2014. Philosophy Today, Volume 58, Issue 3 (Summer 2014).

ISSN 0031-8256. 367392

DOI: 10.5840/philtoday20145225
How Its Not the Chrisippus You Read:
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and
Stoicism as a Way of Life
MATTHEW SHARPE
Abstract: This article challenges John M. Coopers reading of ancient Stoicism as a
way of life, one which sets its back against Pierre Hadots notion that Stoicism (or the
other ancient schools, excepting Epicureanism) could have philosophically advocated
regimens of non-cognitive practices of the kind documented by Hadot. Part 1 examines
Arrians Discourses, following A. A. Long in seeing in this text Arrians portrait of Epicte-
tus as a philosophical persona: one bringing together the different virtues of Socrates,
Diogenes, and Zeno. Part 2 then examines Epictetuss Handbook (Encheiridion), seeing
in this textin contrast to Hadot and Sellarsa distinct set of prescriptions for the
kinds of existential practices the Roman Stoics advocated, not in place of philosophical
argumentation, but as a means to habituate aspirants conduct to ways of thinking,
desiring and acting harmonious with their philosophical conclusions.
Key words: Epictetus, Hadot, Cooper, Handbook, spiritual exercises, habituation
Introduction: Philosophy, Which Way of Life? Cooper versus Hadot
I
n 2012, John M. Cooper published his Pursuits of Wisdom.
1
Based on the
previous years John Locke lectures, Coopers opus examines ancient phi-
losophy as involving not one, but six ways of life. Each ancient school, up
to and including the (for him) liminal neoPlatonists, was moved by the conviction
that philosophical thought . . . on its own, must on its own, and directly, provide
the motivation . . . on which one lives ones life in just the way that one does.
2
Yet
Coopers plural subtitle Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy serves not simply
to qualify this generic metaphilosophical claim about the ancient philosophies.
368 Matthew Sharpe
It also marks Coopers contribution off from the inuential work of the French
historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, whose studies on ancient philosophy comme
manire de vivre (in the singular) inuenced Michel Foucault and many oth-
ers. Indeed, for all of Coopers proximity, and avowed debt, to several of Hadots
key claimsnotably, Hadots claim that the restriction of philosophy to a solely
theoretical pursuit came with the medieval hegemony of Christianity
3
one
leitmotif of Coopers important book is a strong criticism of Hadots conception
of ancient philosophy.
4
Cooper makes two central claims against Hadots idea of ancient philosophy
as a way of life, in favour of his own interpretation. First, ancient philosophyal-
though it was agreed from Socrates onwards to involve an existential commitment,
wherein one lived from, or on the basis of, the philosophical truths one theoreti-
cally assented to
5
did not essentially involve what Hadot calls exercises spirituels
or spiritual exercises.
6
Cooper sees Hadot as equivocating on the meaning of this
term spiritual exercises between a narrower meaning of voluntary, personal
practices, intended to bring about a transformation of the individual and a
wider sense, embracing any activity of living, for example activities of daily life
in which one infuses ones actions with ones knowledge of [e.g.] Stoic logic or
Stoic physical theory.
7
The latter sense Cooper nds consistent with his sense of
ancient philosophy as a way of life, but for just this reason as involving nothing
meaningfully spiritual. Indeed, it is this term, which Hadot recognised would be
controversial, that Cooper sees Hadot as drawing from Ignatius Loyola in the six-
teenth century, rather than from ancient Greek or Roman texts.
8
Indeed, Coopers
second claim is that Hadot illegitimately projects backwards an understanding of
philosophy drawn from late antiquity (Hadots earliest, and an enduring, period
of historical research). This was a period which Cooper (citing Hadots La Fin du
Paganisme) however sees as one of decline of ancient philosophy. In these times,
with the ascent of syncretic forms of neoPlatonism, philosophy became infected
by a wider cultural malaise and sense of alienation from the natural world that
fed the rise of the mystery cults and Christianity.
9
In this context alone, Cooper
claims, were Hadots spiritual exercises (in the narrower sense specied above)
adopted by philosophers: involving meditation, self-exhortation, memorisation,
and recitation to oneself of bits of sacred texts, causing in oneself devoted prayer-
ful or prayer-like states of consciousness and mystical moments.
10
But such
forms of askesis for Cooper reect a later antique contamination of philosophy
by religion
11
rather than in any way constituting an essential part of the ancient
philosophies, properly conceived as ways of life somehow founded in rigorous
analysis and reasoned argument alone.
12
This essay wants to challenge Coopers criticisms of Hadot, and his concep-
tion of ancient philosophy as a way of life involving spiritual exercises. Its method
is to take a single case from the Roman period, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 369
The stakes of our argument should be made clear from the start. Stoicism is of
course, for Cooper, one of the six ways of life Pursuits of Wisdom examines. Nev-
ertheless, the difference between Coopers treatment of the Stoics and Hadots
is remarkable and itself instructive. Hadot, who began his academic work as a
philologist, begins from the literary question, when he examines ancient phi-
losophers writing.
13
That is, he attends closely to the kinds of books we know the
Stoics wrote, and argues that these literary forms reect their desired pedagogic
and ethical aimsindeed their entire metaphilosophy. It is in order to explain
the distance, for example, between Aureliuss Meditations and The Critique of
Pure Reason that Hadot claims that such texts can only be meaningfully read
as involving injunctions to forms of askesisotherwise, he notes, we must
dismiss them as repetitive, ill-formed, drafts, or wholly idiosyncratic.
14
Cooper
by contrast, in Pursuits of Wisdom, begins by reconstructing the Stoics theoreti-
cal system in abstraction from any and all specic texts, drawing mainly on the
surviving claims of the Hellenistic Stoics, taken from the doxological tradition;
and reconstructing the system on their basis. He then makes clear how assent-
ing to such a theoretically coherent worldview was intended to legitimise and,
in ways Cooper arguably cannot detail, make possible actually living a Stoic way
of life on an ongoing basis.
15
Coopers Stoicism as a way of life did not involve,
then, any practices to ensure that these theoretical truths did come to actually
motivate agents practically (Epicureanism alone of the Hellenistic schools did,
Cooper concedesbut Epicureanism scores lower on his scale for this reason.
16
)
In what follows, we will claim that Epictetus stands as a prime exemplar of
philosophy practiced as a way of life, in ways which exceed and challenge Coopers
model. There is in Epictetus an over-arching sense of philosophy as interested
in ethical formation or . This interest is nevertheless grounded in, and
justiable by, a set of reasoned, theoretical claims about human nature; and the
philosophical way of life thus conceived is to be sharply differentiated both from
the values of most ordinary folk, and sophists who make a show of learning
for the sake of personal fame or advancement. These are the points about an-
cient philosophy as a way of life on which Cooper agrees with Hadot, and will
occupy Part 1 of the essay, where we examine Epictetuss philosophical persona
as presented by Arrian in the Discourses. Yet, beyond Coopers metaphilosophy
and as Hadot, Sellars, Long and others have argued, Epictetus also embraces
the explicitly therapeutic sense of philosophy as aiming to cure peoples desires,
following Socrates and the earlier Stoics in describing it aslike medicinea
, specically an art of living.
