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Reading the Handbook (Episode 16)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
In this episode we do a close reading of the first two chapters of Epictetus’s Handbook.
Epictetus packages key theoretical and practical insights in the first two sections – read along!
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Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Stoicism vs Conventional Success
00:00:00
Speaker
Some people use stoicism as a tool set to succeed in their careers. And his point was if you really pursue stoicism as a philosophy of life, as a virtue system, you're going to be less successful than people who don't have any problem with portraying others. That's the key point here.
Podcast Introduction: Stowe Conversations
00:00:19
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 we'll be an in-depth conversation with and experts.
Epictetus's Handbook: A Close Reading
00:00:37
Speaker
In this episode, we do a close reading of the first two chapters of Epictetus's handbook. I got a lot of value out of this. I thought it was a lot of fun. Michael studied Epictetus in graduate school, so he's a real expert on the philosopher and his works. Here is our conversation. Welcome. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and I am here with Michael Trombley.
Dichotomy of Control: An Overview
00:01:01
Speaker
Hey Caleb, how you doing? Good. And today we're going to be talking about Epictetus's handbook. We have a few sections or chapters from the handbook, the Enchiridion that we'll be talking about. Yeah, I thought it would be fun today to do some close reading of Epictetus's handbook for a couple of reasons. One is the handbook. So for those that aren't familiar, Epictetus is one of the big three Roman Stoics, the later Stoics.
00:01:28
Speaker
We have his discourses, which are the notes taken by a student from his lectures. If you're going about navigating the world and you need a reminder, you can pull this out and look at your handbook. You know, now we have our iPads, we have our phones, things like this we can pull out. But back then it was meant to be kind of an accessible pamphlet to refer to if you were in a difficult situation to kind of ground yourself in stoic thinking.
00:01:50
Speaker
And the reason I wanted to go through it closely is it is both very accessible. I recommend it as a starting point for stoicism because you get almost all of stoic philosophy in 20 pages from an original source, but it's also very, in some ways also inaccessible because it was meant to be a tool for practicing stoics to use.
Modern Translations of Stoic Texts
00:02:13
Speaker
A kind of a reminder, right? A spark notes or a cheat sheets once you were already a stoic.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I think it's, I think it's very easy to get the gist of it. And I think it can be complicated to get a deep perspective on it. So I wanted to take this time for us to go together and do some deep readings of some of the parts of the handbook to provide that a deeper explanation of what's going on. I think it would be both be fun and helpful.
00:02:38
Speaker
A quick note about translations, we'll be using Robin Hard's translation, this book right here for those watching on video, Epictetus's Discourse Fragments and Handbook. Some people, I know, I noticed this a lot, will come on Reddit or come on Facebook and say I'm having trouble understanding the stoic. The first thing to do when you're having trouble understanding the stoic is just to make sure you're using a modern translation. It doesn't need to be Robin Hard's.
00:03:03
Speaker
But it should be a contemporary one. A lot of times you can find for free on the internet. Older translations might be accurate, but are written, you know, a hundred, 120 years ago, and the English language has
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:03:14
Speaker
changed. It's not as easy to read as possible. Anything you want to add? This is going to be our first one of these episodes. So any additional comments or questions you have, or if there's any particular other stoic text you'd like us to take a look at, that sort of feedback would be really useful. But otherwise, let's just hop into it.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, let us know what you think about the close reading. So jumping into Epictetus's Handbook 1, this is the start, this is the big one. It says, some things are within our power while others are not. Within our power, our opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever is of our own doing. Not within our power, our body, our property, reputation, office, and in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.
Internal vs External Control in Stoicism
00:03:57
Speaker
So this first part right here is where we get this idea of the dichotomy of control, right? So Epictetus says, look, of all the things that exist, some are within our power, some are not within our power, and that's the dichotomy of control. I'm realizing in this translation, it's interesting, he said some things are within our power while others are not. That isn't necessarily a dichotomy, but I also have the grief pulled up.
00:04:21
Speaker
And the Greek is the Greek says of the things that exist. So of all things, there are things that are in our power and things that are not that it is a stark dichotomy. It is there are two types of things. And then he goes on to say what those things are in each category. Right. And in our power, we have, we're given a short list, but we have opinion, motivation, desire, and aversion.
00:04:47
Speaker
And I think the thing you want to note about this right away is that those things are all kind of mental faculties, right? So opinion is what you think about a situation, motivation is the kind of
00:05:02
Speaker
impulse you feel towards or away from something to doing something or to not doing something and desire or aversion are technical terms for you know if you think something is worth pursuing or if you think something is worth avoiding but these are all kind of mental faculties so again things are up to us some are not but the things that are up to us are all these these parts of our mind parts of the way that we reason and go about choosing things and desiring things
00:05:28
Speaker
And then the things that are not of our own doing, the things that are not uptimes or within our power are all these external things.
Philosophical Implications of Control
00:05:34
Speaker
There's things outside of our mind, our body, our property, our reputation and political office, right? Like you could think about this as your, even your career position, your job, something like this.
00:05:45
Speaker
the thing that's interesting here too is that we have our body right right away our body and Epictetus is just being very clear that he's being restricting what is up to us very tightly to what's in our mind not even
00:06:00
Speaker
ourselves because many people might associate yourself with your body and he's making this divide. It's not even your body. It's not your physical hell. It's not the strength of your muscles or anything like this. It is just the faculty of our mind that is up to us. Any thoughts on that part Kill?
