BMCR 2008.11.20, Theodore Scaltsas, The Philosophy of Epictetus

Theodore Scaltsas, Andrew S. Mason (ed.), The Philosophy of Epictetus.
Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2007.  Pp. 181.  ISBN
978-0-19-923307-6.  $59.95.

Reviewed by Thornton Lockwood, Boston University ([email protected])
Word count:  2306 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Epictetus, a former slave who lived in Rome during Nero's reign but was
exiled (along with all those who practiced philosophy in Rome) to
Greece by Domitian's decree in 93 CE, espoused an austere ethical
philosophy which aimed at happiness (eudaimonia), or tranquility
(ataraxia), through the delimitation of valuation to things within
one's control.  Although Epictetus never set to writing his beliefs,
his disciple Arrian recorded eight books of his sayings (entitled
Discourses [<greek>diatribai/</greek>] of which only four books
survive) and edited a compendium entitled the Handbook
(<greek>*)Egxeiri/dion</greek>).  In his preface to the volume under
review, editor Theodore Scaltsas writes that "there is no message that
would be of greater value in the face of today's threats to society
than Epictetus' 'bear and forbear.'" (1)  Although Epictetus'
"forbearance" is not exactly the philosophy of hope much in vogue in
contemporary politics, there is no doubt that Epictetus offers a
perennial source of strength and self-reliance.

The present volume derives from a conference held in 2001 devoted to
the further understanding of Epictetus and his philosophy.  Although
the contributors are major scholars in ancient philosophy, most of the
contributions are relatively brief examinations of select problems
within Epictetus' philosophy.  (The papers by Algra and
Dragona-Monachou are each over twenty-five pages long, but all the
remaining papers are under sixteen pages long and five of the papers
are twelve pages long or shorter.)  Although quantity obviously does
not determine quality, at times it felt as though the length of the
papers delimited their scope and argumentation.  Although the essays
are accessible to non-specialists, the volume lacks a general
introduction to the philosophy of Epictetus, and Andrew Mason's eight
page introduction to the volume is primarily concerned with summarizing
the individual papers in the volume.  The conference at which the
papers were delivered antedated the publication of A.A. Long's
Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford, 2002), which
stands as the most important and best general introduction to the
philosophy of Epictetus; most (but not all) of the authors situate
their theses against the claims of Long's volume since the edited
collection now postdates it.  The volume includes a bibliography of
works cited by the individual essays and a short index, but no index
locorum.

Several of the essays naturally fit together.  As Mason's introduction
notes, the essays by Cooper and Crivelli address the question of the
overall methodology of Epictetus, including its relationship to the
study of logic; the essays by Algra, Ierodiakonou, and Schofield
address aspects of Epicurus' theology; the essays by Sorabji, Erler,
and Dragona-Monachou examine questions related to Epictetus' notion of
the self; and the essays by Annas and Frede take up the relationship
between personhood, the "roles" or "offices" which humans play, and the
duties or obligations which derive from such roles.  Let me survey the
problems in each of these four clusters.

A glance at Epictetus' writings shows that   his philosophical
interests were  predominantly in ethical or practical questions.
Whereas one finds in the imperial Stoicism of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius
rhetorical appeals to moral improvement, in classical and Hellenistic
Stoicism of Zeno and Chrysippus, one finds logic and physics as
foundations of ethical theorizing.  When one turns to Epictetus, there
appears by contrast a profound concern with moral practice in a
non-rhetorical fashion yet without a detailed elaboration of its
relationship to more theoretical foundations.  Cooper's essay addresses
the relationship between moral theory and practice in Epictetus and
Crivelli takes up the place of logic within Epictetus' general
philosophy.  Following Jonathan Barnes' Logic and the Imperial Stoa
(Brill, 1997), Crivelli argues, through the explication of several
passages in the Discourses concerning the role of logic, that
Epictetus' ambivalence is misleading and that he had a positive if
ultimately ancillary role for logic within his overall philosophy.
Cooper argues that determining Epictetus' overall
methodology--including the relationship of moral theory to moral
practice--is complicated by the nature of the evidence, since the
Discourses consist largely of admonitions and protreptics addressed to
students rather than the formal course of instruction in Epictetus'
school. Cooper concludes that what Epictetus seeks in a student is "one
who will read Chrysippus' treatises with care and retention, and will
put into effect in their daily lives the lessons Chrysippus has to
teach" (15).

