Paul knew how easy it would be to infer from his presentation that we are "to continue in sin that grace may abound" (Romans 6:1) ("why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying" [Romans 3:8]) although he hardly foresaw how much discipline and rigidity of dogma would be required to protect the Church against the pecca fortiter. He was also quite aware of the greatest stumbling-block for a Christian philosophy: the obvious contradiction between an all-knowing, all-powerful-God and what Augustine later called the "monstrosity" of the Will. How can God permit this human wretchedness? Above all, how can He "still find fault," since no one "can resist his will" (Romans 9:19)? Paul was a Roman citizen, spoke and wrote koine Greek, and was obviously well informed about Roman law and Greek thought. Yet the founder of the Christian religion (if not of the Church) remained a Jew, and there could perhaps be no more forceful proof of it than his answer to the unanswerable questions his new faith and the new discoveries of his own inwardness had raised.
It is almost word for word the answer Job gave when he was led to question the inscrutable ways of the Hebrew God. Like Job's, Paul's reply is very simple and entirely unphilo-sophical: "But, who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? What if God, desiring ... to make known his power, has endured ... the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory ... ?" (Romans 9:20–23; Job 10). In the same vein, God, cutting off all interrogation, had spoken to Job, who had dared to question Him: "I will question you and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...Shall a fault-finder contend with the Almighty?" And to this there exists indeed only Job's answer: "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).
Unlike his doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, Paul's argumentum ad hominem, as it were, cutting short all questions with a Who-are-you-to-ask? failed to survive the early stages of the Christian faith. Historically speaking, that is, since of course we cannot know how many Christians in the long centuries of an imitatio Christi remained untouched by the ever-repeated attempts to reconcile absolute Hebrew faith in the Creator-God with Greek philosophy. The Jewish communities, at any rate, were warned against any kind of speculation; the Talmud, provoked by Gnosticism, told them: "It were better for the man never to be born who thinks about four matters: what is above and what is below, what was before and what will be afterward."24
Like a faint echo of this faithful awe before the mystery of all Being, centuries later we hear Augustine repeating what must have been a well-known joke at the time: "I answer the man who says: What did God do before He made heaven and earth?...: He was preparing Hell for those who pry into such deep matters." But Augustine did not let the matter rest at that. Several chapters further on (in the Confessions), after denouncing unjokingly those who ask such questions as men attacked "by a criminal disease that makes them thirst for more than they can hold," gives the logically correct and existentially unsatisfactory answer that, since the Creator-God is eternal, He must have created time when He created Heaven and Earth, so that there could be no "before" prior to the Creation. "Let them see that there could be no time without a created being."25
9. Epictetus and the omnipotence of the Will
In the Letter to the Romans, Paul describes an inner experience, the experience of the I-will-and-I-cannof. This experience, followed by the experience of God's mercy, is overwhelming. He explains what happened to him and tells us how and why the two occurrences are interconnected. In the course of the explanation he develops the first comprehensive theory of history, of what history is all about, and he lays the foundations of Christian doctrine. But he does so in terms of facts; he does not argue, and this is what distinguishes him most sharply from Epictetus, with whom otherwise he had much in common.
They were just about contemporaries, came from roughly the same region in the Near East, lived in the Hellenized Roman Empire, and spoke the same language (the Koine), though one was a Roman citizen and the other a freedman, a former slave, one was a Jew and the other a Stoic. They also have in common a certain moral rigidity which sets them apart from their surroundings. They both declare that to covet your neighbor's wife means to have committed adultery. They denounce in almost the same words the intellectual establishment of their time—the Pharisees in Paul's case, the philosophers (Stoics and Academicians) in Epictetus'—as hypocrites who do not conduct themselves in accordance with their teaching. "Show me a Stoic if you can!" exclaims Epictetus. "Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy....By the gods I would fain see a Stoic."26 This scorn is more outspoken and plays an even greater role in Epictetus than in Paul. Finally, they share an almost instinctive contempt for the body—this "bag," in Epictetus' words, which day by day I stuff, and then empty: "what could be more tiresome?"27 —and insist on the distinction between an "inmost self (Paul) and "outward things."28
In each, the actual content of inwardness is described exclusively in terms of the promptings of the Will, which Paul believed to be impotent and Epictetus declared to be almighty: "Where lies the good? In the will. Where lies evil? In the will. Where lies neither? In what is not within the will's control."29 At first glance, this is old Stoic doctrine but without any of the old Stoa's philosophical underpinnings; from Epictetus, we do not hear about the intrinsic goodness of nature according to which (kata physin) men ought to live and think—think away, that is, all apparent evil as a necessary component of an all-comprehensive good. In our context the interest of Epictetus lies precisely in the absence of such metaphysical doctrines from his teaching.