00:06:16
Speaker
The parts that stand out to me here is first, as you said, we have this stark division, a fundamental division that sort of cleaves all things in half, as it were. There are some things that are going to fall on the side that are up to us and others will fall on the side that are not. And that this is really a fundamental division that gets the whole handbook going in a way. I think you can read a lot of later sections as just spelling out this division.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's something to keep in mind. One other aspect that comes out is that the question is whether things are within our power or our own doing, which it can help clarify this notion of a dichotomy of control. I think if you think about our power, what's that? Well, it's the sort of thing we can cause our own doing to answer like, what is our own doing? We need some account of
00:07:15
Speaker
who we are, what we do, and that goes back to this bit that you were mentioning, Michael, that we are mental beings, we are decision makers, things that have desires, judgments, and so on.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's dead on. I think that's, I think that's exactly right. We have to be really careful. Like we open up with this, this is something we've talked about before on this channel. The dichotomy of control is the really popular framing of this, but it's not so much a control isn't used here, right? This is the passage we get it from. It's not used here.
00:07:48
Speaker
It is the dichotomy of what's in our power and not in our power, or the dichotomy of what is our own doing or not our own doing. And I think that's an important distinction. As we've talked about it in our frequently asked questions episode, control makes it seem like you should be immediately able to change something.
00:08:09
Speaker
Right? So in that sense, our opinions and our desire and our versions are not in our control in the sense that, you know, I can't immediately, if I'm an angry person, I can't immediately cease being angry.
00:08:21
Speaker
But my anger is within my power. It's something up to me to change over time. And my anger is also my own doing. It is a result of my choices and my opinions. So that's why we want to kind of, when we think about this in a nuanced sense, we want to discard control because it can be confusing and replace that within our power up to us, our own doing. That's more helpful.
00:08:44
Speaker
And as you said, I think, yes, I think a lot of Epictetus is just telling people how to make this distinction correctly. So both understand the distinction and then effectively apply the distinction moving forward.
Stoicism vs Modern Success Views
00:08:56
Speaker
And we'll see that later on in part one.
00:09:00
Speaker
the handbook I also want to really nerd out here because we're getting to do the deep reading so I want to go a level and when he talks about so the second sentence is within our power our opinion motivation desire and aversion all of those are technical terms all of those mean very specific things that make see this that if you read the discourses you'll see
00:09:22
Speaker
But if you come from it from an English perspective, you might not have, you might think, okay, well, he's just talking about kind of the way we feel about things, but he's referring specifically to stoic psychology here. All of these are specific Greek words that mean specific things.
00:09:39
Speaker
So the first part opinion, that is what we do with impressions, right? So in the stoic psychology of the mind, there's input. We see something I perceive. I perceive somebody saying rude things about me. That's an impression. I then make a decision about that impression. And then that depression, that decision, whether I say, yes, it's true that they're saying mean things and that's a bad thing or it's true that they're doing that, but I don't really care because it's nothing to me. Our decision about that impression then yields.
00:10:09
Speaker
a psychological result. So opinion is that opinion is that decision about the impression, whether I think it's true, what I think about it. So that's the first thing that's up to us. Motivation
00:10:21
Speaker
is what we feel, what we experience when we make a, when we form an opinion about something being preferable or not preferable. So when I make a form an opinion and I say, well, it would be better to have chocolate ice cream, then I will receive a motivation. I will experience a psychological sensation towards getting chocolate ice cream. That's the second one. That's motivation.
00:10:49
Speaker
Then we have desire and aversion. Desire is the psychological sensation you experience when you think something is the good, when you think something is the best thing you can have, and it's good in all circumstances. Desire is different from motivation because it's incredibly powerful, and if you don't get what you desire, it's incredibly frustrating and damaging.
00:11:13
Speaker
Aversion is the opposite of that. Aversion is what you think when you judge something to be bad in all circumstances. So we might feel desire. You know, I might feel desire. Common things people might feel desire for are romantic relationships. You know, when you feel that incredible, I need to be with this person or my life is going to end or fame or extreme wealth. You know, when you see someone who.
00:11:35
Speaker
feels cheated out of money or something. That's an instance of desire. Where aversion is the opposite. It's the one you feel when you think something is incredible bad. It's bad in all circumstances.
Real-world Applications of Stoicism
00:11:44
Speaker
People might feel aversion towards death. And this is what you see when somebody's afraid of getting on a plane.
00:11:50
Speaker
or they receive news of an illness, that's somebody experiencing aversion. And I just wanted to clarify that because he's not just saying, well, what's up to you is how you feel about things. He's talking about very specific processes. One, opinion, what we do with impressions, what we do with our sensory information, and then motivation, desire, and aversion are the psychological effects of when we make value judgments. So in that sense, it's really easy to see why those are up to us because
00:12:20
Speaker
The impression we receive is not up to us, but then he's saying what we do with it, our opinion is up to us. And then what we feel when we make that opinion, that's also up to us. And that's the point being, that's the point being made here. And that's the kind of level I want to dig deeper into because it's easy to read over that, but be like, to take that as simple, but those are technical terms. Anything you wanted to add there, Kilov?
