he.

16:53 Wes: Or he just went. He went mad.

16:55 Alex: Yes, he went mad like the Joker or something.

16:58 Dylan: One of the sections, I don't remember it was in the Enchiridion or something else that I read from the Discourses. He brings the example of being executed and the proper way to man up and be executed.

17:13 Mark: Not in the handbook, but go ahead, tell us about it.

17:16 Dylan: Well, the idea was, well, you know, some things are not in your control, but the way you deal with them and the way you experience them can be. And he gives the example of, you got captured in a war and they're going to chop your head off. You can whimper your way through it, or you can stand and hold your neck out.

17:34 Mark: Yeah, it's not an accident that this is a very martial philosophy that Marcus Aurelius, in the ancient world and in the modern world, like it's among the military. This is a big. A big thing. Obviously the interpretation is not about I can only control things in my brain and so I won't really try to bother to do anything out there or have commitments or pay attention to duty, because those are all external and only internal stuff matters. Like that's not. No, you have to get the mission done according to this modern interpretation. But yeah, you ultimately, there's obviously part of the external world that you can affect, but you are not ultimately going to be able to determine by yourself the outcome. So, yes, only your own attitudes are the thing you have total control of if you're a man, if you're a stoic sage.

18:18 Alex: It's interesting to me that a lot of the Stoics, I believe, also were determinists where they said that things that just happen as they're going to happen. And now you have to deal with it. So that's.

18:31 Wes: Yeah, I think we get some of that here in his talk of being in accord with nature.

18:35 Dylan: Yep.

18:35 Alex: Yeah.

18:36 Wes: As in everything that that happens is going to happen anyway. So it's more than just simply ignoring or trying to detach yourself from events, it's embracing them as part of a larger order. So in that sense it's sort of, you know. And of course Augustine was heavily influenced by the Stoics. So it's highly reminiscent of Augustine's theory of evil where the particular things that seem evil to us are just. Those are local snapshots where we can't see that the entire whole, the whole cosmos as it is put together is a good thing and it relies on that little portion of existence to achieve its goodness.

19:11 Alex: Interesting you were bringing up Augustine because as I was looking up the historical movement of the Stoics and the determinism thing came up, they said that the Stoics were kind of like soft determinists where they thought that everything's going to happen as it happens. But because your rational brain is not connected to the flesh and bone world, it's part of the divine sort of reason that that's the part you can control. It almost seems like that kind of good old fashioned Catholic distrust of all things human body.

19:38 Wes: It does. And we see a lot of that in here. His talk about when he gets down to giving practical advice. So for instance, there's a section where he's essentially talking about avoiding pleasure. I think it's towards the end.

19:48 Dylan: Well, 33 has a whole litany of recommendations for how to behave.

19:54 Alex: One of them like you should be the 40 year old virgin.

19:56 Wes: Yeah. So he talks about. And this is also reminiscent of Augustine because he talks about public shows.

20:02 Unknown speaker: Yeah.

20:03 Wes: Avoiding going to these entertainments and lectures and avoiding any kind of luxury and avoiding boasting. And ultimately we get to section 34, which is purely about resisting pleasure. So whenever you encounter some kind of apparent pleasure, be on guard, as in the case of other appearances, not to be carried away by it, but let the thing wait for you and allow yourself to delay. There's another section about a banquet where as you're waiting for the plate to come around, you don't stretch out your desire towards the thing that's coming. You simply wait for it to come to you. So it doesn't seem to be a prohibition on having pleasure, but it's more about this second level attitude towards pleasure. If you can see pleasure as just an appearance, as something that in a way is not quite real. You might still enjoy it, but not be upset when it doesn't happen to come your way.

20:56 Alex: Yeah, that seems kind of like the Platonic thing of Pleasures are inherently fleeting. So that's like the lowest kind of satisfaction of the soul. I think it was, I want to say, republic.

21:05 Mark: So, Wes, if you're going to raise that verse about the passing plate, I have to read the rest because this puts forth two levels of how awesome a Stoic sage you are. This is number 15. Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don't stop it. Is it? Not yet come. Don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Do this with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy partner of the feasts of the gods.

And here's the rub. And if you don't even take the things which are set before you, but are able even to reject them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of the gods, but also of their empire. For by doing this, Diogenes, Heraclitus and others like him deservedly became and were called divine.

21:51 Alex: In his defense, if you're at a dinner party, you should not reach for the children. So that's probably a good idea.

21:57 Wes: Yeah, I always wait for them to come to me.

21:59 Mark: Yeah, you gotta just be inviting.

22:03 Seth: Oh, Wes, is that why you have that van?

22:06 Wes: Have that what?

22:07 Seth: The van.

22:08 Wes: The van. Yes.

22:10 Alex: Subway's new spokesman.

22:11 Wes: There's nothing in Epictetus prohibiting vans.

22:14 Dylan: He does say, though, in the end of 33, after a whole bunch of recommendations, says, avoid trying to be funny. That's the way vulgarity lies. And at the same time, it's likely to lower you in your friend's estimation.

22:28 Alex: Epictetus does not approve of all that time and effort I put into this. So I like the more he says, don't swear. He's like, it's just gross. Don't just. If you have to, don't go crazy.

22:38 Mark: That's the thing that he says stuff like that. If you have to, if you can't stop yourself. He also says, don't take on things that are bigger than you. In other words, he acknowledges, even though it seems like he says everything mental. You're free to adjust as you like. In other words, you can adjust your own desires, blah, blah, blah. And that sounds just unrealistic, like, oh, really? I can just not want that? Why don't you just not want that? Yeah, well, I'm so disappointed. Well, why don't you just not want that? Well, fuck you. Like, that's not. That's not helpful.

23:03 Wes: But he does acknowledge we can't just not feel pain or not feel pleasure. And he's not saying that, but he

23:09 Mark: acknowledges that it takes conditioning. And I didn't see this in here stated outright. But, you know, maybe some people are just gonna be better at being a stoic sage than others. Some people are just by nature incontinent. I'm not sure what his take on that is, but I definitely saw a lot of the shades of Aristotle's take on. Yeah, you gotta train yourself or be trained to be the kind of person is going to be able to be the stoic sage.

23:32 Alex: Yeah, it's like they have the old Hagakure. The samurai text has that part where it says, meditate daily on the thought of you dying in horrible ways. Which I only know because of the movie Ghost Dog. But it's that same sort of thing where he's like, I acknowledge that tomorrow could be the last day of your life. It could end terribly, but you have to be okay with that. It's sort of like an Easter.

23:50 Wes: Yeah, I think. I think meditation might be the right word. So this is another text on desire management. What we do with our desire, how we manage it. And the question is, is he simply asking us to repress our desires? Because that doesn't seem all that helpful, or is he. And this is, I think, the more interesting thing about it, is he talking about this second level, reflective attitude towards one's own desires. There are things in here that start to sound like mindfulness, like recognizing certain emotions or feelings and not simply repressing them or pushing them away or not feeling them.

But insofar as you see them as an appearance or you see them as part of the inevitable order of the cosmos, this second level attitude changes. There's two types of pain that we might have in a particular experience. So, for instance, there's the pain of deprivation. There's the pain of, oh, I wanted that and I didn't get it. And then there's a whole other level of pain associated with what psychoanalysts call narcissistic injury or what we might think of as pride, or what Plato thought of as thumos. The second level has to do with this idea that, well, I ought to have gotten that.

It's not fair that I didn't get that woe is me and I hate the gods. There's a section later on Piety where he talks about blaming the gods for not getting what you want. So I think if we tease apart those two different kinds of pain, the pain of not getting what you want and then the pain of thinking that you ought to have gotten it or it's unfair that you didn't get it, then I think this becomes more interesting because it becomes more about that second type of pain.

25:16 Mark: As a guy who's dealing with sort of Buddhist things, what was your take on this, Seth, this whole desire?

25:22 Seth: Well, there's a couple of touch points and I did initially go there. It's not explicit, but we'd have to spend some time talking about what eudaimonia means. But it's definitely for the Stoics. Eudaimonia is a principle of flourishing that isn't necessarily happiness, where happiness is the satisfaction of desires. So there is that sense in Epictetus where he says part of the reason you get disappointed is because you want something and you don't get it. Just like Wes was talking, right? Or you get what you want, but then it's fleeting. And in that respect there's a touch point, but there's a sense in which I think Buddhism has a much more mature psychology associated with it and a recognition that desire is normal.

Whereas here, and this goes back to what I was talking about, that structure of appearance, judgment and reaction, or appearance, judgment, affectation, is that essentially he's claiming that we can use reason to overcome desire and feeling, which are irrational, that rationality can overcome irrationality. And that's not something that I think you would find a parallel in kind of a sort of Buddhist way of

26:26 Wes: thinking that still questioned me because I was arguing against that, right? I was saying, well, I'm not convinced that he's simply arguing for the repression of desire, rather that he's arguing for a different relationship to those desires.

26:38 Dylan: And the way in which you regulate it is not one of necessarily repression, but of reflection and of cultivating. Well, to go fully Aristotle on it, cultivating habits with regards to those desires that are partially, maybe in the case of Epictetus, primarily based in reason.

26:55 Seth: So I'll concede the repression point that that was probably not the right choice of words. But I do believe that he thinks that whatever it is that generates what I'll call normal desires. So the things that society tells you to want, or the sort of things that we think of as being normally human, like wanting success and being good looking and all these Sorts of things. He's saying these are not rational desires, that there are rational desires that are strictly associated with what you can control yourself, which is your own reaction to your own judgments about things. And when you react to these other things, you're acting in a way that's contrary to reason, because it's ultimately going to lead to you not reaching fulfillment or not flourishing.

27:41 Wes: So he's talking about our attitudes towards those desires, right? Because it's clear that we can't control whether we are in pain or not or something like that. And the desire itself, it's questionable the extent to which we can control having desires. But then it seems like it's the attitude above that towards that desire, whether you take it seriously. Because it's one thing that, for instance, see someone who's prestigious and say, oh, I want to be prestigious. It's one thing to have that passing desire, and it's another to inhabit it and believe it.

Because you might have that passing desire and think, oh, well, that's not actually really important. And that's not what would be most conducive to my good as a person or my flourishing. But on the other hand, you might inhabit it fully, you might believe it, you might think, yes, fame or prestige really is the good in life. It is the best thing, and I must pursue that. So I don't know. It's still a question for me. To the extent to which we're talking about something similar to repression or something

28:38 Mark: in section two, he's talking about aversion and how you should try to adjust your aversion so you're only averse to things that are in your control. So your own veilings of will, for instance, and not averse to sickness and death. But then he turns to desire as a separate, positive thing, but for the present, totally suppressed desire.

28:54 Alex: Yeah, he just said it.

28:56 Mark: For if you desire any of the things which are not in your own control, you must necessarily be disappointed. And of those which are, and which you would be laudable to desire, nothing is yet in your possession. Use only the appropriate actions of pursuit and avoidance, and even these lightly and with gentleness and reservation.

29:09 Wes: What does the time being mean? For the time being? Eliminate desire completely.

29:13 Mark: I think that means as a novice, like maybe when you are a stoic sage, or you are at least a little. Sometimes he talks about people who are just getting started, people who are on the road and people who are very far down. He doesn't use the word sage anywhere in here. I think he initiated or something like that. So, yeah, as a novice, you just can't handle desire. Just. Just squash that.

29:32 Alex: Don't even try, dude. Just leave that to when you're 90 and you're good at this.

29:36 Mark: You know, it's interesting, we see in Buddhism and stuff things like where you treat some of your mental contents as objective as happening to you. Like, oh, that desire, that's not really me. That's something that's outside of my control. I can kind of bracket that desire and say, where the hell did that come from? I'm not going to take that seriously. I don't see that in here.