The question of theology in Epictetus' writings arises at several
levels.  Often Epictetus invokes the will of god in his writings, but
what is the nature of that god?  Like Socrates in the Apology,
Epictetus speaks of philosophy as a divine mission, but in what sense
does he see the life of philosophy as a divine command? Is Epictetus'
god -- which is often described in quasi personal terms, including as
an object of prayer -- consistent with the god of earlier Stoicism? The
essays by Algra, Ierodiakonou, and Schofield touch upon facets of these
questions.  Algra's essay is the most expansive and helpfully situates
the question of Epictetus' theology within scholarly debates of the
last century.  Algra argues that determining whether Epictetus'
theology is heterodox within Stoicism first requires clarification of
the contested concepts of pantheism and theism.  The overall thrust of
her argument is  "that early Stoicism was not as exclusively
pantheistic as it is often supposed to be, whereas on the other hand
the kind of personalistic theism that we may attribute to Epictetus
does not appear to have been all that radical or unheard of after all"
(36). As Algra points out, the relationship between god and man in
early Stoicism is like that between sages -- with the qualification
that such a god, as perfect rationality, is an ideal or limit to which
humans can aspire.  The remainder of Algra's essay shows how Epictetus'
"personalized" concept of god is more a difference in emphasis than a
departure from Stoic orthodoxy;  moreover, the literary style of the
Discourses and Epictetus' Socratic spirit can account for such
differences.

Ierodiakonou's and Schofield's essays help unpack Epictetus'
idiosyncratic spirit concerning his claim that the role of the
philosopher is one assigned by God as a divine mission.  The trope
occurs in several places in the Discourses (which Ierodiakonou aptly
surveys), including Discourses III.22 (which is the focus of
Schofield's essay), wherein Epictetus claims that the true philosopher
(in the case under discussion, a Cynic) has been sent by Zeus  as a
messenger (<greek>a)/ggelos</greek>) and scout
(<greek>kata/skopos</greek>) for humanity.  For Ierodiakonou,
Discourses III.22 (with several other passages) illustrates how
Epictetus generally conceives of the philosopher as one who is to scout
out the enemies of humanity (namely, those things which really harm
humans) and to announce the god's will in everyday life, both in
discourses and by means of example.  At the same time -- echoing
details in Algra's essay -- she shows how such a messenger (and his
announcements about conversion and salvation)  is solely secular and
different from the "messengers" (or angels) of Christianity.   For
Schofield, Discourses III.22 serves as a rare text for unpacking
Diogenes the Cynic's actual practice as philosophy.  Whereas
Ierodiakonou sheds light on how Epictetus views philosophy as a divine
vocation, Schofield sheds light on how a philosopher who had pondered
the paradoxes and practices of Diogenes interpreted that lifestyle.
The two essays together thus illume the broader and more narrow nuances
of Discourses III.22.

The third cluster of essays--those by Sorabji, Erler, and
Dragona-Monachou--are loosely united insofar as they touch upon topics
related to the notion of "self"  in Epictetus' philosophy.  All three
essays are also comparative: Sorabji juxtaposes Epictetus' account of
proairesis with that found in Aristotle (and to a lesser degree,
Neoplatonic philosophy); Erler juxtaposes Epictetus' account of how to
respond to the fear of death with that given by Socrates in the Phaedo;
and Dragona-Monachou traces parallels she finds between Epictetus and
Wittgenstein on the notion of freedom.  Sorabji's eleven page essay
lays out the terrain of the problem by showing that Epictetus makes use
of several different senses of "self" in his writings (including one
sense in which he identifies the self with a sense of proairesis or
"rational decision).  Erler's essay argues that the metaphor of "the
child in man"  -- the irrational element within the self that wrongly
fears death, even though it is beyond one's control -- which Epictetus
uses in Discourses II.1 likely derives from the Socratic metaphor used
in the Phaedo (77e; see also Crito 46c) and illustrates the preparatory
training Epictetus directs towards the young men who seek to follow
him.  Finally, Dragona-Morgana situates Epictetus within the scholarly
debate concerning the origins of the "free will problem" in classical
philosophy and argues that Epictetus' notion of freedom is one based
primarily on autonomy or self-mastery (or in Suzanne Bobzien's
words--with which Dragona-Morgana concurs--"freedom through
self-restriction" [[1]]).