17
Epictetuss sayings as recorded by Arrian
also clearly enjoin forms of writing and acting as means to actively reshape aspir-
ing philosophers motivations, on top of merely learning the theoretical system
of the earlier Stoics. Epictetuss recommendation of such forms of askesis, which
we will argue shape the entirety of his Handbook, will be our concern in Part 2
370 Matthew Sharpe
below. Indeed, our argument here against Coopers sense of Stoicism as a way of
life is captured in two characteristic episodes recorded in the Discourses, where
Epictetus in effect pillories students who had the temerity to think that being a
Stoic could just involve theoretically comprehending the system of the great Stoic
master Chrisippus (no less), without spiritual practices. If you could analyse syl-
logisms like Chrisippus, what is to prevent you from being wretched, sorrowful,
envious, and in a word, being distracted and miserable?, Epictetus asks, then
answers: Not a single thing.
18
And again:
[Epictetus] Who is in a state of progress then? He who has best studied
Chrisippus?
Why, doesnt virtue consist in having read Chrisippus? . . . This person, they
say, is already able to understand Chrisippus, by himself.
[Epictetus]: Certainly, sir, you have made a vast improvement! What improve-
ment? Why do you delude him? Why do you withdraw him from a sense of his
real needs? . . . That is not what I am looking for, slave, but how you exercise
your impulse to act, how you manage your desires and aversions, how you
approach things, how you apply yourself to them, and prepare for them, and
whether in harmony with Nature or out of harmony.
19
Part 1. Arrians Depiction of Epictetus as Philosophical Sage
We begin by underscoring the remarkable fact that although Epictetusan
emancipated, lame slave who conducted classes in provincial Nicopolis at the
beginning of the second century CE (until his death circa 135 CE)established
a formidable reputation as the greatest philosopher of his time, he never wrote a
single word. We owe our testimony of the man and his philosophy to the memory
notes (or ) of one of the many young Roman nobles, Arrian, who
came to sit at his feet. Alongside such admirers, who might like Arrian stay with
Epictetus for some time, the Discourses suggest that there was also a hard core
of closer disciples who lived in or around Epictetuss school, as well as taking
his formal classes. Other Romans, and occasionally philosophers from rival
schools, would also come to Nicopolis to discuss philosophy with Epictetus, or
(remarkably for us) ask advice on mundane, practical issues: how to respond
to the illness of family members, whether to proceed in a law-suit, and so on.
20

The point here is that it is from the fabric of the exchanges Epictetus had with
these students and visitors before or after his more formal classes that Arrian
has woven the eight books of the Diatribai that bear his name.
21
For us, even the
four books that survive can thus seem almost completely disordered, and far
beneath the dignity of reasoned analysis and theory-construction. As A.A. Long
notes, the conversations span nearly every kind of topic, from the sublime (what
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 371
is providence? the will of god?), to the methodological (how to do philosophy?
why do logic?), psychological (what is the nature of love, fear, tranquillity, pity?),
and mundane (on duties, relationships, even cleanliness)with a good dose of
the ironic thrown in. The middle of the book seems to be everywhere, and we
start again with every new chapter.
Any understanding of Epictetus, and his way of philosophising, we would
argue, needs to begin from a sense of why Arrian might have published such a
work; or, in his words, why his notes concerning Epictetus should somehow
[have] fall[en] into the public domain.
22
Arrian was a Roman consul under
Hadrian, and governor of the Province of Cappadocia. He was also, however, a
very serious author whose diverse oeuvre, if not his persona, seems clearly to
have been modelled on that of Xenophon, the ancient philosopher, proselytiser
of Socrates, historian, and adventurer. Arrian like Xenophon wrote an Anabasis
(Ascent or Rise) on Alexander the Greats expeditions to the East, as Xenophon
had written an Anabasis on his own mercenary adventures in the East. Arrian
also penned lesser works on hunting and military arts, like his Greek hero. This
literary emulation becomes signicant for us when we come to consider the aims
of his Diatribai of Epictetus. As Xenophon matched his Persian works with a
Memorabilia of Socrates, it seems very plausible that Arrian wanted to present
these discourses of Epictetus as a kind of Roman re-casting of Xenophons Memo-
rabilia: the work in which Xenophon set out to report the conversations and deeds
of his hero-mentor Socrates. In stark contrast to our expectations that the book
should, as rigorous philosophy, develop a single line of theoretical argument on
anything like the model of the contemporary monograph
23
Arrian presents these
Discourses as a semi-biographical Memorabilia of a great philosophical sage. The
rst object of the Discourses of Epictetus, we might say, is Epictetus himself, as
a sage who taught by living example, through actions as well as words, what it
might be like to become a Stoic philosopher.
So who is Arrians Epictetus, as the Discourses presents him to us? What
features does he have, as a philosopher so ideal that Arrian has felt it right to
record for us his scattered, occasional discourses? In answering this question,
A.A. Longs important study, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life, draws
attention to one statement by Epictetus as particularly revealing of Epictetuss
own philosophical identity. The saying concerns three earlier philosophers: [God]
counselled Socrates to undertake the ofce of refuting [
], Epictetus begins; Diogenes [the Cynic] was tasked with the reproving and
kingly task [ ]; and Zeno [the
founding Stoic] brought doctrinal instruction [
].
24
For Long, by naming his heroes in this way, Epictetus is tell-
ing us about his own ways of philosophising. On some occasions, in exchanges
with students and visitors, Epictetus engages in Socratic questioning: the famous
372 Matthew Sharpe
Socratic elenchus. At other times, as in the sharper discourses like those cited
above wherein he rebukes students for their wrong-headed ideas, Epictetus is more
like Diogenes the Cynic. Always, Epictetus aims through adopting these personae
to bring students towards an appreciation of Stoic philosophical doctrine, so they
can begin to live according to the convictions promoted rst by Zeno of Cition at
the end of the fourth century BCE.
Following Long, let us then consider these three components of Epictetus as
a philosopher in turn.
As is well known, Diogenes of Sinope was the Cynic philosopher, contempo-
rary of Plato, famous for living in a barrel, masturbating in public, and wandering
around Athens haranguing people with a lamp, saying: I am looking for an honest
man. His extraordinary behaviour did not end with these idiosyncrasies. The
later Diogenes, Diogenes Laertius, tells us in his Lives of the Philosophers that his
Cynic namesake would train himself in endurance by embracing snow-covered
statues; or in patience, by begging at statues feet with open hands, as if waiting
endlessly for them to throw him coins
25
all, en passant, prize instances of what
Hadot calls spiritual exercises, which Cooper problematically tells us were un-
known to philosophers before the imperial period.
