Is this the purpose of philosophy
Just to know, and not to be?
Just a show so not to see
Your own lived inconsistency?
Setting, marking, passing tests
To vomit what you should digest.
Selling what should not be sold
For medals made of foolish gold.
Lettuce and pence, it makes no sense
To make a trade in ignorance.
Wisdom entombed in pyramid schemes
A great end lost to petty means.
Know thyself and become free.
Reputation or reality?
Be what you would claim to be
Content in anonymity.
To be more good, not have more good things
A shadow-chaser never wins.
Troubled no more, content with less
Postscript: Lettuce and Pence
It’s National Poetry Day here in the UK, which in 2023 is focussing on the theme of ‘refuge’.
The only part of the above that isn’t self-explanatory or otherwise explained elsewhere on this website, I think, is the reference to ‘lettuce and pence’. This is a favourite example of Epictetus’.
Firstly as something low-value that we should not trade in exchange for high-value things: if you squabble over a lettuce, you might gain the lettuce, but you have lost your temperament and self-control, which is more valuable. Academics squabble over their measures of success and in exchange they lose their dignity, their autonomy, their authenticity, and they hand the value of their subject over to be determined by junk measures.
Secondly as something that is traded, and if we make that trade then we cannot complain. If you choose to buy lettuce for pence, you can’t complain that you have no pence, because you have lettuce; if you choose not to buy lettuce, you have your money, but no lettuce. People who achieve a certain place and status in this world do so at a cost to themselves: they sell themselves in exchange for whatever it is they get in return. Academic philosophers sell the most precious thing they have – their cultivated understanding of what matters – when they pursue their trivial affairs. In exchange they get money, a title, prestige and status. If you aren’t willing to sell yourself in this way, you can’t then complain if you don’t have those things, because you’ve kept something that you’ve chosen to keep.
And remember that you cannot be permitted to rival others in externals, without using the same means to obtain them. For how can he, who will not haunt the door of any man, will not attend him, will not praise him, have an equal share with him who does these things? You are unjust, then, and unreasonable, if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and would have them for nothing. For how much are lettuces sold? An obolus, for instance. If another, then, paying an obolus takes the lettuces, and you, not paying it, go without them, do not imagine that he has gained any advantage over you. For as he has the lettuces, so you have the obolus which you did not give.
Epictetus’ Enchiridion XXV
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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