28 KiB
[EDU] The Enchiridion, Condensed
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2q8ttn/edu_the_enchiridion_condensed/
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Score: 3
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Created: 2014-12-24T03:54:01
Post:
Since we've had a bit of a lull here, I thought I'd share /u/A_Lobster's condensed version of The Enchiridion by Epictetus, an ancient Greek Stoic. The raw .txt is on Pastebin, though /u/TheWayofTheFuture can supply a formatted .pdf on demand. It was originally posted here.
Why does it belong on /r/rational?
I hold that a rationalist Stoic behaves no differently than a rationalist; the only difference is in how they think. Stoicism is just map-territory distinction cranked up to 11 – mindfulness plus psychological debugging – and provides a pretty solid solution to Camus' absurdity along the way. It's also repeatedly been demonstrated as a fast and effective treatment for depression, which is always nice.
While this über-condensed version might read a little bit like the Ten Commandments, I recommend reading the full text. It's longer – each bullet point is expanded into one or two paragraphs – but it explains the reasoning much more thoroughly, even if you read just the first page or so. It's available all over the internet, notably here.
Comments:
u/AugSphere [+8] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 hours later)
Some of these are incompatible with my values like this:
XII. It is better to die of hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.
And some are just downright silly:
XXXII. Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or abundant.
But there are a couple of good ones and the overall theme seems interesting. Is there any good modern analysis of that philosophy you can recommend to me?
EDIT: My interest at this point is mostly academic. I don't think a model of behaviour built on ignoring things outside of one's causal reach is a good one for human beings.
u/rumblestiltsken [+4] (5 hours later)
Twelve is fine from the perspective of someone thousands of years ago, who probably didn't expect to live very long anyway.
Valuing happiness over some mildly increased lifespan while unhappy is a totally reasonable position. The equivalent is euthanasia today, whee it is completely rational to check out rather than face suffering for a short period of time. There is only negative utility, hell, letting a disease take you out rather than dying while relatively healthy probably even makes resurrection harder if you go the cryonics part.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (5 hours later)
There are a lot of things which looked reasonable at the time, but are not so now. I'm not looking forward to reverse engineering philosophical insights of a 2000 year old text and then constructing a rational modern reinterpretation based on them. That is why I asked for a modern analysis. I'm hoping someone did all the work for me.
EDIT: As for twelve, it's a matter of interpretation. After reading the full version:
If you want to improve, reject such reasonings as these: "If I neglect my affairs, I'll have no income; if I don't correct my servant, he will be bad." For it is better to die with hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation; and it is better your servant should be bad, than you unhappy.
I don't think Epictetus meant euthanasia when he wrote that. I'm actually not sure what he really wanted to express with this one. It looks like a modern "you're fine just the way you are" meme, but then he prefaces it with "if you want to improve", which seems rather odd. He basically says "If you want to improve, then be happy lazing about starving to death. It's better than doing a bit of work you despise to feed yourself."
EDIT2: I feel that interpreting this as "you should optimise your life for cumulative happiness and not lifespan" is way too charitable to Epictetus. At this point it's no longer his philosophy, but something of our own creation.
u/None [+3] (8 hours later)
I think I can clarify a bit. Stoicism shares a vary close ancestory with Cynicism, which was a specific form of hedonism. In that school of thought, one is trained to take pleasure in the small things. Epictetus in particular was heavily influenced by Cynical teachings, and greatly admired Diogenes the Cynic. Epictetus viewed cynicism as a perfect form of stoicism, where a person has complete self-control.
Cynicism stems from asking questions like this;
"Will the pleasure gained from having a Ferrari, minus the stress caused by the effort of actually getting one, be more than the pleasure of simply bathing in the sun?"
In Cynicism, one trains them self to take extra pleasure in small things, and takes as little effort as possible to gain as much pleasure as possible. There's more to Cynicism than this, but that's as much as I need to explain.
This isn't exactly what Epictetus is saying, but he's saying something in a similar vain. The stress of worrying about a problem plus the pleasure gained from fixing it is less than the inconvenience of having the problem, if you train yourself to not be worried about it.
