Epictetus, The Enchiridion, chapters 29-30 | A Line By Line Commentary by Dr. Gregory B. Sadler

Summary

Highlights

• Epictetus compares choosing a lifestyle to preparing for an Olympic victory—consider all it involves before committing. 🥇
• The emphasis is on the importance of discipline, whether it's in philosophical pursuits or athletic training. 💪
• Dr. Sadler discusses how social roles define many of our duties, aligning our choices with the nature and roles we inhabit. 👥
• The chapter encourages examining one's abilities and setting realistic goals, avoiding impulsive decisions based on whimsy. 🎯
• A core message is about pursuing internal development over external achievements, choosing a focused path. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Commit to your pursuits wholeheartedly after thoughtful consideration of their demands and consequences. 🏆
• Epictetus warns against dilettantism and advocates for a disciplined, consistent lifestyle. 🏋️‍♂️
• Understanding and accepting your social roles and duties is key to living harmoniously with nature. 🌿
• Establish boundaries when necessary, but strive to fulfill your roles and principles. 🛡️
• Life choices require sacrifices, but they lead to tranquility and authentic personal growth. 🧘‍♂️

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:30: Introduction and Importance of Planning in Actions The chapter titled 'Introduction and Importance of Planning in Actions' introduces the concept of careful planning before taking action. It emphasizes the importance of considering the initial steps and the subsequent impacts of any action. The key message is to approach tasks with enthusiasm tempered by thoughtful consideration of the sequence and consequences of one's actions.
• 10:30 - 20:00: Athletic Metaphor for Commitment The chapter explores the concept of commitment through the metaphor of preparing for an Olympic victory. It argues that true commitment involves not only aspiring for a goal but also reflecting on and preparing for the steps that will be required to achieve it. The metaphor underscores the necessity of discipline, adherence to a strict regimen, and the willingness to endure hardships such as giving up indulgent foods and training rigorously. The overarching message is that achieving excellence demands preparation for all the challenges that lie between the starting point and the ultimate goal.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Consequences of Lack of Commitment and Superficial Pursuits This chapter discusses the importance of commitment and the consequences of superficial pursuits by comparing life challenges to athletic contests. The text illustrates that success requires dedication and discipline, akin to an athlete following a strict training regimen similar to a patient obediently following a doctor's orders. An athlete must endure hardships, injuries, and losses, just as a person must face life's challenges with resilience. The chapter warns that without full commitment, superficial engagement will lead to failure and setbacks.
• 30:00 - 42:00: Understanding Social Roles and Duties The chapter 'Understanding Social Roles and Duties' explores the theme of adapting various societal roles much like children do. It draws a parallel between children who often play roles like wrestlers, gladiators, or musicians and adults who oscillate between being athletes, gladiators, rhetoricians, philosophers, etc. The passage criticizes the lack of focus and depth as individuals imitate what they see rather than pursuing roles and duties with full commitment and understanding. The chapter emphasizes the importance of adopting roles with awareness and dedication rather than whimsical fascination with superficial roles.
• 42:00 - 52:00: Challenges of Social Roles and Potential for Abuse In this chapter, the author reflects on how people often approach significant roles or challenges without proper preparation or commitment. By providing an analogy with those who hear an eloquent philosopher like Euphrates and subsequently wish to be philosophers themselves, the author highlights the importance of self-awareness and understanding one's abilities. Before deciding to assume a challenging role, individuals should carefully consider their natural abilities and preparedness, akin to an athlete assessing their physical condition before entering a demanding competition like the pentathlon or wrestling. The chapter underscores the potential for failure or 'abuse' of roles when individuals lack the necessary skills or dedication.

