|
As an educator, what you need to understand is that Stoicism was formed in a rigorously determined ancient world. Like, a level of determinism that's wholly uncomfortable to spoiled moderns like us. It's an easy conclusion to come to if you're Zeno walking around in 4th century Athens and realizing that you could fucking die because you caught a cold or because a building fell over on you or because some random jerk's donkey kicked you in the head. And the social classes were similarly rigid, so even if you didn't drop dead of some grotesque accident or oozing malady, you were still born knowing exactly what your life was supposed to look like. Born a slave, like Epictetus in the first century, you're a slave.* Born an Emperor, like Epictetus' successor in the Stoic tradition Marcus Aurelius, you were going to be an emperor.
This is simultaneously horrifying and freeing, the latter because it doesn't winnow away choice so much as the illusion of choice. Now, as an educator, when I do this spiel for my students, I don't really bother with a lot of the weird physics of Stoicism since it's just kind of confusing. Expressing this determination as some sort of Divine Reason or "Logos" is for when they want to pursue this line of thought on their own (and, notably, requires more effort than the bare minimum bullshit I can give them in a single semester or a single year) and the introduction of the latter term is particularly confusing to students with any background in Christian thought.# Additionally, leaving the name out of the motivating force behind this determinism serves a kind of narrative purpose because it allows me to pull in some of the Greek pantheon of Gods to make the point about human/divine interaction being a losing proposition *and* because the ambiguity of the half-assed pantheism of the original Stoic system under Zeno and his immediate successors really did a lot to facilitate the whole wacky thing being easily grafted onto early Christian anthropology.
Basically, the immanence of the divine in the Stoic system can play as pantheism for the original practitioners, but characterizing the divine was such a low priority as they shifted ALL of their eggs into the ethical basket and the deeply pressing question of "how on earth do I live well in this arbitrary deterministic world?" that it really wasn't that difficult for early Christians engaging with Seneca to look at his work and say, "oh right. Logos. you're talking about the one true God."
Anyways, the point is that their thought was animated by that ethical question of what it means to pursue the good and to live right when you have literally no control over the events of your life, from slimy birth to grim fucking death. As an educator, this is where I start pointing my fingers at my kiddeaux to emphasize the cognitive gap between this ancient system and our enthusiasm for embracing the ridiculous lie that you can be anything you want to be. As a woefully underpaid educator, I take particular delight in informing a bunch of 18-22 year olds that shit is almost certainly not going to happen. And, furthermore, that it wont be dramatic like Alvin Mack destroying his knee in The Program. You'll just realize in hindsight that you're 40 and you're a sad person and you've probably been that way for at least a decade and a half.
This is why I prefer Epictetus. There's obviously efficiency of expression. The Enchiridion is short as hell and deeply pithy, which is swell because I'm lazy. But there's a clarity of expression which fits with the aforesaid winnowing theme in Stoicism. Very little interest in bullshit. Blessedly, Epictetus addressed your perverse understanding of human agency very directly in The Enchiridion when he wrote, "Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."
That's the result of the efficiency in will created within the Stoic system. You don't have control over anything that happens to your sweaty meatsack of a body in this shitty joke of a life. But you do have control over your opinion. And you have control over the things you decide to pursue, wherein failure to obtain them will make you unhappy. So, if something has ruffled your feathers, Epictetus would advise you to choose within the extraordinarily limited but equally powerful window for your free will and to not be ruffled.
The durability of this system is fascinating, since we've largely resisted the worldview on which it is based. But it fit well within the framework of early Christendom, as I mentioned previously, and we be-churched dummies have a hard time giving that up.
*as a slight cheat, Epictetus actually received his freedom at the beginning of his career - but, as an educator, I don't typically bother with this part of the narrative to my students because we're building systems of thought and not (yet) operating as castrated fact deliverers.
#though I don't really get those. lots of capital-C Christians, but more of the Jesus-was-nice-so-you-should-be-nice too ones who get their child-dosage Evangelicalism in some ridiculous gym basement with Pastor Trent and his stupid guitar. ______________________________
"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"
--Walleye's Dad
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
Okay Sports
