In The Enchiridion, Epictetus lays part of the groundwork for what is now called Stoicism. In Greek, Enchiridion means “handbook”—the text is essentially a handbook on how to live your life. In the text Epictetus puts forward his ideas on how to live your life when, at times, it seems to be a disappointment. The way of viewing life that Epictetus puts forward can, at times, seem rather passive and seem rather distant from how people usually behave. It makes it hard to see how one could have love and passion for something if one were to accept this view wholeheartedly. The goal of this paper is to explore the main principles behind Epictetus’s ideas and seek out whether such a view should be adopted.
The general idea Epictetus puts forward is that, “Some things are in your control and others are not.” (Enchiridion, pt. 1) Meaning there are moments in life where you do not get to have your way—there are things outside of your control and there is nothing you can do about it. “Things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish restrained, belonging to others.” (Enchiridion, pt. 1) From this it would seem that there are many more things that are outside of your control than within your control. When you try to control or desire something that is not by nature something within your control—you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Epictetus usually uses the words disappointment, to be disturbed, hindered or grieved as a way of defining a failure of attaining something that is not by nature, in your control. Epictetus’s main goal is to try and prevent someone from being disturbed. The less disturbed you are the more likely you are to be content and happy. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.” (Enchiridion pt. 13) Meaning the less attached you are to external things the more happy and content you will be because external things lead to being disturbed. Epictetus gives us the following example from part three of the Enchiridion:
If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.
It seems that what Epictetus is getting at is that you should only be fond of the idea of things and not the actual things themselves. You should only love your memories of something but not the physical thing you associate them with.
I have had a similar incident like this happen to myself. I went on a trip with my grandmother to New Orleans. While I was there I bought a ceramic coffee mug from Café du Monde. While I was living with previous roommates—one of them had accidentally broken it while cleaning it. The mug was a representation of my time in New Orleans, the memories, etc. Thats just what Epictetus would say about my mug. The memories were being represented in the physical world by this mug but the mug did not have those properties. The problem of my being “disturbed” by the mug breaking had to do with my mistaking those memories as being part of the mug itself. The way I could help prevent myself from being disturbed is to recognize that it is the memories the cup instills in me when I look at it. However, those memories already exist in my mind and I do not need the cup to remember them.
As stated above, Stoicism has a reputation for requiring people to be passive to events in their life, to remain unchanged by things out of their control. First I will discuss the positive outcomes of following this philosophy. Most notably one will have far less disappointment in their life. If one takes the time to contemplate that much of the world is out of one’s control—then dealing with loss will be a lot easier on oneself. The reason it would be easier to deal with the loss is because one has detached them self from the physical thing and how they think about it. Referring to my mug example above, when my mug broke I should not feel saddened by it breaking. What the mug means to me is in my mind, the memories it brings to me are in my mind and therefore always accessible even without the mugs presence.
One may take issue with viewing life through the Stoics lens for multiple reasons. The first reason being that simply this is not how humans naturally think. We create physical manifestations of ideas all the time. This is the main idea behind art. A lot of art is a physical thing that is usually meant to convey a meaning and illicit an emotional response whether it is positive or negative. It would be interesting to hear what Epictetus would say because there is art that is created to cause one to be “disturbed.” It seems that if one were to genuinely hold the view that Stoic Philosophy is the correct one a huge part of the human experience would be cut off because it can illicit a negative response.
One may regard Epictetus response to a wife or child dying as a bit strong—especially comparing them to a cup being broken. The problem I see is if one is to view their wife or child dying as if it were equivalent to a cup breaking—it is hard to see what sort of family would arise from that. It seems that Epictetus is trying to make it so people do not get invested in the physical world. Thinking that this is a way to run a family seems like it could give rise to some unhelpful emotional issues later in life. (Granted now we have this information that a child needs emotional support while growing up so one cannot be too hard on Epictetus with this point.) However, it still seems relationships with people would be quite stilted. The only people that you could have successful relationships with would be other people who had the same view as you.
The final point to make is that Stoicism gets painted as being a rather passive philosophy. This means that instead of dealing with the sadness that life often comes with—Stoicism offers another way out of which is to remove the possibility of sadness or being disturbed from ones life. To do this would take a lot of life style change—not to say it is not a reason to take upon the challenge of being a Stoic. However, many people would most likely agree that a little bit of suffering might be a good thing. When suffering is directed or thought of in a productive matter it can help achieve great things. There is the possibility that if one were to take an entirely passive view of life and not take on risk; that developments in the human race would either stop or take much longer to achieve. Pain and suffering are part of what it is to be human and to remove that to live a purely content life does not seem like a worth while trade off.
While Stoicism may be an attractive way to get rid of suffering, it does not seem like its benefits outweigh what would be lost. If anything it is a personal choice to live by it or not. Stoicism may be a useful way of viewing something that has severely distressed someone or perhaps an overreaction to an event. It does not seem like it is a philosophy that should be avidly picked up. There may be a lot of suffering in the world but, there must be a better way of dealing with it than avoiding it completely. Paste your essay in here…