Transcript
Speaker: So if you have a role model, that's someone you respect. If there's someone you admire, then there are traits, virtues, positive traits of character that person has. Okay. So if that's what we respect, then in order to gain our own self -respect, what do we have to become? We have to become the kind of person who internalizes just those admirable traits.
Speaker: Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in -depth conversation with an expert.
Speaker: And in this conversation, I speak with Dr. William Stevens. We talk about Epictetus's handbook, also called The Enchiridion. The conversation focuses on the historical impact of the handbook, Epictetus's ideas of freedom, tranquility, and self -respect, and then end the conversation with a short discussion on role ethics and role models.
Speaker: This is another excellent discussion with William Stevens. You can find some of our other discussions on the Stoa app. I'm excited to share it, and I hope that you find it useful. Here is our conversation. Welcome to Stoa. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and in this conversation, I am speaking with Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Creighton University, William Stevens. He's the author of Stoic Ethics and Marcus Aurelius, a guide for the perplexed.
Speaker: He and Scott Aiken, another Stoic Conversations guest, are also publishing Epictetus's and Caridian, a new translation and guide to Stoic ethics, which should be available this summer. Thanks for coming back. Thank you. Thank you, Caleb. Good to see you. So what is Epictetus's and Caridian?
Speaker: So the Enchiridion is, the Greek word means something you could hold in your hand. So it's usually translated manual or handbook. And originally, before Epictetus' time, Enchiridion was used principally to mean a small weapon, like a dagger, that you could hold in your hand to protect yourself.
Speaker: And then later, it was also applied to the meaning that we typically associate it with, meaning handbook or manual. And Epictetus's student Arian compiled the handbook, the Enchiridion, from the lectures that he witnessed Epictetus giving at his school. And he did the longer work, the discourses, the Diatribae, and eight books, four of which survive that we have today.
Speaker: and then a condensed version of Epictetus's teachings in the Enchiridion, in the Handbook. And so Arian's presentation of it is indeed something that is designed to be kept at hand, something handy, something that you can reach and hold on to and use every day.
Speaker: And that's what the teachings that Arian has selected to include in the handbook have. They are a set of things to remember, to practice, to remind yourself of, but then of course to apply, not just to know in some sort of theoretical sense, but to live by.
Speaker: And living by means applying these stoic ideas, arguments, principles, concepts, distinctions, examples to your everyday life every single day in order to make progress toward the goal, which is happiness, a good flow of life, a kind of placidity or serenity or peace of mind that can only be achieved through hard work over a long period of time, living as a stoic.
Speaker: Really good. Yeah. My colleague, Michael Trombley focused on Epictetus and the Enchiridion or the Handbook is the book he will always recommend to new Stoics because it has both practical advice, anecdotes. It's very concrete, but also out of all the different Stoic works gives you a picture of Stoicism in a relatively short amount of time.
Speaker: That's right. So it's concise and that makes it both easy to approach as an introductory text and pretty challenging because to someone who's unfamiliar with
Speaker: a broader perspective and other stoic doctrines that are involved. If it's the only stoicism you read, then you might have objections to some of Epictetus's examples and some of his advice that might strike you as
Speaker: too callous or unfeeling. Some of the more vivid examples that he uses lend themselves to misinterpretation. And it is a popular text. It is a good choice to introduce people to stoicism, but it's tricky too. And that's why Dr. Aiken and I decided it would be helpful to those approaching stoicism through Epictetus's handbook.
Speaker: to have contemporary translation that will speak to them in their situation, in their idiom, and discuss at length what we understand the meaning of each of the chapters of the handbook to mean and how best to interpret them and the tensions that arise from interpreting those very short chapters
Speaker: And what's the historical impact of the work? How has the end Caridian fared through time? How has it impacted history? Yeah, I really do think it's fair to say, and I'm not the only one who's offered this judgment, but given its size, there's no other philosophical work in the history of Western philosophy that has had a larger impact or even as large an impact as Epictetus's handbook.
Speaker: So ever since Epictetus and Arian died, the handbook has had an ongoing career, a life of its own. It was hugely influential throughout the Christian period because monks in training just ate up Epictetus with a spoon, and they would replace Socrates in Epictetus's mention of Socrates in the handbook with St. Paul. And then it was used as a primer for Christian monks.
