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The Stoic's Guide to Perspective: Epictetus’s Handbook 26 (Episode 156)
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Why Epictetus tells us to compare our suffering to others. This simple exercise can help you in times of crisis.
Join Michael as he breaks down Epictetus’s Handbook 26.
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Transcript
Introduction to Epictetus's Handbook 26
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Michael Trombley here on a solo episode of Stobo Conversations. For today's episode, I'm going to break down Epictetus's Handbook 26. So a short passage by Epictetus, and then we'll dig into it in further detail.
00:00:20
Speaker
And I thought this would be a fun opportunity to yeah just go in more detail into what the Epictetus says here. These are always these passages where there's a couple of different things going on. So it's always really worth digging into each line and going over it.
Changing Perspectives and Improving Relationships
00:00:35
Speaker
And that's what we'll do today. This is a great one about really getting the right perspective on things and how changing our view about something can um improve the way that we relate to it. So I'll jump right into it. This is Epictetus's Handbook 26. Epictetus says, the will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't differ 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.
00:01:10
Speaker
Be assured then that 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's presently, alas, how wretched am I?
00:01:36
Speaker
But it should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others.
Learning from Others' Experiences
00:01:43
Speaker
And so that's that's Handbook 26. And again, Epictetus's Handbook is kind of his his greatest hits, ah summarized by one of his students. And so I wanted to start and say, what is this passage actually saying? What are the key takeaways we should take from this? And then connect that with some other ideas in stoicism.
00:02:04
Speaker
So the the first key idea here is about the will of nature. That's the first line Epictetus uses. He says, the will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't differ from each other. And what's what's the point here? What is the will of nature?
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, Epictetus's point is that when he says the will of nature, he really means there are some facts about the world. There are some truths about the way the world is.
Aligning Life with Nature through Stoicism
00:02:35
Speaker
And if we want to learn those facts, if we want to learn those truths, we can do that by observing observing other people and ah observing them, especially concerning things that relate to our own lives or that we have in common. right So if i'm you know if if I'm not an artist, I can maybe learn something from observing an artist, but it doesn't necessarily relate to my life if I'm a carpenter. But if I want to learn facts about the world in relation to you know having a family, life and death, things like this, I can learn about those things just by watching other humans go through them.
00:03:15
Speaker
And the the point here is that every person's life, it involves accidents. that's That's just a fact of nature. That's part of the will of nature as Epictetus would say. If you have a family, there will be deaths. Either of those of your parents or grandparents that are older than you or sometimes of your your wife or husband and then sometimes even of your children.
00:03:39
Speaker
Everybody makes mistakes. That's another that's another thing. Gets in fights, does things they regret. These are all just facts of the world. And then that's what Epictetus is calling the will of nature is really truths about the way the way human life is, the way things must occur.
00:04:00
Speaker
And so if we if we want to understand those things and and know what those facts are, we can do that by by observing other people and observing them specifically in terms of what they share with us, in terms of what we have in common.
Accepting Life's Inevitable Events
00:04:14
Speaker
ah So in this example, it's you know somebody's child breaking something, breaking a cup. We maybe don't covet our cups as much as we did back then. um We maybe have other things, but you can think of you know ah somebody's you you know your son or daughter denting the car.
00:04:33
Speaker
um you know, breaking breaking something that you find valuable. that's just that's just part of having That's just part of having kids. That's just a fact of the world. And then ah the other example, he says the more serious example is the the death of ah your child or your husband or your wife. So that's the will of nature. The first part is look, we can learn about that just from observing other people. By watching other people live their lives, we can we can know more about what life entails.
00:05:02
Speaker
The second key idea here though is that stoicism is about living life in accordance with nature. And so that connects to this idea of the will of nature, which is to say we we want to live our life in accordance with the will of nature, not fight against it. So stoicism is a lot about Has a lot to say about trying to reduce the friction of our lives and they think that all main source of our happiness and main source of our suffering comes from friction.
00:05:34
Speaker
when we fight against things that are outside of our control and and especially things that are outside of our control that are necessary parts of life. So if we find ourselves, take the example of the child breaking the cup, if we find ourselves totally surprised and totally unprepared to think that our children will ever do something inconvenient, ever harm any of our possessions,
00:05:59
Speaker
If we find ourselves in that position, where we're just like, I'm so mad. I'm so mad at my son or daughter for breaking my favorite cup. Epictetus would say this is this is an example of living out of accordance with nature because the only kind of person that would be that upset is the person who who didn't suspect it, didn't anticipate it, ah didn't think it was something that could happen and likely would happen. And so by being oblivious to ah you know the fact that children will wreck possessions from time to time or or you know damage things that you own, you're you've put yourself out of accordance with nature and you've created this kind of friction and the consequence of that friction is your is your suffering, it's your unhappiness.