00:12:44
Speaker
So maybe just to make sure I understand the claim. So you've got opinion. That's why we talk about this often. It's our judgments we make. You have some sensation that comes in and then we make a judgment about what that sensation impression says about the world.
00:13:03
Speaker
that's opinion. And then we have motivation, a sort of distinction between motivation and desire where the motive, someone's motivated if they see something as preferable and then desire refers to the psychological state that something is good in every circumstance. And the every circumstance bit is important and separates it from motivation, right? And I think that's worth highlighting because
00:13:27
Speaker
And one way to read this in the English version is just to say, you know, Abacus is talking about what we want and what we don't want here, and then going through the handbook with that level of description. But in a way, when he's talking about desire, it's really a deep, deep phenomenon. And so I think it's very, not just what we want, but what we see as ultimately good.
00:13:51
Speaker
And he is providing a picture of what we should desire, what is ultimately good, and arguing throughout the handbook that our common desires are misplaced.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know if the Greek is helpful for people, but I think it is because the English, if you change translations, you'll change translations and people will use different words. But the Greek for motivation is Horma. That is what you feel in stoic psychology when you feel motivated towards something because you've judged it to be good in some circumstances. And then the desire is Orexus.
00:14:26
Speaker
and aversion is ecclesis but those are just specific terms they're not they're he's referring to different things as you said good in all instances like i might feel motivation to score a basket and pick up basketball game i'll have it with my friends
00:14:42
Speaker
LeBron James might feel desire to win that basketball game in the NBA finals. And the psychological consequences of us missing those baskets are going to be very different. And the psychological experience of us wanting that is going to be very different because they're very different kinds of sensations because they're very different kinds of judgments about how important it is to get the thing we want.
00:15:04
Speaker
And when you go through Evictetus, he actually recommends, you know, what he says later on in the handbook and in his discourse is that the only thing that deserves desire is virtue. And the only thing that deserves aversion is vice, is being a bad person.
00:15:20
Speaker
And so, uh, we can feel motivation towards lots of kinds of things, right? We want to participate. We want to do these things, but desire and aversion are very special categories that should be reserved, very special kind of motivational intensities, very special sensation that should reserve only for being a good person and only for being a bad person. But I don't want to spend the, I don't want to spend the whole time on 1.1. So I'll jump on to the next part, unless there's anything you wanted to add to that.
00:15:46
Speaker
No, let's jump on to the next part so I can read it out.
00:16:02
Speaker
So on the first pass, this is a way of extending, detailing what the fundamental division, this dichotomy of control has become to spell out, which is on one side we have
00:16:17
Speaker
These things that are up to us, that are our own, are free, or at least where we can find our freedom. And the opposite, those things that are not up to us, are going to be places where we find ourselves constrained, or restricted, or even worse, basically to play things of the external world. I think that's the first past reading of this next section.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. There's two key ideas here.
00:16:51
Speaker
So as you said, he's made the division. There's things up to us, things not up to us. And then there's two key details to understand about this division, besides just what belongs in the category. These things have a certain nature. The things that are up to us are our own. They belong to us and they are free and they can't be hindered or obstructed. Exactly what you said. The idea being that somebody else cannot make us feel a certain way or think a certain thing.
00:17:20
Speaker
That's what that means. But somebody else can make our body
Justice in Stoicism
00:17:23
Speaker
do something. They can physically chain us up, right? That's what it means when the things not in our power are slate-ish, subject to hindrance, not our own. Somebody can physically chain our leg.
00:17:33
Speaker
Somebody can take our property and burn it down. Somebody can take our job and fire us. These things are in the hands of others. They're able to be determined by others, but those original things, the opinion and the consequences of our opinions, the way that we think, the choices we make, that cannot be controlled by others. That's the point here. Absolutely.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, maybe we could say that, all right, first we've divided what is up to us and what's not. Then Epictetus has said, okay, what's up to us is where we find our freedom. And then we have an account of freedom, which is freedom from obstruction, freedom from hindrance. And that's, I think that's currently where we're at.
00:18:14
Speaker
Totally. And then the next part, he says, look, so there's this division to be made. And then there's consequences when you get this division wrong. There is consequences to your happiness when you misunderstand this division, or you don't think about it at all.
00:18:29
Speaker
So 1.3 is, quote, remember then that if you regard that which is by nature slavish as being free and that which is not your own as being your own, you'll have cause to lament. You'll have a troubled mind and you'll find fall with both gods and human beings.
00:18:47
Speaker
But if you regard only that which is your own as being your own, and that which isn't your own as not being your own, as is indeed the case, no one will ever be able to coerce you, no one will hinder you, you'll find fault with no one, you'll accuse no one, you'll do nothing whatever against your will, you'll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because no harm can affect.
00:19:08
Speaker
So whoa, big claims by Epictetus there. But he's kind of almost giving, he's giving an account of stoic happiness. Not only is he giving an account of stoic happiness, but he's attributing, so stoic happiness being, you know, no one can coerce you, no one can hinder you, you'll find no faults, you'll never be upset, you'll have no enemies, no harm can affect you. Wow, you'll have this perfect life, but, and they say in the simplest way to get to this perfect life, or what can achieve this perfect life,
00:19:35
Speaker
is really just understanding what is your own and not your own, incorporating understanding, correctly applying that dichotomy of control. But if you make a category error,
00:19:46
Speaker
If you go around and say, well, my, my reputation is me, my reputation belongs to me. My reputation is what matters for me. I'm going to control my reputation. If you make that category error and what happens is, you know, a scandal comes out. Somebody creates a lie about you. You have this thing that doesn't belong to you. You treat it like it belongs to you and then it gets.