Speaker: you know, learning how to live godly, pious, good lives. So instead of modeling themselves after Socrates, as Epictetus recommended, they would model themselves after St. Paul, as if St. Paul had the same biography as Socrates, which he didn't, but. So it was very influential through the Middle Ages. There were additions in Latin, of course, and then into the Renaissance.
Speaker: There would be new translations from the Latin into French and eventually into German and English through the 16th and 17th centuries. And then you have neostoics like Justus Lipsius, who tried to repackage and re -energize stoicism for the readers of his day, multiple translations of the handbook so that throughout most of
Speaker: Western thought, most of the time people introduced to Epictetus were not reading the discourses, which, as we said, is a much longer work. They were reading the Nice Shore of Handbook. So the Handbook, I think it's fair to say, the Handbook of Epictetus has had a much larger and longer -lasting impact over the centuries and millennia, in fact,
Speaker: than the discourses, for better or for worse. As I said, not only in the Renaissance, but also in the early modern period, Adam Smith was influenced by Stoicism and by Epictetus and by the handbook Walt Whitman, the great American poet.
Speaker: adored Epictetus. He read Epictetus at an early age and would often return to reading Epictetus, probably the handbook, over and over again. And Thomas Jefferson had a copy, so a number of different figures. You've got Emerson and Thoreau, they were influenced as well. And then, of course, in this century, estoicism has become, has experienced a kind of rebirth of interest, right?
Speaker: the 60s and 70s philosophers, academic philosophers, weren't really studying Hellenistic philosophy very much at all. And then along came Long, Tony Long, and he wrote his book on Hellenistic philosophy and kind of reintroduced all of the Hellenistic philosophies to academic philosophy. And then since then, since what, the 70s, 80s, Stoicism has become hugely popular.
Speaker: And the handbook is, again, a very popular choice. I mean, Seneca is wonderful too, reading his letters is great, his essays are wonderful stuff, but to be introduced to Stoicism, yeah, it's sort of a natural choice to start with a handbook. Historically, it has had tremendous influence, both among Christian, in a Christian audience, within Christian audiences, but also more secular settings, Epictetus, Epictetus cells.
Speaker: The handbook is popular. What is it about the work that's caused it to be so meaningful to people from monks to poets? You know, it's so powerful. I mean, I think part of it is, you know, when you read Marcus Aurelius, you know, you're reminded in the meditations another work that I love. He's an emperor.
Speaker: He was born into a privileged family. He was always wealthy. And his example is admirable. But most of us are not born royalty, right? Most of us are not going to become president of a nation or prime minister or a king, right? And similarly, Seneca was an equestrian. So he was not in the senatorial class.
Speaker: But he was a very privileged, well -educated guy too, and he acquired a lot of wealth. He made loans at very high interest rates and became hugely wealthy. Most of us are not hugely wealthy. So part of the appeal of the handbook is the appeal of Epictetus.
Speaker: I think, of course. And one aspect of Epictetus' appeal is that he's an ordinary guy. I mean, he was born into slavery. And so he knows what it's like to be bought and sold, to have to do menial manual labor. He grew up knowing what it's like to be physically abused and maybe emotionally intimidated and abused.
Speaker: grew up craving freedom and understanding at a deep philosophical level that freedom
Speaker: There are two different kinds of freedom. There's the freedom to have resources and move around and buy and do whatever you want and do whatever you want. That's the kind of freedom that in consumer societies, in materialist societies like ours, we think that the wealthiest people enjoy. They have the freedom to do what they want and say what they want and go where they want and live what they want and own what they want
Speaker: But there's another kind of freedom. And the other kind of freedom is more personal and more powerful. It's more philosophically durable. And that's being self -mastered. That's having freedom over your desires and impulses and aversions. That's being free from luck.
Speaker: free from grief, free from sadness, right? This is the kind of freedom that Epictetus is committed to and that he learned as a slave is far more valuable because wealth can come and go.
Speaker: and the freedom to move your body exactly the way you want to, that can come and go. That can be taken away. That's lost as you age, right? You can have accident, injury, illness. So that kind of freedom, I think, comes through very strongly in the handbook. And the first chapter of the handbook, I think, is just an excellent encapsulation
Speaker: of the logic behind the core of Epictetus's ethics, which can be reconstructed in a very simple syllogism, right? Everything in the world can be divided into things which are always completely by their very nature up to me, or up to us, and everything else that is not by its very nature always completely up to me.