29:53 Wes: Well, I see contradictory strains. So, yeah, he's clearly talking about repression here, but some of these other methods. So for instance, the method of generalization, is that really simply repression? It's unclear to me. So again, for me it's a question because I don't think all of this is consistent. If we thought it through. Is the upshot really the giving up of desire as he's, you know, he is directly saying that here, but is the upshot of the text as a whole? That's not clear to me that it really is.

30:19 Seth: But, yeah, I think you're right. I don't think the upshot of the text is getting rid of desire as a whole. But there's this notion that desire is fueled by correct or incorrect knowledge of the good. So if you desire something because you think it's good, like prestige, but it's actually not good, it's indifferent, meaning it's good to have it, but you shouldn't be upset if you don't have it right, then your reaction or your desire is because you're in a wrong state of knowledge about that thing being good, bad, or indifferent. He doesn't seem to acknowledge that desires, or I don't even want to say desires, that affectations are things that might come upon us without having some form of judgment about the goodness or badness of the thing underlying it.

Like, for example, and he says, oh, if your wife dies, you know, you should just be kind of like, oh, well, in my mind, the notion that the grief that you would feel is something very normal and not something that would be driven by a judgment that this is a bad thing, there's a loss. There's no doubt that you judge it as a loss. I think in his mind, and he says it numerous times about the wife and the child, is that that's something you should be able to say, oh, that's not a bad thing. Because of course, you know, now they're Back in the bosom of Christ or whatever, and that's a better place to be than on this earth.

Whereas I would say no, but it's still perfectly natural to have feelings of loss in that case. And that would not be irrational.

31:39 Wes: Yeah, he's clearly on the wrong track there because then it would be psychologically not beneficial to you to simply deny that loss and not go through the grief and so on.

31:48 Alex: I think the main thing that we can all take from this is that it's saying have perspective seems to be the message. Do you think that deep down he's saying if we didn't have desire, that would be great? Or is he saying it's good to have some just manage it. Right. It seems like a lot of he's saying, well, we have this and it sucks. So here's how you deal with wanting things. I wonder how he would feel about the prospect of if you could just shut that off, would that be a good or worse place to be?

32:13 Wes: So, yeah, that's where I think it's. Again, it's contradictory. So for instance, on the one hand, you know, Mark just quoted a passage where he says you should get rid of desire. But then in other places, the reflection he's calling for seems to imply that desire doesn't simply go away or that the reflective element isn't simply there to drive away desire. So for instance, Section 20, when someone irritates you, be aware that what irritates you is your own belief. More importantly, therefore, try not to be carried away by appearance, since if you once again gain time and delay, you will control yourself more easily.

So the phenomenology of that is not simply that I've trained myself to be rid of irritation or to not have desires, or not to have all those emotions that I going to have on a daily basis. But again that I look at that with the second level of reflection where I realize, oh, I'm not being irritated by the person, I'm being irritated by my own belief. And then I can step through that. Phenomenologically that's different than mere repression. Even though there are other places. The whole idea of simply not grieving or not desiring obviously sound like repression.

So that's why I'm kind of agnostic or not entirely sure what the upshot of this is.

33:19 Alex: Seems like in the beginning of the text it's a lot of like, okay, you feel this way about this situation. Don't do that. It's counterproductive, it's out of your control. As it goes on the bullet points seem to get a little more nuanced. Whereas in the beginning he's like, don't care if this happens to you. That sucks, but whatever. And then by the end, it's like, okay, don't do this unless you have to, and it's going to happen, but don't get too into it or have perspective. I wonder if that was on purpose or if I just came around to it mentally more on my ender, if it was in my control. I don't know.

33:48 Mark: Well, we should say how this book was written.

33:50 Alex: Dictated, right?

33:51 Mark: Yes. That Epictetus was too busy being a teacher to write anything down. He was too busy being a family man, as Dylan said, to write this crap down. So it was all Flavius Arrian, his student.

34:02 Alex: He dictated to a Harry Potter spell.

34:06 Mark: He's mostly just called Arrian, but in one of the places I found he was called Flavius Arrian.

34:10 Seth: Yes. Because he was a Roman, noble family, I think.

34:14 Mark: There you go. But he took down things for this and for the longer discourses in shorthand. So it wasn't like Plato writing about Socrates after Socrates was dead and using a lot of dramatic devices. Probably. These are more or less the things that Epictetus said. But. Yeah, where did we get the structure? Why does he put some of these things first and some later? Nobody's pretending that this is a single speech of Epictetus's that was being dictated. This is just a manual. This is a handbook of all the best practices. It's a best practices guide.

34:44 Wes: Best practices guide.

34:47 Mark: Only Wes, who works with me should

34:49 Wes: have had a long fancy title. Best practices for maintaining self composure in the face of. Blah, blah, blah.

34:55 Alex: How to win friends and not care if your kid's dead.

34:58 Mark: That's a good. That's the subtitle.

35:02 Wes: We should say, though, there's a positive element to this, which is you are allowed certain desires and certain aversions. And so the desires you're allowed are towards those things that you actually can control. Yeah, we've talked about as these attitudes. So, for instance, Section 8, he seems to be advocating that you want things to happen as they are bound to happen. You want everything that happens. That's what you want.

35:26 Mark: It's not love of fate, it's tolerance of fate.

35:28 Seth: Yeah. Okay, so this is section number one. This is the Carter translation, which we'll link to online. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and in one word, whatever, are not our actions. And then in section two, he says, remember that following desire promises the attainment of that which you are desirous, and aversion promises the avoiding that to which you are averse.

However, he who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion is wretched. If then you confine your aversion to those objects only which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties, which you have in your own control, you will never incur anything to which you are averse. Right. So this whole thing is a manual for how never to be disappointed and in some sense, how also to be satisfied. But it's all tied up with this notion that your satisfaction or disappointment is tied up with your desire, which is in your control.

And I take it back. I know I'm kind of repeating the same refrain here, but there's a sense in which there must be a structure here where you can control your desire in such a way that your desire will always be satisfied because you will only desire things that you can actually control. That's what this is supposed to be teaching you how to do.

36:56 Dylan: In fact, it's hard to do. And so thinking about what kind of ambition you have in the next section, after what Seth read, and my translation is a little bit different, I have the dobbin, he says, but if you have the right idea about what really belongs to you and what does not, you will never be the subject to force or hindrance. You will never blame or criticize anyone, and everything you do will be done willingly. You won't have a single rival, no one to hurt you, because you will be proof against harm of any kind. With rewards this substantial, be aware that a casual effort is not sufficient.

Other ambitions will have to be sacrificed altogether, or at least for now. If you want these rewards at the same time that you are striving for power and riches, chances are you will not get to be rich and powerful while you aim for the other goal. And the rewards of freedom and happiness will elude you altogether. So Wes had mentioned earlier that he thought a big piece of this was about valuing the virtue of freedom, particularly of freedom in your soul, as the highest thing to have ambition for. And I think he's right. I think that this section reveals part of that.

That for a stoic part of having the right disposition towards the things that can affect you and having your right dispositions of your desires is really maintaining your freedom, because part of having misplaced or unbalanced desires is to enslave yourself. Enslave yourself to things that are not in your control. And the higher ambition for a stoic is to be as free as possible.

38:33 Wes: What section was that again, that you were reading?

38:35 Dylan: That's chapter one.

38:37 Mark: It's section one. Just the parts that Seth hadn't read.

38:40 Alex: Do you think he's saying that you can't be a guy with a lot of money and still follow this? It doesn't seem like he says it outright, like it's never okay to have money or anything like that, but it seems like a lot of these principles wouldn't jive with someone who was really good at business or something. They would be too invested in the goal. So I wonder if that's the subliminal thing, is, yeah, don't ever be a wolf of Wall Street. This is written by a slave. He's used to the mentality being poor. So I don't know.

39:06 Seth: You hit the nail on the head, Alex. I had that exact same thought. That. Is he saying it's appropriate for you to pursue those things, but if you don't get the outcome that you want, that you should just be satisfied and say, oh, well, well, you know, like, in other words, don't be disappointed in outcomes versus going more along the Buddhist that Mark's point out. Or is he saying if you desire wealth, you already have desire for the wrong thing, even if your job is to be a hedge fund manager. Like, that's your place in life. Because we haven't even talked about fate and appropriateness and that sort of thing. But it's unclear whether the two things are incompatible.

39:42 Dylan: What if you were born to wealth?

39:43 Seth: Like if you were a prince like Flavius Arrian.

39:46 Dylan: Yes. Or someone like Marcus Aurelius, who was a successful general. I guess I'm thinking about the idea of the naturalism that runs through Epictetus, that things have their sort of natural way of being. And so my thought about being wealthy is there's the process of becoming wealthy. And so there would be things to say about that disposition and about that kind of ambition and whether or not, like what we read before just now, that it would not be hard for that ambition to compromise your freedom. And for Epictetus, that might not be a compromise worth making, but say you were just in a situation where you just were full of wealth, just like you might be in a situation where you were a slave.

And a big part of this is understanding where you are and what faculties you have and having the right sort of disposition with respect to it. There's a section later on, it's 37. It's a very short one sentence thing. If you undertake a role beyond your means, you will not only embarrass yourself in that you miss the chance of a role that you might have fulfilled successfully.

40:53 Mark: Yeah, see, that's actually what I was referring to earlier as maybe that some people aren't naturally good at being so exagious, because mine is. If you have assumed any character above your strength, you have both made an ill figure in that and quitted one which you might have supported. So I didn't think that was talking about means, meaning financial means at all.

41:12 Dylan: Well, no, I didn't think it meant financial means. I'm saying it beyond your abilities, beyond what you naturally have. I am interpreting that broadly into social circumstances. Whether you were born a slave or whether you were born wealthy versus into a wealthy situation. Whether you're good with your hands and maybe you're good with your hands. You should be a carpenter, but you shouldn't necessarily be a, I don't know, juggler.

41:37 Seth: Yeah.

41:37 Dylan: There's a fittingness that you should think in about your life that applies both to the external world having natural ways of, and then also your own fittingness into yourself.

41:48 Wes: There is a lot in here to suggest that he thinks that this freedom and the life of the philosopher is inconsistent with the life of someone more worldly. So for instance, in section 29 he talks about if you're going to be a philosopher, you have to put up with hardship, be away from your own people, be looked down on by a little slave boy, be laughed at by people who meet. You get the worst of it in everything. Honor, public office, law courts, every little thing. This is a weird translation. In the white translation that I have think about whether you want to exchange these things for tranquility, freedom, calm. So he does make it seem like a zero sum game there.

42:26 Mark: It seems straight out of Socrates.

42:28 Wes: Yeah. And then in section 48 he talks about the philosopher's focus on what's internal as opposed to what's external. So he goes around like an invalid, careful not to move any of his parts that are healing before they have become firm. He has kept off all desire from himself and he has transferred all aversion onto what is against nature. Among the things that are up to us. His impulses towards everything are diminished. If he seems foolish or ignorant, he does not care in a single phrase. He is on guard against himself as an enemy lying in wait. I think to succeed in something worldly, you'd have to have so much desire focused on externals that it would pretty clearly contradict.

43:07 Alex: I wonder what he would say to a slave who was like, hey, I'd really like to not be a slave anymore. How does he feel about upward mobility?

43:15 Seth: It's a great question.

43:16 Alex: Like, how would he feel about Django Unchained is what I really want to know.

43:20 Mark: You could certainly appreciate when you get freed, but you wouldn't want to do anything that would be too crazy to get freed.

43:29 Alex: So you shouldn't shoot all of the Leonardo DiCaprios.

43:33 Mark: No.

43:33 Dylan: Or even just try to escape. I mean, that's an interesting question.

43:37 Seth: Or why can't you say, listen, my role in things is to be Spartacus, and Spartacus was perfectly suited to his role and did what was appropriate to him, even though it was not appropriate for the social norms. There's definitely a tension here about following social norms and a station. Again, getting back to. I think it was Alex's point that this is clearly a book written by a slave and not an emperor. This is a philosophy of somebody who's trying to cope with harsh realities of life instead of celebrating the wondrous joys of life.

