Discourses and Selected Writings Read Free Page A

known in the Islamic East. The ninth-century philosopher al-Kindi (according to the Muslim historian Ibn al-Nadim (d. 955), ‘the best man of his time, called The Philosopher of the Arabs’) 2 was appointed by the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun to the House of Wisdom, a centre for the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific texts in Baghdad. His own work of ethics, ‘On the Art of Dispelling Sorrows’, shows the unmistakable influence of Stoicism in general and Epictetus in particular. There he lays emphasis on the importance of freedom from the world and highlights humans’ status as agents, who through their ultimate independence are responsible for their own happiness and independent of others. The weight Epictetus puts on the ephemeral nature of worldly goods is recalled; from chapter 7 of the Enchiridion al-Kindi borrows the comparison of earthly life to a ship which has, during the course of its voyage, temporarily anchored at an island and allowed its passengers to disembark; passengers who linger too long on the island risk being left behind when the ship sets sail again. The implicit warning, as in Epictetus, is that we must not become attached to material things (represented by the island and its foodstuffs), because they will invariably be taken away from us when the ship relaunches.
    The first printed edition of the Discourses appeared in Venice in 1535; within a century they had been translated into all the major European languages; and in one version or another they, and the Enchiridion , have remained continuously in print.
    Two of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century witness to the fact that Epictetus survived the transition to the modern era with no loss in reputation. Pascal, in his ‘Discussion withMonsieur de Sacy’, praises Epictetus for his delineation of human duties and his recommendation that we submit to the will of a providential God. He objects, however, to the assumption, common among ancient philosophers, that human nature was perfectible without the need of God’s grace.
    [Epictetus] believes that God gave man the means to fulfill all his obligations; that these means are within his power, that happiness is attained through what we are capable of, this being the reason God gave them to us. Our mind cannot be forced to believe what is false, nor our will compelled to love something that makes it unhappy. These two powers are therefore free, and it is through them that we can become perfect. 3
    That the redemptive message of the Gospels was not available to the ancients makes their morals incomplete. But this Christian caveat aside, Pascal shrewdly identifies and correctly describes a central tenet of Epictetus’ teaching. Stoicism purported to be an internally consistent system the doctrines of which were mutually self-entailing across all three branches – logic, physics and ethics. Pascal’s contemporary Descartes was deeply affected by his reading of Epictetus, and he seized on one of the philosopher’s most original moves, the way he enlists epistemology (specifically humans’ use of appearances) in support of his moral principles. In Descartes too we find a close fit between the method of doubt he adopts regarding the truth of our impressions and opinions and his philosophy of life. In the Rules for the Direction of the Mind , he states:
    The aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgments about whatever comes before it… [A person should consider] how to increase the natural light of his reason… in order that his intellect should show his will what decision it ought to make in each of life’s contingencies. 4
    Over long stretches Descartes’ Discourse on Method , the first classic of modern philosophy, reads like nothing so much as aparaphrase of Epictetus. One programmatic passage will have to do by way of illustration:
    I undertook to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than