Speaker: So everything in the world can be divided into these two categories, what's up to me and what's not up to me. And then the second premise is just an observation about human psychology. It's a fact of human nature. We're happy and content when we get what we desire, when we get what we want and we avoid what we dislike and we're miserable otherwise. If you get what you want and you avoid what you dislike, you're happy.
Speaker: If you don't get what you want and you encounter things you don't want, then you're going to be unhappy. Fact of human psychology. Okay, so use your power of reason, draw the inference. What's the only logical, sensible thing to do given these two facts?
Speaker: You limit your desires exclusively to the things that are always completely by their very nature up to you. If you can train yourself to limit your desires to exclusively what's always completely by its very nature up to you, and you take the rest as it comes, you take the rest in stride,
Speaker: and you can guarantee your happiness, then your happiness is not a crapshoot. It's not dependent on luck. It's not dependent on the weather. It's not dependent on other people. It's not dependent on the stock. It's dependent on you. And so this is a conception of human happiness that empowers you to derive your happiness from you. And if happiness is a certain outlook, a certain condition of the mind,
Speaker: a certain perspective on things that happen that are positive, being pleased with what you have, taking pride in your own progress, becoming a better person. If happiness is that kind of internal condition of the mind,
Speaker: that it doesn't make sense that it should arise from having certain things on the inside in proper order. The non -stoic, the un -stoic person thinks that happiness comes from outside of her. It comes from other people. It comes from her reputation. It comes from her wealth and her power to get what she wants out in the world. It comes from externals. But those things are subject to fate and whim and chance and caprice and their temporary in any case.
Speaker: Whereas if happiness is a condition of the soul or the mind, then it makes sense that
Speaker: Secure happiness would come from having that mind in the right sort of disposition. So that seems to be the basic idea of the first chapter of the handbook. And then he's got several similes or images that he uses to illustrate his philosophy. There's behaving properly at a banquet. If you're at a dinner party, how should you behave courteously? Well, Epictetus uses that analogy
Speaker: to explain how a stoic handles food coming around when it's passed. The polite thing to do is take your share, let the plate pass to the next guest at the dinner party, not make it stop and take more than your share. And then there's nothing for the next person, not demand that the host provide food that isn't offered, right?
Speaker: not overstay your welcome, not be rude talking to the servers or the other dinner guests, right? This is how we should handle all externals, right? If you get a job, you're offered a job and you take it, great. That doesn't mean the job will last forever. So you take it, you make the best use of it while you've got it. And when it's over, you move on. And the same is true with friends, right?
Speaker: You're going to meet people in life, you're going to befriend some of them, and some of them will move away. Some of them will die. But the Stoic recognizes that those circumstances are the result of fate or nature or Zeus or Providence.
Speaker: And making the best of what comes your way is the sensible thing to do, like a courteous guest at a dinner party. It might be useful to say just a little bit more about how you understand what it is for something to be up to us, or what are these
Speaker: features of our mind. Yes, very good. Epictetus construes the things. Epi mean the things that are up to us very strictly. So the things that are up to us are not our bodies, and they're not our reputation, and they're not our wealth. Why? Because things can happen to all of those things that we don't want to have happen.
Speaker: The things that are up to us, it's a pretty narrow field in a sense, and these are our beliefs, our judgments, our attitudes, the propositions that we assent to or withhold our assent from. The Greek is prahyrisis, our volition.
Speaker: our volition, what we will. So our volition, our will, our beliefs, our judgments, including our value judgments, our evaluations of things. So we could say our values, these are up to us. More broadly, our attitude, how we choose to approach things in life, our attitude, our perspective on things, how we interpret them, that's up to us. And certainly our intentions.
Speaker: are the goals that we see in the world outside of our minds. So in brief, our minds are up to us. Very technically, certain aspects of our cognitive functions are up to us. But even Epictetus recognizes that not everything that goes on in our minds is up to us. But the things that I described, he considers our own doing, right?
