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Epictetus as Socratic mentor1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
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In Tom Wolfe's most recent novel, A Man In Full, a young Californian, down on his luck, converts a macho sixty-year old tycoon, facing financial ruin, to Stoicism. The young man, Conrad, has miraculously escaped from the Santa Rita gaol as a result of an earthquake. Shortly before, he had discovered Epictetus in a book called The Stoics, a book he had been sent mistakenly in place of a riveting thriller by his favourite author with the title, The Stoics' Game. He rapidly comes across this passage: ‘I [Zeus] gave you a portion of our divinity, a spark from our own fire, the power to act and not to act, the will to get and the will to avoid. If you pay heed to this, you will not groan, you will blame no man, you will flatter none’ (p. 398). Conrad is hooked. An innocent among a bunch of hideous felons, he asks himself: ‘What would Epictetus have done with this bunch? What could he have done? How could you apply his lessons two thousand years later, in this grimy gray pod, this pigsty full of beasts who grunted about mother-fuckin this and mother-fuckin that?’ (p. 410). Conrad memorises chunks of Epictetus. He refers a series of challenges to Zeus, overcomes a thug twice his size, and radiates Stoic strength. At the end, hired as a male nurse in Atlanta for the massive but now ailing Croker, the about-to-be ruined tycoon, Conrad tells Croker about the Stoic Zeus and Epictetus. Croker was on the point of clinching a deal that would have saved him from bankruptcy at the cost of compromising his Georgian sense of honour. Instead, he gives a press conference, disavows all interest in wealth, parrots Epictetus to the bemused Atlanta elite, and walks away from everything that had previously defined his life. At the end we learn that he has become a highly successful televangelist, with a programme called ‘The Stoic's Hour’.
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References
2 Wolfe's book is published by Farrar Straus Giroux (New York, 1998). The translations of Epictetus that he includes are drawn from The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. Oates, Whitney J. (New York, 1940)Google Scholar.
3 The Chicago Tribune of 22 January, 1999 ran a piece headed ‘Epictetus the Stoic is hot again, thanks to Tom Wolfe’, and the article noted how sales of Epictetus have shot up. In an interview, published in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, 29 November 1998, Wolfe tells of how he ‘came across an account of an ordeal by an American pilot shot down in Vietnam [James Stockdale]. I remember him saying that if he had not taken a philosophy course at the Naval Academy he would never have survived the ordeal – and the one name that came back to him was Epictetus.’ Either Wolfe's source or his memory is in error because Stockdale learned his Epictetus at Stanford University. See Stockdale, J. B., Courage under Fire. Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (Stanford, 1993)Google Scholar. An extract from this is included in the new Everyman edition of Epictetus, ed. C. Gill (London/Vermont, 1995) 347–9.
4 Published in English transl. by Hurley, R. as The Care of the Self = vol. 3Google Scholar of Foucault's, M.The History of Sexuality (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. For the influence of Stoicism on modern ethics, see Becker, L. C., A New Stoicism (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar, which argues for a ‘secular’ version of ancient Stoicism, defending this as the basis for an ethical theory that successfully combines virtue with happiness.
5 See Hadot, P., Exercises spirituels et philosophic antique (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar, transl. as Philosophy as a Way of Life, by Davidson, A. (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1995)Google Scholar; La Citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle (Paris. 1992)Google Scholar, transl. as The Inner Citadel. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, by Chase, M. (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar; and Qu'est-ce que la philosophic antique (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar.
6 See above n. 3. Wolfe is not the first American novelist to refer to Epictetus. Dreiser, Theodore wrote a novel called The Stoic (1947)Google Scholar, the third part of his largely forgotten trilogy about the rise and fall of Frank Cowperwood, also (like Wolfe's Croker) a ruthless tycoon; and in Dreiser's much earlier and celebrated novel, Sister Carrie, we read (p. 434 of the Modern Library ed., New York, 1999): ‘It is the unintellectual miser who sweats blood at the loss of a hundred dollars. It is the Epictetus who smiles when the last vestige of physical welfare is removed’. See also the allusion to Epictetus in Jack Higgins' novel Thunder Point (New York, 1994) 143Google Scholar.