44:11 Mark: Well, maybe it was the emphasis of Flavius.

44:15 Alex: Of Flavius. Aryan brotherhood.

44:16 Mark: He does bring up a number of things about your relation to your servants. That number 12, second half. When you call your servant, it is possible he may not come, or if he does, he may not do what you want, but he is by no means of such importance that it should be in his power to give you any disturbance. I felt like that was straight from Downton Abbey or something.

44:37 Alex: It's very Jeeves and Wooster type of passage.

44:40 Seth: I myself like to think of myself as very enlightened because I do not get upset when my servants talk back to me or fail to clean the stove adequately. I simply gently correct them and point them at their station in life. Ask them to correct their.

44:55 Alex: Put them in the corner, let them think about what they did.

44:57 Mark: Yes, but then it's right after that. Number 13. If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything, and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself, for it is difficult to keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other. So no Wolf of Wall street there.

45:25 Alex: He keeps bringing up. He's like, hey, people are gonna think you're really dumb, so just accept that. You're gonna look very silly. I wonder how much of this is just he got laughed at. And he's like, yurik's gonna happen to you too.

45:35 Dylan: It's just.

45:36 Seth: Well, he did get expelled, didn't he?

45:39 Dylan: All the philosophers got expelled by Tacitus Diocletian, wasn't it?

45:43 Wes: Do we need to re emphasize here what he means by keeping choices in accord with nature?

45:48 Mark: Need to have a huge discussion on what accord with nature is. Why don't you start, Wes?

45:52 Wes: I kind of hinted at this before. Just this idea that from what I can tell, what he thinks of as nature is just kind of cosmic determinism where what's going to happen is going to happen. And to keep my choices in accord with that means to never have my choices or my desires conflicting with that. So, for instance, saying, woe is me, I lost my wife. In that sense, you would be in conflict with the natural course of things. But if I have some way of just accepting that, then I've kept my choice in accord with nature.

46:25 Dylan: The challenge is that there seems to be no room for rebelling in some appropriate way. Chapter 30. He says, Duties are broadly defined by social roles. This man is your father. The relationship demands from you support constant deference and tolerance for his verbal, even physical abuse. But he's a bad father. Look, nature has endeared you to a father, not necessarily a good one. My brother is unfair to me. Well, then keep your side of the relationship. Don't concern yourself with his behavior, only with what you must do to keep your will in tune with nature.

Another person will not hurt you without your cooperation. You are hurt the moment you believe yourself to be. It's very much an attitude of how to maintain your integrity and survive. But it doesn't seem to have much room for saying, like, what would you say to the woman who's being abused by her husband? You know what you got stuck with an abusive husband. That sucks. Or maybe that's just the way it is. It wouldn't even be that sucks, right? It's just, that's just the way it is. You can't control that part. You can only control how you feel about it.

And so there wouldn't be the activity of saying, well, part of you controlling your situation, your choices, is just leaving. I think that at the very least there's this sense that wherever you are, you have very little upward mobility. Or choice about moving on to something else. So if you're a slave, it might be that you get freed, but that's not in your control. This is where the determinism comes in. It seems that your choices have little external effect, even external effect that would affect your own situation.

48:10 Alex: Seems like there's a little bit of shut up and do what you're told sprinkled out throughout all this. If something bad is happening to you, don't go, well, how can I fix it? It's like, okay, how you deal with it. It's almost like an authoritarian type of. Like we said, never be a rebellious type of.

48:24 Seth: If they're gonna chop off your head, stretch out your neck.

48:27 Wes: But it's kind of unclear, though, what he would think about that.

48:30 Mark: Yeah, there are ways that you can deal with things, but they have to be within the realm of what would be virtuous for you to do. I think in addition to what Wes was talking about, this fate aspect, that being in conformance with nature has a teleological aspect on a couple different levels. One is that maybe it is a matter of your individual nature, as I think Dylan was talking about before, that there are certain things that you might just be kind of designed to do better than other things. And so that's what you should do. And if you're worried about, oh, I need to be ambitious and raise up the social ladder so then I can help the state more and help my neighbors more.

And he says something like, would you expect a shoemaker to yield? Where is this about baths and the shoemaker and about baths? This is in 24. If you're not making enough money, then how can you really help the state? How can you make endowments like baths and porticos? This is another thing that made me think that it was aimed toward the rich. Why? Neither does a smith provide it with shoes or a shoemaker with arms. It is enough if everyone fully performs his own proper business. And were you to supply it with another citizen of honor and fidelity, would not he be of use to it?

Yes, therefore, serve your role with fidelity and honor and consistency.

49:42 Dylan: In my translation, the section says, what kind of help do you have in mind? You can't give it buildings or baths. True, but so what? The blacksmith can't give it shoes, nor the cobbler supply it with arms. It's enough if everyone plays their respective part. I mean, wouldn't you benefit your community by adding another lawful or loyal citizen to its roles? This whole section is about having honor and distinction and being a benefactor and that you ought to have the ambition of being a benefactor to your community in accord with your abilities and your station.

50:16 Mark: Number 17 is another one here. Remember that you were an actor in a drama of such a kind as the author pleases to make it if short of a short one, if long of a long one, if it is his pleasure, you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person. See that you acted naturally, for this is your business to act well. The character assigned to you to choose it is another's. So I like the idea of gracefulness, that when you are acting according to your role, and you could interpret this in a less conservative, dickish, no social mobility way, but that whatever you take on, part of the goal of being a good Stoic is to be able to do it with grace and ease. Whether that's because it sort of goes with your inherent nature, or whether you've trained yourself through discipline over time that you're able to execute your duty with ease and grace.

51:10 Dylan: Does that answer Seth's implicit question of if Spartacus could have been a Stoic, putting aside whether he was or not, but that you could be a political revolutionary, envious Stoic?

51:21 Mark: Seems there's a lot of shouting involved.

51:25 Alex: It's a very yelly profession.

51:29 Dylan: So Stoics don't shout. That's the rub there.

51:32 Seth: They don't talk, they act, they don't talk. Oh, section 46. I get the sense that there's an implicit social order that he's appealing to and that this is kind of inheriting the old Aristotelian. Hey, some people are just slaves, you know, this is the way things are, and you should deal with what's put in front of you. That's just the way it feels to me. That's the tone. I can't say that textually it's 100% lock on that side. But that's why I think of this as a philosophy of coping, a philosophy of dealing with the hand that you're dealt, and not an exhortation to do that, but also simultaneously try to improve yourself or improve your station. Because the improvement that comes is all internal. It's all in your own how you handle what it is that's thrown at you.

52:24 Mark: So that's all conformable to nature business. We said it might have something to do with fate. It probably has something to do with acting in tune with your own personal abilities. But of course, teleology for Aristotle mostly it's not an individual matter, it's a species matter. And I do see a lot of places in here. For instance, number 39, the body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, just as the foot is of the shoe. If therefore you stop at this, you will keep the measure, but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward as down a cliff. As in the case of a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to be gilded, then purpled, then studded with jewels. For to that which once exceeds a due measure, there is no bound purple

53:07 Alex: and studded with jewels. So tone down your shoes, prince, is what we're saying.

53:12 Mark: No, it's a matter of keeping everything functional. Right. Don't go beyond the bounds and the functional. That's what teleology is all about. So it's not only just your human nature. It seems unlikely that a Spartacus, a great disruptor of the social order, that's part of human nature.

53:26 Alex: Yeah. It's interesting that he looks at, if we're gonna take the Spartacus example, he might look at slave upward mobility as almost like an embarrassment of riches of gusang with the shoe example. Like, well, don't go beyond just functionality and go crazy and need more and more things for having cool shoes. He could look at life the same sort of way.

53:46 Mark: But the institution of slavery, is that what you're saying? That even just having slaves or having a lot of slaves like that seems?

53:53 Alex: Yeah, I mean, more like the guy trying to escape slavery. Like he's saying, this is your lot in life and just go as far as you need to be comfortable. Although I don't think that works. So for him saying you trying to escape, that's you overstepping your bounds and not being at will with nature.

54:08 Dylan: I guess I'm inclined to reword it a little bit, maybe. I'm just basically agreeing with Wes's interpretation that he put forward that this is less dogmatic and more about being cognizant and reflective about how your desires are affecting your own freedom. And so it would be less about the social mores. Shut up and just do what you're told to do. I think it's true that there's this open question about what you do about changing your position. Mark, you said that you thought that while Spartacus could not possibly be a stoic properly because these features of being in accord with nature are teleological and those are species driven.

And it seems unlikely that it's natural for a human being to be so rebellious. It seems an open question that human beings aren't naturally rebellious. I'm not sure that that's the case. And then the other part is that species seems like it's maybe going too far in the case of human beings, because there is definitely, even in teleology, a fittingness that goes across species. I mean, the constant examples are even within human beings, you know, and the fittingness of the shoe is a perfect example. This case, it was functional, but you'd also have the same kind of fittingness, not just in terms of function, but whether it actually fits your foot and whether your foot's a size 5 or size 12, or if you are a huge person, you need to eat more than a little tiny person does that kind of thing.

55:36 Wes: We had a similar conversation with the Pyrrhonian skepticism episode, because there's the same sort of objective with skepticism where you achieve tranquility. And there's a famous conversation around that, how can skeptics lead daily life and never get anything done? And the skeptics argued, yes, you can have habits and opinions. It's just that you have a sort of reflective detachment from them. And it's sort of reminiscent of a sort of Nietzschean ironic distance from one's life. And I think actually the same conversation happened with Stoicism. We should mention that just historically, this was a hot issue, and Stoics defended the idea that you could live your life and do things and have opinions and things like that, and yet still be a Stoic. But from this particular text, it seems somewhat contradictory to me. It's unclear from this text, I think, how that would work exactly.

56:27 Dylan: There is something pointing in that direction, though, Wes, in the second to last chapter, chapter 52, which, incidentally, was my favorite, you know, he invokes the philosopher a number of times, but this is one place where he sort of criticizes the breadth of different kinds of attitudes in philosophy. He says the first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as do not lie. Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs by asking, for example, how does this prove it?

What exactly is a proof? What is logical inference? What is contradiction? What is truth? What is falsehood? Thus, the third field is necessary because the second and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one that should occupy most of our time, is the first. But we do just the opposite. We are preoccupied with the third field and give that all our attention, passing the first altogether. The result is that we lie, but we have no difficulty proving why we shouldn't. That's like a big bitch slap to analytical philosophy as far as I'm concerned.

57:39 Alex: Yeah, that's true.

57:40 Seth: Yeah. Well, I agree with Dylan that the last section of any work of philosophy is my favorite,

57:48 Wes: but a second to

57:49 Seth: last, the second to last, penultimate. This notion of being accord with nature, one of the things that is not so much about the natural order of, say, the natural social order, but the idea that in nature there are essentially appearances without judgment. So I think part of what's in that formulation is that things happen in nature and they don't have a value or a judgment associated with them. There are storms, there are mudslides, there's good harvest, animals get along or they eat each other or whatever. And I thought that part of what it meant to be in accord with nature was to understand how we in essence put an overlay of judgment on top of the things that happen in a way that, for example, animals don't. And that part of being an accord of nature is also just letting things be what they are and just focusing on our own reaction.

58:45 Wes: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think this leads us into maybe talk about the ruling principle. Before I get to that, Just reaffirming your point, Seth, Section 41. He advocates turning your whole attention toward your faculty of judgment instead of on externals. That's the thing over which we have power, and so on and so forth. And then I thought that's related, although I'm not clear how, to this mention of ruling principle, which in the ancient Greek is hegemonicon, as in hegemony. But in section 29, at the very end, you must be one person, either good or bad.