00:06:50
Speaker
And so the goal of stoicism then is to get in accordance with nature, which is to say when when you know your your child breaks your favorite cup, you say, well, accidents happen. that Things will break from time to time. That's just that's the way it goes. It was not in my control for this cup to be unbroken. No one ever promised me this cup would never be broken.
00:07:15
Speaker
And that's someone who's living in accordance with nature. That's someone who is not at friction with this event. And obviously, it's easy when you talk about the cup, but Epictetus is talking about also training ourselves up to adopting that same perspective when our family members die, which is probably one of the most complicated and difficult lessons. But they would be the same example with the death of a family member, which is to say, instead of the friction of how could this ever happen to me,
00:07:49
Speaker
This is not something that you anticipated. This is not something you prepared for. Instead, it's it's a ah this is this is this is a terrible thing, but it's also it's also a fact of the way the world works. And because of that, i was I was prepared for that, and I accounted for it. And so the goal of stoicism is to get to that second state, to be in accordance with nature, to reduce the friction between yourself and the way the world is.
00:08:18
Speaker
and how we do that, how do we
Gaining Perspective from Others' Reactions
00:08:22
Speaker
become, how do we live in accordance with nature is an important question for the Stoics. And the point of this passage is really an exercise to do that. It's to live in accordance with nature. And the the exercise that Epictetus is pointed out pointing out is that we should observe carefully actually, not how we react to situations in our own lives, but actually how we react to the situations in the lives of others. So
00:08:51
Speaker
There's some information to be gained when somebody scratches your car, for example. There's some information to be gained there in terms of how you react to the situation. But actually, why don't you turn to how you react when that happens to somebody else, when that happens to your neighbor or a friend of yours, somebody you care about but is not in your immediate circle of your family.
00:09:15
Speaker
how do you How do we react? And Epictetus points out, I think quite rightly, and this was 2,000 years ago, but I think it's the it's the truth about how we react today. is we we have this perspective where we're almost a step removed. We say, well, these things happen. The car got scratched because your your son or daughter were driving it and they're not the most experienced driver. you know Accidents happen, people make mistakes. That's not something we should let ruin our ruin our day, if not our month or our year.
00:09:49
Speaker
And Epictetus's point is that that's actually the right perspective. You've actually adopted a perspective in accordance with nature there. And we're actually quite good at doing that with other people. We're really good at understanding, yeah, don't be frivolous with your things. Don't go around breaking your cups. But if a cup breaks, that's just that's just as to be expected to a certain degree degree that that will happen every once in a while.
00:10:14
Speaker
And the same thing with the larger issues of death and tragedy. When these things happen to other people, we recognize that they're sad, but not unexpected. We accept them as a part of life.
00:10:30
Speaker
something to ah be mourned, but not not to ruin your life, not to ruin an extended period of time, to mourn appropriately, as as Seneca would say, too to cry but not to weep. And we're quite good at applying that to other people. I think if you think of going to some the funeral of a different family,
00:10:52
Speaker
That's something that it's ah it's very, very sad. It's a very, very sad thing to do. But we're often able to maintain a better perspective, in the stoic view at least, the correct perspective of this is a really, really sad thing, but not unexpected. ah something that Something that happens in a part of life. And so the point of this passage from Epictetus is to say,
00:11:18
Speaker
Look to do that to yourself. Take what you do a good job of applying to other people and apply that to yourself. So to read that again, as Epictetus says, you know
00:11:31
Speaker
When our neighbor's boy breaks a cup or the like, we are presently ready to say these things happen. Be assured then, when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as one another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child or wife of
Happiness through Understanding and Acceptance
00:11:49
Speaker
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.
00:12:01
Speaker
And so Epictetus is talking that that disproportionality is what he's calling out. Um, it is not any more of a terrible thing because it happened to you. That's a mistake you're making. You're losing perspective by focusing on your individual circumstance, your individual cup, or your individual family. And.
00:12:26
Speaker
I think what I like about this past is it is the point is it's it's not that we are unsympathetic to other people. right It's not that, oh, I care about my own possessions as much as I should and I don't care about my neighbor's cup. ah you know i'm i'm The point is not that I'm disrespectful to my neighbor, that I don't care that they broke their cup. The point is that I've actually Achieve the right degree of caring in that case I've achieved the right amount of perspective and that I actually have Become overly attached to my own cup or I've lost this perspective in my own case um We lose that perspective with our own family that they're that they're humans and humans will experience the things human experience like sickness and death and so we've lost that perspective in our own case and It's not it is not that we are
00:13:19
Speaker
callous when we don't feel the same thing towards our neighbors, it's that we're actually overly self-oriented with our own hardships and our own problems. And so that's that's that's what Epictetus is saying in this passage. And how do we connect it to stoicism more broadly?