7 See Zanker, P., The Mask of Socrates (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1995) 256–66Google Scholar.
8 Aulus Gellius I.2.1–13.
9 ‘Euphrates of Tyre’, in Sorabji, R., ed., Aristotle and After, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, suppl. 68 (London, 1997) 1–12Google Scholar.
10 On Arrian's role in publishing Epictetus, I am completely in agreement with Hadot, I., Simplicius. Commentaire sur le Manuel d' Epictète (Leiden, 1996) 153–4Google Scholar, who defends the essential authenticity of the record; cf. my remarks in ‘Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius’, in Luce, T. J., ed., Ancient Writers II (New York, 1985) 989–90Google Scholar. This is compatible with R. Dobbin's interesting proposal that Epictetus himself ‘took charge of effecting his lectures' transition’ to written form, Epictetus. Discourses. Book I (Oxford, 1998) xxi–xxiiiGoogle Scholar.
11 See Schenkl, H., Epictetus. Dissertationes ab Arriano Digestae, ed. maior (Teubner, Leipzig, 1916, repr. Stuttgart, 1965) 1–2Google Scholar.
12 See Schenkl (above n. 11) xxxiii–xxxv.
13 Descriptions of the discourses as ‘diatribes’ persist in Dobbin's excellent book (above n.10) xxii–xxiii, and I myself followed the fashion many years ago; see A. A. Long, in T. J. Luce (above n. 10) 995–6. Its shortcomings were already pointed out by Halbauer, O., De Diatribis Epicteti (Leipzig, 1911)Google Scholar, and the existence of the ‘diatribe’ as an especially Cynic/Stoic literary form has been effectively demolished by Jocelyn, H., Liverpool Classical Monthly 4.7 (1979) 145–6Google Scholar, and 8.6 (1983) 89–91, followed by Douglas, A.E., in Powell, J., ed., Cicero the Philosopher (Oxford, 1995) 198–9Google Scholar.
14 See II.4; II.14; II.24; III.4; III.7; III.9, and cf. Millar, F., ‘Epictetus and the imperial court’. Journal of Roman Studies 55 (1965) 141–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 On Epictetus and logic, see Barnes, J., Logic and the Imperial Stoa (Leiden, 1997)Google Scholar. I specify theology as distinct from physics for Epictetus' curriculum because he is quite reticent about the physical details of cosmology as distinct from divine providence. Why he differs in this respect from Seneca and Marcus Aurelius is much too large a question for me to explore in this paper, but I am sure that part of the explanation involves his very deliberate focus on Socrates as the ideal paradigm for himself and his students. See Epictetus, fr. 1, which echoes Socrates' well-known disclaimers concerning physical speculation. Barnes (25–7) offers a quite different interpretation of this text, attempting (unsuccessfully in my opinion) to find in it a proof that ‘Epictetus took physics to be a necessary part of philosophical study’. Yet physics, in the sense that Barnes intends, is strikingly absent from Epictetus' triad of topics for his students to study (see III.2).
16 See e.g. III.3.9: III.10.19; III.17.8; III.21.5; III.26.8; IV.1.43; Ench. 30, 43.
17 See Barnes, (above n. 15), 43–55. I largely agree with his interpretation of II.19 and his recognition of Epictetus' ‘heavy irony’. But I also think Epictetus is sincere when he says ‘I don't know’ [which option to adopt as regards the Master Argument]. His point to his students would then be: when you don't know something important, admit it, and make every effort to arrive at a critical judgment of your own, but don't trot out encyclopaedic information. For positive assessments of logic, see I.7; I.8; I.17; I.27; II.20. For criticism of mistaken priorities or mere parroting, see I.4; I.26.9; II.9.15; II.13.26; II.16.3; II.17.34; II.21.17.
