Philosophy as a way of life

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

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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