26
The cynics, taking Socrates as their idol, were convinced that living fully
naturally involved actively cultivating , a complete absence of shame
before articial (as they conceived them) social conventions.
27
Epictetus and the
Stoics in general were not as extreme as the Cynics, although their founder Zeno
was a Cynic for a time (and one of the rst Stoics, Aristo of Chios, jumped ship
back to the Cynical school). Epictetuss admiration for Diogenes is nevertheless
very clear, as Long notes. No other gure is mentioned so often in the Discourses,
excepting Socrates. In an entire chapter devoted to praise for the Cynics in the
third book, Diogenes is lauded as a kind of advance scout () of the
gods.
28
He scouts out the true nature of good and evil, assuring us that death and
other perceived evils like loss of reputation, are not truly so.
29
Notably, Epicte-
tus especially praises Diogenes as someone who proves these things in action,
not words: he gives as proof of each claim his own courage, his tranquillity, his
freedom, and moreover his body, radiant and hardened.
30
As for Epictetuss claim that Diogenes is kingly, the comparison of the
sage to the true king is a Stoic commonplace in their ongoing reections on the
persona of the sage.
31
Most people imagine kings to be the most self-sufcient
of men. Yet only the sage, by mastering his own fears and desires, can truly have
this . Most of us imagine that kings must be the happiest of men,
since they have everything we could want: wine, women, wealth, etc. The Stoics
claimed that the wise man alone is lastingly happy, since he alone can adapt his
desires perfectly to whatever may come. As for Diogenes, his kingship ()
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 373
for Epictetus lay in how he fearlessly reproved all and sundryeven, famously,
Alexander the Greatas if he were their rightful monarch:
able to lift up his voice . . . and say, like Socrates: O mortals, whither are you
hurrying? What are you about? Why do you tumble up and down, O miserable
wretches, like blind men? . . . You seek prosperity and happiness in the wrong
place, where they are not; nor do you give credit to another, who shows you
where they are.
32
We have already seen Epictetus exercising such a kingly, reproving function for
himself, in response to hapless students who sought his approval in the wrong
place, by learning passages of Chrisippus by rote. This protreptic style of reprov-
ing others, Epictetus explains, consists
in being able to show, to one and all, the contradictions in which they are
involved; and that they care for everything rather than what they mean to
care for: for they mean the things conducive to happiness, but they seek them
where they are not to be found.
33
Turning now to the Socratic component of Epictetuss philosophising, commenta-
tors can at least agree on the centrality of the so-called elenchusdiscussion by
question and answerto Socratess way of doing philosophy. In a similar manner,
the Discourses show us Epictetus ceaselessly entering into dialogue with students
and visitors, andin a way which blends always into protreptic reprovaleven
undertaking rhetorical dialogues with imagined interlocutors. Consider the
opening discourse in the Discourses:
Of other faculties, you will nd no one that contemplates, and consequently
approves or disapproves itself. How far does the proper sphere of grammar
extend?
[respondent] As far as the judging of language.
Of music?
[respondent] As far as the judging of melody.
Does either of them contemplate itself, then?
[respondent] By no means.
Thus, for instance, when you are to write to your friend, grammar will tell you
what to write; but whether you are to write to your friend at all, or no, grammar
will not tell you. . . . What will tell, then?
[respondent] That which contemplates both itself and all other things.
And what is that?
[respondent] The Reasoning Faculty
Yes; for that alone is found to consider both itself, its powers, its value, and
likewise all the rest. For what is it else that says, gold is beautiful; for the gold
374 Matthew Sharpe
itself does not speak? Evidently that faculty which judges of the appearances
of things. What else distinguishes music, grammar, the other faculties, proves
their uses, and shows their proper occasions?
[respondent] Nothing but this.
34
The rst advantage to teaching by way of this method, as any decent modern
academic tutor can avow, is that it represents the surest way to ensure that your
students are paying attention and thinking things through for themselves, even
ifas here, and very often with Socratesthe questions are pre-shaped to lead
towards a single destination. More, however, is involved in the elenchus, as Long
has reected. Stoics like Epictetus, in practicing dialecticand celebrating its
mastery as a distinct virtue
35
were working with several Socratic assumptions
about human nature which are also basic to the idea of philosophy as a way of
life. The rst of these is that people always, in their beliefs and opinions, will only
assent to what they take to be true or likely: it is the very nature of the under-
standing to agree to truth, to be dissatised with falsehood, and to suspend its
belief, in doubtful cases.
36
What is the proof of this?, Epictetus asks rhetorically.
Persuade yourself, if you can, that it is now night, he challenges a student (we
presume it was daytime):
[respondent] It is impossible.
Dissuade yourself from the belief that it is day.
[respondent] Impossible.
Persuade yourself that the number of the stars is even or odd.
[respondent] It is impossible.
The same intellectualist assumption applies to the way the Stoics thought that
human beings are motivated to behave, including in situations where all our pas-
sions are involved. As rational creatures, Epictetus claims, we always only assent
to actually do anything if we are convinced at the decisive moment that it is right,
good, noble, pleasant or advantageous for us:
Well, then; have we, in actions, anything correspondent to this distinction
between true and false?
[respondent] Right and wrong; advantageous and disadvantageous; desirable
and undesirable; and the like.
A person then, cannot think a thing truly advantageous to him, and not
choose it?
[respondent] He cannot.
This is vitally important for understanding the elenchus, and Epictetuss modus
operandi, because it follows from these premises that, if you can show a person
that what they thought was true is in fact falseor what they thought was good
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 375
or benecial is in fact not sothey will be more or less compelled to change
their opinion. At least, they will be drawn to feel that kind of shame Epictetus
mentions that Rufus engendered in all his students; and which Alcibiades in the
Symposium tells us Socrates alone could make him feel.
37
In this way, we confront
another of Socratess famous paradoxes endorsed by the Stoics: that all wrong-
doingappearances notwithstandingresults from error or ignorance. Humans
may and do act badly, this argument suggests. But they are not irredeemably bad,
the inheritors of an innate perversity or original sin. Rather:
Every error implies a contradiction; for, since he who errs does not wish to
err, but to be in the right, it is evident, then, that he acts contrary to his wish.
What does a thief desire to attain? His own interest. If, then, thieving is really
against his interest, he acts contrary to his own desire.
38
All human beings, as rational animals, in fact have the same preconceptions,
the Stoics maintained. And these , at least in general form, track the
true and the good: For which of us does not admit, that good is advantageous
and worthwhile, and in all cases to be pursued and followed? Who does not admit
that justice is fair and noble?