Speaker: So again, why are our bodies not up to us? Our actions are not up to us, right? If we had sent to a proposition, that ascent is completely up to us. We're fully responsible for that. But if we have a physical condition, which doesn't allow us to say walk,
Speaker: We can try to walk and intend to, but our legs might be too wobbly and we might fall down. Anyone can come, any two or three people could come and pick me up and carry me away. And so then my body's not even up to me, right? I can be physically overpowered. Whenever you get a cold or an injury, whenever you stub your toe, Epictetus says, see?
Speaker: Your toe is not up to you. Something can happen to your foot that you don't want to have happen to your foot, okay? And so certainly our reputation, our health, our wealth, even the functioning of our senses, right? We can go blind or our vision can become bad and we have to wear glasses, right? Our hearing can decline. All of these things are not up to us.
Speaker: other people's behavior, their beliefs, their decisions, up to them, not up to us. The weather is not up to us. Traffic is not up to us. Economic conditions are not up to us. And our very reputation is not up to us. My reputation is what other people think about me. Well, that's going to be up to them based on their judgments. So does that do a better job of clarifying
Speaker: What's up, Taz? In modern Stoicism, one of the most powerful ideas is the dichotomy of control, which of course comes directly from Epictetus, dividing things that are under our control between those that are not. But I think this language of up to us does help clarify the issue of what is exactly under my control.
Speaker: And I think behind this picture, as you say, is a picture of identity, what we are. Ultimately, we are minds, and to be specific, the choice -making, if you will, the decision -making aspect of our mind. And that is what is up to us, our decisions, judgments. And that's it on F .I .T., this is a picture.
Speaker: It intentions, right? If you can have an intention, you can set a goal and try to achieve it. But if it involves events outside of your body, then whether you achieve it or not is ultimately going to be up to fate, destiny, Zeus, God, nature, whatever you want to call it. And then in addition to the dichotomy of control, or as we call it in our book, the fundamental divide between what's up to us and what's not up to us,
Speaker: Among the things that are not up to us, there are those that it makes sense to try to influence, even though ultimately they're not up to us. So right now we're having a conversation, and so we're influencing each other in our conversation.
Speaker: But ultimately, what you say is up to you, not me. What I say is up to me, not you. And so any sort of conversation or interactive behavior with other people, we are trying to influence each other in subtle ways and maybe less than subtle ways. But ultimately, each person is going to make up her own mind what she wants to say, what she says and believes and chooses and desires and decides.
Speaker: and so forth. So it's not that stoics are passive and they don't try to interact with other people. Of course they're going to interact with other people. So that's the realm of influencing.
Speaker: But there are things that, at least so far, we can't influence at all, like the weather, unless, of course, geo -engineers decide that we should spray certain chemicals in the sky in order to reflect the sun's light back and diminish the greenhouse effect. Yeah. Now, it is important to know that, at least as I interpret Epictetus, he would not be opposed to collective action.
Speaker: So, given environmental problems, political problems, a stoic doesn't have to be a passive non -participant. This is a distortion of stoic role theory. He says, you know, you're a neighbor, you're a citizen, and so you've got to play the part. And that means contributing to the common good.
Speaker: And so you will not have to try. You do have to, ought to, try to achieve social good for your community and your country and your neighborhood.
Speaker: And what you should focus on again is what's up to you. So don't fault other people for not doing their part, just concentrate on doing your part. That would be the stoic emphasis. How does this picture of Epictetus's philosophy interact with the idea of tranquility? So I think some people when they hear stoicism, they think the object of stoicism is tranquility, which sounds a lot like Epicureanism, this other philosophy that focuses on pleasure.
Speaker: So, to distinguish Epicureanism and Stoicism, we like to focus on virtue. The object of Stoicism is virtue. But Epictetus actually doesn't talk about virtue so much. So, I'm curious how you think about that. Yeah. So, both Epicureans and Stoics describe the good flow of life or imperturbability, anteryxia in Greek, as
Speaker: the texture or quality of happiness that they experience when they're successfully applying their philosophy to their lives.
Speaker: And to be fair to the Epicureans, virtue is very important because Epicurus argues that the virtues are necessary in order to live an untroubled life. Because if you're vicious, you're going to run afoul of other people. If you're unjust, you're going to get caught. You're not going to have friends and you're going to be punished.
Speaker: And if you lack self -control, you're not going to maximize the best kinds of pleasure that lead to a happy life. So basically Epicurus argues that the virtues are necessary instruments in order to live pleasant, pleasant life. And that makes stomachs cringe because they hold that pleasure does not contribute anything to a happy life.