The various post-Socratic philosophies were very centered around emotion. They often had a stated goal of completely avoiding one emotion or another, and/or promoting one emotion, usually pleasure, by varying definitions.
Epictetus's account of stoicism puts abnormally heavy emphasis on one's ability to choose, that is, our will. The only thing we have absolute control over is our thoughts, opinions, or decisions. And as such, it is a highest virtue to possess absolute control over these, so that we may make the "right" choice. I'd recommend reading the first few chapters (they're super short) of The Discourses, which gives a clear account of this emphasis. It may help to know that Epictetus was born into slavery, and the idea that, even if one cannot control their body, they can still control their mind, became very important to him. In his mind, anyone who possesses concern for those things for which they do not have absolute control, anything that's external to the mind, lacks virtue. Hence, it is not virtuous in his mind to worry about external problems.
If you're interested in studying stoicism in general, using Epictetus's Handbook (that's what Enchiridion means) will be woefully incomplete. It's specifically intended to be a study guide, a companion to a larger course on stoic ethics. Epictetus's writings (really Arrian's, as Epictetus didn't actually write anything himself) mainly consist of ethics. Most of stoic philosophy is actually concerned with Platonic/Socratic logic, physics, and metaphysics. Epictetus deliberately goes out of his way to downplay the importance of these, even though they were the chief concerns of his contemporaries and predecessors. His views on stoicism were greatly influential, but they were not always canonical.
A good modern account of these ideas is given in the History of Philosophy without any gaps. The Hellenistic subsection in the Later Antiquity category contains an episode dedicated exclusively to Epictetus, as well as other aspects of stoicism and its sibling philosophies.
u/AugSphere [+0] Dark Lord of Corruption (11 hours later)
Thank you for clarification and links. I may check The Discourses out, though I hate reading philosophy mostly for the reasons David Stove outlined rather well here. History of Philosophy without any gaps looks pretty good however.
u/Muskwalker [+3] (a day later)
Some of these are incompatible with my values like this:
XII. It is better to die of hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.
This is pretty poor on its own, I agree, and is probably best understood as corrective hyperbole: if someone is distressing themselves about their upkeep, the point is they can drop the distress. They are very probably not actually going to die if they stop stressing, and an extreme statement like this could open their mind to the possibility that one can still be happy in suboptimal conditions.
And some are just downright silly:
XXXII. Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or abundant.
I believe this is a cultural difference. I seem to remember that laughing in that era was mostly understood as "laughing at".
EDIT: My interest at this point is mostly academic. I don't think a model of behaviour built on ignoring things outside of one's causal reach is a good one for human beings.
I think it's more about realistic expectations. If you don't have absolute control over a thing, then it is wrong to expect that it will always go the way you want it to. (If it did, then it would be something you had absolute control over.) If you know that things are not always going to go the way you want them to, then you can be emotionally prepared for that eventuality. You don't have to discard emotions — you can harness them for whatever productive ends they move you to — but you don't have to let them debilitate you.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
If your reinterpret Enchiridion strongly enough to get output like "Do not let bad things upset you so much you are debilitated" and "Do not expect everything to go your way", then it becomes a good philosophy. But why use Enchiridion at all? Just construct a good philosophy based on modern psychological and cognitive science and be done with it. Using contrived interpretations of questionably translated 2000 year old text for this seems ill-advised.
EDIT: If it's not clear from my previous posts, I'm strongly against using any interpretation of philosophical text but the most blindingly obvious one. If philosopher wants to convey his ideas to some public the onus is on him to make the meaning clear and unambiguous. I'm not going to try and reverse engineer the intended meaning behind mangled hyperbole.
u/Muskwalker [+2] (a day later)
Just construct a good philosophy based on modern psychological and cognitive science and be done with it. Using contrived interpretations of questionably translated 2000 year old text for this seems ill-advised.
That's probably so, if you're trying to develop a philosophy. I didn't pick up Epictetus for the purpose of internalizing the principles of Stoicism; Discourses just happened to be on my reading list and I managed to come away with some insights that were useful to me in my position. I also like his humor and found his prayers interesting.
