Epictetus

Like a lot of people I have been appalled at the decline in school standards since the sixties generation took over. Not only academic standards have taken a beating, but also standards of behaviour. Stories of schoolyard bullying are a common topic of newspaper editorials. Boorish behaviour in public is rampant. I have long felt that much of the problem is due to the devaluation of boys that has taken place through the influence of feminism. Boys are expected to become like little girls, supposedly more sensitive and caring. Bah. Boys are different from girls. Boys need structure and coherence. I have just stumble across a little book that would form a wonderful template for a boy's education in the Discourses of Epictetus. Epictetus was a Greek philosopher of the Stoic school who lived in the first century AD. Thanks to my lack of a systematic education I was not familiar with the name. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor/philosopher whose "Meditations" are still widely read, is the only Stoic I have read at all. This slim volume of Epictetus' Discourses looked quite demure lying casually on the library bookshelf and I couldn't resist it. It's one of those very inexpensive Dover editions and was ably translated by P.E. Matheson. The footnotes are brief but informative.
And a very interesting little book it is. It's not really about theory so much as the application of sound philosophical principals to a man's life. I find much of it quite admirable and rather wish it was required reading for aspiring teachers...particularly for teachers of boys.
Right from the start it's easy to see that Epictetus' sound philosophical principals are firmly rooted in Platonic idealism. "...for this alone of the faculties [Reason] we have recieved is created to comprehend even its own nature..."
"But what says Zeus? 'Epictetus, if it were possible I would have made your body and your possessions (those trifles you prize) free and untramelled. But as things are-never forget this-this body is not yours, it is but a clever mixture of clay. But since I could not make it free, I gave you a portion in our divinity, this faculty of impulse to act and not to act, of will to get and to avoid [Orexis and ekklesis are the Greek words, the footnote tells us], in a word the faculty which can turn perceptions to right use. If you pay heed to this, and put your affairs in its keeping, you will never suffer let or hindrance, you will not groan, you will blame no man, you will flatter none. What then? Does all this seem but little to you?"
The key to living a good life is to only worry about things over which we have some control. "'When will the west wind blow?' When it so chooses, good sir, or when Aeolus chooses. For god made Aeolus master of the winds, not you...We must make the best of those things that are in our power and take the rest as nature gives it. What do you mean by 'nature?' I mean, god's will."
"'What? am I to be beheaded now, and I alone?'
"Why? would you have had all beheaded, to give you consolation?"
"...I must die, but must I die groaning?"
The theme throughout is that the powers of the world may be able to harm a man's body but they cannot touch his spirit. The key is to remember that we are all the children of God, that we are of two natures, the body we share with animals, the mind and Reason we share with God. It behooves men to value the part of us we share with God above the part of us we share with the beasts. Those who prefer their kinship with beasts become savage, brutal, foul mouthed, "no better than a fox or the meanest and most miserable of creatures."
How are men to avoid this dismal fate? Certainly not from books, Epictetus tells us. Books are fine as far as they go but unless a man learns to avoid feeling sorry for himself when things go wrong he has learned nothing. Be like Socrates, who calmly accepted the verdict and drank his hemlock, saying, "if it pleases the gods, so be it." Epictetus' advice is to ask Zeus: "...send me what trial thou wilt; for I have endowments and resources, given me by thee, to bring myself honor through what befalls."
It's hard to imagine a greater contrast to how boys are taught now. In fact, I am convinced that boys need a different sort of education than girls. Boys respond to ideas of nobility and courage, in fact need them in order to become men. The generation coming to manhood now has been taught largely by feminists who dislike boys and have no sympathy with manly virtues. Walking down the street here in downtown Victoria it's hard to keep from stumbling over all the scruffy males who have never learned to have a sense of shame or honor. They have no compunctions against rummaging through a trash can for a leftover big mac or picking out butts from the gutter. According to the feminists who deprived them of a proper education we are now to feel sorry for them. They are taught to feel sorry for themselves. They are taught that the miserable state they find themselves in is due to some injustice inflicted on them by an unfair, uncaring capitalist society. But for the antipoverty groups the 'homeless' are really only tools for their agenda. The more 'homeless' there are the better.
There are lots of things to like about Epictetus, but what stands out the most is his good sense. There will be trials in life, but we have been given the resources to deal with them. He is aware of the various doubts people have about God: Concerning the gods there are some who say the Divine doesn't exist, others that it exists but is inactive and indifferent...And so on. But it's easy to tell his position on the matter. Without the assumption of men having a share in the divine none of his advice makes any sense. Speaking of the ass (the beast of burden...pick up truck of the Roman empire) he makes the assertion that it is made for our use and does not share our spark of the divine. "Are not they too God's works?" he is asked. "They are," he replies, "but not his principal works, nor parts of the Divine. But you are a principal work, a fragment of God himself, you have in yourself a part of him."
This is no cause for arrogance, but for humility and a devotion to duty:
"It is no ordinary task merely to fulfill man's promise. For what is Man? A rational animal subject to death. At once we ask, from what does the rational element distinguish us? From wild beasts. And from what else? From sheep and the like. Look to it that you do nothing like a wild beast, else you destroy the Man in you and fail to fulfil his promise. See that you do not act like sheep, or else again the Man in you perishes.
You ask how we act like sheep?
When we consult the belly, or our passions, when our actions are random or dirty or inconsiderate, are we not falling away to the state of sheep? What do we destroy? The faculty of reason. When our actions are combative, mischievous angry and rude, do we not fall away and become wild beasts? In a word, some of us are great beasts, and others are small but base-natured beasts, which give occasion to say, 'Nay, rather let me be food for a lion." All these are actions by which the calling of man is destroyed."
There are quibbles I might have with some of his ideas, but overall I am amazed at how small are the adjustments that must be made to make it intelligible to a modern reader. Not only that, his ideas are portable to different cultures and religions. How could even an Imam or a hard core atheist object to his views? Resistance would still be found among the man-hating campus feminists, but they hate everything. Are you a young man who is thinking of taking up teaching? Ignore all the edpsych garbage. Read Epictetus. Or are you the father of a newborn son? Read Epictetus and throw Doctor Spock in the garbage where he belongs. And marvel at all the things you should have been taught as you were growing up but weren't. And if you are the mother of a young son you might find it a fascinating glimpse of what it means to be a man.