39
The devil is in the details: of trying to work out
which particular courses of action actually are good, just, advantageous or noble
in this situation, when we happen to feel so strongly angered, desirous, envious,
etc. The question and answer of the elenchus, then, is conceived by the Stoics (like
their hero-sage Socrates) as a device to make people see for themselves when
they have judged or acted against their own better ideasnot anyone elses.
As confrontational as the process can seem, thenespecially in the kingly
hands of an Epictetusit is based on a profound psychological optimism: that
whoever has a false moral belief will always have at the same time true moral
beliefs entailing the negation of the false belief, and thus real internal motives
to change.
40
Epictetus, as ever, puts this elenctic wager best:
Socrates knew that, if a rational soul be moved by anything, the scale must
turn, whether it will or no. Show the governing faculty of reason a contradic-
tion, and it will renounce it; but till you have shown it, rather blame yourself
than him who remains unconvinced.
41
For reasons like this, the Stoics thus used to call themselves
(Socratics), from the rst generation beginning with Zeno, through to the fail-
ing of the school with the eclipse of the classical world.
42
And the central claims
of Stoicismthat virtue or strength of character is the only true good, that this
virtue is a form of wisdom ( or ), and that all external goods
like money, power, fame, even bodily health, are truly indifferent or beneath good
and evilare each anticipated in arguments Socrates defends in Plato and Xeno-
phon, which we have already skirted. Long and Striker have drawn our attention
to how Platos dialogue, the Euthydemus, in fact contains in a condensed version
376 Matthew Sharpe
what might be called the Stoics master argument, upon whose conclusions the
schools entire ethical position is founded. The Euthydemuss argument can be
summarised thus:
1. Everyone wishes to fare well ( ).
2. Faring well involves the possession, enjoyment, or use of different good
things.
3. People everywhere agree that these good things include (i) things outside
our control like wealth, health, beauty, other bodily advantages, noble
birth, power, and honor; (ii) virtues like temperance, justice and courage,
(iii) wisdom (), and (iv) good fortune.
4. But wisdom, when we think about it, is the truest form of good fortune,
since it makes men fare as well as they can in all circumstancesso the
need for (iv) can straight away can be reduced to a need to cultivate (iii),
.
5. All good things make us fare well only because they benet us in some
way (this is the very denition of something being a good, for the Stoics).
6. But good things truly benet us by being used or enjoyed, not simply
possessed.
7. And it is only a kind of wisdom in guiding our choice and actions that
can ensure that we actually use or enjoy external goods like health, wealth,
and fame (i) for our benet, thus exercising the virtues (iii) of courage,
temperance, and the like.
8. By contrast, without such wisdom, these goods can harm people, not
benet them. So in truth they are only sometimes good for us, and depend
for their goodness on how we dispose of them.
9. Thus wisdom alone () both provides us with good fortune (iv),
and ensures that we will choose and decide well how to use and enjoy all
external goods we come across (i, iii).
10. Hence, a kind of knowledge () about how to use
and enjoy external things (7), and avoid harm in all circumstances (4,
7) is the only true good thing for human beings.
43
However troubling critics have continued to nd this argument, what is impor-
tant here is that Epictetus, at least, clearly did believe these things, because he
stresses the decisive points (7 and 8) of the argument repeatedly to many who
cross his path:
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 377
Why do you seek this possession [happiness] outside? It lies not in the body;
if you do not believe me, look at Myro, look at Ophellius [today, we might say,
look at Lindsay Lohan or many of the other stars that light up our magazinal
rmament]. It is not in wealth; if you do not believe me, look upon Crsus;
look upon the rich of the present age, how full of lamentation their life is. It
is not in power; for otherwise, they who have been twice and thrice consuls
must be happy; but they are not.
44
This extraordinary Stoic claim that virtue (roughly, strength of character, con-
ceived as a kind of embodied knowledge of how to live well) is the only true
good is their typically striking way of saying that virtue alone never harms its
possessor. It has this feature in contrast to all of the other things we usually desire
as goods. The equally paradoxical idea that this virtue is a form of wisdom or
knowledgeanother Socratismis the Stoic way of highlighting how, without
knowledge of how to use or enjoy the things nearly everyone values (money, for
example), these very goods will do no good to their possessor.
It is not that, in contrast to all other Greek philosophers, Stoics like Epictetus
somehow wanted to deny that a virtuous life must involve grim unhappiness and
world-denial. Their claim, on the contrary, is that the key to true happiness, an
inner tranquility (variously , , , , or the
Latin tranquilitas), comes from being fully satised with the world as it is each
momenta happy inner state which can only come from taking care of ones
own psyche over pursuing externals. Again, the point is just what we read Socrates
enjoining of the Athenians in the Apology.
45
The sage, as Epictetus and the others
Stoics imagine herand as Arrian wants us to see in Epictetus himselfcon-
stantly enjoys (i.e. good affects), hailing from a deep conviction that
we have everything we need to be happy, and that this happiness does not depend
on possessing or avoiding things that are at the discretion of fortune, or of anyone
else.
46
The goal of the philosophers principles is to enable us, whatever happens,
to have our [the leading faculty which governs our thoughts and
impulses] in harmony with nature and to keep it so, Epictetus tells us.
47
The
Stoic denition of the virtue of great souledness or puts the
same thought this way. The Stoic sage is above the things [namely, the indiffer-
ent external things] which befall good and bad men alike.
48
The achievement of
such an extraordinary inner strength alone, Epictetus tells us, will allow a person
to declaim, as Diogenes did to his contemporaries, come what may: See, people,
that I [may] have nothing, [but] I need nothing; see how without a house, without
a city . . . I live more tranquilly and serenely than all the nobly born and rich.
49
The question we need to address now, having given this depiction of the
gure of Epictetus, is the decisive issue of how Epictetus, and the Stoics, thought
the achievement of such virtue could be attained or at least approached.
378 Matthew Sharpe
Part 2:
From the Discourses to the Handbook:
Spiritual Exercises in Epictetus
If we disregard Coopers neglect of the literary question of why the Stoics wrote
texts like the Discourses, rather than treatises of theoretical philosophy alone,
none of what we have presented so far, I take it, stands in conict with Coopers
presentation of Stoicism as a way of life in Pursuits of Wisdom. Cooper has little
to say concerning Epictetus or the Discourses, but we might even grant that his
position could accept our idea that this text is best read as primarily a depiction
of a philosopher, and only mediately of a philosophy.