The fourth cluster of papers--those by Annas and the late Michael
Frede--strike me as the richest contributions of the volume, and thus
fittingly its conclusion.  Both are concerned with the ways in which
Epictetus views ethical obligations as situational--for instance, that
my obligations are determined by the roles that I play, such as whether
I am a parent, an employer, a spouse, etc.--and yet nonetheless derived
from a single unified rational "person" who is more than just the sum
of his roles.  Annas  addresses the relationship between our
situational roles and personhood by juxtaposing Epictetus' account with
modern ways around the problem.  From a modern perspective, there
appears to be at least potentially a conflict between one's obligations
as a rational being and those related to a person's embeddedness in
specific roles: what reason commands me to do impartially seems quite
likely to conflict with the loyalty a sibling might require of me.  But
the practical nature of Epictetus' (and, for Annas, most ancient
ethical theory) obviates this conflict. As Annas puts it at one point,
"given that our aim as Stoics is to achieve the good by becoming
virtuous, this is to be found not in running away from our commitments,
or by abstracting from our socially embedded roles and relationships.
Rather, we seek the good from within those relationships, in a way best
captured by what can be called aspiring to the Stoic ideal in our
everyday life" (148). Annas considers criticisms against such a view
but sets it out as a plausible, defensible ethical theory.

Whereas Annas goes at the question in a sense from the side of our
embedded commitments, Frede explores the question from the perspective
of the unified "person" (or for Epictetus, <greek>pro/swpon</greek>).
Frede unpacks the notion of "person" in Epictetus' writings, separating
it both from modern, post Lockean notions of a person (for instance,
the sense that a person is "a thinking intelligent being, that has
reason and reflection" [Essay on Human Understanding, II.27.11]) and
from the different senses of person in Cicero, Seneca, and Panaetius.
(As Frede intriguingly notes, "It is an obvious fact, but one little
attention has been paid to, that down to the end of the fourth century
BC nobody in extant Greek literature talks of human beings as 'humans.'
Neither Plato nor Aristotle in their voluminous works ever speaks of
human beings as 'persons' in any sense of the word" (157).) Epictetus'
distinctive contribution to the notion of person comes out most clearly
in his reflection on the Roman senator Helvidius Priscus who faced
persecution from Emperor Vespasian (Discourses I.2.19-21).  Given that
Helvidius Priscus is "the person who he is, " as long as he is on the
rolls of the senate he has an obligation to attend the Senate
regardless of whether he is threatened; but, were he removed from the
rolls, no longer does his "person" include duties towards the senate
(at least qua senator).  Thus, for Epictetus, person means "the sort of
person somebody is," that is, personhood integrates the various
roles--senator, parent, sibling, spouse--one "plays."  (Theatrical
language is appropriate in part because this notion of
<greek>pro/swpon</greek> picks up on a secondary meaning of the term as
"mask.")  With respect to moral obligations, Frede's analysis explains
one of the more challenging issues in Epictetus' ethical thought
concerning the place of moral rules.  Since every "person" is different
(common characteristics like reason notwithstanding), it follows that
"living a good life, acting as you ought to act, does not amount to the
same thing for everybody.  It is relative to the sort of person you
are. There is not a single set of rules which define, let along decide,
how one should act, which hold for everybody." (163)

As noted at the outset, evaluation of the volume is complicated because
of the brevity of some of its offerings.  Frede's essay stands out as
one which will be of interest not only to scholars of ancient
philosophy, but also to those interested in the idea of personhood and
that concept's history.  Specialists in ancient Greek philosophy will
find the essays by Algra and Annas especially worthy of examination
independent of interest in Stoic ethics or theology.  The pieces by
Schofield and Sorabji display the erudition and insight one expects
from their authors, although the brevity of their pieces limits the
scope of their contributions.  The remaining essays are all carefully
crafted pieces which will be of interest primarily to scholars working
within the philosophy of Stoicism.

1.   The Relevance of Moral Theory to Moral Improvement in Epictetus
(John M. Cooper)
2.   Epictetus and Logic (Paolo Crivelli)
3.   Epictetus and Stoic Theology (Keimpe Algra)
4.   The Philosopher as God's Messenger (Katerina Ierodiakonou)
5.   Epictetus on Cynicism (Malcolm Schofield)
6.   Epictetus on proairesis and Self (Richard Sorabji)
7.   Death is a Bugbear: Socratic 'Epode' and Epictetus' Philosophy of
the Self (Michael Erler)
8.   Epictetus on Freedom: Parallels between Epictetus and Wittgenstein
(Myrto Dragona-Monachou)
9.   Epictetus on Moral Perspectives (Julia Annas)
10.  A Notion of a Person in Epictetus (Michael Frede)
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Notes:


1.   See S. Bobzien, "Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relaton to
Ethics," in R. Sorabji, ed., Aristotle and After. Bulletin of the
Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 68 (1997): 79.