18 Scholars have not missed the importance of Socrates to Epictetus, but I know of no treatment which probes it deeply, and it is barely mentioned in the classic works of Bonhöffer, A.: Epiclet und die Stoa (Stuttgart, 1890)Google Scholar and Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet (Stuttgart, 1894)Google Scholar. The only study that treats it with some thor-oughness is Döring, K., in a chapter of his Exemplum Socratis (Wiesbaden, 1979)Google Scholar, and his approach is more descriptive than analytical; see also Jagu, A., Epictète et Platon (Paris, 1946)Google Scholar. Even if T. Wirth were right, in treating Arrian as the essential author of the discourses, modelling himself on Xenophon's, Memorabilia (Museum Helveticum 24 (1967) 149–89, 197–216)Google Scholar, Epictetus' Socrates echoes Plato far more than Xenophon. For criticism of Wirth, see Long (above n. 10) 989–90, and I. Hadot (above n. 10) 153–5. For an extensive selection of Epictetus' allusions to Plato's Socrates, see Long, A. A., Stoic Studies (Cambridge, 1996) 2 n. 2Google Scholar.
19 See A. A. Long, ‘Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy’ = ch. 1 of Stoic Studies (above n. 18).
20 I.4.24; I.9.22–5; I.12.23; I.29.16–19, 29, 65–6; II.2.8–9, 18; II.5.18–19; II.16.35; III.1.19–21; III. 18.4; III.24.99; IV.1.123; IV.1.159–69; Ench. 46, 51, 53.
21 See Seneca, Ep. 13.14; 24.4; 64.10; 67.7; 71.16.
22 Cicero's references to Socrates are most frequent and most engaged in the Tusculans: see I.71, I.97–9 (the celebrated translation of Socrates' peroration from Plato's Apology), I.103, III.31, V.35–6, etc.
23 Although ‘stretching a finger thus or thus’ was a standard example in Stoicism of something ‘absolutely indifferent in itself’ (SVF 3.118), Epictetus alludes to it here to make the equally Stoic point that even this trivial action can and should be performed intelligently (phronimōs; see SVF 3.627).
24 Epictetus begins II.17 by saying that the first task of one who does philosophy is to remove the conceit of thinking that he knows. For his concern with standards and criteria, cf. I.11; I.17.8; I.28.28–30; III.3.14.
25 Euth. 7c; Prot. 356b-357a.
26 Epictetus can hardly have known the works of Sextus Empiricus, but he wa s clearly aware of the Pyrrhonist revival, see I.27.2, 14, where he cites Pyrrho alongside the Academic sceptics. The way he talks about conflict of opinions and the inquiry that it motivates suggests to me that he was familiar with some neo-Pyrrhonist work; cf. Sextus, , PH 1.12 and 29Google Scholar.
27 Drawing on Xenophon, Mem. III.9.8 and Plato, , Philebus 48b ff.Google Scholar The text is too condensed to be thoroughly clear. I conjecture its sense as follows: the interlocutor starts by taking malice to be pleasure in someone else's misfortunes (cf. Plato, , Phileb. 48cGoogle Scholar). Under challenge, he accepts that malice is a painful emotion, contradicting his initial claim. He then agrees that it cannot be pain aroused by others' misfortunes. So he is prompted to redefine malice as pain taken in someone else's good fortunes (cf. Cicero, , Tusc. III.21Google Scholar = SVF 1.434), a complete reversal of his starting-point.
28 I draw on Barnes' translation, which nicely captures the pedantically logical language. Logic and the Imperial Stoa, 29.
29 See Plato, , Gorgias 485dGoogle Scholar, where Callicles charges Socrates with ‘twittering in a corner with three or four young men’.
30 Barnes, , Logic and the Imperial Stoa, 29Google Scholar.
31 That is to say, Epictetus is telling his students that they shouldn't try to outdo Socrates and shouldn't worry about Callicles' taunt. I am grateful to the journal's referee for criticising my original formulation of this point. On the other hand, I have doubts about the referee's suggestion that ‘Epictetus, having tried the game [of playing Socrates on the streets of Rome] when he was younger, now thinks of himself as “twittering in a corner” – namely his school in Nicopolis.’ For in that school he was frequently visited by prominent Romans and did not mince words in his conversations with them.