00:13:41
Speaker
Well, the the the point I wanted to make is that stoicism says that our happiness is about, it's about knowledge. So happiness is about knowledge. And what that means for the stoics is that happiness is about how we think about the world. If we think about the world in the right way, then we will be happy and we will flourish. This comes back to Epictetus's dichotomy of control. You know, if we think about things that are not up to us as being up to us,
00:14:12
Speaker
our reputation, our body, our wealth. If we treat those things like like we can control them, we will suffer because we can't control them. And if we neglect the things that we can control, like our character, our behavior, if we neglect the things that are up to us, we will suffer because we won't pay as much attention to them as we should. So that's how r that's an example of how our happiness depends on knowledge.
00:14:43
Speaker
Because it's about it's it's a matter of how we relate to the things, we understand the things in our lives, that that's the changing the outcomes of our lives. not ah then not Whether or not we get that promotion, not whether or not those people like us, not how much money we accumulate, it's about the way that we relate to the things happening to us.
00:15:03
Speaker
And so that's that's that's a big part of what the Stoics mean by saying that happiness is knowledge. And another part of knowledge is actually perspective. So the way you think about the same event is what I mean by perspective. so The cup has broken. that's that's a That is a factual statement. And you can be you can be incorrect about factual statements. you can You can think your cup has broken when it hasn't. You can think somebody is sick or likely to die when they aren't. And so you can make these kind of factual mistakes. And those can lead us to suffering.
00:15:43
Speaker
As Seneca says, we we suffer more in imagination than reality, but often we suffer not because of these factual errors. We don't deviate with stoic knowledge because of these factual errors. We deviate with stoic knowledge because of the way we relate to the to what we accept as fact.
00:16:01
Speaker
So everybody in the room accepts that the cup is broken, but people have a different perspective about it. They they think that it means different things. They they give it different importance depending on what they thought about the cup or how much they anticipated um this event to happen.
00:16:20
Speaker
And so a lot of stoicism is about changing that perspective. And that's what living in accordance with nature is. It's having your perspective correspond with nature, having your perspective line up with the way things really are. So when things happen, you're not you don't have that friction I talked about earlier. You're not confused, surprised, depressed about it.
00:16:42
Speaker
And so the Stokes give us a lot of different tools for doing this, right? but Give us tools for having the right perspective. Memento Mori is one of those tools that's remembering that you will die. It's about keeping death in view. That is a strategy about perspective. It's about not forgetting about the inevitability of death, right?
00:17:02
Speaker
The view from above is another perspective shifting exercise, I would say. Well, that's the one where you, when you're particularly stressed or frustrated at something, you imagine yourself looking down from the clouds at the situation and looking down at yourself from above and say, well, when I've zoomed out, I've taken myself out of that first person perspective. Is it still frustrating? Do I still give it the same amount of importance? And so these are these.
00:17:28
Speaker
almost meditative exercises we can practice to shift our perspective and gain some control over that perspective. And so what's this passage? This is Epictetus giving us another kind of exercise. This is Epictetus giving us another perspective shifting exercise.
Applying Stoic Exercises for Perspective Adjustment
00:17:46
Speaker
So often we can be more objective and more correct in our perspective when we reflect on situations as they occur to those we care about but are not ah personally invested in or two too personally invested in.
00:18:07
Speaker
thats That's the insight, is that, look, if I want to know how I should think about getting fired, how would I feel if my friend Jim got fired? I probably wouldn't say Jim's life is over. I probably wouldn't say his career aspirations are ruined. What is he going to do? I would say, oh, that's that's really upsetting. That's probably going to be a difficult couple months.
00:18:34
Speaker
Things financially, depending on Jim's situation, might be... difficult for a period of time, even leading to, you know, some sort of debt or loans in some situations, things you wouldn't want to do. But probably he's going to get a different job, maybe even a job he likes more, maybe even a job that pays better. And in that sense, it's not necessarily long term, even a bad thing, even though it might be short term, quite difficult. That's what I might say if it happens to a friend. But can we apply that own perspective to ourselves?
00:19:05
Speaker
That's Epictetus' advice is do that to yourself. I think about this also in terms of relationship advice. How easy is it for us to tell our friends they should dump somebody who cheats on them? you know We look at our friends and say, why are they with that person? they they you know That person doesn't treat them well. They could do better. We apply that perspective to other people. We don't apply that perspective to ourselves.
