The second area of exercises is that of motivating inclinations, or action.
For Epictetus, this area is related first and foremost to human relationships within the city. It corresponds to what the Stoics traditionally called "the duties" (ta kathekonta): those actions which are appropriate to the inclinations of our nature. Duties are actions - they thus fall under the category of things which depend on us - bearing upon objects which do not depend on us - such as other people, politics, health, art, etc. As we have seen, such objects ought to be matters of indifference; yet, by dint of a reasonable justification, they can be considered as corresponding to that deeply-embedded instinct which impels rational human nature to act for its own conservation. Duties are thus actions "appropriate" to our rational nature, and they consist in placing ourselves in the service of the human community, in the form of the city/state and of the family.
The third area of exercises is that of assent (sunkatathesis). Epictetus urges us to criticize each representation ( phantasia) as it presents itself to us, and give our assent only to that which is "objective." In other words, we are to set aside all subjective value-judgments. Epictetus formulates the principle guiding this exercise as follows: "People are not troubled by things, but by their j udgements abo111 things. " 80
For Epk-u:tu11, these three areas (topoi) of exercise correspond to the t hree 1111pcL'IN 1 11' 11hil111111phy as it is lived and experienced , as opposed to
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Figures
the three parts of philosophical discourse. This becomes clear from a passage in the Discourses in which he criticizes pseudo-philosophers, who are content just to read theoretical discourses about philosophy. Here we can clearly see that the second and third areas correspond respectively to ethics and to dialectics. The connection between logic and the third of our topoi is particularly evident:
It is as if, in the area of the exercise of assent, we were surrounded by representations, some of them "objective" and others not, and we did not want to distinguish between them, but preferred to read treatises with titles like On Comprehension! How does this come about? The reason is that we have never carried out our reading or our writing in such a way that, when it comes to action, we could use the representations we receive in a way consonant with nature; instead, we arc content when we have learned what is said to us, and can explain it to others; when we can analyze syllogisms and examine hypothetical arguments.81
In this passage, Epictetus underlines the opposition between, on the one hand, theoretical logic, as it was set forth in treatises with titles like On Comprehension; and, on the other, what we might term "lived logic," or logic as applied to life, which consists in the discipline of assent, and the critique of those representations which actually do present themselves to us. In the rest of this passage, we find the same opposition between theoretical discourse and practical, "lived" exercises, this time with regard to the second area. Epictetus shows that the only justification for reading theoretical treatises like On Inclination or On Duties is so that, in concrete situations, we can act in conformity with mankind's rational nature.
In the tripartite division of philosophy,112 the areas of logic and ethics are followed by that of physics. Can physics, then, be made to correspond to the discipline of desire? It would seem as though the passage we have just quoted prohibits such an identification. When, in the context of the discipline of desire, Epictetus speaks of treatises entitled On Desire and Aversion, we have every reason to believe these were treatises relating to ethics. However, even though the abstract theory of "desire" as such, insofar as it is an act of the soul, pertains to the areas of ethics and psychology, the lived attitude which corresponds to the discipline of desire does indeed seem to be a kind of applied physics, which one lives and experiences in the manner of a spiritual exercise. On several occasions, Epictetus insists that the discipline of desire consists in "learning to desire that everything happen just the way it does happen." 83 We are to "keep our will in harmony with what happens," JH and to "be well-pleased with the divine government of things." Hl "If a good man could foresee the future, he would cooper11te with Nickness, death, and mutilation; for he would he awnrc lhnl thiK lml lll'cn ord11ined hy the univcrNal
Marcus Aurelius
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order of things, and that the whole is more important than its parts." 86 We have here a true case of physics lived and experienced as a spiritual exercise.
Since, in order to discipline their desires, people need to be intensely conscious of the fact that they are a part of the cosmos, they must replace each event within the perspective of universal nature.
Such, for Epictetus, is the practice and exercise of philosophy, and we find this fundamental scheme repeated throughout the Discourses. Epictetus'
disciple Arrian, who was responsible for the redaction of both the Discourses and the Manual, made no mistake in this regard, when he chose to group the sayings which make up the Manual according to the three disciplines or areas we have just distinguished. 87
3 Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus
It is fair to say that the essential substance of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations c.-omes from Epictetus. In the first place, it is probably from Epictetus that Marcus got the very idea of the literary genre of meditation by means of writing: "These are the kinds of things on which lovers of wisdom ought to meditate; they ought to write them down every day, and use them to train themselves." 811 "Let these thoughts be 'at hand' for you, day and night Write them down and re-read them; talk about them, both to yourself and with others." 119
The idea of dialogue with oneself had existed for a long time; one thinks of Homer's depiction of Odysseus admonishing himself: "Bear up, my heart." 90 The custom of writing down, for one's personal use, either one's own thoughts or the sayings one has read is also no doubt extremely old .
Nevertheless, we have every reason to believe that it was from Epictetus that Marcus derived the idea of this particular form of self-exhortation and conversation with oneself, bearing as it does upon the same rules of life and principles of action upon which Epictetus had advised his readers to meditate.
The object of Marcus' meditations and exercises was none other than Epictetus' three fundamental themes: the discipline of desire, the discipline of inclinations, and the discipline of judgment. This conceptual structure is peculiar to Epictetus, and is found nowhere else in the philosophical literature of antiquity.91 Moreover, in the course of a series of quotations from Epictetus, Marcus cites a fragment which clearly sets forth the three themes we have been examining: