1. Think clearly.
2. Accept what you cannot change.
3. Control yourself.
4. Want things to go as they will go.
5. Do not argue about what a good life is: live it.
One. Think clearly. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you won’t know what to do, or why; and if you don’t know what to do or why then you’ll probably do something wrong. And even if you happened to do the right thing, by chance, you probably wouldn’t know it; not knowing what the right thing is, you probably wouldn’t recognise it when it is staring you in the face.
Everything depends on knowledge. Socrates would say that happiness depends on virtue and virtue depends on knowledge. The Stoics agree, and they would further say that knowledge depends on clear thinking. If you don’t know what you think, or why, then you’ve no chance of having knowledge, and because of this almost no chance of making good choices or having good judgement. You must think well in order to live well.
So set yourself to task on clarifying your thoughts. This is not a complicated exercise but it does require a meticulous attention to logical detail. They might seem trivial, but the devils are in these details. The early Stoics’ obsession with fine-grained technical distinctions is one of their defining characteristics and they are often criticised for it, but it is not as vicious as it seems. We saw this in some of the examples earlier in this chapter. Paying attention to our inferences, investigating whether they ‘follow’, and making this clearer by understanding the various logically-equivalent ways that we can say the same thing: this exercise in clarification helps us come to understand which inferences are strong or weak. This is a very important thing to understand, if you want to live your life led by good inferences. Or contrasting the thought that the oar ‘is’ bent with the thought that the oar ‘seems’ bent, or the thought that pleasure ‘is’ good or only ‘seems’ it. This exercise in clarification in the pursuit of consistency is what enables us to distinguish what ‘is’ from what only ‘seems’ to be; it enables us to distinguish truth from illusion; it is a matter of seeing the world as it really is.
If you do not clarify your thoughts then you will always be lost in a muddy world of illusion and confusion. You will constantly find yourself getting led down dead ends, chasing nonsense, never knowing who or what you are. Clarifying your thoughts is what enables you to escape this illusory world and find something real. It is the only route to knowledge, according to the Stoics. These logical exercises show us ‘what we mean when we say’, and in showing us what we mean it shows us what we think, and in showing us what we think it shows us to ourselves. You are a thinking thing. If you would know thyself, this exercise in clear thinking is invaluable.
Thinking clearly helps you to understand yourself and the world. You need that understanding in order to live well in this world. Logic can help you to think clearly, and you want to live well. Therefore, you should follow the Stoics and study logic.
Two. Accept what you cannot change. Which is: literally anything other than your own opinion. If you follow the Stoics’ logic and clarify your thinking about physics, you too will come to understand with them that the physical world is what philosophers call ‘causally closed’. There is no room in the world for any causes other than physical causes; and when it comes to causes, the world is full up. You and your physical body are part of this chain of cause and effect, but you cannot add anything, nor take anything away. And because of this you cannot change anything. The world will go as it will go and you are just along for the ride.
What you must do is accept this and learn to live with it. This is your task, your proper activity as a thinking thing. Non-thinking things go along with the course of events naturally, without a second thought, and merely live as an expression of their nature: in this they are happy and free. This was the Cynics’ insight, which the Stoics borrowed, and which leads both schools of thought to express the same concept of what it means to live well as a human being: align yourself with nature. But whereas the Cynics understood this to mean that we should remain in our ‘natural’ state as much as possible and live ‘like a dog’, the Stoics understand that our distinctively human nature, with all its social constructs, is just as much a part of the world as anything else. If we want to go along with things as they are, then we should go along with these distinctively human things too. And so we should act appropriately, according to the customs and conventions of society. You should play your part as the universe has appointed.
If you are a parent then you should accept the responsibilities of a parent. If you are a soldier then you should act like a soldier. If you are a money-maker then you should make money. If you are a doctor then you should heal your patients. If you are a baker then you should make bread and cakes. Etc., etc. And if you are a philosopher then you should live like a philosopher and not only talk like one.
When philosophers play their part and perform their proper function, investigating themselves and the world and holding their beliefs to account via reason, they discover logic, physics, and ethics, and they come to understand that there is nothing we can control in this world beyond our own activity as thinking things. We can control only what is ‘internal’ to this activity: our opinions and judgements, our desires and aversions. We cannot control what is ‘external’ to this activity: our body, our wealth, our health, our place and standing in the world. These ‘externals’ are all materially determined and so are fated to go as they will go. Because of this, if you look to find success in external terms then you are a slave: you are dependent on something other than yourself, constrained by unbreakable chains. Freedom consists in governing yourself by your own will, which means taking control of what you can control: your opinions, judgements, desires and aversions. Virtue consists in this ‘internal’ self-control, and only in this, because this is all you can do. You must accept everything beyond this as being beyond your power to affect.