The decisive issue between Coopers understanding of ancient philosophy
as a way of life and Hadots, I take it, concerns how it is we are to conceive that
the Stoics and others thought that the unappable philosophical serenity they
valorised in gures like Epictetus could, in practical life, be achieved. For to
achieve this wisdom, as we have by now repeated, Epictetus certainly thinks that
merely rehashing, or even truly understanding, Chrisippuss theoretical system
alone (to which Cooper devotes most of his chapter on the Stoics in Pursuits
50
),
is not enough. The kind of knowledge or Epictetus does mean seems
instead, very clearly, to involve cultivating in ones self what Olympiodorus tells
us that the founding Stoic Zeno, signicantly, argued characterised any :
namely, a system of apprehensions unied by practice (our italics).
51
The ob-
servation that seems to have moved the Stoics is simply that, then as now, many
people who learn much recondite theory do not become ethical paragons thereby.
It is just not that easy to achieve an unmovable, sage-like serenity of mind. If we
are to be serious about making philosophy active in shaping our ways of life, the
Stoics for such reasons always maintained that we evidently will need to cultivate
a kind of or art of living.
52
And this art of living (a novel
notion for which they were pilloried in the ancient world by the sceptics
53
) must
involve, beyond theoretical learning, what they variously called the habituation
() of the soul; its digestion () of philosophical teachings; or even,
in Epictetuss most august pupil, Marcus Aurelius, the dyeing () of a
persons character.
54
This process is in one sense much easier, and more popularly
available, than learning recondite theorywhich may be one reason why many
academic philosophers are highly dismissive of the idea of philosophy as a way
of life.
55
However, Epictetus also reminds us that, practically or ethically speak-
ing, such existential change is much harder: The philosophers rst exercise us
in theory where . . . there is nothing which holds us back from following what we
are taught, but in the affairs of life there are many things which draw us away.
56
What we want to establish in what follows, contra Cooper, is that Epictetus
clearly advocated, for just these reasonsand not any alleged lapse into anything
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 379
like a supernaturalist religion
57
the need for existential exercises: a need which
is also the principal reason behind Epictetuss fondness for adopting his harsh,
protreptic way of speaking. The opening chapter of the Discourses already enjoins
that the philosopher will need to meditate on [], . . . every day write
down [ ] . . . and exercise [] the kinds of
thoughts and attitudes Stoicism teaches as philosophically true.
58
What we want
to now argue, contra Coopers conception of ancient philosophy as a way of life,
is that addressing this need, and recommending a series of existential exercises,
is what Epictetuss Encheiridion does as a whole.
Compiled by Arrian for his friend Ulpias Prastina Messalanos, governor
of Roman Numidia, the Encheiridion comprises 53 brief sections epitomising
Epictetuss practical philosophy. It is thus small enough (as per the diminutive
-idion ending) to be carried around in a persons hand (en cheiri), and there can
be little contention about the books poor credentials, if we go to it looking for a
novel formulation, or rigorously systematic statement of Stoic principles. As with
the Discourses, however, we would argue that, if we put aside this expectation, and
consider how the book has actually been framed, we can see how it very power-
fully meets a different, therapeutic and practical end.
Firstly, the Encheiridion is clearly addressed, via Messalanos, to outsiders
from or beginners to the philosophical school: people potentially interested in
Stoicism as a possible way of life, and wondering what it might involve. Its open-
ing two sections for instance, give advice for the moment
59
to its readers, until
we advance a little further. Later sections are directed to readers who desire
philosophy,
60
or to make progress in philosophy.
61
The neoPlatonist Simplicius
thus describes the books nature perfectly in his Commentary on the text, or
so we would contend:
It is called Encheiridion because all persons who are desirous to live as they
ought, should be perfect in this book, and have it ready to hand: a book of as
constant and necessary use as a sword is to a soldier.
In this context, indeed, Simplicius continues to restate what we would contend
is the key Socratic and Stoic idea justifying the kinds of exercises the book
prescribeson an analogy between body and mind, and the need of both for
habituation, if real behavioural change is to be achieved:
For as the body gathers strength by exercise [] and frequently
repeating such motions as are natural to it; so the mind too, by exerting its
powers, and the practice of such things as are agreeable to nature, conforms
itself in habits, and strengthens its own constitution.
62
The Encheiridion is then what its title aptly captures: a little guidebook for living
like a Stoic. Not so many statements of pure theory, its short sections embody
a collection of existential exercises and prescriptions which anyone who takes
380 Matthew Sharpe
Stoicism seriously as a way of life will need to master. Certainly, if we read the
text in this way, as Hadot, Sellars, and others would prompt us, it takes on a new
coherence and rationality which would otherwise elude us, and render the text
incoherent or inconsequential. Little is too mundane to elude its attention, as
we see in Epictetuss detailed, sometimes austere, prescriptions about speaking,
laughing, clothes, sexual relations, bawdy conversations, gossip, and meeting new
people.
63
We are to take on a new rule of life, Epictetus enjoins; and abide by it as
if it were a law or .
64
Epictetuss protreptic manner is here again front and
centre: indeed, it is much more all-pervasive than in the more theoretical, less
directly practical Discourses. The Handbook is chock-full of second person verbs
(you . . .) and imperatives like (remember!
65
), and
(remind yourself!
66
). The matter is urgent. It is never too late to start to
pay attention to ourselves. And the sooner we begin, the better.
67
Pierre Hadot, in several pieces, has suggested an important key we can use to
distinguish the different prescriptions and existential practices Epictetus enjoins
in the Encheiridion, once we have acceded to the idea that this is the purpose of
the book.
68
Hadot contends that Epictetus divides his prescriptive, practical phi-
losophy into three topics or topoi. These correspond to what the Stoics thought
were three functions of our psyche: rst, our desires and aversions; second, our
impulses and actions; and third, our judgments and what we assent to as true,
good, benecial, pleasant, etc. In favor of his idea, Hadot points readers attention to
the start of Discourses book III chapter 2, where Epictetus nearly exactly says this:
There are three topics in philosophy, in which he who would be wise and good
must exercise:
That of the desires and aversions, that he may not be disappointed of the
one, nor incur the other.
That of the pursuits and avoidances, and, in general, the appropriate actions
of life; that he may act with order and consideration, and not carelessly.
The third includes integrity of mind and prudence, and, in general, what-
ever belongs to the judgment.
69
The more recondite part of Hadots claim is his further idea that these three practi-
cal topoi correspond to the three parts of Stoic theoretical discourse we mentioned
above: logic, physics, ethics. So what we think and believe corresponds, in practical
life, to the eld theoretical logic analyses. What we do clearly corresponds to what
ethicists study. But what we desire and despise, Hadot suggests, corresponds in
our practical lives to what physics (the understanding of nature) studies in theory.
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 381
Table 1: The Three Fields of Stoic Practice, Using Hadots Idea
1. Practical physics: concerning desire () and aversion (); the relation between what we
want and dont want, and the way the world really is (thus physics).
2. Practical ethics: concerning the impulses () to act and not to act, regarding others, and appropriate
actions ().