You must either work on your ruling principle or work on externals, as in fame and fortune, things like that. Practice the art either of what is inside or of what is outside, that is play the role either of a philosopher or a non philosopher. And then there's another mention of the ruling principle at 38. Pay attention the same way so as not to harm your ruling principle in the same way that you would avoid stepping on nails to hurt your feet. Be on guard about this in every action, this idea that there's this ruling principle. It's unclear to me, except in the footnote where in my edition he gives the ancient Greek again, hegemonicon.

And it's the idea, so he says, it's the complicated psychological theory adopted by the Stoics, that central part of the soul that can understand what is good and decide to act on that understanding. This ruling principle has something to do with the faculty of judgment. But again, this is still a little opaque to me and how it fits into.

1:00:16 Alex: It seems like the only thing you're allowed to hate is yourself. You're not allowed to have any opinions on anything except how you're reacting to it. So it's just like, I wish I would feel better about this or I wish I wouldn't take this so hard. It's really almost like a self loathing kind of happening.

1:00:31 Dylan: Where do you get the self loathing part? And why is it about hating yourself?

1:00:40 Alex: Because the whole time he's saying there's all, I forget what passages, but there's some parts that say like, don't be averse to anything but that, which would make you not see the choices clearly of what's in your control or not. And there was another part that's said be watchful of yourself as your own enemy to your stoicism. Something like that. It seems like the only thing he's okay with you saying I don't like is yourself. That you might be getting in your own way. Which to me says, I'm always screwing this up. It's almost like a finger pointing back at you.

1:01:08 Dylan: I don't get the part where it's about screwing up. I mean, being attentive to how things are working and regulating that is not the same thing as loathing it.

1:01:18 Alex: No, no, I'm saying loathing yourself for not living up to the standard that he is setting.

1:01:22 Mark: Well, so Section 5 is one of those where he talks about the different levels of how awesome a stoic sage you are. When we are hindered or disturbed or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves, that is to our own principles. And here we go. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad conditions upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Someone who's perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself. So it's the self loathing, but the being hard on yourself.

Let's not say self loathing, that that implies something terminal and irredeemable. But the being hard on yourself is a stage in the instruction that when you really get it, then, and I don't know whether that's just because you've mastered yourself and so you're not going to place blame on yourself or because in trying to apply this ourselves, it would be because you forgive yourself. It's not just that the things that are outside you are not under your control, but that even some of the things inside you are not under your control. And so if something bad happens and you react bad to it, then you recognize the truth.

The truth is that it's your own reaction that is causing any suffering. But do you blame yourself for then suffering? Well, maybe you don't. You just say that's how it is.

1:02:35 Seth: Yeah, I was with you until you said there are some things inside yourself that are not under your control. I feel like that's actually one of the things.

1:02:42 Wes: Well, like being in pain, but that's body.

1:02:45 Seth: And body's not under your control.

1:02:48 Wes: Well, it's a feeling. But you, you have feelings. So when he gives that list in the beginning, talks about impulses, desires, aversions, opinions, impulses, desires, aversions, those are the interior things that are up to us. But it seems like there's a whole realm of interior things beyond those things which are not up to us.

1:03:06 Mark: But that's an anachronism. Taking the Cartesian, everything that I feel is part of my inner life, including the sensations I have of things and of my own pains, and those are all mental, whereas the only thing that's physical are actually body, reputation, command, et cetera. That seems kind of foreign to him that I agree with Seth.

1:03:27 Wes: I don't think so. I think, in fact Descartes picked up right where these traditions left off. It was heavily influenced, for instance, by ancient skepticism, which has a very clear idea of what's interior. There's no evidence in here that pain and pleasure are not interior things. And again, he's only listing opinions, impulses, desires, aversions. Certainly there's more to inner life than that.

1:03:50 Seth: Okay, well, two things. One is what I gathered from the quote that Mark read. And then what he was saying was if somebody says something bad about me and I get upset, if I was a non philosopher or in our translation, vulgar, I would blame it on the other person. If I'm beginning my instruction or I'm somehow not a perfect stoic, I would say I blame it on myself. I shouldn't be. I'd get upset with myself in the sense of I shouldn't get upset at that. I shouldn't let that person affect me that way. And then if you reach the point of you're a full fledged stoic philosopher, then it feels like you might say, well, I recognize that I'm having this feeling of being upset, but I don't blame him or myself.

1:04:28 Wes: Yeah. So the reason why I think this is important is again, going back to this idea, these are opinions, impulses, desires, aversions. What he's really talking about are judgments. And that's why I thought that Section 41 on the paying attention to the faculty of judgment is important. And that does sort of support the reading that there might be passing emotions over which you obviously have no control. But again, it's the reflective judgment about that emotion that's important. It's conceivable that you would train yourself or habituate yourself such that your emotions are modified. But I think the idea that we have this direct control over what emotions we feel, it seems implausible. And to get a consistent reading out of this, we have to say, well, what he's really thinking we have control of are our judgments.

1:05:13 Mark: And having control over your judgments is actually a matter of seeing the truth. That if you get offended by something, then you're being taken away with the appearance. The appearance is that this person saying something about is hurting me. But the truth of the fact is it's not hurting me. The only thing that could hurt me is if I fail myself is if I don't have the fortitude or, you know, whatever, those are the only things that could even potentially hurt me, because those are the only things that belong to me. So internalizing that truth is the goal.

1:05:41 Dylan: And so I guess we're still brought back with this issue of hurting is hurting. Getting hurt and getting affected externally is what the mode of action and the activity of something akin to self preservation would be. And for instance, things like how is ambition balanced with this kind of attitude of impassivity?

1:06:03 Wes: Yeah, if my goal is to become a great politician, for instance, or let's say, a writer, or even what about the desire to become a philosopher? I mean, are all those paths cut off to us? Or is it a matter of saying it's not that I'm attached to these things and that if I don't get them, woe is me. It's that these things are fitting. It's in accord with my nature to take steps in those directions. And again, if fate dictates otherwise, then I embrace that as well. We'd have to work on that to get a consistent statement that reconciles a real world existence with the Stoic way of life.

1:06:37 Dylan: Yeah, I think this is one of those things that if we spent some time, quality time in the Discourses, we get more meat on the bones of this part of it. Because, you know, he has sections on indifference and on ambition.

1:06:50 Mark: Just to clarify, the Discourses is a different work also written by the Same author taking things down in shorthand. But it's kind of the philosopher Epictetus in action with his students. These are the actual lecture notes, whereas the handbook here, this is the distillation. This is the end product that you can fit in your pocket.

1:07:07 Dylan: Yes, that's right. And so in the Discourses, there are three books, conventionally of them, and you'll have. In certain points, there's a lot of things that amount to quotes Epictetus manifesting. You know, someone. I say this or you say that, and you have a little bit of that in the handbook. But then you have also parts where Epictetus says, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:07:31 Mark: And is he a jackass? Is he a Zen master in any of it, where he pulls a fast one on his students? Or is it all straightforward teaching as

1:07:39 Wes: they're washing on and washing off?

1:07:42 Alex: Did you guys get the translation where he uses the word blockhead? He's like, hey, don't do this. You'll be a blockhead. I'm like, thanks, Three Stooges.

1:07:53 Mark: That's probably a very literal translation from the Greek, I'm sure.

1:07:57 Alex: If thou wants what thou cannot have, thou is a meathead.

1:08:00 Wes: You're a stoic Charlie Brown.

1:08:03 Alex: When the football is taken away from you, do not grief, but acknowledge that this will happen.

1:08:09 Wes: Do not say it.

1:08:11 Seth: The football has been returned.

1:08:15 Mark: It was obviously never his to begin with. Come on.

1:08:19 Seth: That's deep.

1:08:21 Alex: Yeah, I mean, it was. I think it was Lucy's football anyway. She was just a sadist. It wasn't like she was using his football against him. That'd be like. That's some.

1:08:29 Mark: Well, and she never plays with the football on her own. She just only has it there.

1:08:34 Alex: She bought a football just to torture him. That's up. That's like some true detective shit.

1:08:41 Wes: Yeah, she's a dark character. There's no doubt about it.

1:08:46 Mark: Yes, I want to call out this quote from section 1 Again, just to see what we think of it now that we've talked more about it. But if you suppose that only to be your own, which is your own, and what belongs to others, such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you further. You will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you. You will have no enemies and you will not be harmed. Like, that is pretty over the top language.

1:09:16 Wes: The only thing that you will is to have good judgments, and the only thing that can harm you is not having good judgments.

1:09:22 Mark: Yeah, but like you will have no enemies. You will see no one is an enemy. Right, because you're not taking things personally. Because you're not the kind of person who. But can somebody really hate you? Can you be their enemy still?

1:09:36 Wes: Well, I don't think he's saying. I don't think he's. He's not saying that.

1:09:39 Alex: It just goes back to the interpretation thing like is someone your enemy if you view them as not your enemy and what's out of your control now is how they view you. Because they could go, he's my enemy, I am his enemy. But you might not agree, which then makes the one in your control that he's not your enemy. It's absurd.

1:09:57 Seth: But that's.

1:09:57 Alex: I think, what he's saying.

1:09:58 Wes: Well, certainly he's saying someone can persecute you and hate you and all that stuff, but you're not in that state of mind where you're disturbed and hating the other person and so on and so forth. You see them as a natural occurrence. They're just a. There's an irony to that being a natural occurrence because it's those people you know are in a state of mind where they're not in acting accordance. In accordance with nature, right? And yet they are natural occurrences. So their interior unnaturalness is, from an exterior point of view, completely natural.

1:10:33 Seth: There's a section 45 in this translation. It says, does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity. For unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how shall you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting any appearances, but such as you fully comprehend. And I think this goes back to the being in accord with nature, where if you use a descriptive apparatus that treats people the same way, you would say, oh, that tree is growing out of a hillside, or that falcon caught that mouse. In the same way you're describing other people's and not putting a judgment on it that this person's doing something right or doing something wrong. Because you don't know what principle. What are the internal principles according to which they need to operate in order to have their eudaimonia.

1:11:33 Wes: That's really interesting.

1:11:35 Seth: I miss that section 25 kind of supports that where he says, if somebody gets something that you want, don't be jealous. Instead, if that something you want is good, then be happy that somebody got something that's good. And just be happy that you avoid things that are bad, even if it's not related to possession, but anyway.

1:11:52 Wes: And you can't tell if it's actually good or bad for them. You don't know from the external because it's a. Yeah, yeah.

1:11:59 Seth: This notion of accord with nature, but also the discussion that we've been having about this kind of being, clearly from a slave's perspective, it made me think of Nietzsche and the idea of building a morality out of a certain resentment. And so I did a quick little search to see what if Nietzsche had anything to say about the Stoics, and he does.

1:12:22 Mark: Life haters.

1:12:23 Seth: What he says is that Stoicism is a fraud of words because he says you desire to live according to nature. What a fraud of words. Imagine to yourselves a being like nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice. Imagine to yourselves indifference as a power. How could you live in accordance with such indifference to live? Is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this nature? So he's basically saying you've made a principle out of something that you must do and you must be. And then you turn around and you try to dictate terms to nature.

1:13:05 Wes: Well, it sounds like living requires the struggle, you know, against nature.

1:13:10 Seth: He calls Stoicism self tyranny.

1:13:14 Wes: So on one reading of this, of course, yeah, it could be.

1:13:16 Dylan: Well, yeah, so Nietzsche would come down on the polar opposite right of reveling in ecstasy and maximizing that ecstasy and the struggle.

1:13:25 Wes: So it's, you know, the Stoic wants to withdraw from the battlefield. In a sense.

1:13:28 Dylan: Yes. The Stoic soldier would be going through in great efficiency and grim duty and saving people and killing in one shot, whereas the Nietzschean warrior would be, I don't know, more Achillean and reveling and being a upfront badass.

1:13:51 Mark: Yeah.

1:13:52 Dylan: Enjoying it the whole time.

1:13:54 Wes: And certainly more capable of pride than.

1:13:57 Dylan: Yes, being prideful about it.