00:20:07
Speaker
controlled by other people because it doesn't, then you'll suffer, then you'll be harmed. So in that first part of the handbook, so much good stuff here. You have the category division, an explanation of what is in the categories and what they're like, and an explanation of the psychological consequences when you get that categorization wrong.
Misunderstanding Control and Blame
00:20:24
Speaker
Yep. I think, and there's a sense in which it's not just an explanation of the psychological
00:20:30
Speaker
consequences, there's also a view about what harm is and whether you can be harmed or not by these things that are external to you. And of course, there are psychological consequences to harm and being harmed, but the division is a fundamental division about value.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think I fixed stoicism for granted so much that I forget how unintuitive a line like that could be in first reading, absolutely. Like, this idea that if you understand the dichotomy of control, no harm can affect you, no one will ever harm you. That's yeah, that's pretty counterintuitive if you're not a stoic already. And as you pointed out,
00:21:14
Speaker
And there's both the psychological effect of that harm in terms of the suffering that's caused. And as you said, the bad judgment or the lack of virtue that's involved in, you know, desiring things besides virtue, desiring that technical sense and wanting to be an averse to things besides being a bad person. I'm absolutely right. Are you okay to move on or more to add?
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, I think it is worth just saying a little bit more about that. So you have the line, you'll find faults with both gods and human beings. This is something that will happen if you forget the dichotomy of control. And I think here again, you initially have the image that you're shaking your fists at the sky when things don't turn out, blaming others, which is true, that is right. But this line also brings out that
00:22:05
Speaker
One cannot blame the way things turn out that are independent from you, or when he talks about the gods, he says one shouldn't blame what we might say as our social environment, our inheritance, biological inheritance.
00:22:22
Speaker
given by nature and there is this really radical view that you can just be thrown into the world and so long as you take care of what is up to you then you can be free. Then that's brought out I think just by that simple line that you will find fault with the gods if you forget what is your own and the reverse is true you will not find fault with them. Yeah that is a radical view and I guess the point
00:22:49
Speaker
As you were saying, which is really important here, there's both the psychological sense, which is that you can find no fault because you just accept everything because that's psychologically, psychologically easier. But then the more radical stoic claim, which is you'll find no fault because there is no fault.
00:23:06
Speaker
The fault of circumstances or the lamenting against God and other people is a mistake we make when we think things that aren't up to us should be up to
Virtue vs External Success in Stoicism
00:23:19
Speaker
us. When we think, you know, that's my property. That belongs to me. Nobody has a right to come in and interfere with that.
00:23:29
Speaker
And then when that's a mistake and that mistake not only lends us to suffer more, but also is just incorrect. As you said, it's the more radical claim. It's just the wrong way of thinking about external goods and property.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah. Practice Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines the ancient philosophy of Stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons, and conversations to help you live a happier life. Find it available for a free download in the Play Store and App Store. You'll find no fault because there is no fault. It's a great line and a good way to put it.
00:24:06
Speaker
Alright, so if we come to chapter one, part four, I can read it out. Since you're aiming then at such great things, remember that you'll have to exert no small effort to attain them, and that you'll have to renounce some things altogether, while postponing others for the present.
00:24:22
Speaker
But if you want to have both these things and public office and riches too, you'll quite possibly not even gain the ladder because you're aiming at the former too. And you'll certainly fail to get the former through which alone happiness and freedom can be secured. All right. What's going on there, Michael? Yeah. So the idea that, I mean, in simple terms, Apigee, that's the same look.
00:24:47
Speaker
Since you want virtue, since you want to be able to tell the difference between what's up to you and what's not so that you don't lament, you have no enemy, things are good, you understand the world as the way it really is. If you want that, understand that you're not going to be as successful with the external stuff as the people that care about externals are, right? You're not, if you think that way about your career, you're going to do worse in your career than people who desire career. People who all they do, they're willing to betray people to move up the corporate ladder, right?
00:25:15
Speaker
If you don't covet possessions, you're going to have less money than the kind of people that are willing to lament, willing to make mistakes. If it means they'll have more, that's the first part he's saying. So you'll have to postpone those things. And then if you decide to try to get both, if you say, no, I'm not going to postpone, I'm going to try to get both. I'm going to try to be a great person and just kill it in the externals game, you know, get all the things I get, all the things I want that aren't virtue too.
00:25:42
Speaker
He said, you're probably not going to win that game of property reputation prizes, and you're definitely not going to get virtue, right? If you chase both those rabbits, you're not going to get either. So I think the takeaway from this is that, look, if you can't get both,
00:26:01
Speaker
you have to just pursue the virtue or pursue that as the primary and you have to be okay.
Practical Stoic Methods
00:26:08
Speaker
That's going to mean you're going to do worse it with the externals than the people who were just focused on the externals. In many ways, it's kind of this criticism of the dollar side stoicism.