00:19:29
Speaker
And so that's Epictetus's exercise here. Can we apply to ourselves the same standard that we apply to our neighbors and our friends? Can we apply
Stoicism in Relationships and Self-Talk
00:19:39
Speaker
to ourselves the same perspective that we give to people we care about, but are not so close to us that we lose that perspective? And I think that's an interesting part of stoicism is that perspective shift, which is to say, you're trying to live in accordance with nature.
00:19:57
Speaker
You're trying to do that by by understanding the way things really are. And so how do you understand the way things really are? Well, look at it look at other people and you will see what happens in a human life. You will see cops getting broken. You will see family members dying.
00:20:15
Speaker
You will see breakups and ah frustrations with careers. You will see other things and the things we share in common. And then well, how should you relate to those things? How should you relate to those inevitable parts of our lives? What Epictetus calls the will of nature.
00:20:31
Speaker
Well, you should relate to them in terms of how we relate to people that we care about but are not ourselves, which is we often take a ah pretty appropriate perspective. We have that appropriate perspective within ourselves. We just need to apply it to ourselves because we have no problem applying it to other people.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I think that's a great lesson. I think that's a really interesting idea Appictetus is speaking to. And you know regardless of how stoic you are, maybe you're fully stoic, maybe maybe you're not, maybe you're just you you like some of the ideas, maybe you fully committed it to it as ah as a life philosophy, there's an insight there. There's an insight about... um I think the the key insight that im that I take from this passage is often when things happen to us, we think,
00:21:18
Speaker
how can i How can I think about this? What's the right way to think about this? This is just so upsetting. I don't have any way to to properly contextualize it. I'm so confused. I don't know how to think about it. And everything is pointing out, you do know how to think about it. just Just how would you think about it if it happened to your friend?
00:21:36
Speaker
How would you think about it if it happened to your neighbor? And so he's kind of pointing out to us that not only do we make this mistake by focusing on on our ah own situations and and acting like they're different than when they happen to other people, but we actually have a lot of the answers already. We just need to successfully apply them like the way we can apply them to other people. And yeah, that's a good lesson. One one that i've one that I learned even before studying stoicism or practicing stoicism was this idea of how would you, in terms of self-talk, in terms of speaking to yourself positively, I often think, speak to yourself the way you would speak to a friend. So if you find yourself being overly negative to yourself, criticizing yourself, I often think, would I talk to my friend like this? Would I criticize my friend if they made a mistake?
00:22:31
Speaker
And that's the same kind of exercise Epictetus is recommending here, except that kind of positive self-talk exercise I was talking about, I would say not not being overly critical on yourself.
00:22:44
Speaker
This I think is is about not focusing on your not losing perspective that you are actually um not the first person to encounter these things. So almost like not taking yourself too seriously, right? Like you're not the first person who's had their cup broken. You're not the first person to have a family member die. As trivial as that might sound or to have you lose your job or to go through a bad breakup.
00:23:11
Speaker
um You're not the first person to encounter these things. And so that doesn't trivialize them. That doesn't mean they don't matter. But what it means is that you know how have other people handled it and how do you think of these things when they occur to other people? And you can use that as a source of knowledge and inspiration for how you can handle it and how you can deal with it. So that is the breakdown of Epictetus's Handbook 26.
00:23:38
Speaker
A lot of ideas in there, I think.
Reflecting on Learned Perspectives
00:23:42
Speaker
Going back to these key ideas, living in accordance with nature is always something to think about when you think about the goal of stoicism. you know How do I get my perspective so there's that as little friction with the way things must be, what Epictetus calls the here the will of nature, with how things must be and how I relate to them, and how much of my suffering or my unhappiness is because I'm wanting things to be different. I'm wanting to have
00:24:09
Speaker
children that never frustrate me or ah break my possessions. I want to have family members that never get sick. and you know Anytime you have those perspectives, you know you you want to love a human and have them never get sick, you want to have children that never frustrate you. When you have these kind of perspectives, you're you're actually getting out of accordance with nature. It feels good in the moment, but it takes you out of accordance with nature.
00:24:36
Speaker
And that's when it leads to suffering. And so Epictetus is saying here, look, if you want to have the right perspective, the perspective that's in accordance with nature and understand the things, ah in relation to the things that all humans experience, just look at how we treat our friends and our neighbors when these things happen to them. And so with that in mind, I'm going to read the passage one last time. We'll end with that. And now, hopefully, there is there's a bit more context behind it, a bit more of an understanding of what Epictetus is getting at here.
00:25:06
Speaker
So again, this is Handbook 26. The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't differ 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 one another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things.
00:25:33
Speaker
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
Conclusion and Invitation for Feedback
00:25:47
Speaker
should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others.
00:25:53
Speaker
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00:26:12
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.