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
I don't think a model of behaviour built on ignoring things outside of one's causal reach is a good one for human beings.
Not "ignoring", not at all. "Tying emotional state to." When Epictetus says "Concern yourself not with the weather, for it is outside your influence," he means "You can't control the weather, so don't get all upset when there's rain and clouds on your birthday. Just be happy regardless of the weather."
Does that make a little more sense?
But there are a couple of good ones and the overall theme seems interesting. Is there any good modern analysis of that philosophy you can recommend to me?
A Guide to the Good Life, by William B Irving, has been very helpful to me. It's a pretty straightforward interpretation of Stoic philosophy and an application to the modern day. He's written a few articles here, which I also recommend.
Unfortunately, quite a few purely scholarly analyses seems to focus less on the philosophy and more on the archaic metaphysics taught by the ancient practitioners. As the SEP says, "Stoicism has never been ‘purely academic’." I'll do some googling and see if I can find anything.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (11 hours later)
Concern yourself not with the weather, for it is outside your influence.
If something outside your immediate influence does not bother you, you are not likely to try and bring it under your influence. I feel that this is a crucial bug in this model of behaviour. Humans are pretty bad at estimating what does and does not lie in our causal reach. Some things turn out to be within reach only when we are bothered enough to try and affect them. Stoicism may be a good philosophy for enduring hardship, but not for trying to cure death or save the Earth from UFAI.
In general, since our emotions guide our behaviour in ways that are not always obvious, tinkering with out own utility functions like stoicism prescribes seems a bit risky to me. You may end up happy and content as people you could have saved, if you cared to try, continue to die around you. That does not sound like the optimal outcome to me.
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
Ahh, now I understand where you're coming from.
If something outside your immediate influence does not bother you, you are not likely to try and bring it under your influence.
The whole point is that the only thing we really have control over is our map. Anything we control in the territory could be taken away. For instance, you might think you have control over what you wear every day, but a totalitarian government could come tomorrow and take that away from you. If that were to happen, would you cry that you can no longer choose what you wear? No, of course not. Breaking down in tears is hardly ever productive.
Keep in mind that when Epictetus says "the world's a stage; play your part," he's speaking as a slave who believed his part was "philosopher" and therefore won his freedom through years of effort. Marcus Aurelius, writer of the great Stoic text Meditations, was a Roman Emperor who led great wars of conquest against the Parthian Empire and won the Marcomannic Wars against the Germanic tribes. Being driven to do great things is not at all incompatible with Stoic philosophy.
How's this for a summary: Stoicism says, "Act on your principles, not your moods." Does that make sense?
You may end up happy and content as people you could have saved, if you cared to try, continue to die around you.
That's inevitable. Perfection is never attainable. One can only try to help as many people as possible.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
That does not really answer my criticism.
If that were to happen, would you cry that you can no longer choose what you wear? No, of course not. Breaking down in tears is hardly ever productive.
There is less motivation to try and change your situation for the better if you trained yourself to stop caring about things seemingly outside of your control. Sure I might decide to fight the totalitarian government as a result of rational deliberation completely unencumbered by feelings (not really, but for the sake of argument let's assume it's possible), but if I really hated not being able to wear my favourite pants, I might start fighting just a bit sooner and fight just a little bit harder and save one more life as a result. Like it or not, emotions play a very big part in human decision making and lowering my dissatisfaction with things that are not right will lead me to take less action to make them right.
And why do you decide that choosing what you wear is outside of your control anyway? Surely dismantling the totalitarian government would allow you this freedom again, right? Where do you draw the line between things you can and cannot affect?
"Act on your principles, not your moods."
Sounds good in theory and falls flat in practice. Human beings are not really capable of decision making not informed by emotions. Maybe I'm an extra special snowflake myself (seriously doubt that), but I'd rather have more emotions about bad things I have no control over. Then I'd have enough motivation to start doing something to make this world significantly better.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Perfection is never attainable. One can only try to help as many people as possible.