1:13:58 Wes: Yeah. And not worrying about that pride seems something cut off to the Stoic.

1:14:03 Mark: Based on various things that we know about Nietzsche from having read a bunch of his stuff, I think we could give a lot of ways in which you could interpret Nietzsche's ethical recommendations as acting in accord with nature in some way. But just looking at the particular quote that Seth read, that just seems clearly a Schopenhauerian view of nature as this chaotic force and nobody could actually act like that, which it seems a little beside the point. The Stoic is not saying. Epictetus is not coming with Schopenhauer's version of nature and saying. Oh, that's what we have to ask. No, he just has a different, more Aristotelian take on nature.

1:14:39 Seth: I thought it was interesting, but I certainly found plenty of people who were rejoinders to the Nietzsche criticism.

1:14:45 Mark: Yeah, Schopenhauer himself. I think he thinks that the stoic sages, just like the Buddhist sages, are right on target that this is how to deal with a crazy ass chaotic nature. Is to say that's got nothing to do with the good. As far as I'm concerned. I will be more self contained and withdraw from that. And therefore Nietzsche would respond and say, oh, you people are all despisers of life. You're not buying into the struggle. The struggle. What nature is, is what you have to get into. So it's just a matter of what you're calling nature. Well, can we say more about what Epictetus calls nature?

1:15:19 Wes: Well, he doesn't really say much. We've been sort of making guesses. Right. And I focused on the determinism part of things. And Mark, you are focusing on the more teleological conceptions.

1:15:30 Mark: So back to that quote that I read in number one. You know, if you are the stoic sage, you will not be harmed, no one will hurt you. Well, we understand what that means because I'm the stoic sage and I'm saying the only thing that could hurt me is if you somehow got into my free will. And you can't do that. So hang on, but if you combine this with the idea of teleology, you know, the human teleology is to grow in a certain way. It has things more to do with than just the mind and the mind ruling over the body. It has to do with the fitness of the body and the fitness of the body and the mind. So it seems very hard to say that your whole body could be wrecked. Let's say you even get brain damage. So your mental faculties are even getting messed with. You're in a lot of pain and that still that somehow doesn't harm you.

1:16:18 Wes: That's a hard case. The mental faculties, because the. Yes, it is. The faculty of judgment is the one thing we're supposed to have control over. And if that's violated.

1:16:27 Mark: So let's just separate out the two cases. Even if your physical body is being really messed up, you're in enough pain. And we've said that pain is basically something associated with the body. Maybe you can't suppress pain in the same way you could suppress desire. Then doesn't that interfere? Doesn't that harm you? You can't just say, my good has to do with my mind and My mind is ruling over the faculties of the body, including pain. And so I'm not really harmed, even though.

1:16:53 Alex: Ouch, ouch, ouch.

1:16:54 Mark: Like, no, that is just wordplay.

1:16:57 Dylan: I think you may be right, Mark, that there may be a kind of idealistic notion about being able to be successful at this. But I also wonder if the case that you give example to that there just wouldn't be an acknowledgement that look, that would be really, really hard. There are a number of cases where it's pointed out that being successful at this way of being is very hard to do, requires a lot of work. It requires training. And so in the case that you just gave, it seems to me you would say, well, even as a stoic sage, you may find it very challenging to be successful at being indifferent in a way that was adequate to the task. And it might hurt you.

1:17:42 Mark: Can't you say that it's hurting you, but you're indifferent? Like to keep the idea that I'm being harmed by. If you look at my teleology as a human being and even my personal growth, my fitness as an individual, I was born to be a shoemaker, but now I've lost both my hands and I can't be a shoemaker. That there's still something that there's being harmed about that. But you're coping with the harm. Like, I would be more comfortable with that than just this bald saying, oh, you're not even harmed if you're coping with it.

1:18:08 Dylan: Well, I guess it depends on the interpretation of the word harm there, because the way you interpreted it now seemed to me a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the word harm, where you've abstracted it from physical bleeding and cutting off your legs and that kind of thing, and you've interpreted harm as harm to your soul.

1:18:27 Mark: Right.

1:18:27 Dylan: And so you could be indifferent and therefore not have your soul harmed, even though you were harmed in a different way.

1:18:32 Mark: That does seem to be where Epictetus has to come down. Yes. I don't know if that's plausible. I don't. Well, and then what about the case with the. Your mental faculties are damaged. This always seems to be a problem. You know, they just weren't aware of people. Now you have frontal lobe damage, and now you can't make decisions the way you used to, and you're incontinent. And so, you know, clearly things outside of your control can affect things that are inside of your control.

1:18:57 Seth: Is that just.

1:18:58 Mark: We just need to forget about that. Modern.

1:19:00 Dylan: Yeah. I mean, Chapter nine. Sickness is a problem for the body. Not the mind. Unless the mind decides that it is a problem. Lameness, too, is the body's problem, not the mind's. Say this to yourself, whatever the circumstance, and you will find without fail that the problem pertains to something else, not to you. So that first line sickness is a problem for the body, not the mind. Seems to not even admit of the notion that there'd be something like mental illness.

1:19:27 Mark: Yeah. Which of course is not something dependent on the advent of brain science to know that people act crazy. Like it's right there in fricking Sophocles.

1:19:36 Wes: I think we have to start with the assumption that we have someone who has a faculty of judgment intact. I think it's consistent with the idea that, yeah, there are people whose judgment isn't intact and then they're unlucky.

1:19:49 Mark: Maybe they're not people anymore. Maybe they're like dead people, zombies.

1:19:52 Dylan: Well, I mean, wouldn't you say that they can't be philosophers, among other things?

1:19:58 Alex: I guess if you have brain damage, it seems hard to be a philosopher, right? So.

1:20:03 Dylan: But you could be a zombie.

1:20:04 Alex: Yeah, you could be. But could you be a zombie philosopher?

1:20:07 Mark: I am sick of the American Philosophical association being prejudiced against people with severe brain damage. They should allow more people on faculties.

1:20:16 Seth: Could you be a stoic savant or

1:20:20 Alex: like you're Rain man, but just really good at dealing with your feelings? Exactly.

1:20:23 Seth: You're like autistic, where you're.

1:20:26 Wes: Oh, God.

1:20:28 Seth: Where you just have a condition that makes you absolutely immune to the external things and only attend to your own internal things under your own control.

1:20:38 Wes: You can't help Tom Cruise count Cards, but you can help him be a better person.

1:20:43 Alex: Wasn't that his real purpose in that movie anyway?

1:20:45 Wes: It was. He did turn out to be a stoic savant.

1:20:47 Mark: Well, and it does seem like that since we're talking about mental illness and brain impairments, that being a stoic sage would require a brain impairment of a certain kind of disconnecting your feelings to.

1:20:59 Seth: You would have to literally be a psychopath.

1:21:02 Dylan: Really?

1:21:04 Seth: I believe so. In essence, what he's saying, it sounds to me, is that you have to completely let go of any empathy for beings outside of yourself, because otherwise then you would have desires and aversions associated with them.

1:21:20 Wes: Yeah, that does seem to follow.

1:21:23 Mark: Give us a quote. Dylan, I know you don't buy it.

1:21:25 Dylan: I end up leaning more towards. You need to be aware of the kinds of connections that you choose to have. So I think that probably in the end you're right, that the highest Level of stoic sage would be indifferent in such a way as to have sacrificed things that we consider to be important to being a human being, fully to flourishing in that way which is allowing for deep connections with other human beings and having empathy for them and having that be a cause of our own actions. I tend to take it a little bit less to that end and focus more on the choosing your battles, choosing as much as possible your desires, and in fact maximizing freedom as being the main goal.

And so part of maximizing freedom would be understanding that, well, some things are going to be constraining to you. In fact, there are sections where it feels like maximizing freedom means doing the things that you do do as well and fully as possible and as uninhibited as possible. But that is more like a fittingness argument. It's not like there aren't constraints, there aren't isn't determinism. It's just that it's all working very, very well of a piece. But if you look at it, there are certainly things are lining up with one another.

1:22:43 Seth: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think the thing that seems fundamentally flawed to me about this, there's two aspects. One is this sounds like a coping strategy. It's a way to deal with trauma or a way to deal with challenges in your life in such a way that you won't be overwhelmed with anxiety or fear or depression or all that. In that sense, it's a psychological strategy which I don't necessarily seek needs to be taken to the extreme of being a philosophical system and a way to live your entire life. I could see it as being tactically deployed at certain times to help you deal with stuff.

The second thing is, I think it's calling for a denial of things that are fundamentally human. To say that you should just not feel certain ways about certain types of activities is to just deny what the foundation that Smith and Hume talk about in Moral Sentiments of we have empathy towards other people. And that's the foundation for being a moral person. Here you read this and it feels like he's saying empathy is a sure path to disappointment and frustrated desire. And so you need to overcome that and essentially only focus on things inside yourself where empathy is not a factor.

I used to love stoicism when I was much younger and I fetishized reason, right? And truth. I was much more attracted to this doctrine. But as I read it now, I'm sort of pained. Let me give you an example. So this is section 16. When you see anyone weeping in grief because his son has gone abroad or is dead, or because he has suffered in his affairs. Be careful that the appearance may not misdirect you. Instead, distinguish within your own mind and be prepared to say, it's not the accident that distresses this person because it doesn't distress another person.

It is the judgment which he makes about it. As far as words go, however, don't reduce yourself to his level. And certainly do not moan with him. Do not moan inwardly either. That's a prescription for just being completely disconnected from other human beings.

1:24:52 Dylan: Wait just a second. I mean, this is. What you read is completely different in my translation. I mean, yay.

1:24:57 Seth: Okay.

1:24:57 Dylan: Such as to be exact, to the Greek. Such as to be exactly the opposite.

1:25:01 Seth: Oh. Oh, exciting. Come on, read it.

1:25:04 Dylan: So, chapter 16. He says, Whenever you see someone in tears, distraught because they are parted from a child or have met with some material loss, be careful, lest the impression move you to believe that their circumstances are truly bad. Have ready the reflection that they are not upset by what happened, because other people are not upset by the same things happening to them, but by their own view of the matter. Nevertheless. You should not disdain to sympathize with them, at least with comforting words, or even to the extent of sharing outwardly in their grief, but do not commiserate with your whole heart and soul.

1:25:38 Mark: Wow.

1:25:38 Wes: Yeah, I have something similar. Do not hesitate, however, to sympathize with him verbally.

1:25:44 Dylan: Yes.

1:25:44 Wes: And even to moan with him if the occasion arises. But be careful not to moan inwardly.

1:25:49 Seth: Really?

1:25:50 Dylan: Yes.

1:25:50 Mark: Wow.

1:25:51 Dylan: So that's exactly the opposite of what you just read.

1:25:53 Seth: How could this be so different? Here I'm giving Epictetus the what for over a bad translation. I apologize. Posthumously. Hey, Alex, do you think you could raise him from the dead? Or commute? Oh, no, he's too far back. He's not modern. Right.

1:26:09 Alex: Yeah. My powers are limited. My dark magic can only reach back so far. I'm sorry.

1:26:14 Mark: And they have to be comedians.

1:26:16 Alex: Yeah. I mean, if you want me to raise Richard Pryor, I could probably try, but he'd probably run away on fire before I could get him.

1:26:24 Mark: It would be post stroke Richard Pryor. So he couldn't.

1:26:26 Alex: Yeah, so he wouldn't be. I mean, he still might be funny if he could understand, but it wouldn't be stage worthy at that point. I don't know how much help he would be. Probably want to be with his family and stuff, too. I don't know.

1:26:36 Mark: By the way, number 50, whatever moral rules you've deliberately proposed to Yourself, abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them, which. That's another thing that I read as to deal with people effectively, you have to be flexible. You have to actually engage with them. And if you say that sort of every point of your conduct, my integrity demands that I act the same way in all circumstances. It just. It doesn't sound flexible enough to make you a good husband. For instance.