00:26:18
Speaker
And then we talked about in a previous episode, which was this idea that, you know, some people use stoicism to, as a tool set to succeed in their careers. And his point was like, ever to use his point is that if you really pursue stoicism as a philosophy of life, as an ethical virtual system, virtue system, you're going to be less successful than people who don't have any problem with betraying others. That's the key point here.
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting claim because I think often people will want to say that being good and being successful can come together, and that you can, in fact, have both. But Epictetus has reminded you to focus.
00:27:03
Speaker
here and I think there's certainly wisdom in that and the idea that you can have both in some ways is suspiciously convenient. It assumes that the just world is the case and that you can be successful and you can also be good because that's how the world would turn out if things were just and we often have this just world type bias.
00:27:30
Speaker
And of course, I think the Stoics in a real sense do believe that the world is just, but at a much deeper level, not at the level that, you know, we could say that success and goodness automatically come together, but at a deeper level where the whole makes sense in some way. So I see Epihidas here just reminding us to focus and be wary of thinking we can have a, have it both ways.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah. And maybe we can have it both ways. Maybe there's a 5% chance, a 10, 20, 50% chance we can have it both ways. He is just like, I'm just taking him to say, there's not a hundred percent chance. So when you have to make that choice, when you get to the fork in the road, be prepared that fork in the road was coming and be ready to pick the virtue at the expense of external success. Cause if you're not ready, if you just said, well, I'll never have to make this choice, it's going to, it's going to hit you unprepared.
00:28:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. That's a good clarification. I think he's not saying that you can't have both. I understand it more as a claim about focus and prioritization. And the thought that you can't have both at least carries the risk that you might, as he says, not get either. So let's jump into 1.5. This is the end of the handbook.
00:28:48
Speaker
A quick summary to where we are so far. Some things are in our power, some things aren't. Things in our power are by nature free, things that aren't are by nature subject to hindrance. If you make a mistake categorizing those, that's a bad thing that will also lead to suffering and lamenting. So since you're aiming, so you want to be able to categorize those things properly, since you're aiming at that, be prepared to focus on that at the expense of the things outside of your control,
00:29:17
Speaker
And then, so then what does focusing on that look like? Well, that's 1.5. Focusing on that, getting that distinction right is, quote, practice then from the very beginning to say to every disagreeable impression, you are an impression and not all that you appear to be. Then examine it.
00:29:36
Speaker
and test it by these rules that you possess, and first and foremost by this one. Whether this impression relates to those things that are within our power, or those things that aren't within our power, and if it relates to anything that isn't within our power, be ready to reply, that is nothing to me.
00:29:53
Speaker
So you made this distinction, it's about focus. What does focus look like? Focus looks like going around being ready to test these impressions, right? We talked about at the beginning that opinion is what you do with these impressions. And he's saying, test these impressions first things first, recognize that they're impressions. He says, you're an impression and not at all what you appear to be. Recognize that the first way things seem to us is not necessarily true,
00:30:23
Speaker
We have to interrogate if it's true. So it might seem to us that our possessions really matter, that our jobs really matter, that the opinions of others really matter. That's going to be a normal impression to have. Social media, television, friends are constantly bombarding us with these impressions, constantly telling us these things. It's going to be normal for them to seem that way. But then we stop and we say, well, that's just how things seem. That doesn't mean it's necessarily the case. Let me check if it's the case.
00:30:52
Speaker
then I apply the rule. Well, is my physical looks, is that up to me or not up to me? Well, it's not up to me. Well, in that case, it's nothing to me. In that case, it's not the kinds of thing that I should desire or the kind of thing I should be averse to. And I think that's nothing to me, often gets misunderstood. So the last line right was,
00:31:15
Speaker
If it relates to anything that isn't within our power, be ready to reply, that's nothing to me.
Detaching Identity from Thoughts
00:31:21
Speaker
And people often misinterpret this line with the view that, well, Epictetus is saying we shouldn't care about other people. We shouldn't care about what's going on in the world. We shouldn't care about externals at all.
00:31:32
Speaker
And I don't think that's what he's saying. I think what he's saying is it comes down to that identity division at the start, right? There's things that are ours and there's things that aren't ours. And what he's saying is that's not mine. That's nothing to me as I am.
00:31:49
Speaker
Right? I can still be motivated. I can still want chocolate ice cream. That's my, that's my, that's my go-to example. Feel free if you have another one, but I'm very food motivated. I can still want chocolate ice cream, but chocolate ice cream is nothing to me. It's not a part of who I am. Right? Whereas if someone asks me to portray, to do something terrible, to lie, to be dishonest, that is something to me. And that's a different kind of thing.
00:32:15
Speaker
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, clarifying that last bit is especially important that it's not a view of unfeeling indifference as it were and said it's in some ways similar to the line when also times here in cognitive behavioral therapy or mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy that you are not your thoughts.
00:32:39
Speaker
there's this idea that when we think often we'll wrap our identity into what our thoughts are and fuse how we see the world with our thoughts and that means something like you know if we become angry then
00:32:54
Speaker
We see all of the world painted in that angry light and the thoughts that, you know, if we're angry at a specific person, we believe they did something wrong to us and these thoughts are tied to our identity. We feel harmed.