Speaker: Well, what does? Well, as I explained in the original little syllogism from Handbook Chapter 1, Epictetus says, you're happy when you get what you want and you avoid what you dislike and you're unhappy otherwise.
Speaker: But in order to be happy then, you have to, he thinks, limit yourself to deriving that happiness from your virtues, from being wise, from having true beliefs about the world. And if you have true beliefs about the world, then the world isn't gonna surprise you and upset you. No matter what happens, you'll deal with it, you'll cope with it. And coping with it,
Speaker: requires the virtues. So when it comes to food, drink, alcohol, and sex, you have to have self -control. If you're not a self -controlled eater or drinker, you're going to suffer physically. You're going to suffer illness. You're going to need justice in order to be, excuse me, you're going to need justice in order to be a successful participant in your human community.
Speaker: And the stoic insight is, no one can stop you from being a just person, from doing just things, from being fair -minded and even -handed. No one can stop you from being courageous. No one can stop you from being wise.
Speaker: Right? And what they can stop you from is acquiring these external possessions. They can stop you from getting wealth. They can affect your reputation. Maybe you can't find. If you invest your happiness in having a certain kind of food or a certain amount of food every day, that's going to depend on other people. Right?
Speaker: If they're out of your favorite food at the store you shop at, then you're going to be upset if you make your happiness depend on getting that food every time you go to the store. So the serenity comes from, in my view,
Speaker: the kind of stoic happiness that distinguishes it from Epicurean happiness is that it doesn't involve pleasure, it involves a kind of satisfaction that you can only derive from being virtuous. Another way of putting it is, stoic happiness or peace of mind comes from self -respect. Hey, come on. Can you say more about that? What you mean by self -respect? Hi, everyone. This is Michael Trombley.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to Stoick Conversations. We're a new podcast. We're getting started. We're building episode by episode. So I wanted to just give a quick shout out and say that any review or referral that you can provide really goes a long way to helping the show. Thanks again for listening. So what do we respect? Well, Stoicks argue that what we respect are admirable traits.
Speaker: We respect virtues. We respect people who have integrity, who stick to their guns. But we don't respect people who are closed -minded. We respect people who are intelligent, wise, fair -minded, just, kind. We respect people who are generous with themselves, with their resources. We don't respect money.
Speaker: We respect skillful people who are talented, who are good at doing things. So what we respect are
Speaker: aspects of agential excellence, people who are good at doing things, people who are smart, intelligent, circumspect, fair, kind, cooperative. All of those positive traits are things that we respect because we wish we had those traits, right? We want to be like that. So if you have a role model, that's someone you respect.
Speaker: If there's someone you admire, then there are traits, virtues, positive traits of character that person has. Okay, so if that's what we respect, then in order to gain our own self -respect, what do we have to become? We have to become the kind of person who internalizes just those admirable traits.
Speaker: And if we do, if we're proud of how we handle things, if we're pleased with how we negotiate challenges, how we respond to hardships and adversity, how generous we are, how kind and helpful we are, how cooperative we are, how decent we are and courteous to other people, if we have all of these positive traits, these virtues ourselves,
Speaker: then we gain our own self -respect. And there's no substitute for that, according to the Stoics. And once you become virtuous and you gain that self -respect, you recognize that's the best kind of happiness there is. That there's no substitute for that.
Speaker: because having wonderful back rubs and being really good looking because of plastic surgery and having lots of money because you stole it or you exploited people to get it, those things are no substitute for self -respect. And the people who have those non -goods that people think are valuable, that non -stokes consider valuable, they live in fear and they live in anxiety of losing those things.
Speaker: But if you have self -respect, why would you fear losing your self -respect? The only way you could lose it is if you did something despicable. But that's up to you. And you can always avoid doing something unsavory or despicable or cowardly, right? Right. And it's a powerful philosophy. So how would you say that Epictetus's role ethics figures into this picture?
Speaker: Yeah, so that's the next image that he uses several times in the handbook and the discourses. He says, remember, you're an actor in a play, and the director of the play is someone else, and that someone else is Zeus, God, fate.
