Stoic Ethics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In one of the talks 'after class' given by the Stoic Epictetus, he is recorded as warning his audience against supposing that they can turn themselves into professional teachers of philosophy overnight, simply by rehearsing the principles they have worked up. His remarks include this intriguing passage (III 21.18–19): It may be that not even being wise suffices for taking care of young people. There is a need in addition for a certain readiness and fitness for this task, in heaven’s name, and a particular physique, and above all it has to be the case that god is advising one to occupy this position, as he advised Socrates to take on the job of cross-examination, Diogenes the job of kingship and castigation, Zeno the job of teaching and formulating doctrine. Two things are immediately obvious: (1) In talking of Socrates, Zeno, and the Cynic Diogenes in this way, Epictetus is not doing history of philosophy. These great names – of thinkers who lived over four or (in Socrates’ case) five hundred years previously – are simply his authorities and paradigms. (2) Epictetus is not thinking of Socrates, Zeno, and Diogenes as authors or proponents of distinct although no doubt related philosophies, as they would standardly be presented in modern accounts of Greek philosophy. The implication is rather that there is one philosophy – or one thing, philosophy – but that the three of them each adopt a different mode of communicating it to others: a different mode of ‘care’, or what one might roughly and in generic terms call ‘therapy’.

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