00:33:11
Speaker
But Epictetus is pointing out that this fusion can happen very easily, but it's misleading. We are not our thoughts. This anger carries with it a lot of mistaken judgments. We are not necessarily harmed by what the other person did. A nice example from that in the meditations is Marcus Aurelius mentions lying to the effect of, you know, don't say that
00:33:39
Speaker
So and so insulted you, just say that they were talking behind your back or something like this. You don't need to add that additional value judgment that you are insulted, that you were harmed, that they did something bad to you. Instead, they were just talking to some other person and said something about you.
00:33:57
Speaker
Now that doesn't mean you just take it on the chin and you ignore it. Perhaps that's not the right play. But what I think many that one benefit that this approach has is that you don't just lose yourself and immediately react to the thought that you've been insulted or you've been harmed. Instead you have a clean separation between
00:34:20
Speaker
yourself and all these external things and a focus on seeing things as they are and then acting appropriately Yeah, and that's that that's that first part about I mean it's all interlinked, but that is that first part about
00:34:35
Speaker
You know, if you do one thing at the start of your stoic practice, very start of your stoic practice, Epictetus is saying here, it's the ability to slow down your thinking and identify impressions as just representations of the world, not the world itself. Just that one thing is the first thing you can do. Then you got to categorize, you got to make decisions about, well, is it true or not? But just that first process, as you pointed out, not adding that extra layer, not having that combination.
Managing Anxiety with Stoic Techniques
00:35:02
Speaker
That's the first that like, that's where to start, right? That's clear, intentional thinking. What else do you want to say on Handbook Part 1? Yeah. So he has this line that examine it and test it by the rules that you possess. And first and foremost, by this one, which suggests that there are other rules. Do you want to say anything about that? These other rules one might possess?
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, the other rules you possess, I think are just rules that are of less ethical importance, right? So you can have impressions, you can examine an impression in a literal descriptive way, right? Which is to say, you know, is that really a tree that I see off in the distance?
00:35:42
Speaker
And then you might have certain rules for determining whether or not it's a tree or not. There's ways that we can test impressions. We can test them for their little facts, but then we can test them for their ethical facts. And then of the ethical judgments, he's saying the first and foremost is you get that first division right. Is this something that deserves desire and aversion because it's up to you? Or are we talking about motivation because it's something not up to you? So that's the most important thing.
00:36:08
Speaker
But then the other tests, so let's say it deserves motivation. Let's say you have the impression, you know, that your possession is, you know, your car is likely to get scratched, right? Then we can have a kind of, we can have kind of tests of, yeah, no, I think, I do think that's worth, you know, me moving my car so it doesn't get scratched or these kinds of things. It's really like a branching path is the way I take it. And he says, we have to get that first branch right, which is to say,
00:36:36
Speaker
Does this concern us and concerns virtue and vice, desire and aversion?
00:36:42
Speaker
Or does it not? And we're talking about either something that is, you know, ethically, not an ethical question. Like, is that a tree? Is this, is this worth my money to purchase or should I spend my money somewhere else? These kinds of non ethical questions or these questions of kind of motivation or kind of, you know, navigating a different successfully. That's the point. And it's first because it's the first part of the branch. And it's foremost because if you make that mistake and you get that wrong, you're going to suffer a lot of consequences.
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah, putting it in terms of a branch, I think is helpful or branching logic. I recently spoke with Tim LaBon in an episode that will coming out probably in a few weeks about what he calls the stoic worry tree, which is a psychological technique for dealing with worry, anxiety. And the, you know, the very first step is this something that is up to me and that you can go through other steps and think through, okay, depending on the answer, then a different response
Desire, Aversion, and Control
00:37:38
Speaker
will be appropriate. Yeah, totally. Awesome.
00:37:39
Speaker
It's fantastic how in this first chapter we have a statement of stoicism and then we end with practical advice. I think that's a fantastic first chapter for that reason. Yes. That's why I like the deep reading. There's a lot of value there. That's like what we just read is less than a page, right? On my small book. But there's a lot in there. If all you had was that, you'd be like, that's pretty good. There's a lot there. Really did a good job.
00:38:08
Speaker
And it's also a stoic doing this, right? Like it's from the source, somebody kind of really refining it down. It doesn't have to be a summary.
00:38:15
Speaker
Not that there's anything wrong with contemporary summaries. That's really helpful. That's, you know, that's what the, that's what the Stoics did of the people that wrote before them. But it's cool to, it's cool to see that kind of summary, what Epic Tita thinks is that most crucial part refined down to that division, the consequences of that division and practical tips about focus and actual tools about examining impressions. Really great. I do want to get chapter two in, if that's all right with you. Yeah, let's do it.
00:38:44
Speaker
Zane, get ready for our, you know, 52 hour commentary on the handbook coming up, but it's worth it. So part two is about desire and aversion. And I think part two, you can understand a lot better because of what I was explaining before that these are technical terms. So chapter two opens, remember that desire promises the attaining of what you desire and aversion, the avoiding of what you want to avoid and that he who falls into desires unfortunate while he who falls into what he wants to avoid suffers misfortune.
00:39:14
Speaker
If you seek to avoid that, only what is contrary to nature among those things that are within your own power, you'll never fall into anything that you want to avoid. But if you attempt to avoid illness or death or poverty, you'll suffer misfortune. So the point here again comes back to that idea of desire and aversion. Desire is what you view
00:39:38
Speaker
I can feel motivation towards chocolate ice cream, but it's not desire. I can even feel, as a good stoic, motivation to not have my car scratched, motivation to avoid a conflict with somebody who's angry. That is like, I don't want to have to deal with that today if I don't have to. But I don't feel aversion or desire towards those things. I only feel, as a good stoic, aversion and desire towards what is really bad and what is really good, which is virtue and vice.