1:27:10 Dylan: Well,

1:27:13 Wes: is he really saying that? Is he saying you can't be flexible? I mean, he's saying in my translation, abide by whatever task is set before you as if it were a law. So it depends on the scope of the word task.

1:27:26 Seth: Oh, see, that.

1:27:27 Mark: That sounds like I am a husband. It is my role. I will play the fucking part.

1:27:32 Wes: No, but it's a task. It doesn't say role. You say, I'm going to do something. It's about willing. You know, I'm going to do something. And then you. There's no longer a question of doing it or not doing it.

1:27:42 Dylan: The second sentence in chapter 50 for me says, pay no attention to whatever people might say. This no longer should influence you. This is a piece with a number of places where the emphasis is on don't worry about what other people think. They're going to think you're crazy and the whole integrity and sticking to your own freedom. Mark's probably right that if you go too far with that, then you're not going to accommodate anybody and not have any relationships with anyone.

1:28:11 Mark: Here's Another part of 33 is another really great recipe for being a great spouse. Be for the most part silent, or speak merely what is necessary in few words.

1:28:21 Alex: What a weird sitcom. What do you think, honey? Not really anything.

1:28:28 Mark: We may, however, enter, though sparingly into discourse sometimes when occasion falls for it, but not on any of the common subjects of gladiators or horse races or athletic champions or feasts, the vulgar topics of conversation, but principally not of men, so as to either blame or praise or make comparisons. So don't be a gossip. That's fine, if you're able, then by your own conversation, bring over that of your company to proper subjects. But if you happen to be taken among strangers, be silent. So clearly you're not supposed to gossip, but it's unclear to me sort of how otherwise debilitating that makes you as a.

Does that make you a prude that there's no idle chatter here? Because really relating to somebody. This is why it's obviously, this is Written by a man. This is not written by a woman. At least the way they tell us that how people relate to each other, that women are more the talky talky. And it doesn't even matter what you're saying so much. It's the doing the talking that matters. And that's. That's what makes the social bonds there. And so this guy needs to go read Women are from Venus or whatever crap that would inform him.

1:29:34 Alex: It sounds like he was really nervous. At parties, there's so many references to be like, when you're in a place you don't want to be, just smile and don't say too much and thank them for the onion rings. I think he's number 41 or whatever.

1:29:48 Dylan: Well, he certainly isn't a political philosopher, right? Contrary to Aristotle, who says not only that we're rational animals, but we are political animals and that we're fundamentally designed to interact with one another and build families and societies. He seems to be basically not of that opinion. Or at least the way his philosophy is working is not one centered on building a flourishing community. The extent to which, at least in what we've read, that you would be concerned about that is that you do what you can based upon your social role at the time, but you don't really sweat it. But the idea of caring about, say, for instance, political freedoms and institutional laws and stuff like that doesn't seem to be of issue. He also doesn't seem to worry about justice at all. I mean, not even once.

1:30:38 Mark: Is justice not implied by fidelity and honor?

1:30:41 Dylan: No, I don't think so. Just think about the way justice is characterized in the Republic, and the notion of the question of justice, and the way in which that question is articulated into getting what you deserve and giving your enemies what they deserve, or the will of the stronger, or the rule of the good. None of those kinds of things seem to even be gestured towards, at least in this little handbook. It seems to be. Maybe Epictetus himself has thoughts about that. But this seems to be all about ethics, for lack of a better term, and about the way one ought to live themselves. But it doesn't seem to point in that ethics towards the way one is part of a community.

1:31:21 Mark: If you're not allowed to condemn the way things turn out that you're supposed to morally just say, I'm with however things turned out. It seems like justice is whatever actually happens, like there is no normative concept of justice.

1:31:35 Seth: Yeah, and if you have a concept of determinism that makes perfect sense, which

1:31:39 Mark: they do he does talk about friendship in here, but it's more as how you shouldn't let yourself be too influenced or sucked in or led to do disreputable things by your friends or to help your friends, that the best you could do is to be a friend of fidelity and honor, which just means being a person of integrity.

1:32:01 Dylan: There is a little bit of one in section 33 that made me laugh out loud said, avoid fraternizing with non philosophers if you must. Though be careful not to sink to their level. Because, you know, if a companion is dirty, his friends cannot help but get a little dirty too. No matter how clean they started out.

1:32:23 Alex: That could lead to dancing.

1:32:27 Mark: Your translation is funny, Dylan. It's very modern.

1:32:31 Dylan: Yes, it reads awesome. I love it. It's really easy to read.

1:32:36 Mark: For be assured that if a person be ever so sound himself, yet if his companions be infected, he who converses with him will be infected. Likewise.

1:32:47 Alex: Who wrote this? Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. And be wary of the outside world. They want to take your throne of skulls.

1:32:58 Seth: I just heard Agent Smith's voice in that.

1:33:02 Alex: And Epictetus said, you are the illness and we are the cure.

1:33:06 Mark: Anything else about the practical? This is mostly number 33, the ethics, the manners that we hadn't hit already. We got talked about public spectacles don't go where appearances of authors are.

1:33:20 Alex: Yeah, what was that like? Don't go to play. He said, don't go to play rehearsals. Was that like a Greek thing? Like, hey, can you really come to my play rehearsal? I really need you to sacrifice your inner aversion to things that are out of your control and just watch and give me some notes. Can you betray your own fidelity and just help me out?

1:33:38 Mark: I don't think rehearse means practice. I just think it means. It means oratory, the rehearsal of an author. In other words, the author saying stuff, reading his work aloud or.

1:33:47 Dylan: Oh, my translation is lectures.

1:33:51 Mark: Yeah, okay, there you go.

1:33:52 Dylan: Don't too soon or too lightly attend other people's lectures. When you do go, remain serious and reserved without being disagreeable.

1:34:00 Alex: So do not bring flowers.

1:34:02 Mark: It would be funny if he had said, oh, don't go to the dress rehearsal. I know you'll get a better seats, but come on, it's not going to be good as performance. Just pay the full price.

1:34:12 Seth: I just found a potentially other directed passage in here that might be worth reading, but I'm terrified of reading my version of the. Since this translation is apparently awful and wrong. So, Dylan, would you do me a favor and Read your version or Wes, number 47.

1:34:28 Dylan: 47. When your body gets used to simple living, don't preen over it. If you're a water drinker, don't take every opportunity to announce it. If you want to train for physical austerities, do it for yourself, not for outsiders. Don't embrace marble statues. But if you happen to be very thirsty, try taking some cold water in your mouth and spitting it out. And don't tell anyone. Do you know what embracing marble statues is?

1:34:55 Wes: Yeah.

1:34:56 Seth: No.

1:34:57 Dylan: So apparently there was, among some stoics like Diogenes, a kind of ascetic practice of in the dead of winter, going out naked and grabbing a hold of a marble statue as a way of training ascetically, well.

1:35:10 Wes: So, yeah, Diogenes the cynic would do it nude in cold weather, naked in the snow. But the idea is that he was being a show off.

1:35:16 Dylan: Yeah, he was being a show off. Exactly.

1:35:18 Mark: That means 50 degrees in this climate. He was.

1:35:22 Alex: It's a brisk nude statue hug. It's not really freezing.

1:35:27 Seth: Well, I'll tell you, there is a line in our translation that did not come up at all in yours, which gave me this false reading.

1:35:35 Dylan: Okay?

1:35:35 Seth: It says, when you have brought yourself to supply the necessities of your body at a small price, don't pique yourself upon it. Nor if you drink water, be saying, upon every occasion, I drink water. But first consider how much more sparing and patient of hardship the poor are than we. That has not even a close to an analog in anything you read.

1:35:54 Wes: No, it's not in my translation.

1:35:56 Mark: And it makes sense, you know, you think you're a badass ascetic. Well, think of people who actually are starving. Fuck you.

1:36:03 Alex: You know those, like, super hardcore metal.

1:36:06 Mark: Oh, I passed it. I didn't eat all day. I'm so virtuous.

1:36:12 Alex: I didn't eat for three days and I'm seeing blue right now. Oh, yeah.

1:36:17 Dylan: So I don't know if you guys are familiar with Perseus. It's a server out of Tufts that has a huge collection of original Greek and Roman literature, and then they often have translations cross referenced with it. So you can go back and forth between the Greek and the English or the Latin or whatever. So they have the translation from George Long, which has that line in it that you just mentioned. Consider how much more frugal the poor are than we and how much more enduring of labor.

1:36:48 Mark: So this was originally in Greek and not in Latin. Even though we're in Rome, it's all in Koine Greek. Okay?

1:36:54 Dylan: So the same Greek as the New Testament. In fact, this book and the New Testament are where we get koine Greek. That's where we know what it looks like. Common Greek.

1:37:05 Seth: Common Greek is distinguished from what other kind of Greek?

1:37:08 Dylan: Common Greek just meaning the term koine. Koine just means common. So everyday Greek language, and it's different

1:37:13 Mark: versus Ancient Greek versus Attic Greek.

1:37:16 Seth: Yep, Attic Greek.

1:37:17 Dylan: Okay. Yeah. And you would contrast that further with Homeric Greek. But it's significantly simpler the way in which most languages. The further you go back, the more cases there are and the more complicated they are.

1:37:30 Seth: It didn't make it any easier to translate, apparently.

1:37:33 Dylan: Apparently not.

1:37:34 Mark: Well, I did like the fact that we have a callback here to Augustine in this water fetish. Take a little spurt it out and tell nobody.

1:37:45 Alex: That's like a Sicilian message. Spurt out the water, tell no one the hell. Creepy.

1:37:52 Mark: The virtue of not drinking water. It's not part of their health regimen to drink five glasses a day or whatever the thing you're supposed to do.

1:38:01 Seth: Well, I think it was just saying you're just drinking water and not wine, right?

1:38:05 Dylan: Well, no. At the end of this is another ascetic practice of you're very thirsty and you take some cold water in your mouth and then you spit it out because you're going to be a tough badass and be released. But here he's saying, do that. Go ahead, be a tough badass, but don't tell anybody. Don't gloat over it. Like Diogenes and his show offishness of hugging statues in Greek Winter.

1:38:27 Mark: Speaking of number 41, it is a mark of want of genius to spend much time in things relating to the body, as to be long in our exercises in eating and drinking and in the discharge of other animal functions. These should be done incidentally and slightly and our whole attention be engaged in the care of our understanding. So I just want to put that out there because it's most of what we've said here. Again, it's a warriors thing. You could use this as a discipline if you're a gymnast or something. But no, really, you shouldn't be paying that much attention. This sounds straight up more Plato. Pay attention to reason and your ruling faculty. And if you're wasting too much time in the gym, that's not just a matter of disciplining yourself. That's being self indulgent.

1:39:11 Alex: Was it a translation thing? Because he says it's a one of genius. And I didn't quite know what that meant. It Was a weird word to use in that, you know, you're going to want to be a genius and eat a lot and drink a lot of beer.

1:39:22 Mark: It is a surfeit of blockheadedness to spend too much time doing this.

1:39:27 Dylan: Which section is this again?

1:39:28 Mark: 41. You going to read us the right translation?

1:39:31 Dylan: No, I just wanted to make sure I was.

1:39:34 Mark: Well, I do want to see you do. What does he say instead of want of genius?

1:39:39 Dylan: He doesn't say genius. He says it shows lack of refinement to spend a lot of time exercising, eating, drinking, defecating or copulating. Tending to the body's needs. Should be done incidentally, as it were. The mind and its functions require the bulk of our attention.

1:39:52 Mark: Well, so I believe this translation that we've been using off the Internet Archive is like from the 1700s.

1:39:59 Dylan: The Carter.

1:40:00 Mark: Yes.

1:40:00 Dylan: There is a revision of the Carter translation, actually, that came out in2020.

1:40:05 Seth: This has to be because this is not 18th century language. It doesn't sound like it.

