Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius

You shame yourself, my soul, you shame yourself, and you will have no further opportunity to respect yourself; the life of every man is short and yours is almost finished while you do not respect yourself but allow your happiness to depend upon……others. Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome

Stoicism initially emerged as a reaction against the belief that pleasure is always good and pain is always bad or evil. We can define Stoicism as the philosophy that counsels self-control, detachment and acceptance of one´s fate as identified by the objective use of reason. Stoic is an individual who attemps to live according to Stoic doctrine.

Rather than persuing pleasure and trying to avoid pain, the Stoics seek serenity (peace of mind) through self discipline. Stoicism asserts that seeking anything but self control results in avoidable unhapiness, in Stoic view, happiness comes only through detachment of all externals. Everything is a matter of attitude. The disciplined, reasonable person can be happy under any and all conditions.

Stoics believe that nothing can make you happy or unhappy without your consent. All unhappiness is the result of bad thinking, poor character, and confusing what we can control with what we cannot control. Hedonism One of the most earliest and persistent theory of happiness is: “Pursue pleasure (whatever suits you) and avoid pain (whatever causes you suffering and discomfort). The technical name for this kind of philosophy is hedonism.

Hedonism is the general term for any philosophy that says pleasure = good and pain = evil. Some hedonists stress the pursuit of pleasure, and others emphasize avoiding pain, for a strict hedonist, nothing that provides pleasure can be bad. The Meaning of Life is Pleasure Aristippus (c B.C.E.) lived in the town of Cyrene on the coast of North Africa in what is now Libya. Aristippus was a clever and friendly young man, fond of pleasures of all sorts.

He heard about Socrates while attending the Olimpic Games with a friend and was so impressed that he rushed to Athens to meet Socrates. Aristippus quickly became a member of the closest, most involved groups of Socrates´ followers and did some teaching himself. Eventually Aristippus came home and opened a school of philosophy in Cyrene, his doctrine of unrefined hedonism is known as Cyrenaic Hedonism. Aristippus taught that pleasure is the principle motive for living and that pleasure is always good– regardless of its source.

The consequence of such view is that whatever feels good is good, lacking any objective standard of comparison, the Cyrenaic hedonist concludes that the individual is the measure of that which is pleasure, that it is pleasure, of that which is pain, that is pain. And since any pleasure is by definition good, it follows that, I ought to be doing whatever I enjoy doing.

Though Epicurus ( B.C.E.) was born in the Asia Minor city of Samos, he was an Athenian citizen because his father had moved to Samos as an Athenian colonist. When he was eighteen years old, Epicurus went to Athens to complete a two-year military service required of Athenian Males. The Macedonian king of Greece, Alexander the Great, had just died, and the Athenians, who had resented his rule, revolted against the regent he had imposed on them.

It took less than a year for this revolt to be crused, but Epicurus drew an important lesson from it: Political activities and ambitions are pointless. Epicurus remained in Athens for a long time and studied with followers of both Plato and Aristotle. He never accepted Plato´s philosophy and came to reject Aristotle´s as well. He referred to himself as self-taught and never acknowledged any philosophical teacher or master. He saw himself as a moral reformer who had discovered a brand new message, one that could save others from unhappiness.

Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either if it does not expel the suffereing of the mind.

Epicurus called his school “The Garden”. A serene retreat from the social, political and even philosophical turmoil of Athens, Epicurus´s Garden became as well known for good living and pleasant socializing as it was for its philosophy. One of the unusual features of The Garden was that it welcomed everyone. It was one of the very few places in Greece where women were allowed and encouraged to interact with men as equals. Epicurus made no distinction based on social status or race.

He accepted all who came to learn: prostitutes, housewifes, slaves, aristocrats. His favorite pupil was his own slave, Mysis. In his time the mere acceptance of all races, sexes, and social classes would have been enough to brand Epicurus as a dangerous and ungrateful rebel, regardless of his philosophical ideas, yet he went beyond theoretical tolerance, welcoming and encouraging all comers, even in our time, such an attitude is often met with fear and criticism when it is put into practice.

As disciplined and moderate as Epicurus´s refined hedonism was, it was still too soft for another important influence on Stoicism. Cynisism was a philosophic school only in the loosest sense. Founded by Antisthenes, its most famous proponent was Diogenes (C b.c.e.) As a philosophical school, Cynisism existed from the fourth century until the sixth century.

Altough the cynics revolted against the rigidly ordered philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, they admired Socrates. Socrates was the model on which Antisthenes built his Cynisism and by extension, Socrates was a model for the Stoics, it is said that Antisthenes walked almost five miles every day to hear Socrates. The word cynic comes from the greek word for “dog”, and this label was later given to Diogenes because he lived like a dog. That is he was unwashed and rough-looking, he scrounged for food, and he refused to follow conventional standards of dress and behavior.

The Cynics believed that the very essence of civilization is corrupt ;Manners are hypocritical and phony; material wealth weakens people, making them physically and morally soft, the desire for succes and power produces dishonesty and dependency; flattery fashion, fashion and convention destroy the individual and make him or her vulnerable to the whims of fortune. And as the tragic death of Socrates, not even the wisest person can control other people or external events.

So the less an individual needs to be happy, the less vulnerable he or she is. Diogenes for example, lived in an abandoned wine barrel on the beach and once said, “When I saw a child drinking from his hand, I threw away my cup”. The cynics lived austere unconventional lives, they dstrust luxury, they believed happiness was possible through self-discipline, rational control of all desires and appetites, and minimal contact with conventional society.

The two most philosophically influential Stoics are a Roman slave and a Roman emperor. Epictectus and Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus We don´t know much about Epictetus life, his mother was a slave, he was brought to Rome as a slave, he demonstrated unusual abilities, so his master send him to study with Musonius Rufus, the most powerful stoic since the days of Zeno.

Epictetus never lost sight of the fact, that he could be bought or sold, pampered or tortured at his owner´s whim. Epictetus was onced so badly tortured, for the mistake of another slave, that his leg never healed right and he limped for the rest of his life. Freed sometime after Nero´s death, Epictetus became a well known teacher, he fled to Nicopolis in northern Greece, where he taught until he was very old, he became a popular teacher, following the example of Socrates, he published nothing. His ideas have come from class notes from his students.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ( c.e.) was bound by duty. By temperament a scholar and a recluse, he lived surrounded with commotion, deception and crowds. As an emperor he deal with flatterers, liars, and enemies. He was regularly dragged away from Rome to deal from uprisings and barbarian invasions along the frontiers.He was betrayed by a trusted general and spend the last years of his life away from home on a difficult military campaign.

Marcus was loved by many Romans for his kindness and mercy, his last years were hard and lonely, spent in a military campaign, he was described as “by nature a saint and sage, by proffesion a warrior and a ruler”, he died at the age of fifty-nine, worn down by fatigue and toil. Lesson Assessment 1. What is hedonism? 2. What is Cynism?

3. Compare and contrast Hedonism, Cynism, and Stoicism. 4. Describe the life of Epictetus. 5. Describe the life of Marcus Aurelius.