In the limit, as your power rises, perfection becomes attainable. It matters how your personal philosophy or ideology behaves in the limit.
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/None [+1] (8 hours later)
Hmm. I'd certainly like to see more data on this, then. I got that "fast and effective" bit from ADAA.org. Are they not a trustworthy source? I admit I'm totally unfamiliar with the big players in the depression treatment world.
u/Muskwalker [+2] (a day later)
Epictetus is wonderful, though I hesitate to bring him up around here because he can be read as very deathist.
(Of course the actual lesson is not to stress oneself about anything one doesn't have absolute power over. This doesn't mean you can't work to gain more power, just that it doesn't need to perturb you: "I must do X. Must I do X lamenting?")
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (4 days later)
I came into the thread unaware of the historical context expecting rationalist Adventure Time. >_>
u/None [+0] (3 hours later)
Really? I'm quite under the impression that Stoicism consists in trying to mimic a Straw Vulcan in real life.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 hours later)
I think the idea is to take from Enchiridion the parts which are helpful psychologically and rebuild a personal philosophy around that.
Actually adopting everything some dude from 2k years ago thought was a good idea is not the most rational of behaviours, obviously.
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
Blame that on bad pop psychology. The Straw Vulcan might as well be named the Straw Stoic – emphasis on Straw. That's not what Stoicism is at all.
u/None [+1] (8 hours later)
That's nice, but the whole issue is that I am my emotions. If I wasn't quite effusively over-emotional, I wouldn't be me at all.
u/None [+1] (8 hours later)
Again, differentiating between pop mutilated little-s stoics and philosophically respected big-S Stoics: It's not saying you shouldn't be overemotional, it's just saying that you shouldn't be very overemotional about things you can't control. For instance, bursting into tears whenever it rains because you hate the rain. Or losing sleep every night because you can't stop worrying about the outcome of a controversial court case continents away. Those would be non-Stoic behaviors. Surely you can see the wisdom in that?
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
Or losing sleep every night because you can't stop worrying about the outcome of a controversial court case continents away.
I can see the sense in trying to relax and get sleep. I can't see the wisdom in saying, "I cannot affect it, therefore I shouldn't bother feeling anything about it."
u/None [+1] (9 hours later)
Okay, that's alright. I guess it's not for everyone?
It has this great side-effect of reorientation: yknow, letting me focus in on what's important in life. I've stopped watching the mainstream news, and I've been so much happier. More tranquil. I'm thinking of canceling my cable service. I'm also starting to be a little anti-consumption, which I don't know what to do with, but why would anyone need more stuff?
I don't know what's been happening to me since I started Stoicism. From that description, it sounds like I've turned into some hippy-dippy New Age vegan, but I've not. Sure, walks through nature, but also lots of science books and I'm learning a lot more now than I ever have before.
And my job has stopped annoying me. Which is very, very welcome.
u/None [+0] (9 hours later)
I've stopped watching the mainstream news, and I've been so much happier. More tranquil. I'm thinking of canceling my cable service. I'm also starting to be a little anti-consumption, which I don't know what to do with, but why would anyone need more stuff?
I've never bought cable service, and my primary rage-news source is reddit. I've always generally been anti-consumption, because, well, yeah, what do you do with all that stuff? Most people I know with lots of stuff barely manage to use any of it any significant fraction of the time.
The weird thing is, I'm the opposite of a Stoic. Like, if Stoics are the Jedi, I'm an outright Sith. The concept of not having intense emotions seems weird and inhuman to me. There's a reason almost every internet account I have makes some kind of Gurren Lagann reference: it's literally the only pop-culture work I've seen in which my "to feel and feel passionately is to live, so fight determinedly for everything!" attitude was ever actually portrayed as a positive -- almost all fiction drops into "emotions are bad" whenever it tries to be "deep" or "have a message".
also lots of science books and I'm learning a lot more now than I ever have before.