1:40:09 Mark: It sounds like the fact that it says other bodily functions instead of actually saying copulating and defecating. That's somebody trying to be more discreet in their translation.

1:40:19 Dylan: Yes.

1:40:19 Alex: So like, you know what we're talking about. Let's not print it. You're going to be copulating and defecating. We don't have to say it.

1:40:28 Seth: I thought. Oh, well, that would have been Victorian. I was going to say prior to that, just a little bit earlier. And they were much more open about talking about this stuff. That's a Victorian thing.

1:40:38 Mark: Well, again, how to be a good spouse is treat your copulation slightly, get it over with.

1:40:44 Alex: Incidentally, quick and light of touch, that's all. She will be so happy. But if she goes away,

1:40:54 Seth: well, just remember, she's allowed to feel the same way about you.

1:40:57 Alex: Just two light touches.

1:40:58 Mark: So we might as well say, obviously this is aimed at men. It was by men. There's one thing in here. Oh, God. Number 40. Women from 14 years old are flattered with the title of mistresses by the men. Therefore, perceiving that they are regarded only as qualified to give the men pleasure, they begin to adorn themselves and in that to place all their hopes. We should therefore fix our attention on making them sensible, that they are valued for the appearance of decent, modest and discreet behavior.

1:41:25 Alex: Shouldn't we stop screwing them at 14 first?

1:41:28 Mark: That might help.

1:41:30 Seth: I thought halfway through that was going in a much more progressive direction.

1:41:34 Dylan: Well, my translation did.

1:41:35 Seth: I thought, oh, okay.

1:41:38 Alex: What does yours want to say?

1:41:39 Dylan: Well, because the Translation uses self respect. At the end it says, at the age of 14, girls begin to be addressed by men as ladies. From this they infer that the world honors them for nothing so much as their potential as sexual partners. Consequently, they become preoccupied with their appearance to the exclusion of everything else. They must be made to realize that they are entitled to be called ladies insofar as they cultivate modesty and self respect. So it seemed to me that I read this as being surprisingly progressive in that the reason that it's bad for girls to be cultivated in this way and that it's their environment that makes them care about their appearance to the exclusion of everything else. And in fact, what we should be doing is helping them cultivate modesty and self respect, both of which are Stoic virtues.

1:42:27 Seth: No, we should be helping them to cultivate all the Stoic virtues and not just those two. Yes, that's how that should have ended.

1:42:34 Wes: By the way, I've looked over the ancient Greek here, and I just. I don't see anything about the poor. I mean, none that my Greek is stellar, but it matches up with my translation very well. And there's nothing about the poor.

1:42:46 Seth: You want to give us a couple lines so we can hear what koine Greek lick sounds like?

1:42:49 Wes: Otan enteleos, hreos smenos es katatosoma. That's the body. Somatuto med an udar hudar. That's water. Pines. I think udar is water, right? Ekpases aporames lege. That's where you don't say that you drink water. Hoti that hoti that you drink water all the time. Anyway, so on and so forth. I see it match up with my translation. I don't see where the poor thing comes from. That's baffling.

1:43:23 Dylan: Well, it wouldn't be the first time that translator stuck sentences into things to make them more aligned with what they wanted it to say.

1:43:30 Seth: That is true, but it just points out what a fraud we all are for not both reading and having this conversation in Ancient Greek.

1:43:37 Mark: That would help our listenership greatly.

1:43:39 Alex: So, should we start over in Greek?

1:43:41 Mark: Let's do nonsense Greek.

1:43:43 Wes: The

1:43:45 Mark: since 99% of the audience won't know the difference, why not let's just

1:43:50 Alex: read a diner menu and hope no one notices.

1:43:53 Mark: Seems like they would be violating stoic recommendations to spend so much time laboring over something that is not that useful. This ancient Greek. It almost is like in number 49.

1:44:04 Wes: I just. I like the way the word for water, though, sounds so similar.

1:44:08 Mark: Hodor Hodor 49. This is a smack at the philosophers. When anyone shows himself overly confident in ability to understand and interpret the works of Chrysippus, say to yourself, unless Chrysippus had written obscurely, this person would have no subject for his vanity. But what do I desire? To understand nature and follow her? I ask, then, who interprets her? In finding Chrysippus, does I have recourse to him? I don't understand his writings. I seek therefore one to interpret them. So far there is nothing to value myself on. And when I find an interpreter, what remains is to make use of his instructions.

This alone is a valuable thing. But if I admire nothing except merely in the interpretation, what do I become more than a grammarian instead of a philosopher? Except indeed, that instead of Homer, I interpret Chrysippus. When anyone therefore desires me to read Chrysippus to him, I rather blush when I cannot show my actions agreeable and consonant to his discourse.

1:44:55 Alex: That always makes me blush.

1:44:57 Wes: There's a lot here. The next section is also about actions instead of words. There are a few of these, I think Seth read one of them earlier, where the idea of being a philosopher, it's about the way you live life, strangely enough.

1:45:09 Seth: Yeah, that got lost somewhere.

1:45:11 Mark: Yeah. So we haven't said much about. Just to put this a little in the historical context, that Chrysippus is an ancient Greek Stoic and the Stoics were not concerned just with ethics, that they were also. Like when I read the thing, the Wikipedia entry on Chrysippus, it talks about his. How he created elements of modern logic, things that didn't resurface until Bertrand Russell in that era, Frege, as opposed to Aristotle's, who is a little more simpler logic. And there's stuff about physics in there. So I think it's one of those things where until Epictetus, Stoicism didn't become sort of crystallized as, oh, this thing. That's about. What is the image about the being in the flow of the water or the stone, or. Do you know what I'm talking about?

1:45:53 Wes: Really?

1:45:54 Mark: I thought there was an image associated with. No, no, no, there's not.

1:45:56 Seth: Oh.

1:45:57 Unknown speaker: Oh.

1:45:57 Mark: But I'm trying to. Like, the cliche of Stoicism is that you were bending like a reed in the wind. One of those kind of things.

1:46:03 Wes: Okay.

1:46:04 Alex: Is that from Crouching Tiger?

1:46:05 Mark: That's probably from Daoism.

1:46:07 Wes: It's.

1:46:07 Mark: And it's not until you get to Epictetus that you get it. The ethics distilled like this. And this is the text that, like Montaigne had a copy. And so he did Montaigne and already reflected on how he was channeling some of the ancient skeptics like we read in Sextus. And equally, you can take him as channeling Epictetus.

1:46:27 Wes: And this would have been part of anyone's education at the time, including Shakespeare. I did a little working around on that. And books have been written on the influence of the Stoics on Shakespeare.

1:46:37 Mark: So is it the Stoics in general, or is it Epictetus and the people following him, like Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius, that even wrote poems and, you know, were just expressing this Stoic attitude of being a Stoic?

1:46:49 Wes: I don't know. But I think from what I read, the Enchiridion would have been widely read as part of your education. I'm sure the later Stoics were as well. But early. I don't know how much we have of the earlier Stoics.

1:47:01 Seth: I feel like when I was reading some of the background that we don't have very much at all. In fact, maybe none of Chrysippus. And so there's been a lot of work done to see whether Epictetus was being faithful. Was a departure, but mostly on the discourses, which are much more detailed and have many, many more references to Chrysippus in it.

1:47:19 Mark: Well, Alex, I know you guys did a Chrysippus episode. How did you research that? You just looked at Wikipedia or.

1:47:24 Alex: Pretty much. Okay, I did what I could. I did my usual. I'm on my lunch break and I'm like, I gotta get this to them. Yeah.

1:47:31 Seth: And who was the guest?

1:47:35 Alex: I don't remember.

1:47:36 Mark: I want to say Don Luby.

1:47:39 Alex: Louie. Yeah. And she had a weird story about her involvement with Joe Franklin, which was they weren't like, dating or anything, but they used to, like, hang out. And he used to hold her face and say, repeat after me, Daddy's gonna take care of you. It was the creepiest thing I've ever heard in my life. Even creepier than things that are in this text about not caring about your. Far creepier. The Joe Franklin head in the hands. Daddy's gonna.

1:48:06 Seth: By the way, Joe Franklin is a reference for like 20% of our audience. Maybe 15.

1:48:11 Alex: Yeah.

1:48:11 Mark: People will have to go to the modern day Philosophers podcast and hear the final episode with Joe Franklin before he died. And this other one on Chrysippus.

1:48:19 Alex: Yeah. So you hear his last pointed thoughts and then all the creepy shit he did. So it's like a nice epilogue. Oh, that's sweet.

1:48:27 Mark: Ew.

1:48:27 Seth: Have you done an episode with Cosby?

1:48:31 Mark: I think he's got some free time, hasn't he?

1:48:34 Alex: I tried. He gave me a drink and I don't remember what happened after that, so I.

1:48:41 Mark: Well, you bring up Cosby, That's a conversation killer right there.

1:48:44 Dylan: Yeah, I know.

1:48:45 Alex: Sorry.

1:48:46 Dylan: Sorry.

1:48:47 Alex: Not a stoic.

1:48:48 Mark: Well, speaking of, what was this thing about? There's a lot of stuff about that you shouldn't put too much energy into your reputation or raising yourself politically, but putting it straight in terms of economic terms, that if you're not the first at entertainments, if you're not invited to the homes of the rich and famous, think about what you would have to give up. That it's just like any activity, that when you take on something, you're taking all the shit that goes with it. You're taking on the challenges. If you decide you're going to be a gymnast, you're committing to a hell of a lot of exercise and self discipline and all that.

And likewise, if you commit yourself to being liked or being a famous person, then you're committing yourself to go and suck up to all these people. So if you want to commit yourself to having Bill Cosby come on your show, you're committing yourself to being nice to Bill Cosby and not calling him a dirty old bastard or whatever on your show, you know, because that's. That would be the precondition. There's always a price. If we're going to go pitch for the great courses, we have to listen to their stuff and we have to like it.

1:49:47 Dylan: We have to sleep on Casper's beds.

1:49:52 Mark: That's a small price,

1:49:56 Seth: but that's actually one of the points at which he's driving at the idea that there's fittedness, you know, different types of fittedness for different people. And he's saying, basically, if you complain, you know, that you're not invited to dinner at this rich guy's house, but you aren't willing to put in the time sucking up and stroking his ego and hanging around and doing favors for his daughter, whatever, then don't complain. If you're not willing to pay the price, then shut up.

1:50:22 Dylan: And also think that not paying the price is maybe okay because you've maintained your freedom.

1:50:26 Alex: Right.

1:50:27 Dylan: Both of them go hand in hand that you might even be right for not wanting to do it.

1:50:31 Seth: Yeah.

1:50:32 Mark: So we mentioned in our recent Economics episode that this was a major influence for Adam Smith, which is peculiar given Smith's focus on the foundation of morality being Sympathy. Whereas this does not seem to be recommending sympathy as the foundation for morality at all. But you do see in here, you know, whether it's in Smith or just in sort of the economic viewpoint in general, this idea of if you take something, you take all the crap that goes with it. This fundamental. I remember this even straight out of Ayn Rand, that if you will something, you will the means to that thing. Maybe this is straight from Aristotle, I should give it to him instead. But that. That's part of what being rational is. You can't will something without willing everything that goes with it. Without willing the means to get to that thing.

1:51:18 Alex: Yeah. And then you can't complain when you don't get it because you didn't put in any work.

1:51:22 Mark: Yeah. Or when you get. Yeah. Those things that you should have expected to come with it, because that's part of the deal, right? This thing about the. Are you going to put in the time sucking up? Are you going to forego this favor? He says something in here about, you know, don't think you can get something for nothing. This is part of the way of nature. Right. That there's a cost. I don't know. What do you think about that? The whole nature as economical in some way.

1:51:45 Seth: I think it's all part of this strategy that he's suggesting for how to deal with things is that he's trying to make an association between your desire and then also what's in your control, or at least part of what's in your control. And saying that not only is there an issue with having desire for something that you have no control over, which you may or may not receive, or may, may not get, or may or may not experience, but also if you have desires for things that require hard work. So there's a section where he talks about being an athlete. Maybe this is in the discourses. I don't remember.