3. Practical logic: concerning our judgments, thoughts, and assents (): namely, what we
accept as true, good , or appropriate.
Putting any perplexity about practical physics aside momentarily, we can clearly
see the distinction between three different concerns operating from the Enchei-
ridions bracing opening lines. Of things, some depend upon us [ ],
Epictetus begins,
and others do not. In our power are opinion [, topic 3, logic], move-
ment toward a thing [impulse, topic 2], desire, aversion, [topic 1, physics], and
in a word, whatever are our own acts. Not in our power are the body, property,
reputation, ofces, and in a word, whatever are not our own acts.
70
This rst section of the Handbook then gives Epictetuss variation on what we
called above the Stoic master argument from Platos Euthydemus, aiming to show
that wisdom or self-mastery alone, not external goods, is the key to happiness.
Epictetuss version runs as follows:
1. Happiness or tranquility is the fullment of all our desires, not wishing
for anything we dont have or cant achieve; and not despising anything
we do have or cant avoid.
2. But external goods, including political power, wealth, even bodily health,
are never fully or lastingly within our control.
3. Thus, if we take these externals to be necessary to our happiness, this most
prized of our goals is ceded to fortune. With time, indeed, it certainly will
be lost: you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you
will blame both gods and men;
71
perhaps you will not gain even these
very things (power and wealth) . . . : certainly you will fail in those things
through which alone happiness and freedom are secured.
72
The end of this opening section of the Encheiridion thus gives us a leading ex-
ample of what Hadot intends when he talks about Stoic practical logic, and the
kinds of exercises it involves. If we agree with the argument that external goods
are not the key to our happiness, Epictetus reasons, we will need to actively train
ourselves every morning and night
73
to distinguish everything we encounter ac-
cording to whether or not it depends upon us, so we can avoid all unnecessary
inner tumults. Straightway then practice saying to every harsh appearance, You
are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be, Epictetus exhorts:
Then examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this rst and chiey,
whether it relates to the things which are in our power [ ] or to the
382 Matthew Sharpe
things which are not in our power: and if it relates to anything which is not
in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you.
74
So this is a different kind of logic than what students learn in logic classes today.
What this practical or lived logic has in common with the theoretical examination
of formal arguments is a scrupulous attention to every idea or proposition that
presents itself to us. To learn it, as to learn theoretical logic, will thus involve long
practice: but unlike theoretical logic, we cannot put it aside when we leave the
classroom. We must apply it to each opinion we nd ourselves inclined to form,
so eventually this process of inner examination becomes almost automatic, a new
internal modus vivendi. Epictetus in the Discourses thus describes this practical
logic, as ever, by aligning it with Socratess call for us to live examined lives:
Just as Socrates used to say we should not live an unexamined life, so we should
not accept any unexamined impression [ ], but
should say [to each]: Wait, let me see who you are and where you are coming
from. . . . Do you have your guarantee from nature, which every impression
that is to be accepted should have?
75
The governing idea is that, too often, we assent to ideas we have not examined,
and that, in this way, we soon commit ourselves to opinions that arent just false,
but pernicious. A nice example of this is section 44 of the Encheiridion:
These reasons do not cohere: I am richer than you, therefore I am better than
you; I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you. On the
contrary these rather cohere, I am richer than you, therefore my possessions
are greater than yours: I am more eloquent than you, therefore my speech is
superior to yours. But you are neither possession nor speech.
76
Now, according to the Stoics understanding of the mind, all our perceptions of
external objects and of other people involve or appearances, to which
we are capable of giving or withholding our assent. For this reason, there is a clear
sense in which practical logic as we have described itthe business of testing
each of these appearances for its Stoic identity papers, as it werehas a kind of
priority over the other disciplines Epictetus recommends. Men are not disturbed
by things which happen [ ], but by the opinions [] about
the things, Epictetus underscores.
77
So the path to either reforming our desires,
or treating others more ethically, passes through the logical reform of our opin-
ions. This thought makes it somewhat difcult to neatly divide the Encheiridions
sections according to the idea that each must deal with one and one only of the
topoi of ethics, logic or physics. Nevertheless, in contrast to Hadots and Sellars
attempts, we propose the following division of the Encheiridion between the
three disciplines:
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 383
Table 2: The Encheiridion divided into the different practical topics or disciplines
Discipline of desire
& aversion
Discipline of
impulse & action
(duties & other
people)
Discipline of logic
(judgment/
Assent)
Other advice for
those training to be
a philosopher
#1.21.5,
# 2
#1 end
#1.1 (general, the three
topoi)
#3 #36
#811 #10
#7 (on philosophy as
guide to life)
#13, cf. #22 #13 #12
#1213: advice for
students, as students
#1415; #17; #19 #17 (end) #16, cf. #5 (start); 18
#21; #23
#20, concerning insults
(cf. 33, 42, 22)
#20 (representation of
insults)
#2223: more advice
for o
#2627 #24; #25; #28 #29
#31;#34; #3839; 41
#3031; 32; 33; 3536;
40;4243;45
#31; #32; #44; 45. #33;#37
#50.3 #4651/52.
#52/3 (1st & 2nd
quotes)
#52/3 (last of three
quotes)
#52/53
What Hadot calls practical or lived (veu) physics is the hardest idea in Stoic
practical philosophy to get a sense of. There seems no manifest link between
the disciplining of our desires and aversions and any kind of study of the nature
of physical things, which looks to be wholly and only theoretical. The operative
Stoic idea is simply that such externals are the things we typically desire, together
with the further psychological observation that often our desires for them paint
them in illusory lights. Indeed, the Stoics claim, when we desire something
particularly if the desire is strongthe desire presents it for us as what in fact
it can never be: namely, necessary or sufcient all on its own (or his or her own)
to secure our happiness. The whole urgency of our emotions, whether of desire
or fear, consists in this sense of an unconditional need for some external thing
or event to occuror to lastor not. The key to practical physics in Epictetuss
Encheiridion, then, is the famous opening injunction of #8:
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish
the things which do happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil
ow of life.
78
This injunction reects the fundamental rule for practical logic, dividing what is and is
not in our control. But it also points to how the exercises in practical physics are at bot-
tom exercises in attempting to see things for what they are, as independently as possible
of how we wish or fear them to be. The Encheiridions third section hence directs us:
384 Matthew Sharpe
In everything which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved, remember
to add this to its description: what is the nature of each thing, beginning from
the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which
you love; for when it has been broken, [then] you will not be so disturbed.