32 Texts that should be compared with II.26 include I.2.1–4, I.28.I–4, and the whole of I.11, which is a full fledged ‘Soeratic’ elenehus; there Epictetus exposes the contradictoriness of a man who believed he was motivated by love in absenting himself from his daughter's sick-bed.
33 For this sceptical strategy and Stoic responses to it, see Cicero, , Acad. II.51, 88Google Scholar.
34 I owe this point to James Ker.
35 In making this claim, Epictetus differs from his early Stoic authorities for whom the mind is a tabula rasa at birth. They accepted that concepts of value arise ‘naturally’, as rationality develops, but Epictetus, as a later Stoic influenced by Platonism, adopted the stronger notion of inborn preconceptions: see Sandbach, F. H., ‘Ennoia and Prolepsis’, in Long, A. A., ed., Problems in Stoicism (London, 1971, repr. 1996) 29–30Google Scholar.
36 See I.22; I.28; II.17; II.18: III.3.
37 I have discussed it in detail in Stoic Studies (above n. 18) 275–85.
38 Plato, , Ap. 38aGoogle Scholar; see Epictetus III.12.15.
39 See Vlastos, G., Socratic Studies, ed. Burnyeat, M. F. (Cambridge, 1994) 1–29. esp. 22–9Google Scholar.
40 There is much more to be said about Epictetus' elenctic procedure than I have room to explore in this paper. I devote a chapter to it in the book on Epictetus that I am writing (above n. 1).
41 See I.24.1–2; III.24.31.
42 This is probably an adaptation of Plato, , Tht. 151bGoogle Scholar, where Socrates says he has consigned numerous young men who have not ‘conceived’ to Prodicus and other sophists.
43 At III.21.19 and III.23.33 Epictetus endorses three styles of discourse – protreptic, elcnctic, and instructional (didascalic), assigning them to Diogenes, Socrates, and Zeno respectively. In the second passage he discredits there being a fourth, epideictic style.
44 Cf. Jones, C. P., The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, Mass., 1978) 9–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 On Dio's study with Musonius, see Jones (above n. 44) 12–14.
46 See I.23.3; II.12.22; II.21.11; III.13.22; IV.11.24. He occasionally uses spoudaios and phronimos; cf. I.7.3, 25, 29; 2.22.3; III.6.5, but note his irony at I.19.17–23, II.21.9, and III.22.37.
47 See Plato, , Tht. 172c ff.Google Scholar where the servitude of the time-serving politican is contrasted with the freedom of the philosopher; Xenophon, Mem. I.1.16 on Socrates' distinction between those with moral knowledge, who are kaloikagathoi and the ‘slavishness’ of the morally ignorant.
48 Its further title is Sophists and Self-presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar.
49 Nothing that Epictetus says is inconsistent with Musonius' striking defence of women's natural suitability for philosophy and for being educated similarly to males (Discourses III and IV, ed. Hense, Google Scholar), but his reticence on the subject fits his general focus on the training of young men.
50 See II.8.12–13; and cf. I.14.11–14, and for Socrates' daimonion, III.1.19.
51 Epictetus alludes to his most strongly emphasised doctrine; hence Arrian places it first in his edition of the Discourses and in the Manual.
52 Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge, 1996) 194Google Scholar.
53 Modern assessments of Epictetus are bound to differ greatly, as with anyone who takes so strong a line. Against Wolfe's novel, set the following comment by Barnes (above n. 15) 25: ‘If there is something obscurely admirable about his dogged idealism, it is difficult to avoid the thought thai the attitudes which he recommended are both humanly impossible and morally disgusting.’ Barnes, I surmise, is troubled about Epictetus' insistence that nothing outside one's own mind-set and purpose, including one's closest family, should ever be of ultimate concern or treated as part of oneself.
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