Speaker: And what's up to you is not to be the casting director. You don't get to pick your role. You're an actor in the play, not the director. You're not the casting. You're not the person who does casting the role. You didn't choose to be born a human being into this world. You discover that you are a human being born into this world. So even your very existence as a human being, your very human life is a role that nature gave you. It was assigned to you
Speaker: by Zeus Godfate. And then in addition to that, you're born with a certain gender. That's a role that you're cast in. And if you have any brothers or sisters, then you're cast in the role of being a sibling. And in any case, you're cast in the role of being a child to parents. And if you don't have parents because you're an orphan, then guess what? That's a role that you're cast into.
Speaker: So whether you're an orphan or a child with parents, a son or a daughter, you're going to be a sibling or an only child. You're going to be born into a particular place in a particular time. So these are the natural roles that Epictetus says were given. Nature gives to us. They're not chosen. We inherit them just by coming into existence.
Speaker: But there are also some roles that are chosen. So once you're alive and you're interacting with other people, the first language that you learn, you're not choosing. Your natural tongue, you just pick up. But whether you choose to learn additional languages,
Speaker: That's up to you. So you can try to learn other languages and you could even try to teach other languages to others. So one role you can choose is to be a teacher. All of us are students.
Speaker: So I guess that's kind of a natural role in a sense, but you could choose to expand your role as a student by studying any number of things, any number of subjects, right? And certainly your friends, the friendships that you choose are chosen roles. You choose who to befriend. You don't choose your co -workers usually, although you might if you're on a hiring committee,
Speaker: have some say about that, but your friends you do choose. Nobody forces you to have someone as a friend. And your other hobbies that you choose to pursue. Those are chosen roles that you have. Your jobs, how you earn money, that you choose. In regarding those roles, Epictetus says you need to know your natural abilities.
Speaker: So he says, hey, maybe you want to be an Olympic athlete and you decide, hey, I think it'd be great to be an Olympic wrestler and compete as a wrestler. He says, well, take a look at your body. Are you built?
Speaker: to have a kind of wrestler's body. And yes, you can train and you can lift weights and you can transform your body to an extent. But if you're tall and thin and lanky, you really are going to have trouble becoming an effective wrestler because you just aren't given by nature the right tools.
Speaker: Whereas if you're comfortable speaking in public, you're not afraid of speaking around other people, then being an orator or a lecturer or a teacher is kind of a natural role for you to choose, but it would still be a chosen role. And your duties flow from, they follow from the roles that you have, both the chosen roles, the acquired roles and the natural roles that you have.
Speaker: And you have to adjudicate which roles you need to prioritize today, this week, this month, and which roles you can't spend as much time on. These are decisions we make every single day, right? If I haven't visited my mother in a long time, gosh, it might be the case that I should
Speaker: you know, subordinate a couple of my other roles so that I can visit my mother in order to be a good son. Right. Or if I haven't spent time talking to my brother, I need to set aside some time, not work on writing project. And I need to call my brother and make an appointment to talk to him on the phone. Right. And being a good neighbor and being a good friend and being a good coworker, all of these roles, we have to juggle and
Speaker: Each of them has its own duties that come with it. And it's complex and it requires what? Wisdom, knowing how to negotiate and navigate these different roles that we have so that we do all of them well. And if I find that I have too many roles and I'm neglecting some too much in order to fulfill others, then I have to make hard decisions about maybe cutting back on my chosen roles.
Speaker: I'm taking on too many different responsibilities and I'm not doing them, any of them well, then I need to simplify my life. And that will be the wise thing to do.
Speaker: One underrated aspect of Efectetus is his advice on life planning or even career choice. Just focus on knowing your talents, understanding your social relations and how those make demands on you. And then also knowing your own preferences and how well you'll perform in particular tasks, if you enjoy them or not.
Speaker: Exactly. And sometimes when I would teach Epictetus to my students back in Nebraska, they would say, oh, is he saying that if you're not good at something, you shouldn't try to get better at it? That if you try, if you undertake some role beyond your ability, then you disgrace yourself and you fail to fulfill the role that you could have done well. Does that mean that you shouldn't stretch yourself and try to do things that you're not good at right now?