79
The goal of Stoic practical physics is thus to cultivateas here, by repeating the
exercise with everything we lovetheir famous inner reservation ()
about externals. It is not that we could ever cease desiring external things (money,
fame, status symbols, etc.), and wanting to avoid others. It is just that we should
always pursue or avoid them, awake to the way they remain beyond our full pos-
session and control, as someone who in effect says to themselves on each occasion,
as soon as their desire is prompted: I want my friend to love me, but respect
that this is at his discretion; or, I would like that promotion, but realise it is not
mine to give or withhold, and so on. For Epictetus and the Stoics, we will never
be able to achieve lasting tranquillity until we learn to see things steadily, in the
context of the whole of which they are each small and transient parts, rather than
through the lens of our wish-spun fears or desires. Yet our affects or , far
from being simply irrational, embody what today would be called propositional
attitudes, pining and opining that the world might be otherwise than it is. And
for this reason, assenting to the way they prompt us to perceive things sets us up
for avoidable forms of suffering. What we desire, if it is external, will perish, and
can always be lost or taken from us. This is what it is to be an external, as Stoic
practical physics underscores. We can resist the thought, perhaps protesting that
it is morbid: a criticism often levelled against Stoicism. Ultimately, though, the
transience of externals, and even of our most dearly beloved, cannot be avoided, as
Epictetus reminds us. It should accordingly rather be confronted philosophically:
If you would have your children and your wife and your friends to live forever,
you are a fool; for you would have the things which are not in your power to be
in your power, and the things which belong to others to be yours.
80
Concluding Remarks
In this paper, we have examined rstly Epictetuss presentation by Arrian in the
Discourses, arguing that this text aims to illustrate for its reader the persona of
Epictetus as a philosopher, depicting him as a sage gure whom we are invited to
admire and emulate. Epictetuss Stoicism, in deep consistency with his Hellenistic
forebears, was deeply Socratic in its key ethical doctrines and theoretical assump-
tions about human action and motivation. But Epictetus brings to his pedagogy a
protreptic element explicitly indebted to the wandering cynic Diogenes of Sinope: a
philosopher whom Epictetus admires primarily for his way of living, rather than his
(rather minimal) theoretical commitments. In Part 2, we highlighted what seems
to us to be the key deciding instance between Hadot and Coopers conceptions
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 385
of Stoicism as a way of life, in favour of Hadot. This is Epictetuss very evident
willingness to explicitly recommend modes of existential or spiritual practice to
students who wish to live as Stoics: urging them to exercise repeatedly, write down
and practice daily applying Stoic principles to their own actions, impulses and
desires. Do you think that you can act as you do, and be a philosopher; that you
can eat, drink, be angry, be discontented, as you are now? Epictetus presses us:
You must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain appetites;
must quit your acquaintances, be despised by your servant, be laughed at by
those you meet; come off worse than others in everything,in ofces, in
honors, before tribunals.
81
This hardly sounds like doing philosophy exactly as with us, as Cooper tells us
the ancients proceeded.
82
Whilst Hadots conception of philosophy as a way of life of course highlights
this practical, prescriptive aspect of ancient thinkers (Hadot frequently cites
Epictetus as a primary source when discussing the philosophical, spiritual exer-
cises, and he co-wrote a commentary on the Encheiridion), by contrast, John M.
Cooper is (to say the least) far more hesitant concerning the connection between
such spiritual practices and any species of ancient philosophy worthy of the
name. If the exegetical work of this paper has been successful, then, it would
follow that Coopers conception of ancient Stoicism must be adjudged decisively
partial. Its unwillingness to consider the philosophical prescription of regimens
of exercises like those prescribed by Epictetus, as well as forms of dialectical
argument and analysis, seems simply inaccurateunless, in defence of Cooper,
we could somehow argue that Epictetus should properly be conceived as a late
exception to the rule of Stoic philosophising, and not a representative case.
Such an argument, it should be said, could be undertaken by a defender of
Coopers views concerning ancient philosophyalbeit at the price of considerably
straining how far our conception of ancient philosophy might be plausibly allowed
to differ from how the ancients themselves, who rated Epictetus very highly as a
philosopher, perceived matters. Cooper claims that the earliest examples of the
kinds of Stoic spiritual exercises Hadot sees as central to Stoicism per se, and which
Hadot is able to cite, in fact date from the rst century CE in Rome: specically he
cites Senecas De Ira III.36, with its call for a nightly examination of conscience.
But these passages Cooper sees as evidence of the novelty of such a practice in
Senecas time, rather than of the Hellenistic provenance of such Stoic exercises, or
proximity to the essence of the Stoic philosophy as a way of life.
83
Now Epictetus
of course postdates Seneca. It would follow, from these premises, that Epictetuss
evident advocacy of similar forms of existential practices as Senecaswhich
aim to engender something like what Cooper calls devoted prayerful or prayer-
like states of consciousness and mystical momentscould indeed be seen by
him (and so by us) as a late exception, or epigone, in a Stoic tradition already in
386 Matthew Sharpe
the process of atrophy.
84
The classical Roman period itself, and its philosophy, it
has to be said, has in Coopers Pursuits of Wisdom a liminal or ambiguous status,
in terms of his attempt to delineate the ancient philosophies from philosophys
contamination at the end of antiquity by religious claims to truth and goodness
founded in ritual, faith, or revelation. Stoicism at this time did involve Hadots
kind of spiritual practices, as we have seen Cooper concede.
85
Nevertheless, as
we saw in the Introduction, Coopers more sustained claim elsewhere in Pursuits
is that such spiritual exercises were only necessitated in later antiquity, when
the idea was prevalent that a persons bare consciousnessthe I at its centre
. . . itself no part of the natural world
86
had become hegemonic, leading to the
end of pagan philosophy and the beginning of the age of faith. Cooper, we repeat,
thinks that what Hadot calls spiritual exercises only make sense in terms of a
post-philosophical, religious concern with the salvation of such a de-worlded I.
The problem with these claims, if we want to apply them to the great Roman
Stoics of the Imperial period like Epictetus, is simply that Stoicism, as Cooper com-
ments, never held to such a conception of the I: in fact, a self might, for the Stoics,
be a mind and nothing butbut such a mind was conceived unproblematically as
part of the natural world.
87
Likewise, even though there is plenty of God-talk in both
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius: this God or Zeus is transparently the divine logos
of the Stoics, immanent to and shaping the natural whole, in which the individuals
mind is held to participaterather than a transcendent God promising salvation
from the natural world. None of these descriptions t the kind of transcendent
philosophy or religion Cooper wants to argue alone should have promoted the
very kinds of askeseis we have seen Epictetuss Encheiridion dourly recommends.
