Review of Epictetus: The Complete Works
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
Epictetus is by far my favourite of the Stoics I've read. The Enchiridion is short, acerbic, enlightening and funny. You don't get that much in philosophy, and I think that author clearly appreciates that.
That said, in the end I think Nietzsche is right in his criticism: Stoicism works, but it limits one's capacity for joy because to tools you use to combat negative emotion unintentionally, but necessarily, limit positive emotion.
I practiced Stoicism pretty seriously for a few years and it definitely improved my life, but once you've used it to build a solid emotional foundation, the Stoic tactics (which essentially involve always watching yourself for deviations from the Stoic path) limit your ability to experience extremes of joy.
There are elements of Stoicism (like negative visualisation) that are easy to integrate into life and are pretty much only positive, but for me, full-blown Stoicism is something I only bring out when I need to re-establish that solid baseline.
My favourite by far is Epictetus. This site[0] has many translations of The Enchiridion side-by-side. I'd read a few of the options, find the one you like and just read that (personally I like Carter, and sometimes Long). It's short - 53 sections which are mostly a paragraph or two. You can knock it over in a few hours. I don't know if this is "optimal", but the approach I took was to read it all through fairly quickly, then re-read one section a day (or so) trying to really understand it.
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is also quite readable if you find a translation you like. It's interesting to read the diary of an emperor as he tried to apply Stoicism to his life, but it didn't teach me anything that I didn't get from The Enchiridion.
If you want to ease in with a modern take, I think William Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life is decent, though he makes the mistake of adding his own more complex, and unnecessary concepts on top.
My contention is that to experience the deepest and most profound emotions requires you to submit to them, and Stoicism (very intentionally) prevents that.
- going to sporting events to be socially acceptable, but not allowing yourself to care about the outcome
- comforting a woman on the death of her child, and making the outward appearance of sympathy, not not actually sinking into sadness
I can't think of a single example of any of the Stoics I've read recommending becoming overwhelmed by emotion or experience.
Having grown up poor (but checking some privilege boxes), when I first discovered stoicism it really helped me comes to grips with an unjust world. As I have climbed the social ladder, I find that the more things/privileges I have the harder it is to be stoic. I suppose this is why I like Seneca so much. He feels like a rich dude (I’m not rich but comparatively well off) who is working on not being a bad person. A lot of what I have taken from stoicism and Buddhism are lessons on how to develop a compassionate and just mindset.
I’m fairly skeptical of reading ancient philosophy through a modern lens. This critique had a weird tone and it seems the author might be have an issue with modern proponents of pop-stoicism and a lack of impetus for collective action. I have seen a couple similar arguments going on in Buddhism around the idea of “big-tent” Buddhism and the question of whether or not Buddhism advocates for activism.
One note, the authors claims Arrian wrote The Discourses over four books, but in reality it was eight and only four survive. This calls into question the scholarship here.
So four books? Seems to be a bit of a distinction without a difference.
As far as I was aware, Marcus Aurelius had a reputation as a wise and temperate philosopher king in his lifetime, and was later considered the last of the "five good emperors". If he was a warmonger then let us remind ourselves that even in the modern day our leaders have spent the last hundred years waging war somewhere or another in order to maintain a sphere of power too. And Meditations was in reality his private diary - like any regular person would routinely keep - and was not intended to ever be published. Characterizing it like she did is uncharitable at best and misleading at worst.
(Meditations is also an excellent read for those interested in Stoic philosophy.)
This is less of a compliment than it may sound like, because it is his own fault that he was the last.
The previous good emperors each selected their own equally good successors (by adopting them, so that they technically became their "heirs"). Marcus ignored this tradition and left the empire to his crazy biological son, who immediately ruined it.
You can look forward to some acerbic letters about this article in the next edition (and maybe even a response from Willis too).
The gall of a modern academic to downplay the teachings of one of the greatest philosophers in history, himself a former slave, in these childish terms really shouldn't surprise me, but it still does. One of the most privileged and spoiled classes of people in history, and they just can't seem to help themselves but to attack those that actually accomplished things.
Wilson has also translated and critiqued Seneca, according to her wiki article. So I would see this writing as the next entry in a career-making exercise.
As a lauded translator of the Odyssey, (and soon the Iliad) I'm inclined towards a very good faith reading of her article.
For comparison, here is the opening snippet of the Odyssey done by several translators:
Richmond Lattimore (1967):
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove —
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will —sing for our time too.
