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Chandos Book Publishing

‘Freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with your desire, but by destroying your desire’ (Epictetus) Discuss

by Alexander Rikowski



Epictetus (c.55 - c.135C.E.) was a Stoic philosopher, who as I have found out when researching him, was born a slave. This could help us realise why he seems to portray freedom to be something of such great importance. He shows us how the term freedom could mean that we have power over our desires and he advises us what to do with that power. Epictetus appeared to use four main concepts of thought to give his philosophy its unity. A.A. Long (2002, p.27) interpreted these as freedom, judgement, violation and integrity. I realise, however, that all these terms are relevant to achieve his idea of freedom. As Epictetus said:

"Accordingly, if I am there, where my volition is, thus and only thus shall I be the friend and son and father that I should be. For this will be my interest – to preserve integrity, patience, abstemiousness, and cooperation, and to persevere my human relationships." (Epictetus, 106,) (2.22.19-20)

The freedom that interests Epictetus is purely psychological, and has nothing to do with looking at things in a political or social way. He believed happiness comes from doing and experiencing things that we want to experience. This can be possible by having a certain amount of understanding towards nature and of our own identity. To help us to further understand the basis for this ideal of freedom we should first look at judgement. It seems to me Epictetus believed mental states such as emotions are an after effect feeling. That is, we experience them from previously making judgements on the area that we are feeling emotional about. It seems to me he is saying an emotion cannot just be a natural reaction.

I would like to give an example here. If somebody was witnessing a family member dying (assuming that it is in our nature to protect fellow family members especially offspring). Some humans would say that to witness a family member dying is to experience a terribly bad emotion during and after they had died. If however an individual was witnessing the death of a family member and by their own accounts judged that the dying person had previously achieved non virtuous acts such as murder. Assuming there was a good chance that the individual was going to repeat such non virtuous acts in the future. So then at the time they made the conscience decision to do nothing to help him/her after making the judgement that for him/her to die would be a good thing, they could then experience a happy emotion after realising it was the best possible outcome. They could then in turn possibly feel the freedom to feel happy about the whole situation, rather than feel guilt.

However it is possible that a certain individual could have the desire within themselves to protect all human beings at all costs. Then for some reason they did nothing to help someone who was dying, even though they thought that the dying individual had performed non virtuous acts, they would feel unhappiness and resentment towards themselves.

Another example is the type of freedom Epictetus was talking about. The unhappy individual, who I referred to previously, who was witnessing the death of the non virtuous person, could possibly after some delegation and rational thinking wish to eradicate their previous desire to protect all human beings at all costs. After achieving this I feel they can then experience the type of psychological freedom that Epictetus was trying to help us realise. I feel by eradicating a certain desire that I feel is preventing me from feeling happy, it can be possible to have the freedom to feel more how I want to feel about further coming situations or indeed from previous ones in the past. This is all assuming of course that all humans require happiness. I feel Epictetus thought we should only eradicate a desire if eradicating it should not prevent me from becoming virtuous and it could actually help me to become virtuous in the future. It seems that the individual I am talking about could possibly have based his/her outcome on the same way of thinking. It is possible of course that the individual had already destroyed their desire to protect all human beings at all costs and that is why they did nothing when their family member was dying. Therefore the way we feel can determine the way we act, or in this case, not act.

From making judgments on certain topics we can then determine how the third core concept from Epictetus, which would be volition, can be determined. It seems to me that volition is basically who we are, what our character is, judgements, goals, desires, and consciousness. What it is that basically makes us do the things we do and think the things we think. A.A. Long tries to help us understand in his book when he writes:

"You and I are not our bodies… We are essential selves, are our volitions." (Long, 2002, p. 29)

Epictetus seems to be saying we can only have freedom by thinking in this unusual way. To take all of our wants and values away from external things and use only the ones that remain in our volition. In another way, the message Epictetus seems to want to get across is, by eradicating our desires such as our status, prosperity, our desire to have a family after realising that they are purely outside our volitions at this précised moment in our lives, can in turn help us to feel happy, and then this leads on to an individual to achieve perfection, that is the human good (or virtue). That would in turn allow us to have the freedom to do more of what we want to do, and to think in a way that we wish to think. So if we achieve this we would now become wise and this would enable us to have moral excellence.

This brings me on to integrity - this being the fourth core concept. A.A. Long choose to use the word integrity after repeatingly reading words from Epictetus such as reverence, trustworthy, conscience, decency. So then integrity is part of the way we behave towards other people or indeed a way of thinking and behaving overall. This happens after creating our good volition. A good volition carries greater value to an individual over everything else, and integrity would need to be included in this.