He was primarily a teacher and, since he taught and did not write,30 he apparently thought of himself as a follower of Socrates, forgetting, like most of Socrates' so-called followers, that Socrates had nothing to teach. Anyhow, Epictetus considered himself a philosopher and he defined philosophy's subject matter as "the art of living one's life."31 This art consisted mainly in having an argument ready for every emergency, for every situation of acute misery. His starting-point was the ancient omnes homines beati esse volunt, all men wish to be happy, and the only question for philosophy was to find out how to arrive at this matter-of-course goal. Except that Epictetus, in agreement with the mood of the time and in contrast to die pre-Christian era, was convinced that life, as it is given on earth, with the inevitable ending in death, and hence beset by fear and trembling, was incapable of giving real happiness without a special effort of man's will. Thus "happiness" changed its meaning; it was no longer understood as eudaimonia, the activity of eu zēn, living well, but as euroia biou, a Stoic metaphor indicating a free-flowing life, undisturbed by storms, tempests, or obstacles. Its characteristics were serenity, galēnē, the stillness after the storm, and tranquillity, eudia, fair weather32 —metaphors unknown to classical antiquity. They all relate to a mood of the soul that is best described in negative terms (like ataraxia) and indeed consists in something wholly negative: to be "happy" now meant primarily "not to be miserable." Philosophy could teach "the processes of reason," the arguments, "like weapons bright and ready for use,"33 to be directed against the wretchedness of real life.
Reason discovers that what makes you miserable is not death threatening from the outside but the fear of death within you, not pain but the fear of pain—"it is not death or pain which is a fearful thing, but the fear of pain or death."34 Hence the only thing to be rightly afraid of is fear itself, and while men cannot escape death or pain, they can argue themselves out of the fear within themselves by eliminating the impressions fearful things have imprinted on their minds: "if we kept our fear not for death or exile, but for fear itself, then we should practi
ce to avoid what we think evil."35 (We need only recall the many instances that testify to the role played in the household of the soul by an overwhelming fear of being afraid, or imagine how reckless human courage would be if experienced pain left no memory behind—Epictetus' "impression"—in order to realize the down-to-earth psychological value of these apparently far-fetched theories.)
Once reason has discovered this inward region where man is confronted only by the "impressions" outward things make on his mind rather than by their factual existence, its task has been accomplished. The philosopher is no longer the thinker examining whatever may come his way but the man who has trained himself never to "turn to outward things," no matter where he happens to be. Epictetus gives an illuminating example of the attitude. He lets his philosopher go to the games like everybody else; but unlike the "vulgar" crowd of other spectators, he is "concerned" there only with himself and his own "happiness"; hence, he forces himself to "wish only that to happen which does happen, and only him to win who does win."36 This turning away from reality while still in the midst of it, in contrast to the withdrawal of the thinking ego into the solitude of the soundless dialogue between me and myself, where every thought is an after-thought by definition, has the most far-reaching consequences. It means, for instance, that when one is going somewhere one pays no attention to one's goal but is interested only in one's "own activity" of walking, "or when deliberating is interested [only] in the act of deliberation, and not in getting that for which he is planning."37 In terms of the game parable, it is as though these spectators, looking with blinded eyes, were mere ghosdike apparitions in the world of appearances.
It may be helpful to compare this attitude with that of the philosopher in the old Pythagorean parable about the Olympic Games; the best were those who did not participate in the struggle for fame or gain but were mere spectators, interested in the games for their own sake. Not a trace of such disinterested interest is left here. Only the self is of interest, and the selfs unchallengeable ruler is argumentative reason, not the old nous, the inner organ for truth, the invisible eye of the mind directed toward the invisible in the visible world, but a dynamis logikē, whose greatest distinction is that it takes "cognizance of itself and of all things else" and "has the power to approve or disapprove its own action."38 At first glance this may look like the Socratic two-in-one actualized in the thinking process but in reality it is much closer to what we today would call consciousness.
Epictetus' discovery was that the mind, because it could retain outward "impressions" (phantasiai), was able to deal with all "outside things" as mere "data of consciousness," as we would say. The dynamis logike examines both itself and the "impressions" imprinted on the mind. Philosophy teaches us how to "deal with impressions aright"; it tests them and "distinguishes them and makes use of none which is untested." Looking at a table does not enable us to decide whether the table is good or bad; vision does not tell us, nor do any of our other senses. Only the mind, which deals not with real tables but with impressions of tables, can tell us. ("What tells us that gold is a goodly thing? For the gold does not tell us. Clearly it is the faculty that deals with impressions."39 ) The point is that you don't have to go outside yourself if your concern is wholly for that self. Only insofar as the mind can draw things into itself are they of any value.
Once the mind has withdrawn from outside things into the inwardness of its own impressions, it discovers that in one respect it is entirely independent of all outside influences: "Can anyone prevent you from agreeing to what is true? No one. Can anyone compel you to accept the false? No one. Do you see that in this sphere your faculty is free from let and hindrance and constraint and compulsion?"40 That it is in the nature of truth to "necessitate" the mind is an old insight: "hēsper hyp' antes tes alētheias anagkasthentes," "necessitated as it were by truth itself," as Aristotle says when talking of self-evident theories standing in need of no special reasoning.41 But in Epictetus this truth and its dynamis logike have nothing at all to do with knowledge or cognition, for which "the processes of logic are unfruitful"42—literally good for nothing (akarpa). Knowledge and cognition concern "outside things," independent of man and beyond his power; hence, they are not, or should not be, of concern to him.