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
The man, Muse—tell me about that resourceful man, who wandered
far and wide, when he’d sacked Troy’s sacred citadel:
many men’s townships he saw, and learned their ways of thinking,
many the griefs he suffered at heart on the open sea,
battling for his own life and his comrades’ homecoming. Yet
no way could he save his comrades, much though he longed to—
it was through their own blind recklessness that they perished,
the fools, for they slaughtered the cattle of Hēlios the sun god
and ate them: for that he took from them their day of returning.
Tell us this tale, goddess, child of Zeus; start anywhere in it!If that kind of loss of fidelity/nuance is typical of the translation then it's not for me. Maybe I misunderstood and this translation is intended as an easy-reading introduction for readers with reduced vocabularies?
The translator doing slightly different choices, often more accurate to original does not make it worst.
And yes, it sounds better because it is translation to actual English. There is no loss of nuance here anyway.
As a (once) professional translator with some familiarity with the language, I'd like to reassure potential readers that it's a fine translation with a unique parti pris. It's in spirit probably closer to the original than some translations that may be more canonical, e.g. Pope's, but that have been criticized just as harshly (or more) in the past.
I’ve not heard of Peter Green before but that translation doesn’t look to be great either, if the sample is representative. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that, translating Homer was a schoolboy/girl exercise for centuries but only a very rare talent ever got something beyond serviceable. Again, the tiresome part is people celebrating workmanlike translations for social reasons.
Like the person so involved in the BDSM community that everything relates back somehow to bondage or nipple clamps.
Would we be reasonable people?
So the answer depends on whether our hypothetical stoic ancestors in the alternative universe also rewarded each other for being stoic, and or punished those who failed to be sufficiently stoic. Because there would always be a few exceptions to the rule, for example people with new mutations.
If the stoic ancestors consistently rewarded the people who demonstrated stoic virtues, for example by considering the virtues necessary for holding an important office or inheriting family property -- so that their more stoic kids would on average have better jobs, higher status, more money, and more kids that survived to adulthood (regardless of how much they would proclaim that things such as jobs, status, money, and kids don't really matter), and their less stoic kids on average ended up poor and childless -- then today, most of us would be genetically selected to be highly stoical. (Or perhaps, highly stoical until we safely get to the positions of power, and then corrupted by it.)
However, being more stoic wouldn't necessarily make us reasonable -- perhaps the stoic civilization would develop their own unreasonable behaviors. For example, I could imagine a stoic society that opposed science and progress because "meh, we don't need all that fancy new stuff; the true philosophers are content with whatever they have". Or they wouldn't develop medicine and cure diseases because "the only important thing is whether in your mind you are free"; etc.
On the other hand, if the stoic ancestors were like "eh, I don't care if that guy wants to be a king; I am okay with being a slave as long as my mind is free", then the stoics would be quickly outcompeted by... whoever showed up for the race.
It's an interesting piece, it tells you a lot, and clearly Emily Wilson has a warm appreciation for Epictetus.
But the overall framing seems to be guilty of the condescension of posterity. Specifically, the tone is: "isn't it a shame that Epictetus, despite his wisdom, wrote for other male slave-owners?"
There is probably a ton to say about the exact nature of slavery in Ancient Rome, how bad it was, etc. I'm not an expert but for sure everyone can agree that by modern standards slavery was not an acceptable employment institution. Set that to one side.
Essentially nobody in Rome believed slavery could be abolished. And everybody in Rome wrote for privileged men. (Maybe because being able to read was, like owning a private jet today, a very expensive privilege.)
So if you criticize someone for that, you have to explain why everyone else had the same blinkers. One answer is "of course that's because they were all privileged themselves!" Except Epictetus wasn't! And Romans did challenge slavery, but in different ways. St Paul doesn't say "let us have a revolution to abolish slavery" but he does say that in Christ there is neither slave nor free.
It seems pretty likely that a Roman analogue of the Communist Manifesto - a call for the political reorganization of society - simply could not have been written. Perhaps Roman society was not centralized in the way that 19th century capitalism was, and so simply wasn't amenable to top-down regime change in the way modern societies may be. Or perhaps the intellectual resources of modern social science simply weren't available that would enable people to think in this register.
If so, complaining that Romans didn't write the Communist Manifesto seems ahistorical, and kind of silly.