00:40:06
Speaker
So his point here, and as I said, virtue was really good or really bad in every circumstance. So when I desire something, I want that thing no matter what. When I feel aversion, I want to avoid it no matter what. And that's that first line. Remember that desire promises the attaining of what you desire and aversion, the avoiding of what you want to avoid, which is to say that when you desire something, you always want to attain it. When you're versed to it, you always want to avoid it.
00:40:32
Speaker
And then the second point is interesting, he says he who falls into desire is unfortunate and while he who falls into what he wants to avoid suffers misfortune.
00:40:42
Speaker
And I think the idea there of falling into desire is just this, is just, we have some stoicism built into that, which is that if you end up desiring anything besides virtue, you know, you're unfortunate in the sense that you will, you will be frustrated later on, right? Because you don't have, you don't have a guarantee that you'll get it because it's not up to you.
00:41:07
Speaker
And then likewise, if you fall into what you want to avoid, well, that's just considered misfortune, right? You're just getting what you don't want, not bad. But the trick to this, the way to get around this is that, as he says, if you seek to avoid then only what is contrary to nature among those things within your own power, you'll never fall into anything that you want to avoid. So what he's saying is that if you only feel aversion towards what is contrary to nature,
00:41:36
Speaker
among those things within our own power, those things within our own power are our rational faculty, our choices, our thoughts, our opinions, and the psychological consequences of those. Contrary to nature means when we do those things in the wrong way, so when we think things that are contrary to our nature as rational beings, or the nature of the universe, which is the truth of the matter. So if we seek to avoid only
00:42:04
Speaker
wanting the wrong, thinking the wrong way, having false beliefs. If we limit our aversion to just that or in stoic terms vice, then we'll never fall into anything we want to avoid because avoiding those things are up to us. Avoiding those things are not up to other people.
Epictetus on Adversity
00:42:23
Speaker
If I want to avoid rain,
00:42:27
Speaker
I can't avoid that all the time. Bad weather, I can't avoid that all the time. It's not up to me. But if I want to avoid me being a bad person, me making incorrect judgments, me making poor use of impressions, I can do that. That's up to me. I can maintain, I can never fall into what I'm averse to. I can never have my aversion meet the object of the aversion, meet the thing it's trying to avoid.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, what do you think about that? You know, you have this idea of aversion, things we see as ultimately bad, unconditionally bad, and misfortune will occur if something we are averse to happens.
00:43:07
Speaker
And so if we are averse to things that are out of our power, there's no guarantee that misfortune won't happen. Most likely it will happen. So the move then is to be averse to things that are in our power, that are up to us, because then we will have a say about whether misfortune can occur or not.
00:43:29
Speaker
And it's also worth highlighting that the list of things that people are averse to often includes things like illness, death, or poverty. And Epictetus explicitly says, like, those are things you should not think are ultimately bad. They're just preferable, but they're not the sort of thing that should guide one's life and by being a sort of an aversion, as it were.
00:43:53
Speaker
So I think that's worth highlighting that yes, this is the stoic view is that these things like illness, death, and poverty are not bad. They're not harms in a real sense. And that's, you know, we're going through why you'd think this as a stoic.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I notice here, like, Epictetus is just a lot more hardcore than me. Like, I'm talking about scratching your car or people thinking bad things about you, and he's like, no, illness, death, poverty. Those are things that you shouldn't, like, he just goes to the most extreme thing, right? And he's like, those are things, even those, don't feel aversion towards them. Don't set your life around trying to avoid them. That's the wrong way to approach it, totally. Hi, everyone, this is Michael Trumbly.
00:44:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stolo 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 like, review, or referral that you can provide really goes a long way to helping the show. Thanks again for listening.
00:45:00
Speaker
Alright, so let's go to the next part of this chapter 2. Remove your aversion then from everything that is not within our power and transfer it to what is contrary to nature among those things that are within our power. For the present, however,
00:45:15
Speaker
suppress your desires entirely, for if you desire any of the things that are not within our power, you're bound to be unfortunate, while those that are within our power, which it would be right for you to desire, which it would be right for you to desire, aren't yet within your reach. But use only your motives to act or not to act, and even those lightly, with reservations and without straining.
00:45:41
Speaker
So the first pass, we have a reminder, I think, of what we've already stated about the importance to transfer what is in our power to our desires. We should desire what is up to us.
00:45:56
Speaker
And then we also have this practical tip, if you will, this pragmatic step, which is initially transferring a desire or refusing to, or I guess another way to say it was initially we have this practical step, which is that it's better to initially suppress desires than move to being like the sage and only desiring virtue initially.
00:46:23
Speaker
and said we should target some of these initial aversions. That's how I understood this bit in the middle here. Yeah, totally. So I think in the part before, there was, you know, if you seek to avoid these things, you'll suffer misfortune. And so then in this part, there's the
00:46:42
Speaker
just the instruction, so don't do it. Don't be averse to these things. Only be averse to things that are within your power, that are contrary to nature. So, bad choices, bad decision, irrational thinking. And then as you said on the practical tip about desire is really interesting. It doesn't make sense unless we have that technical distinction between desire and motivation or hormone.