The beginning of philosophy is "an awareness [synaisthē-sis] of one's own weakness in regard to necessary things." We have no "innate conception" of things we ought to know, such as "a right-angled triangle," but we can be taught by people who know, and those who do not yet know know that they don't know. It is quite different with things which actually concern us and on which the kind of life we lead depends. In this sphere everybody is born with an it-seems-to-me, dokei moi, an opinion, and there our difficulty begins: "in the discovery of conflict in men's minds with one another" and the "attempt to discover a standard, just as we discover the balance to deal with weights and the rale to deal with things straight and crooked. This is the beginning of philosophy."43
Philosophy, then, sets the standards and norms and teaches man how to use his sensory faculties, how "to deal with impressions aright," and how "to test them and calculate the value of each." The criterion of every philosophy is therefore its usefulness in the business of leading a life free from pain. More specifically, it teaches certain lines of thought that can defeat the innate impotence of men. In this general philosophical framework it ought to be reason, argumentative reasoning, that is given primacy over all the mental faculties; but this is not the case. In his violent denunciation of men who were "philosophers only with their hps," Epictetus points to the appalling gap between a man's teachings and his actual conduct, and by implication hints at the old insight that reason by itself neither moves nor achieves anything. The great achiever is not reason but the Will. "Consider who you are" is an exhortation addressed to reason, it seems, but what is then discovered is that "man ... has nothing more sovereign [kyridteros] than will [proairesis] ...all else [is] subject to this, and will itself is free from slavery and subjection." Reason (logos), it is true, distinguishes man from the animals, which therefore are "marked for service," while man is "fitted for command";44 yet the organ capable of command is not reason but Will. If philosophy deals with the "art of living your own life" and if its supreme criterion is usefulness in these terms, then "philosophy means very little else but this—to search how it is practicable to exercise the will to get and the will to avoid without hindrance."45
The first thing reason can teach the will is the distinction between things that depend on man, those that are in his power (the Aristotelian eph' hemin), and those that are not. The power of the will rests on its sovereign decision to concern itself only with things within man's power, and these reside exclusively in human inwardness.46 Hence, the will's first decision is not-to-will what it cannot get and to cease nilling what it cannot avoid—in short, not to concern itself with anything over which it has no power. ("What matters it whether the world is composed of atoms or of infinite parts or of fire and earth? Is it not enough to know ... the limits of the will to get and the will to avoid ... and to dismiss those things that are beyond us?"47 ) And since "it is impossible that what happens should be other than it is,"48 since man, in other words, is entirely powerless in the real world, he has been given the miraculous faculties of reason and will that permit him to reproduce the outside—complete but deprived of its reality—inside his mind, where he is undisputed lord and master. There he rules over himself and over the objects of his concern, for the will can be hindered only by itself. Everything that seems to be real, the world of appearances, actually needs my consent in order to be real for me. And this consent cannot be forced on me: if I withhold it, then the reality of the world disappears as though it were a mere apparition.
This faculty of turning away from the outside toward an invincible inside obviously needs "training" (gymnazein) and constant arguing, for not only does man live his ordinary life in the world as it is; but his inside itself, so long as he is alive, is located with
in some outside, a body that is not in his power but belongs to the "outside things." The constant question is whether your will is strong enough not merely to distract your attention from external, threatening things but to fasten your imagination on different "impressions" in the actual presence of pain and misfortune. To withhold consent, or bracket out reality, is by no means an exercise in sheer thinking; it has to prove itself in actual fact. "I must die. I must be imprisoned. I must suffer exile. But: must I die groaning? Must I whine as well? Can anyone hinder me from going into exile with a smile?" The master threatens to chain me: "What say you? Chain me? My leg you will chain—yes, but not my will—no, not even Zeus can conquer that."49
Epictetus gives many examples, which we do not need to enumerate here; they make tedious reading, like exercises in a schoolbook. The upshot is always the same. What bothers men is not what actually happens to them but their own "judgment" (dogma, in the sense of belief or opinion): "You will be harmed only when you think you are harmed. No one can harm you without your consent."50 "For instance, what does it mean to be slandered? Stand by a stone and slander it: what effect will you produce?"51 Be stonelike and you will be invulnerable. Ataraxia, invulnerability, is all you need in order to feel free once you have discovered that reality itself depends on your consent to recognize it as such.
Like almost all Stoics, Epictetus recognized that the body's vulnerability puts certain limits on this inner freedom. Unable to deny that it is not mere wishes or desires that make us unfree, but the "fetters attached to us in the shape of the body,"52 they therefore had to prove that these fetters are not unbreakable. An answer to the question What restrains us from suicide? becomes a necessary topic of these writings. Epictetus, at any rate, seems to have quite clearly realized that this kind of unlimited inner freedom actually presupposes that "one must remember and hold fast to this, that the door is open."53 For a philosophy of total world-alienation, there is much truth in the remarkable sentence with which Camus began his first book: "Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment'sérieux: c'est le suicide."54
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