Epictetus, The Enchiridion, chapters 29-30 | A Line By Line Commentary by Dr. Gregory B. Sadler Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] in each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first and those which follow after and only then approach the thing itself otherwise at the start you will come to it enthusiastically
• 00:30 - 01:00 because you've never reflected upon any of the subsequent steps but later on when some difficulties appear you will give up disgracefully do you wish to win an olympic victory so do i by the gods for it is a fine thing but consider the matters which come before that and those which follow after and only when you have done that put your hand to the task you have to submit to discipline follow a strict diet give up sweet cakes train under compulsion at a fixed hour in heat
• 01:00 - 01:30 or in cold you must not drink cold water nor wine just whenever you feel like it you must have turned yourself over to your trainer precisely as you would to a physician then when the contest comes on you have to dig in beside your opponent and sometimes dislocate your wrist sprain your ankle swallow quantities of sand take a scourging and along with all that get beaten after you have considered all these points go on into the games if you still wish
• 01:30 - 02:00 to do so otherwise you will be turning back like children sometimes they play wrestlers again gladiators again they blow trumpets and then act to play so you too are now an athlete now a gladiator then a rhetorician then a philosopher yet with your whole soul nothing but like an ape you imitate whatever you see and one thing after another strikes your fancy for you have never gone out after anything with circumspection nor after
• 02:00 - 02:30 you had examined it all over but you acted haphazard and half-heartedly in the same way when some people have seen a philosopher and heard someone speaking like euphrates although indeed who can speak like him they wish to be philosophers themselves man consider first the nature of the business and then learn your own natural ability if you are able to bear it do you wish to be a contender in the pentathlon or a wrestler look to your arms your thighs see what your loins are
• 02:30 - 03:00 like for one man has a natural talent for one thing another for another do you suppose you could eat in the same fashion drink in the same fashion give way to impulse into irritation just as you do now you must keep vigils work hard abandon your own people be despised by a paltry slave be laughed to scorn by those who meet you in everything get the worst of it in honor in office in court in every paltry affair look these drawbacks over carefully if
• 03:00 - 03:30 you are willing at the price of these things to secure tranquility freedom and calm otherwise do not approach philosophy don't act like a child now a philosopher later on a tax gatherer and then a rhetorician than a pro-curator of the caesar these things do not go together you must be one person either good or bad you must labor to improve either your own governing principle or externals you
• 03:30 - 04:00 must work hard either on the inner man or on things outside that is play either the role of a philosopher or else that of a lay man chapter 29 has to do with choosing what we today call a lifestyle in the broad sense and really sticking with it following it through all the way and stoicism can be a lifestyle or it can become a major
• 04:00 - 04:30 component of one's lifestyle and in doing so there's there's certain things that it's going to end up ruling out if you take it seriously if you're not just being a kind of dilettante about it which is precisely what epictetus is calling our attention to the dangers of dilettantism in this chapter so he says and this is the general advice in each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first and those would follow after and only then approach the thing itself so think
• 04:30 - 05:00 about what the prerequisites are what you need to do if you want to be doing that thing right if you want to be engaging in that kind of lifestyle if you want it to become part of who you are and you to become part of what it is then also think about what has to come after that what the entailments are or the implications the things that come along with it and this includes not only what that activity requires but also
• 05:00 - 05:30 what it rules out what it's going to make impossible for you so if you do this then you'll be able to commit wholeheartedly to something you'll be able to go all in as we say so he says otherwise at the start what's the danger you'll come to it enthusiastically because you've never reflected on any of the subsequent steps but later on when some difficulties appear you will give up disgracefully and how many times do we see people doing this it can be with exercise
• 05:30 - 06:00 programs it can be with the latest diet it can be with learning a language it can be with mending relationships with family members or friends it can be about writing the novel and we can go on and on and on and on right sometimes unfortunately it even happens in education so that people enter into college uh not quite understanding why they're going to college and about halfway through or sometimes even the first semester through they end up
• 06:00 - 06:30 dropping out often bringing along with them a trail of loans and and other uh losses along the way and we can say this about relationships too you're going to jump into a romantic relationship uh think very carefully about you know what's going on and what you would like to happen and what is likely to happen those aren't always the same thing what's what you'd like to happen what is likely to happen they don't map on to each other quite perfectly now epictetus