Speaker: I don't think it means that. It's a question of trying to fulfill a role that you just can't fulfill, right? I'm 60 years old. If I decided, oh, I'm going to become, I'm going to play in the NBA. You know, the Lakers need some help. I'm going to move to Los Angeles and I'm going to offer myself up to the Lakers so that I can play alongside LeBron because I know he needs some help. It's like,
Speaker: That's silly, that's ridiculous. It would be impossible for me to play even, it would be ridiculous, right? I'm 60 years old, I can't do that, right? So there are roles that we just have to be clear -eyed about, there are limitations. And this is what some people recoil at when they read Stoicism, because it doesn't say you can be whatever you wanna be.
Speaker: Right? And we hear that. You know, dream big. You can be whatever you want to be. Anyone can become president of the United States. Well, that's hogwash. In our system, you have to be lucky and you have to have the right kind of wealth and be able to raise campaign funds.
Speaker: and so forth and so on. You have to be able to appeal to people. You have to be telegenic in the right sort of way and cutthroat in the right sort of way. So it's ridiculous to think that everyone could do anything they set their mind to. I mean, that's ridiculous. Yes, they're inspiring stories of people who dreamt of big things and they were able to achieve it, but they had the tools.
Speaker: Nature gave them gifts. Different people have different talents. That's the truth. Different people have different talents. And recognizing what your talents are and what kind of, you know, jobs or career you can do well at, that requires self -knowledge. And that requires looking at yourself in the mirror and avoiding self -deception. And so, yeah.
Speaker: is you say you really have to be able to introspect and take stock of your strengths and your weaknesses when you're deciding what to invest your limited time and resources in when it comes to choosing a career, choosing activities that are going to benefit the world. Because that's the kind of big picture perspective, right? Think of it in terms of the world. What does the world want you to be?
Speaker: How can you best contribute to the world and to your community? What are your skills and natural aptitudes that you can work on improving such that you make the biggest contribution, the biggest gift to the world through your efforts? That's how you should be thinking about career decisions, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I think the part of the focus on roles is useful because if you think about, you know, what's the thing that I can do that'll have the most impact? That question is pretty abstract. It's almost like the question, what can I do to become as rich as possible? And it's always useful whether or not that's a good goal to make those more concrete and starting with social roles is a good way to do that.
Speaker: One question I have is, who do you think are figures in history or perhaps fiction or even in the contemporary world that best model or approximate the life that Epictetus promoted as the best one? Oh, boy. You know, I'm going to, Caleb, I'm going to punt on this one. But you know, there are protostoics or nascent stoics
Speaker: around us that we don't even know about. These are people who are not famous. They do their jobs.
Speaker: They care about their families. They love their family members. They're reliable neighbors. They're trustworthy friends. They're fair in their dealings with other people. They're involved in the PTA and their local communities. They give of themselves. They donate to charities. They're honest. They're generous. They share things with their friends and neighbors. They're just stand -up individuals, and they're not famous.
Speaker: Nobody knows their names except their friends and family members. And they're living as stoics. They're not Ryan Holiday. They're not Tony Long. They're not, I don't know, whoever these other famous people, famous stoics. They're not people who survived the Holocaust and had books written about them. They don't have movies made about them. They're people that the ordinary person will never come to know.
Speaker: but their friends and their family know that they're people of integrity. And it's too bad that books aren't written about them and they don't get interviewed on television and they don't have Wikipedia pages. These are the backbone of any nation, of any state, of any city, people who are decent, caring, loving, generous,
Speaker: citizens and friends and neighbors and teachers and students and firefighters and cops and kindergarten teachers, right? And they work in grocery stores and at Costco and Walmart or their insurance, they sell insurance or where their job is.
Speaker: Right? As long as their job doesn't involve exploiting other people or taking advantage of people, but they actually contribute through their efforts to making their communities better. There are not hundreds, not thousands of these people, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these people. And they don't get the press and they don't get the attention. But they live as stoics. And they don't know what stoicism is. They've never heard of it. But they're virtuous.
Speaker: and they don't trade their virtue for advantages. You know, they don't trade it for having better reputations or more money or a bigger house or a fancier car or, you know, trampling over their coworkers to get the promotion that they deserve more than anyone else.
Speaker: You're team players. They're the kind of people you want to have on your Ultimate Frisbee team or your pickup basketball team, right? They're people you want to work with, that you want to play with, that you want to learn from and teach. Stoics, but they don't know it.