LOL guess how many textbooks I've managed to accumulate.
u/None [+1] (10 hours later)
I've never bought cable service, and my primary rage-news source is reddit. I've always generally been anti-consumption, because, well, yeah, what do you do with all that stuff? Most people I know with lots of stuff barely manage to use any of it any significant fraction of the time.
Maybe you're already there. Maybe you don't need Stoicism. As I said in the OP, a rationalist Stoic behaves exactly like a regular rationalist; it seems you just started out as a stronger man than I.
There's a reason almost every internet account I have makes some kind of Gurren Lagann reference: it's literally the only pop-culture work I've seen in which my "to feel and feel passionately is to live, so fight determinedly for everything!" attitude was ever actually portrayed as a positive -- almost all fiction drops into "emotions are bad" whenever it tries to be "deep" or "have a message".
Well, yes. System 1 and System 2 thinking, you're familiar I presume? Both are important, but sometimes one gives better / more optimal results than the other. Stoicism kinda banks on the idea that System 2 is generally a bit more optimal than System 1. Do you disagree with that?
LOL guess how many textbooks I've managed to accumulate.
Two? Many? Too many?
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
it seems you just started out as a stronger man than I.
This is one of the most laughable statements I've ever read. You would underestimate the amount of sad personal history I don't talk about on the internet. Or in public. Or with anyone who's not a blood relation or marital equivalent.
Well, yes. System 1 and System 2 thinking, you're familiar I presume? Both are important, but sometimes one gives better / more optimal results than the other. Stoicism kinda banks on the idea that System 2 is generally a bit more optimal than System 1. Do you disagree with that?
It's not that I object to thinking. It's that I don't see it as dichotomous with feeling. At least as my parents taught me to manage my emotions, the important difference is between long-term and short-term: how much staying power does an emotion have to affect your later evaluations, how thoroughly do you share this emotion with your past and future selves? Thought is for serving the passions that past, present, and future "yous" all share.
Which is kinda a really short way of describing something I do by blunt heuristics that probably requires quite a lot of psychological knowledge to describe thoroughly.
Too many?
More than I actually have time to read. Alas, by the material I have studied, I'm merely almost finished with an MSc in Computer Science and an undergrad-level minor in math. By the time I finish all the materials I've accumulated, I'll probably be at a level of MSc computer science plus undergraduate majors in math and theoretical CS (focusing on logic, probability/statistics, and their intersection FOR SOME WEIRD REASON), plus some PhD-student-level knowledge in a few specialized fields.
This might be somewhere near enough, but it's going to be quite tough to accomplish since day-job sorts of stuff always interferes.
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
You would underestimate the amount of sad personal history I don't talk about on the internet. Or in public. Or with anyone who's not a blood relation or marital equivalent.
No no, not quite what I meant at all. The product of your experiences has resulted in a person with stronger resolve than I have.
the important difference is between long-term and short-term: how much staying power does an emotion have to affect your later evaluations, how thoroughly do you share this emotion with your past and future selves? Thought is for serving the passions that past, present, and future "yous" all share.
Interesting. I'd love to hear more about this.
How would you rate your happiness over a week, in general? Or if happiness isn't the right word, how content are you with your emotional state(s)?
Umm, feel free not to answer that question if this conversation is getting invasive, btw.
More than I actually have time to read.
But hey, "more than can be read" is always better than "not enough to read," right? I envy you.
theoretical CS (focusing on logic, probability/statistics, and their intersection FOR SOME WEIRD REASON)
Yknow, those aren't two topics I'd ordinarily think of in the same sentence. But maths, interconnectivity, I suppose?
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
Yknow, those aren't two topics I'd ordinarily think of in the same sentence. But maths, interconnectivity, I suppose?
The rich, discontinuous structure of logic and programming! The reasoning over incomplete information of probability! We weave together those two fields of math into a double helix, DRILLING A PATH TOWARDS TOMORROW!
And that's Tengen Toppa! That's probabilistic programming! My drill is the drill... THAT CREATES THE HEAVENS!!!
Will answer the rest later.
u/None [+1] (12 hours later)
probmods.org
I now know what I'm going to learn today