• 06:30 - 07:00 uses an example from athletic training he says do you wish to win an olympic victory well now who of us wouldn't want to win an olympic victory right and something or another now we've got olympics that have so many different sports perhaps there's even something for for one of us and he says so do i by the gods for it is a fine thing but consider the matters which come before that and those which follow after and only when you've done that put your hand to the task if you want to talk all
• 07:00 - 07:30 this you know stuff about i could i could be an olympic athlete well consider what that would actually involve on your part what would it take for you to be an olympic athlete he says well you have to submit to discipline okay right there that's going to rule some people out you have to submit to training right escasis follow a strict diet okay that too
• 07:30 - 08:00 especially for those of us who love to eat may be a problem what else give up sweet cakes okay that's kind of a silly example train under compulsion at a fixed hour in heat or cold so it's not just that you go to the gym once a day when you feel like going to the gym you're going to have a trainer and that trainer is going to say get here at five in the morning and we're going to do sprints and you don't want to do sprints tough you're doing them
• 08:00 - 08:30 right any of you who've been in in middle school or high school athletics probably had coaches who pushed you like that and so you know what that's like you must not drink cold water nor wine whenever you feel like it you must have turned yourself over to your trainer precisely as you would to a physician physicians in ancient greek times were kind of you know pretty hands-on you didn't just go see the doctor and then you know do you get on the scale and the doctor says well you need to lose some weight and maybe you know
• 08:30 - 09:00 cut back on the the red meat and the fats and quit smoking and quit drinking and all this sort of stuff and then you don't see the doctor for another six months no your physician would be somebody who would be there saying hey you're not supposed to eat that hey you need to exercise right now hey no smoking you know all of these sorts of things well they weren't smoking in greek times but you get the idea so then that's just the start now what is it like when you actually participate he says when the contest
• 09:00 - 09:30 comes on you have to dig in beside your opponent sometimes dislocate your wrist sprain your ankle swallow quantities of sand this would be if you're a wrestler right sometimes take a scourging and along with all that after all of that lose get beaten the verb here is uh nikkei thing uh yeah nikkeith and i meaning the other guy wins the victory you don't win the victory right after all of that work and
• 09:30 - 10:00 we can say the same thing oh you're gonna go to you're gonna become a big business person right go go do your ba now go do your mba and don't do it just anywhere go to harvard or go to you know uh this place or that place or that place right i'm not really keen on figuring out which business school is supposed to be better than the others uh they probably don't don't matter all that much um but you have to do all this sort of stuff now do your internships now do this now do that and you can get out
• 10:00 - 10:30 there and still not find the job that you want waiting for you all these things are possible the this is how we should think about matters in life so he says if you've considered all these points go into the games if you still wish to do so think it through it's not saying don't be an olympic athlete just think it through are you really up to it not just up to it physically but mentally are you up to all the things that would
• 10:30 - 11:00 be involved if you are more power to you go ahead and do it now if you don't do things that way what's the problem he tells us otherwise you'll be turning back like children what do children do and this is fine for children at the age that children are doing this by the way he's not knocking children and saying oh stop doing that you should all be adults it's just that adults should be adults and so he says what do children do sometimes they play wrestlers again gladiators again they blow trumpets then
• 11:00 - 11:30 act at play so you too now here's the problem you too the adult are now an athlete now a gladiator then a rhetorician then a philosopher yet with your whole soul nothing you're not committing to anything entirely uh you want to learn a foreign language fine learn a foreign language uh you know spend an hour a day doing drills and and studying things maybe you buy yourself you know one of these packages that they sell online and
• 11:30 - 12:00 have all these great ads about how they're not going to make you do drills see if that works for you it doesn't work for you do it the old-fashioned way put in the time every day now start reading some text you want to learn some latin you got to read some some latin texts start with somebody easy aim for augustine or cicero down the line right or or some other great author and just keep plowing at it but don't pretend just because you're carrying around a wheel lock teach yourself latin book
• 12:00 - 12:30 that you're actually learning latin because you go in the cafe and put her around for an hour on a saturday and then go back to doing whatever it was that you know you were doing i mean if you think about this um what is it that most people are particularly good at in our culture there's their jobs right and then there's say watching netflix or enjoying themselves people can negotiate all sorts of things online you know they can find that movie that obscure movie by using the google search engine to you