1:52:14 Mark: No, it's in here. Yep.

1:52:16 Seth: About being an Olympic athlete. And he says, you want to go compete in the Olympics, but you don't want to train every day and you don't want to eat and deprive your body of all these pleasures. Don't complain. Like, if you want to be an Olympic athlete, then there's a huge commitment that you have to make. And he's making a point about desires. And I think maybe, I mean, I can speculate that he's addressing people in the society who are complaining about not getting things that they haven't done anything to achieve or deserve. You know, and this kind of.

We See it now, today there's this entitlement culture that seems to be emerging after several generations of helicopter parents. Right? And so the question is, anytime somebody says I didn't get this or I deserve that, and say, well, what did you do to deserve it? What did you do to get it? That seems perfectly reasonable. Again, great tactical strategy. Not sure about the broader teleology.

1:53:06 Mark: Yeah, so that's the thing about the athletics is in 29, so dipping down a little after that, he talks about the things you have to do to be an athlete and also about going to war, all the things you have to do to train yourself. Then in combat you may be thrown into a ditch, dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swallow dust, be whipped, and after all, lose the victory. When you have evaluated all this, if your inclination still holds, then go to war. Otherwise, take notice. You will behave like children who sometimes play like wrestlers, sometimes gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet and sometimes act a tragedy when they have seen and admired these shows.

Thus you too will be at one time a wrestler, at another a gladiator, now a philosopher, then an orator, but with your whole soul, nothing at all. Like an ape, you mimic all you see and one thing after another is sure to please you, but is out of favor as soon as it becomes familiar. For you have never entered upon anything considerately, nor after having viewed the whole matter on all sides or made any scrutiny into it, but rashly and with a cold inclination. Grow the fuck up. That's the saying.

1:54:01 Seth: What?

1:54:02 Alex: Children play tragedy.

1:54:04 Mark: We have to remember that this is all the TV they had.

1:54:06 Dylan: Isopical. You certainly would have been doing it in ancient Greece, right?

1:54:11 Wes: Mommy, can I watch tragedy? No, not tonight.

1:54:15 Alex: Tragedy's too violent. We had this discussion.

1:54:17 Seth: I think they more likely would have been playing war. They would have had a lot of first hand experience with it, I would imagine.

1:54:23 Mark: Well, they sent their people to fight the Trojans over there instead of letting the Trojans come here. That was a Iraq Trojan War.

1:54:35 Alex: They didn't really have the horse like they said. We were lied to and they had

1:54:40 Seth: no horses of mass destruction.

1:54:42 Alex: Yeah, there it is.

1:54:45 Mark: All right, any sort of last. How has this affected your life? Is this just unworkable enough that like I was brought to mind immediately? We haven't brought this up yet, so let me throw it out here. But the modern version of this, the Serenity Prayer. Oh God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed and the wisdom to know the difference, to know the one from the other. So that's from Reinhold Niebuhr, who's in this century, in the 20th century, yes.

1:55:15 Seth: And what did Reinhold Niebuhr experience? Where did he get that insight?

1:55:19 Wes: Well, clearly it's through Augustine. I think stoicism had a big impact on Christianity.

1:55:25 Mark: This is the kind of thing that floats around, and people use it as an inspirational saying. And I think what's great about inspirational sayings is that you don't try to live by them consistently. You bring them to bear when they are helpful. So when you are faced by a tragedy or something that's out of your control, then you can say, look, I just got to remember that this is not under my control, and I got to just chill out. Not that I have to say, I don't care about my child who's in mortal danger. And then I have to prepare myself and whisper in his ear that he's

1:55:57 Alex: going to die, even though that's totally metal.

1:56:02 Mark: But these are helpful, therapeutically helpful as rules of thumb, but I think should not be taken seriously as a guide to life. I don't like what stoicism, what Epictetus would be commanding you to actually do with your brain in order to not care about your kids in that way. And I know we've had some differences in terms of you could give a softer interpretation of Epictetus where you don't end up being an asshole, where you could actually be a good father and a good family member. And maybe Epictetus himself was those things. And so we need to read this charitably, but sort of taking example after example at face value. I find it very hard to think that this is something that should be seriously pursued.

1:56:42 Alex: The main thing that I would get out of this is just try to keep perspective as much as you can, which is, I think, very helpful. Like that serenity prayer thing we were mentioning. But I think if you really stuck to all these, you had something wrong with you to begin. I don't think this is actually able to be done without you being crazy.

1:57:01 Wes: So I think we're entitled to pick and choose and to appreciate the. Some of the fundamental insights in this without saying we have to live by the book, and that's absurd. So, for instance, I thought, again, I think there's a thing that's important. I think it's only applied, but this what I call the difference between two different kinds of suffering. One of the deprivation itself, or the loss. I lose someone, or I don't get something I want. And then the deprivations that are particularly human that come on top of that, like envy, for instance, or deprivations that depend on your expectation of what the world owes you, or what's right or just or what's fair or not unfair, that sort of suffering.

I think it's insightful to say that by attending to our judgments about things and are cultivating a certain kind of reflectiveness or even a mindfulness, that we can modulate that sort of suffering.

1:57:55 Dylan: I'm basically on with. On the picking and choosing side of this. Maybe because I'm basically a pragmatist, but I don't worry at all about the extreme versions of it. Maybe it's because, in Seth's words, that I'm taking it more tactical than overarching. I find a lot of it, even if it's more about a way or a disposition of a large variety of things, I just find myself deeply sympathetic to it.

1:58:23 Seth: As I mentioned when I wore a younger man's clothes, this is.

1:58:28 Alex: Are you gonna sing us a song?

1:58:29 Wes: Yeah.

1:58:31 Seth: Yes. Sounds like a piano man.

1:58:32 Wes: Guitar should be strumming at this point.

1:58:36 Seth: Well, no, I just. This is the kind of thing that I was more attracted to. And as I've grown older and been more exposed to and more influenced by philosophies and philosophical ideas of connecting with people and that being the basis of ethics, I'm less sympathetic. I'm on the one hand drawn to the idea of flourishing and distinguishing that from what I'll call mere happiness. And that's something that I see partially in. Like, we've been talking about Buddhism, but also just recently, I came across Viktor Frankl again talking about the difference between meaning and happiness in one's life.

I saw that paralleled here to some extent. But I'm always suspicious of teleology, particularly when it's connected with social station. And I do just get a vibe. I love a lot of the things he says as strategies for dealing with life's disappointments and with the obstacles that life will place in your way. But it also strikes me as the voice of somebody who has had so many of those things that he had to come up with a way of dealing with them and is now generalizing and exporting that as a way for all people to live their lives, I think is questionable.

I had one other little thread about the things you can control versus the things you can't control. There being a tension between a certain kind of freedom and a certain kind of determinism that I think is interesting because based on reading Wetzel's book and talking about Augustine and the notion of kind of inventing the will, that he doesn't have that conceptual thing available to him. But I'll just drop that for the listeners to follow up on. I would also encourage people. There's a very nice entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy about Epictetus that gives a lot of context and good explication.

So if you're looking to round things out, that's a good resource.

2:00:27 Mark: All right. Well, unfortunately, the reactions of the audience members to this episode is outside of our control. So it is nothing.

2:00:34 Wes: To me,

2:00:38 Mark: that issue of it seems like you have to be self contained according to stoicism and especially not care what other people think of you. But at the same time we have to remember that Epictetus does. Don't just use this as an excuse to like be self contained, you know. Those bastards, they don't understand me. I feel like people use stoicism in an immature way like that, but that even Epictetus recognizes in all these many things that he tells you about how to act at parties that what people think of you does depend a lot on how you actually act. And so while he doesn't want you to do disreputable things to gain their favor, being polite and doing things that would endear you to others is fine. As always with these wisdom tradition kind of things, it seems like applying it would require good judgment.

2:01:25 Alex: Brings us right back to the brain damage philosophers.

2:01:30 Mark: There you go. Next time. You probably already heard, we are doing a live podcast in Pittsburgh on Hannah Arendt. If you want to read the things that we read to prepare for it. Go get her book the Human Condition and read the first two sections on the human condition and the public in the private realm. We are supported by your donations. Please go to partselexaminelife.com to make a contribution. Big or small. Big donors since last time include Jim Wetzel, who as you may recall appeared on our Augustine aftershow. We contacted him out of the blue.

He not only showed up to that did an awesome job, but then he gives us money on top of it. Very classy. And I'll recommend again that you check out his book A Guide for the Perplexed. Also William Pontius, Paul Kreider, Steven Sanchez, Harriet Tampa, Robinson Kuntz, Jason Lawrence, Craig Jennings, Daniel Ford, Randall Gilliam, Joshua Duke, Nell Iyer, Luca Brennecki, Yuri Dzoba, Michael Pierre, Sima Mahun, Robert Kempel, Josh Khoury, Eric Risberg, Jeanne Carey and Justin Lundgrich. Thanks also to these smaller donors, including those who are newly or on a continued basis signed up for our $5 a month citizen site.

If you are a citizen like that, you should definitely be subscribed to our citizen feed so that you can get all these episodes unbroken and ad free beamed straight to your mobile device. You don't want to do that. You can interact with us in other ways. Go to partialexaminlife.com, subscribe to our blog. We've got an awesome Facebook group. You can follow us on Twitter and support us through our Amazon affiliation. Which means that every time you buy anything through Amazon, go to our site first click on the banner. You don't actually have to do that every time.

Just do it once and bookmark that and make that your new Amazon landing page. And then without any additional spending on your part, some of that money will go to us and make us produce many more wonderful podcasts. Even though that's out of my control, I still feel a little concerned about it. Thank you, Alex, for joining us.

2:03:19 Alex: Thank you.

2:03:20 Mark: Yeah, good luck with your My Racist Toaster and Modern Day Philosophers and other projects.

2:03:27 Seth: Yes.

2:03:27 Alex: Yeah. And me and Danny have another podcast starting with CBS called Mostly Bull Market, which is going to be about the same way we do. Modern Day Philosophers just joking about philosophy. It'll be that, but with finance, so that's going to be pretty awesome.

2:03:41 Mark: You guys know enough about finance. Do.

2:03:44 Alex: No, we're going to do it anyway.

2:03:47 Wes: When you say with cbs, what do you mean?

2:03:49 Alex: Danny just inked a deal with CBS because they're trying to start a podcasting division and so he's like going to be one of the first shows they do. I think it's like him. And then I think Judy Gold has a show, so they're really, really new at that. And he's in on the ground.

2:04:03 Mark: Fucking Hollywood insiders. If only we had a connection to that. Wait a second, We?

2:04:09 Seth: Yeah. Why don't they sign us?

2:04:12 Mark: That's the way to get him to pay attention to us is to call them cocksuckers. For sure.

2:04:16 Seth: Sorry. We're done, right? We're not recording.

2:04:18 Unknown speaker: Oh.

2:04:19 Mark: Good night, everybody.

2:04:20 Wes: Good night, cocksuckers.

2:04:22 Dylan: Good night.

2:04:25 Unknown speaker: Wanna hold you inside out Wanna see you finish first like Delta Go but worse wanna cause wanna breathe through you Take my leave through you But I won't. I won't gather if you fall apart can't. I will practice all you aside. But don't be surprised if you see in my eyes Something rady Stronger than

2:05:26 Mark: you feel by something radiant?

2:05:28 Unknown speaker: Throw something like point your eyes on me? Ready? Wanna fold you through my heart? Wanna see you do your worst? You leave me till it hurts? Follow me, go? Although I feel like hell for haunting you? Could increase this smell by taunting you? Make you feel so swell? By haunting you? Make a whole thing, child? By taunting you? But I won't? I love you, I love you? I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you? I love you? I love you? I love you? I love you? I love you? I love you? I love you. Sam.