00:47:05
Speaker
Right? So the point is that desire, that intense feeling you feel towards everything in my life. This is an entire, like, everything in my life needs to achieve this thing. This is the ultimate good. This is everything I want. Everything is the same. When you're beginning stoicism, don't even feel that at all. Don't even dip your toes in that because if you apply it to the wrong thing,
00:47:29
Speaker
Boom, you're unlucky, you're bad. And if you apply it to the right thing, you can't even be that person yet. You can't even have that thing. So that, that experience. So if you say, wow, like if you're, if you're, if you're a beginning stoic and you say, I'm going to put all my desire into being a good person, you're not really able to do that effectively because being a good person isn't even within reach yet.
00:47:51
Speaker
And you're also beginning your journey. And I think of this to make this a little more practical. I mean, we can all think of these examples of these people who get like really gung ho at the start about being something or becoming something. And there's this kind of, you know, when I do jujitsu.
00:48:05
Speaker
I think of this, like, you see people come in and they get really intense for the first year and then they kind of burn out because they don't really even understand where to apply that intensity. And I think Epictetus is kind of saying the same thing, which is like, don't even feel desire for being a good person yet because you're not able to handle such a strong sensation, which can be directed in the wrong directions or can get frustrated because you're not progressing quick enough.
Progressing Towards Stoic Ideals
00:48:31
Speaker
Right? For example, or you can get really angry with yourself because you're not achieving what you want it to be achieving. So don't even go there is the point that I'm taking. And then the last point, again, not to nerd out on the Greek, but I think this is where the translations are interesting because in chapter one, we talked about motivation as opposed to desire and aversion. I said that motivation is Hormay. Here they say in the English, but use only your motives to act or not to act.
00:49:00
Speaker
What's that? What is a motive to act? Well, in Greek, it's just Hormé. It's just motivation. It's just the thing we talked about last time, which is the weaker sensation you feel towards things that are preferable. Seventies is saying, you know, at the start, don't drive your car too fast. Just use those weaker motivations towards things that are preferable. And that's how to start off your journey. Which is an interesting point. Again, another, as you said, another practical tip.
00:49:26
Speaker
about not jumping into things with too much intensity, even jumping into being a good person with too much intensity at the start.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think Epictetus is counseling his students that this is a exceptionally difficult project, the most difficult project there is, arguably. And so one needs to begin it with care, with a systematic plan, and he's counseling against doing exactly what you mentioned, which is coming in
00:49:56
Speaker
hot with all these expectations and then, you know, crashing when those expectations aren't immediately met. Saying, look, we should just start with using our motivations. Look, this is a marathon, not a sprint, as it were. And the goal is not to become the sage immediately, but to be a progressor, someone who is taking the right steps towards being good.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's the way of putting it. Feeling motivated about being a progressor, not desiring being a sage is a very big difference. And another point I wanted to add here that we get elsewhere in Epictetus is this view. So we talk a lot in stoicism about passion, which are these extreme emotions that are very harmful, both subjectively, like being angry or being incredibly sad. It feels very bad.
00:50:49
Speaker
But they're also harmful to our character because when we're incredibly angry, we've both made a mistake and to become angry, made a mistake in judgment that led us to be angry. But we're more likely to do mistaken things while angry because passion.
00:51:04
Speaker
overtakes our capacity to reason. You know, the Stoics thought of psychology a lot about movements. So when you're sitting still, very easy to change your direction. But if you're angry, you're kind of rushing, your soul is rushing in a certain direction. It's very hard to stop being angry. And it's very likely that momentum will lead somewhere unproductive. And what Epictetus mentions elsewhere in the discourses is that it says only passions only come from frustrated desires and aversions.
00:51:35
Speaker
So passions only come when we have these strong feelings about something and then we don't get what we want, which is either we don't get the thing we wanted or we get the thing we were trying to avoid.
00:51:49
Speaker
So when he says, only use Hormay, only use this gentle motivation, this gentle, I would prefer this if it was the case, he's actually protecting the students from passions. Because if you're only changing the situations in these gentle cases in this, I would prefer this kind of mindset, then when it doesn't occur, it goes differently than you expected. Maybe you're disappointed.
00:52:12
Speaker
Maybe you prefer it would be otherwise, but you're not heartbroken. You're not incredibly angry. You're not thrown into the thrusts of passion. And that's the key point there about that practical advice. Or one of the key points is many things here. Yeah. So we got through two chapters. Hopefully that was useful. I think it was a useful for me at the distinction between motivation and desires. Hasn't always been top of mind when I read the handbook. So that's, I'm glad you called that out.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah. And the thing that I wanted to call out again is just this, both a value as an introduction to stoicism, but also a kind of depth. And I think the thing that struck me, Caleb, that you mentioned was this idea that like, wow, in chapter one, you really get this kind of philosophical positioning about what matter, about what exists, what matters, what doesn't matter, what you should prioritize and practical advice about how to prioritize it effectively.
00:53:05
Speaker
It's like, that's pretty compelling stuff. There's a lot of, there's a lot of good things here. So it's worth, it's worth really digging into it. Yep. Absolutely. Well, let's do it again sometime. Awesome. Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks, Gil. Bye all. Thanks for listening to Stole Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:53:35
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.