• 12:30 - 13:00 know zero in on it but now what about doing actual research you know what was the progression of the stoic philosophers and which ones do you need to read you can use google for that too you know but it all depends on where you commit yourself what are you going to commit yourself to what is valuable to you so he says um you know if you do this you're like like an ape you're imitating whatever you see and one thing after another strikes your fancy you're being driven by things
• 13:00 - 13:30 coming from the outside not setting your own purposes and he says for you've never gone out after anything with circumspection nor after you examined it all over it but you act at haphazard and half-heartedly and it's perfectly understandable that that you know you would do that that a person would do that if you've never sat down and planned things out that takes some some doing and if you come from a family where people don't do that sort of thing or that's just part
• 13:30 - 14:00 of the culture that you grew up in that's unfortunate but you have a choice at this point in time are you going to continue down the path or are you now going to change it and think things through and decide do i want to when i'm 40 years old live this kind of lifestyle or live this kind of lifestyle do i want to when it comes to studying philosophy do i really want to study philosophy and understand it or do i want to just have a kind of a smattering of it and bring it up every
• 14:00 - 14:30 so often and sort of catch phrases these are possibilities one is easy to do the other one requires something like training for the the athletic contest so he says in the same way when people have heard a philosopher and heard somebody speaking like euphrates we don't know much about him but it would be cool if we did they wish to be philosophers themselves and that's a fine thing you know we we see other people doing things we watch dances with the stars and we're like oh man i wish i could dance like that we watched some some martial arts
• 14:30 - 15:00 movie and then we started thinking oh man i should get back into martial arts we see some spy movie and we're like oh i wish i knew all these languages and i could rappel from you know these heights and do all you know spinning kicks and stuff like that so he says consider the nature of the business then learn your own natural ability if you are able to bear it do you want to be a contender in the penta pentathlon or a wrestler look to your arms your thighs see what your
• 15:00 - 15:30 loins look like for one man has a natural talent for one thing another for another we're not all meant for the same thing now of course when it comes to stoic philosophy not everybody necessarily has the talent to become an expositor a teacher of stoic philosophy but we all have the capacity to practice it and to learn it if we so choose that's one of the great things about this kind of philosophy it's very democratic in that respect so he says
• 15:30 - 16:00 you know do you think you can keep on living the same way if you want to become a wrestler no you have to do other things what about for stoicism do you suppose you can eat in the same fashion drink in the same fashion no the answer is you can't not if you want to be a stoic and that's just the start of it give way to impulse into irritation as you do now you can't keep on doing that you're
• 16:00 - 16:30 going to keep doing that but you have to keep yourself as best you can from doing it and then afterwards look at yourself and say oh i lost my temper instead of saying yeah it's that guy's fault over there and and once more i ought to go kick him or something like that you say to yourself oh i lost my temper this is not according to my plan of life i actually set myself behind just as much as an athlete who you know because the weekend came went out got drunk and you know ate
• 16:30 - 17:00 like crap and didn't do any exercise that's the equivalent for stoic philosophy he says you must keep vigils work hard abandon your own people be despised by a paltry slave be laughed to scorn by those who meet you in everything at the worst of it in honor in office and court and every paltry affairs now this is admittedly not what every single stoic encounters but these are the things that can happen um
• 17:00 - 17:30 studying stoic philosophy is not going to make you a big name in whatever circuit you're in it's also not going to be something that other people look to and say oh wow that is so admirable except in a they'll do that sometimes in a superficial way until they know something about stoic philosophy they're not going to look at you the way they do at the celebrities or at the people who have a lot of money or at the people who have uh you know beautiful bodies or the people who have lots and
• 17:30 - 18:00 lots of connections stoic philosophy is something that you do for yourself so he says look these drawbacks over carefully if you are willing at the price of these things to secure what is the goal tranquility freedom and calm apathea alluteria atraxia these are sort of the trifecta of what stoics are after so if that's really your goal if that's the far off distant goal post
• 18:00 - 18:30 then you have to train to reach it he says otherwise don't approach philosophy don't act like a child and now a philosopher later on a tax gatherer then a rhetorician then a pro-creator of caesar these things don't go together you must be and here's where it gets really uh interesting you must be one person you're you're stuck with that you've only got one you to work with so is it going to be a good you or is it going to be a bad you or is it going to