Speaker: That's right. Virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness, not knowing about stoicism. That's right. That's exactly right. It reminds me of the story of Solon and Croesus, where Solon is an ancient Athenian and Croesus is a successful dictator, a story I've told before on this podcast. But I think it's always something I think about which, and Croesus asks him, you know, who is the happiest
Speaker: man alive, expecting to be named given his great wealth, fame, and accomplishments. And Solon says, tell us. And Croesus says, who? You know, who is this? Tell us. And Solon says, you know, tell us was a man who had a family, was a good father, and treated people around him well, and then died gloriously in battle, not as a general, but as someone playing his role, Epictetus might say. And that's it. It's essentially nobody.
Speaker: That's right. It's such a great story. And contrast Matt with the rage of Achilles.
Speaker: Right? Oh, Achilles. Achilles, he was the greatest warrior. He could kill anyone. He could kill opposing soldiers like nobody's business. No one was better at butchering men than Achilles. And so on the Homeric ethic, yeah, he gets our applause. Achilles, terrific. He was a frickin' egomaniac. Right? He didn't get his class. He didn't get his glory. He wasn't. He didn't get the goodies, the trophy.
Speaker: Right? From the battle armor of, you know, the fallen Trojan. And he throws a tantrum.
Speaker: Oh, I've been dissed by Agamemnon. The only reason we're winning this war is that, you know, you Agamemnon asked me to help you out, and you diss me by giving this armor to somebody else? How could you be so insulting? Oh my gosh, Achilles, right? Yeah, and then the whole war turns. Holy cow, right? He's a hero? What's so heroic about that?
Speaker: There are plenty of egomaniacs. He let down all his fellow Greeks.
Speaker: because of his vanity, right? That's not heroic. This is what Stoicism explodes, the myth of the Homeric hero. He's not a hero. Agamemnon's not a hero. Heck, Hector was much more heroic. Hector's fighting to defend his family and his fellow citizens, right, and Troy. Hector's far more heroic than Achilles, right?
Speaker: But more heroic than Achilles also are the foot soldiers laying down their lives who are not the best fighters, but they're doing their duty. They're doing their jobs. Right. I think it's in the discourses where Epictetus says,
Speaker: That's something like, when did Achilles come to grief? Not when Patroclus, his dear friend, died, but when he gave into anger over this conflict with the slave girl precise.
Speaker: But he forgot that he was there to win a war, not earn mistresses. That's right. Not to earn trophies, right? A trophy slave. Because he already has trophy slaves, but he kind of liked the looks of Perseus, right? There's another trophy slave he could add to his chain of trophy slave women. Oh my gosh. Yeah, exactly. Anger. Think of people who are good at controlling their anger. People who stay calm.
Speaker: Right? They're admirable. They're admirable. Absolutely. Fear and anger. Boy, those are the two, those are the two worst emotional states, right? Stoics really focus on those two. If you can get rid of fear of death, fear of loss, fear of humiliation, fear of pain, right?
Speaker: Fear of what? Whatever. Not having enough of whatever. X, Y, and Z. And anger. If you can live a life without fear and anger, good grief. Talk about happiness, right? What things would you worry about if you didn't fear anything and if you didn't get angry?
Speaker: Wow, that's a knowable goal. Just to get angry less often. Just to fear less often. Fear fewer things.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the life of a sage. That's the stoic life. And people do that. And again, it's not just physical courage, right? I mean, you have to have physical courage to be a first responder, a firefighter, a police officer, a soldier. You know, that requires literally putting your body on the line to help other people and protect other people.
Speaker: But, you know, we have the courage of people who are single parents with three kids working three jobs to make ends meet. That takes courage. That takes determination and tenacity, right? To all by yourself make enough money to feed your three kids.
Speaker: And if you don't have a lucrative job, but you have to take on a second and a third job and you're working 60, 70, 80 hour weeks just to keep your kids safe and fed and clothed, good grief. That's courage. Talk about courage. Yeah. Or resisting oppression. People who are fighting injustice. That takes courage and determination.
Speaker: And in their ways of doing that, that don't involve physical danger, at least not Hollywood style physical danger. And those people, they don't know what stoicism is, they might not know what stoicism is, but they're going to be admirable to people who are striving for this stoic ideal.
Speaker: Absolutely. Well, we've covered a lot, so thanks very much for coming on. Terrific. It's good to chat with you again, as always. Thank you, Caleb. Enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
