“Consider who you are. First of all, a human being, that is to say, one who has no faculty more authoritative than choice, but subordinates everything else to that, keeping choice itself free from enslavement and subjection.”
Epictetus (Discourses 2.10.1)
It is within the self that we are in the domain of our control. This is why Stoics use the term “externals” when they discuss what is neither good nor bad.
The material universe is indifferent. Reality itself has no meaning. While all human action points to some goal, reality itself is not a sign that points to anything, since it is a totality. The universe is complete at every instant, it is perfect, and so it does not need to yearn or aim as the human being does.
And so in Stoicism no object in the universe is intrinsically good or bad. Everything is equally worthless. The contents of a latrine are of no less nor more value than the contents of a bank vault to the indifferent eyes of the universe. The same can be said of events. The universe isn’t scandalised by violence, and is equally indifferent to acts of kindness. This is why all things outside of the domain of the mind are called “indifferents” in Stoic parlance.
It is only in the mind that good and bad exists. Epictetus teaches us,
“Remember that what insults you isn’t the person who abuses you or hits you, but your judgement that such people are insulting you. So whenever anyone irritates you, recognize that it is your opinion that has irritated you. Try above all, then, not to allow yourself to be carried away by the impression; for if you delay things and gain time to think, you’ll find it easier to gain control of yourself.” (Enchiridion 20. My emphasis.)
In short, you can decide if anything has upset or irritated you. Understanding this is the difference between bliss and anxiety. We’ll have the tendency to get upset easily for as long as we confuse what is out of our control with what is in our control.
In ancient Stoicism the destiny of the world plays out according to a providential order. Both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius disparage or denigrate both matter and the course of events, as they play out in the physical world, with the goal of fully clarifying what is free and fully in our control. To the Stoic of today, this idea stands up whether or not we believe in providential order.
“Remember if you mistake what is naturally inferior for what is sovereign and free, and what is not your business for your own, you’ll meet with disappointment, grief and worry and be at odds with God and man.” (E. 1.3 My emphasis.)
But it’s also an idea, ever present in the principle texts of Stoicism, that is often interpreted from the wrong angle — that you can’t control the course of events, but you can control your response to those events.
This is obvious and not a distinctly Stoic idea. The distinctly Stoic idea is that you have full control over your power of judgement which is all that one needs to live a life of excellence, that we are self-sufficient in achieving peace of mind, no matter the circumstances we face. But the “only way to be free is to look down on externals.” (E.19).
This is why Stoic ethics seem so alien to the modern reader. Consider this passage from the Discourses of Epictetus, in which the philosopher trains his students in how to regard tyrants. When threatened with imprisonment and torture, the Stoic would respond like this,
“Zeus himself has given me my freedom. He wasn’t going to allow any son of his to be enslaved. You’re the master of my corpse, help yourself to that.”
In the ancient world, vast numbers of people were enslaved, including Epictetus himself. Poverty, war, famine, violent crime and disease were common. The social means to control these problems — human rights, welfare, effective diplomacy, policing and healthcare — were non-existent.
To the ancient person, the idea that we’re not in control of events would have been obvious, the popularity of divination and interpreting omens among all classes is testament to this fact. People believed the future was determined and they were desperate to know what was in store.
That they were in control of something would have been positive news. You could say it’s the gospel of Stoicism — that even slaves are kings in the domain of their own soul.
Choice
Prohairesis, a term that Epictetus used often, is roughly translated as “choice”, “will” or “volition”. The idea is central to the philosopher’s teaching and stands at the intersection of the Stoic understanding of the self and the universe. It’s an idea that demonstrates how different Stoic ethics are from the unwritten rules that regulate our lives today.
While in modern terms, prohairesis is a consolation, in ancient terms, it was the grand prize. There is nothing therapeutic in the austerity of Stoic texts about ethics, only that you may choose to be sad or evil or you may choose to be happy and righteous.
It’s the power of deliberation that makes all the difference. Consider the passage above about being slapped. You felt the insult, your rational mind can do the rest. Why? Because it is free to do so.
Now consider that Epictetus grew up a slave. Was he slapped across the face? We can guess that he probably was. He was a slave in body, but in mind he was free to refuse the insult.
Our own judgement is the only means by which we can determine things to be good or bad. Other people can tell us what is good or bad, but it’s up to us if we take their advice. Gold itself doesn’t tell us it is beautiful or valuable. That’s up to us.
Epictetus points out that “no art or faculty” can approve or disapprove of itself except prohairesis — our power to choose. This makes every other faculty subordinate to prohairesis, which is the “best” faculty.
The philosopher runs through some examples. The art of grammar can judge writing, it will help you choose the words to put into a letter. But the art of grammar will not help you decide whether you send the letter in the first place. Same with music — musical theory will help you construct a melody, but not the appropriate time to play your melody.
Furthermore, the judgement of prohairesis can judge itself. It is “the faculty that takes itself and everything else as the object of study.” You can, in hindsight, regret the letter you decided to send. As such, we have absolute control over this faculty.
The Archer
On a number of occasions in the ancient literature, the Stoic analogy of the archer appears. We see the most famous example in Cicero’s fictitious dialogue with Cato the Younger in De Finibus (On the Ends of Moral Good and Evil). We also see the analogy appear in the Anthology of Stobaeus who documents the Stoicism of Diogenes, Antipater, and Panaetius — three leading thinkers of a crucial era of Stoicism as it became an international philosophy.
Modern writers package up this metaphor as a neat pre-emptive consolation for disappointment — that we can put all our effort into shooting straight, but once the arrow leaves the bowstring, we have no control over its flight.