• 18:30 - 19:00 be a you that's just sort of scattered all over the place a different form of bad actually from the stoic perspective but a more unfortunate type in certain ways right a bad person who's deliberately bad you know where they stand the bad person who's just scattered all over all sorts of stuff and frittering their life and their time away doesn't realize that that's going on you want to be a good person you have to be one person and then you have to train yourself towards goodness
• 19:00 - 19:30 so he says you must labor to improve either your own governing principle or externals you're going to work on your finances or you're going to work on your governing principle are you going to work on your circle of friends and making all sorts of connections and networking or are you going to work on your principles are you going to work on you know making your body as attractive as possible or you're going to work on your governing principle we could go on and on and on with examples of that great another
• 19:30 - 20:00 great example you're going to work on your political career or you're going to work on your governing principle these are not compatible with each other you only have so much time and so much attention that you can devote so where are you going to spend it and if you're going to try to you know spread it over everything you're not going to get anything in in the process so he says either work on the inner person or on things outside that is play either the role of the philosopher or that of the
• 20:00 - 20:30 layperson the idiots in in greek you have to make a decision so the good news is you actually get to make that decision nobody else gets to make it for you our duties are in general measured by our social relationships he is a father one is called upon to take care of him to give way to him in all things to submit when he reviles or strikes you but he is a bad father did nature then bring you into a relationship with a good father no but
• 20:30 - 21:00 simply with a father my brother does me wrong very well then maintain the relation that you have towards him and do not consider what he is doing but what you will have to do if your moral purpose is to be in harmony with nature for no one will harm you without your consent you will have been harmed only when you think you are harmed in this way therefore you will discover what duty to expect of your neighbor your citizen your commanding officer if
• 21:00 - 21:30 you acquire the habit of looking at your social relations with them chapter 30 is a passage that i think proves difficult for a lot of people to to accept in our culture for several different reasons one of these has to do with the fact that he's connecting morality and what is right for us to do with our roles and our relationships you
• 21:30 - 22:00 know he says straight out our duties our cafe that's a stoic term for duty are in general measured by our social relationships he's not saying that all of our duties are you know developing out of social relationships but that a great many of them are he says host epiphan you know in in the generality and this this has to do with our uh sc our
• 22:00 - 22:30 our uh our relationships are our connections with other people a lot of these have to do with determinate roles that we inhabit many of which we don't choose he talks about for example fathers and children we don't choose to be a child of somebody unless we're going through some really strange you know uh you know re-parenting ritual or something like that for the most part that's not really the way it works we get the parents that
• 22:30 - 23:00 we've got and we're stuck with them parents you know you can say well parents chose to make children but sometimes that's actually true but they don't really choose the children that they get and you know we can say the same thing with siblings we can say the same thing with so many relationships that we're thrown into and so there's there's kind of an arbitrariness to it that i think a lot of people have have trouble with there's also some worries about the fact that his isn't all this culturally
• 23:00 - 23:30 relative that's an issue that you know is a big issue uh can be worked out separately the the short answer is no most cultures have some sense of parentage and children and you know how they should behave with each other let's not say that everything is totally constant but there's a lot of similarities that you can look at across the board the other thing that i think people really have a hard time with is they look at this and they think that epictetus is saying that whatever
• 23:30 - 24:00 whatever the other person does to you in the relationship you have to accept it you can't lay down any boundaries you can't lay down any limits and so it seems like there's a possibility for abuse so it's worth keeping in mind that the stoic is not going to allow themselves to suffer something that truly is abusive not only because it would be damaging to oneself it would place oneself under you know a burden that would make it very
• 24:00 - 24:30 difficult to practice the stoic lifestyle but it's also not good for the other person the other person who's being an abuser that's not good for them that's fundamentally bad for them and so sometimes by removing yourself from the situation and laying down limits and saying i'd love to be a you know your kid but you're really uh too much with this this stuff that you're doing and you're going to have to knock that off before we can have a healthy relationship that would be allowable within this um but there there is before