It should not be forgotten of course that Epictetus was a Stoic who believed in fate, since he said:

"…lead me fate to wherever you have assigned me. For I will follow without shrinking; and if I am unwilling, and turn out vicious, none the less I will follow…"(Epictetus, Manual 53)

The Stoics in general thought that by following their laws of nature, it would in turn enable us to realise nothing in the universe is without cause. Also the Stoics seemed to think that because fate exists it enables us to have power over our desires. Therefore assent cannot exist without being stimulated by an external force.

Thus, to sum up Epictetus’s idea of freedom. First we need to establish what our desires are, if they are completely external to our volition e.g. prosperity, then they need to be eradicated. This would help us to discover our volition. The Stoics in general thought the individual’s mind (volition) was perfection. We can then apply reason and wisdom to our lives which would in turn lead us on to becoming virtuous (integrity). This would then be the ideal way in which an individual wishes to behave and think. The ending result is perfect happiness, since to be virtuous is to be content with oneself. This is after realising that oneself is thinking and behaving exactly in a way that he/she wants to think or behave. The individual would then realise that happiness or freedom has come about after eradicating their own desires that were outside of their volition. I feel Epictetus does not advise us to purely aim for happiness and virtue alone. My interpretation of the message he was trying to get across would be: desires can only be successful if they are working in coherence with our volition or our virtues. Only by achieving this can our desires be fulfilled since that is the only area for success. All other desires outside of our volition are desires that can only be frustrated, which leads us on to feeling stressful, unhappy and unsatisfied. Therefore they are desires that are not necessary to us having the freedom to think in a way that we wish to think, we then need to come to the conclusion that they are desires that need eradicating. An example of a desire that would be outside of an individual’s volition could be anger. A person could decide that through various reasons in their life that anger is a desire, they could come to the conclusion that to feel anger would enable them to become prosperous. Epictetus said:

"If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase." (Epictetus) (The quotations page)

So if this is true then the desire to be prosperous would also need to be eradicated, since this is partly or wholly whatever the case may be, contributing to their desire to feeling anger. Anger is of course a vice which is the opposite to one of the virtues in our volition.

My concern would be that some individuals could misinterpret Epictetus’s philosophy and could criticise it in the wrong way. They could come to the conclusion that he thought we should purely eradicate all desires, even those that remain within our volition. If we never had any desires at all we would not be able to do anything with the freedom that we have created since we would have no desires to do anything. This could in turn lead to depression, which is of course not the best way to go about achieving freedom. A better way to criticise his work could be that his idea of achieving freedom by eradicating desires could possibly prevent us from having the freedom of choice between all forms of desires. That to protect all our desires gives us the freedom of choosing which desires we would wish to pursue in the future, which would not have been possible if we had previously made the decision to eradicate some of them. This is of course the total opposite way of achieving freedom. So, an individual could conclude that to protect their desires or even to create new ones of any kind that are either in or outside of our volition, is in fact the best form of freedom. Then they would be able to criticise Epictetus’s philosophy in a worthy way. I also wonder if at one time in my life I eradicate a desire that I believe is purely outside of my volition such as starting a family, but then later on decide that desire is currently working within my volition, how easy could it be to rediscover that desire. Overall I believe that only by observing all the possible ways of achieving freedom can I feel the effects of freedom to its fullest. Since Epictetus himself says ‘only the educated are free’. (The quotations page)


Bibliography

Epictetus (2000) The Discourses, Books 1-4. Available at: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html (Accessed 29/05/05)

Epictetus: Selections from The Enchiridion, Translated by Elizabeth Carter. Available at: http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/epictetusselections.html

Epictetus: the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Available at: htpp://www.iep.utm.edu/e/epictetu.html

Epictetus, Manual 53 (Epictetus, 106,) (2.22.19-20)

Epictetus quotes – The quotations page Available at http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Epictetus

Freedom: Definition, Synonyms and Much More From Answers: In Philosophy and History Available at: http://www.answers.com/freedom

Inwood, Brian and Gerson, L.P. (1997) (2nd ed.) Hellenistic Philosophy Introductory Readings, Hackett Publishing, USA

Irwin, Terence (edited) (1999) Classical Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Long, A. A. (2002) Epictetus: a Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press


Alexander Rikowski, London, June 26th 2005
Paper prepared for Hellenistic Philosophy course, Birkbeck College, University of London

© Copyright, June 2005

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