Three. Control yourself. Because this is all you can do and all that you ought to do. Before you are aware of the Stoics’ philosophy, you are ignorant and a slave, subject to the laws of cause and effect and bound to their effects on you. If you meet with something that causes you to be upset, you will be upset. You have no choice in the matter. But once you are equipped with the Stoic’s philosophy, you come to understand that you always have a choice: you can choose to change your opinion on this matter. And if you take away the opinion that you have cause to be upset, you will take away the cause of your upset, and in that take away the harm that it brings to you.
Do you choose, then, to be upset? That is your choice, but don’t pretend that you don’t have a choice. Investigate the cause of your upset and you will see that it is based in an error. Everything external to you is beyond your power to affect and is therefore a matter of indifference to you. The only things that really matter and have value are what is ‘internal’ to you and within your power to affect, which is only your activity as a thinking thing. So think, thinking thing, and think it through, and you will see that you are the cause of your own upset. It is your faulty opinions that cause you harm. Correct your opinions and bring them in line with your good judgement and you will see that the upset will disappear.
Four. Want things to go as they will go. Having performed your proper activity as a thinking thing and having thought things through, you come to understand that everything that happens must happen as it happens and cannot happen any other way. If you would be free from trouble and suffering, you must exercise good judgement, control yourself, and bring your opinions, desires, and aversion into alignment with things as they are and not how you might want them to be. You must want things to go only as they will go.
Wanting anything else will only make you a slave to something beyond your power to affect. And are you content to be a slave to something other than yourself? You misunderstand yourself if you allow this. Because you are a thinking thing, a will and a perspective, equipped with the powers of reason and desire and aversion, and you can use your reason to govern your desires and aversions. Nothing can constrain this capacity to govern yourself by your own will. Why would you give your freedom and capacity to govern yourself by your own will over to something beyond your power to affect? If you choose to sell yourself so cheaply, then you will get what you deserve, which is: suffering, trouble, frustration, fear. Do not sell yourself at such a low rate.
Five. Do not argue about what a good life is: live it. You need to think well in order to live well, and coming to understand what it is to think and live well is the proper business of philosophy. The process of philosophy, with all its theories and methods and technical discourse, is necessary to gain this understanding, but it is not the final end of this activity. We should at some point leave it behind.
You need philosophy because you are ignorant: you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know what to do, you don’t know how to live, or why. You do not have true beliefs about what really matters. But if you do have true beliefs about what really matters, if you already know what you should do and how you should live, perhaps because you have investigated the matter through a long philosophical education, then why would you continue to argue about it? What is there to argue about? You have your answer, a way of living that is consistent with itself and stands up to rational scrutiny; why continue to come up with more and more ways in which the alternatives fail?
Is it to convince other people of the virtues of your philosophy? But your lived example will be more convincing than any argument. It is to further convince yourself, and reinforce your commitment to your art of living? But how can it help your art of living to do what is contrary to it, by getting lost in nit-picking arguments and trivialities?
The Stoics say that we, in academic philosophy, have got things back to front. The whole point of philosophy is to think well in order to live well. To do this, we investigate the ideas that we have about things. And to do this we construct and appraise arguments for or against particular ideas. Academic philosophers end up prioritising the construction of these arguments at the expense of the reason for their construction. We get lost in our arguments, detached from our proper business as human beings, and end up painfully incapable of justifying the value of what we do to those who do not understand what we do. But this is our fault. We are not what we would claim to be. We live inconsistently with ourselves. We would claim to be philosophers, but we are not philosophers: we are critics and constructors of arguments, we are writers and speech-makers, we are sophists selling our wares. We talk like philosophers but we do not live like it. It is all a show, and our behaviour shows it as such, as we strut about in the lecture theatre. We have sold ourselves at too low a rate, chasing material success in the marketplace of ideas. In this we are not lovers of wisdom but adulterers; we are married to our profession. We should stop this nonsense and return to our proper business as human beings, and that means leaving academic philosophy behind. If your arguments are making you someone that you would not choose to be, then stop making arguments.
The Stoics would say as much, as would the Cynics, but I fear this is a contradictory idea. Of course we should not get lost in arguments and forget ourselves. But we should never stop investigating ourselves and our beliefs; we should never stop putting our thoughts to the test. Because which of us has all the answers? Which of us is not plagued by errors? Which of us is not troubled by life? It’s clear that academic philosophy has many failings and that it has fallen a long way from its ideal. But that is not to say that it is all bad. There are many bad musicians and lots of bad music out there, but that doesn’t mean that music itself is bad and should be thrown away. What is required is for those who are capable to preserve the discipline in its best and truest form. That is what it means for a philosopher to play their part. And that is, arguably, exactly what Epictetus achieved. We should all hope to emulate that example.
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