This is undoubtedly a pretty interpretation, but it isn’t really the meaning intended. This reading is heavily skewed by the modern “dichotomy of control” reading of Stoic prohairesis — that you can’t control what happens to you but you can control how you respond. Modern writers append to this metaphor the notion that the arrow may blow off course, for example. But nowhere in the ancient texts is this possibility mentioned.
The point of the metaphor is that hitting any target — in this case, any of the four virtues, is subordinate to the one true goal of living in accordance with nature.
Antipater saw the end of all human action as doing “everything in one’s power continuously and undeviatingly with a view to obtaining the predominating things which accord with nature.” (Stobaeus II, 76)
This idea of control was controversial. The Skeptics, a rival school of philosophy, questioned whether the Stoics had any idea of what they actually wanted. What were these “predominating things”? Were they subjectively chosen? What was the limit of these things?
The Stoic message was diluted by many goals — some internal, such as the four cardinal virtues, and some external, such as “preferred indifferents” — the most basic example being food and drink — that are beneficial to living well.
The analogy of the archer is the response to anybody who questions Stoicism’s clarity about goals. It is our will that we have full control of, and it is here that we seek “to shoot straight” consistently so that we may “select” our targets — to be wise, to be courageous, to be just, to be moderate — without seeking them as the ends in themselves. In this way, Stoicism has one goal with multiple outcomes.
It’s unwise to set goals in domains where you have no control, so the Stoics encourage us to cultivate virtue within the domain of the mind. The goal of Stoicism is to live in accordance with nature — that is, to live a rational life, since being rational is natural — Oikeiosis — to the human being.
The Stoics distinguish between shooting straight and striking the target. While we may “select” our targets, it is doing everything we can to hit the target — learning to shoot straight — that is really the goal. If we learn to shoot straight we can hit many and different targets. The end goal is doing everything you can to be virtuous, from this we can distinguish the actual achievement of virtue in the ways it manifests in our lives.
Another use of the analogy is from Panaetius (Stobaeus 2.63), who asks us to imagine a single target set up for many archers. One archer would aim for the bullseye, one for the white line, one for the red line. In each case of hitting these, the archers would be on target. They have different ways of hitting the target, but shooting straight and well is necessary in each case.
This mirrors the Stoic theory of action, by which we set our intentions to be reasonable and pure in the hope that our real world actions will make a positive difference to the human community. Those actions themselves are indifferent, just like everything else in the world, it is the intentions — over which we have full control, that can or can’t be virtuous. Our intentions are the shooting straight part of archery.
The Fire Within
In the teachings of Epictetus, and the reflections of Marcus, we ought to pay our full philosophical attention to that which we can fully control. The lesson to be learned here is that cultivating virtue is within your power, that you have no excuses.
“It is not events that disturb people,” Epictetus taught, “it is their judgements concerning them.” These “disturbances” are of our making, since we have the choice to interpret the impressions of the world around us. The radical idea within Stoicism is that it’s not that we must learn control, it’s that we must shatter the illusion that we are not in control in the domain of the mind.
Epictetus acknowledges that this is not easy. The Stoic theory of the self allows control only to mature human beings. This is perhaps because children are alienated from themselves by their utter dependence on others. And so we start adult life with the expectations that we have some control over externals, and little control over our emotions. These expectations have a momentum that can flow through a lifespan.
Our job as Stoics is to train ourselves firstly to actually accept the notion that we have control, even when it seems like we do not, and secondly to discipline our faculty to control — of desire and aversion, of assent, and of intention.
It seems like we have little inward control because of the mechanisms of what Seneca treated as “pre-emotions”. These are visceral responses from the substrate of the body — immediate feelings like shock, fright, and rage. Even a wise Stoic could lose the colour in their complexion in a sudden moment of heavy turbulence on a plane. Fear is natural as long as it is unexpected.
Yet reason can soon quench spontaneous feelings as long as we exercise it properly. We can reason that it’s only turbulence, and that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if we die anyway. As long as we are living in the present, the future is indifferent. This kind of reasoning is how we are in control.
For those who are in control, nothing bad can happen. Consider again the omen. Epictetus tells us that no omen is bad, in fact, all omens are good if we want them to be because we can derive benefit even from circumstances others would consider to be bad.
“If you hear a raven croak inauspiciously, do not be alarmed by the impression. Make a mental distinction at once, and say, ‘These omens hold no significance for me; they only pertain to my body, property, family, or reputation. For me every sign is auspicious, if I want it to be, because, whatever happens, I can derive some benefit from it.’” (E.18. My emphasis.)
In the same spirit, Marcus compares the ruling power within us to be like a fire. It’s a fire that is capable of consuming anything. All the bad things we come by, all the bad situations we are in, will make this fire burn higher and more brightly if we will that to be so. Obstacles in our way are actually the way to virtue, if we choose them to be so.
Like the universe itself, we can be complete at every moment if we can control our will to align with logical necessity. Being rational is a state of mind in which we run with the grain of the cosmos, since reason mirrors the logical necessity underlying nature.
Marcus reflects on the workings of the rational soul as being unlike dance or theatre, in which the action is incomplete if something interrupts the proceedings. Rational thinking is complete at every moment — like the flame of a fire, mirroring the completeness of the cosmos.
To understand this is to understand that you have total control over your deliberations, to abandon the fragmented ego, to assume a universal perspective on the workings of the world and our place in it.
You are capable then of virtue no matter what the circumstances, and capable of virtue at every moment. Our freedom endows us with the privelege of being able to conform, voluntarily and uninhibited, to the unity and self-coherence of the cosmos from instant to instant.
It is the only goal worth striving for, since its acheivement radiates goodness through every other facet of our lives. Keep the fire burning.
That last paragraph is stunning. But getting rid of the ego is a lifelong battle. That attainment is beyond me.
Wonderful read, thank you.