Epictetus’ Exhortation — Bring Yourself Back To The Work!

the better self you yearn to be isn’t going to just produce itself. . .

(this was previously published in Practical Rationality)

Earlier today, during my weekly meeting with a friend and colleague, he asked me about a passage in Epictetus that I’d referenced in some notes from years back. “What’s the ‘lovely statue’ in Epictetus’ Discourses that you mention? I’m not familiar with that metaphor. And you don’t give a book and chapter for it, just a page number…”

“That’s got to be from my Loeb edition,” I responded. “Hang on a second. Those are upstairs. I’ll take you up there” — meaning I’d bring along my laptop where I was skyping with him in one hand, and my coffee cup in the other — “and we’ll figure it out. Because that sounds kinda interesting, but I myself don’t have any idea what it’s about!”

Cracking open the first volume, there it was on pages 359 and 360 — or rather book 2, right at the end of chapter 19, which is titled “To those who take up the teachings of philosophers, only to talk about them”. The passage in question didn’t have anything about a statue, lovely or otherwise. I’d clearly come up with that catchy phrase when I was going through the Discourses, compiling the notes for a presentation I was providing later that year on Epictetus and prohairesis.

Epictetus’ Own Words On The Matter

He ends that chapter with a discourse directed to his student. He first reminds him of the point of his Stoic teaching and their studies

And so now I am your teacher, and you are being taught in my school. And my purpose is this — to make of you a perfect work, secure against restraint, compulsion, and hindrance, free, prosperous, happy, looking to God in everything both small and great; and you are here with the purpose of learning and practising all this.

Then he asks the key question: Why hasn’t the student attained that state, after all their study?

Why, then, do you not complete the work, if it is true that you on your part have the right kind of purpose and I on my part, in addition to the purpose, have the right kind of preparation? What is it that is lacking?

Thinking about other types of work and other competent workers provides needed perspective:

When I see a craftsman who has material lying ready at hand, I look for the finished product. Here also, then, is the craftsman, and here is the material; what do we yet lack?

The answer to that is, quite frankly, nothing. Nothing is missing. So there must be some other reason why the student has not transformed themself into a finished product, a perfect and completed work of applied and living Stoicism.

Cannot the matter be taught? It can. Is it, then, not under our control? Nay, it is the only thing in the whole world that is under our control. Wealth is not under our control, nor health, nor fame, nor, in a word, anything else except the right use of external impressions. This alone is by nature secure against restraint and hindrance. Why, then, do you not finish the work?

And here Epictetus leads us to the crux of the problem

Tell me the reason. For it lies either in me, or in you, or in the nature of the thing. The thing itself is possible and is the only thing that is under our control. Consequently, then, the fault lies either in me, or in you, or, what is nearer the truth, in us both. What then? Would you like to have us at last begin to introduce here a purpose such as I have described? Let us let bygones be bygones. Only let us begin, and, take my word for it, you shall see.

What Can This Mean For Us?

Whether it is Stoicism or any other wisdom tradition, virtue ethics, philosophy as a way of life, or mode of intentional living that we might claim to be devoted to, the questions that Epictetus asks his student are just as relevant to us. That is, if we aren’t just beginners, but instead have been studying and presumably making progress in the philosophy we have chosen for ourselves.

Philosophy in this sense is supposed to be something we not only apply to life, to events and experiences, to relationships with other people, but all the more so to our own selves. Making ourselves into a work of art or craft, like an artist or designer directing their skill and knowledge to their own self, is not the only possible way to look at these matters, but it is certainly a good one.

If we think that the path and discipline that we have adopted does in fact give us what we need in order to genuinely improve ourselves, and if we do have decent, knowledgeable teachers, or guides, then . . . where’s the problem? What’s the hold-up? Why aren’t we making and consolidating the consistent and lasting progress we reasonably expect to make? Why is the work unfinished, raw, perhaps just in the planning stage?

Epictetus is humble enough as a teacher not to just shift all the blame onto his student, but he’s definitely not letting the student off the hook! I know that for me, putting myself into the student’s place and reading these words from nearly two millennia ago, gives me a needed spur to once again resuming responsibility for my own work and progress. Perhaps as you read this short piece, some of those words will similarly speak to you about the work you need to shift your attention back to — the work you do on yourself and with yourself, to make yourself into a more finished human being!

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Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.