• 24:30 - 25:00 you reach that point a lot of like putting up with the other person's nonsense in part because if you're a stoic realize they're not a stoic right and maybe you can talk to them and say hey you know wouldn't you like to live a life where you're not feeling upset all the time and then taking it out on me in this way but you can't make them do that that's not something in your control what is in your control is whether you fulfill your duties
• 25:00 - 25:30 and how you do it and how you understand the role that you're in so he says our duties are in general measured by our social relationships this person's a father so what are you called to do to take care of him to give way to him in all things to submit when he reviles or strikes you and again i think that for quite a few of us we would say some of these parts are culturally limited or relative
• 25:30 - 26:00 but some of them aren't you know respecting one's parents may not necessarily mean that you agree with everything that they say in our culture which prizes a lot of you know back and forth talking and stuff like that but in other cultures it might mean that or bringing things up at the right time not embarrassing your parents by say correcting them in public there's a lot of ways of doing this now notice what he says after that and this is the the complaint but he's a bad father and epictetus says well did
• 26:00 - 26:30 nature bring you into relationship with a good father no simply a father the roles that we're in we don't get to choose how the other person behaves in that role that's up to that person that's not up to us in a way it takes a lot of pressure off to say i don't need to worry about making that other person do something that they're not going to do and my myself being vaxter upset by it
• 26:30 - 27:00 children it works the same way too people are always trying to get their kids to behave some kids just won't behave or they'll behave in this circumstance but not in that circumstance it's pretty common um if you invest most of your energy and making sure that your children stay all within the lines that's really a quixotic enterprise and you're going to be very disappointed somewhere down the line so he says
• 27:00 - 27:30 maintain the relationship that you have towards this father don't worry don't consider what he is doing but what you will have to do if your moral purpose is to be in harmony with nature the goal for you is to maintain your prayer races your faculty of choice your moral purpose in accordance with nature you do that by fulfilling your roles towards other people not worrying about whether there's reciprocity not worrying about whether they did something first and
• 27:30 - 28:00 whether you're going to get back at them by withdrawing the role we could say this about so many other things we could say this about marriages and you know how the partners in the marriage treat each other it's very common for you know little subterranean wars to break out where one person well you didn't do that so i'm gonna take something away over here that would be to go against the stoic uh philosophy on on these sorts of matters same thing with with friends same thing
• 28:00 - 28:30 with classmates same thing with all sorts of other relationships so he says nobody can harm you without your consent you will only you will been harmed only when you think you are harmed now to go back to the abuse thing you know if somebody really is being abusive let's say they're they're constantly insulting you tearing you down um i don't think epictetus would say well you have to stay in that relationship and just let them do whatever they want to you because stoicism
• 28:30 - 29:00 no that's not what stoicism consists in it recognizes us as human beings who are very often even if perhaps you know theoretically we shouldn't be affected by what other people do when it's parents who are doing it it's very tough to screen that out so if we know that we're having trouble with that or we know that because of the way they treated us long ago that never got talked about or resolved that you know we're having difficulty in in you know seeing them in the light that we should
• 29:00 - 29:30 see them and they're still driving us nuts uh because they're not changing not recognizing things not apologizing then it may be that we do have to set down a boundary and we do have to say okay i recognize that that in theory nobody can harm me without my consent but i'm finding myself giving consent to that and i want to stop doing that so he goes on and he says in this way by thinking about our duties and our relationships we will discover
• 29:30 - 30:00 what duty to expect of our neighbor our citizen our commanding officer if we acquire the habit of looking at our social relations with them if we look at our skeptis in greek with them we we can think about how we ought to comport ourselves in relation to other people by looking at the nature of that relationship and that's not to say that
• 30:00 - 30:30 there can't be anything personalized about it that we have to reduce it just to a role oh you're my superior so i have to behave towards you in this way we can have a personal relationship but there is that role there and keeping our moral purpose in accordance with nature does uh have something to do with that it's not as if our social roles are just things that we uh put on like clothes and then then take off they are the fabric within which we live so we really want to pay
• 30:30 - 31:00 attention to them because they matter for moral life [Music]
• 31:00 - 31:30 you