Putting all this together, what seems decisive to us is that Cooper is simply
unable to conceive the way that, in Hadots conception and more widely, there is
no just need to associate the spiritual exercises we see on such ample display
in Epictetuss recommendations in the Encheiridionand also in Aureliuss
Meditations, as well as the Epicurean fragments, etc.with any kind of extra-
philosophical longing for other-worldly redemption. We note in this connection, as
Cooper neglects to do, that Hadot himself baulks at the term spiritual in describ-
ing the philosophical exercises, fearing that it will produce exactly the kinds of
allergic reaction it seems to have produced in Cooper and in many contemporary
readers. He therefore species from the start that, aiming to capture the meaning
of the Greek terms askesis or , the term spiritual exercises implies no
strong metaphysics: indeed, it ts very well with Epicurean philosophy. It aims
only at capturing the sense in which
these exercises in fact correspond to a transformation of our vision of the
world, and to a metamorphosis of our personality. The word spiritual is quite
apt to make us understand that these exercises are the result, not merely of
thought, but of the individuals entire psychism. Above all, the word spiritual
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 387
reveals the true dimensions of these exercises. By means of them, the individual
raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to say, he re-places
himself within the perspective of the Whole.
88
As per Simpliciuss description of the aim of Epictetuss Encheiridion above,
thenand in complete opposition to Coopers thought hereit is exactly the
interconnection between our theoretical and philosophical capacities and our
bodily, all-too-human passions that best explains the need for such exercises. Just
as the body, to become t or trim, needs regular exercise, so the Stoics, certainly
including Epictetus, thought that regular philosophical exercisesexercises in
self-analysis, in monitoring ones ideas and checking ones impulseswere neces-
sary if we were to attune our thoughts, impulses, and desires to the greater whole
of which we are irrevocably a part, despite the fond suggestions of our passions.
89

This thought also, I think, allows us to allay an anxiety the reader can feel in Cooper
about how such non-cognitive, or both cognitive and somatic, exercises can sit
with philosophys theoretical interest in discovering the truth through analysis
and argument. The connection here is no more mysterious than in Aristotles
acknowledgment of the key role that habituation, and imitation of examples,
plays in shaping individuals practical reason () in the Nicomachean
Ethics.
90
The philosophical exercises in the Hellenistic and Roman schools were
the prescribed means of a philosophically directed rehabituation of individuals
actions, desires, and judgments, founded in the conviction that, however difcult
it may be, even adults can come, albeit only after much practice, to change their
deepest set habits of acting and thinking.
91
Certainly, holding to this broadly Hadotian opinion in the contest between Coo-
pers and Hadots conceptions of ancient philosophies allows us readily, without any
ambivalence, to welcome Epictetus as a paradigmatically philosophical Stoic, just as
his ancient contemporaries regarded him. It also, I think, has another salutary effect,
which is amongst the greater services reading and teaching ancient philosophy
can still offer us today. It challenges us to consider whether our own conception
of philosophy as solely a business of argumentation and theory-construction is
the only or the best metaphilosophy the long history of the West has furnished us.
Deakin University
NOTES
1. John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from
Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
2. Ibid., 13.
388 Matthew Sharpe
3. Ibid., 810; Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cam-
bridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 22938.
4. Cooper, Pursuits, x.
5. Ibid., 27.
6. The qualication essentially is necessary, given that Cooper equivocates, giving the
exercises a secondary role (at Pursuits, p. 22) and a preliminary role (at Pursuits, p. 166).
See also the qualication concerning a need to train our prerational feelings at Pursuits,
p. 165; and below, concerning Cooper and the ambivalent (for him) Roman Stoics.
7. Cooper Pursuits, 402n4.
8. Ibid., 20. Hadot knew that many critics would be uneasy with this term, which he in addi-
tion recognises comes from Ignatius. Yet, Hadot claims in this passage, as elsewhere, that
Christian monasticism inherited the exercises from the pagan philosophical schools.
Hadot, Spiritual Exercises, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson,
trans. Michael Chase (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996), 82. The Christian inheritance
of ancient philosophical practices is the theme of Hadot, Ancient Spiritual Exercises
and Christian Philosophy, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, 12644. Cooper does not
engage with this claim, although his closing passages suggest (controversially) that he
can see nothing philosophical in Christianity en bloc (see Cooper, Pursuits, 387).
9. Cooper, Pursuits, 21.
10. Ibid., 22.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., x.
13. On Hadots philological beginnings, see Pierre Hadot, Present Alone is Our Happiness:
Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold L. Davidson, trans. Marc Djaballah
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 3032, 59.
14. On this point, see especially Pierre Hadot, Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in
Ancient Philosophy, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, 6165.
15. Cf. Cooper, Pursuits, 165, and Coopers observation concerning the high ethical de-
mands the Stoics place on would-be adherents: the cure for these impressions, and
for the prerational feelings that engender them, requires a lot of further work on our
tendencies to respond prerationally to things which happen to us. It is not clear that
a clear theory alone, however prescriptive, can do such work.
16. Cooper Pursuits, 402n4: the not being mainline passage comes at page 18, note 26, a
distinction which recurs at pp. 22627, and 24849. We note that this distinction is Coo-
pers and that while the Stoics (e.g.) criticised the Epicureans for subordinating pleasure
to virtue, they do not appear to have questioned their credentials as philosophers per se.
17. See John Sellars, Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 4750, 5558, for the relevant texts.
18. Epictetus, Discourses, trans. W. A. Oldfather, in two volumes (Books III, Books
IIIIV, with Encheiridion and Fragments) (London: Loeb Classical Library, Reprint
Series, 1925), book II, chapter 23, line 44 (hereafter abbreviated as II.23.44, etc.); cf.
III.5.29. Here and throughout I have used the Loeb edition, basing my translations
around those of W. A. Oldfather and amending them where this seems called for.
19. Epictetus, Discourses I.4.414; cf. Disc. III.21; Epictetus, Encheiridion, in Discourses,
vol. 2, section 49 (hereafter Encheiridion sections abbreviated as #49 etc.).
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 389
20. On the makeup of Epictetuss auditors, see Michel Foucault, Hermeneutics of the
Subject: Lectures at the Collge de France 19811982, ed. Frdric Gros, trans. Graham
Burchell (New York: Picador, 2006), 13843.
21. Not the classes themselves, it seems, which he refers to from time to time as includ-
ing courses on Stoic logic and even (ironically enough) on reading Chrisippus; cf.
Epictetus, Discourses I.7.31; I.8; I.10.10; I.17; II.13.21; II.19; etc. See on this point A. A.
Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), 44.
22. Arrian, Arrian to Lucius Gellius, Wishing all Happiness, in Epictetus, Discourses, vol. 1.
23. Compare Cooper, Pursuits, 17: I have been assuming that for the ancients with whom
I am concerned, exactly as with us, the essential core of philosophy is a certain, speci-
cally and recognisably philosophical, style of logical, reasoned argument and analysis.
Anyone who has read any philosophy at all is familiar with this style, whether it takes the
form we nd in the question-and-answer dialectic of the character Socrates in Platos
Socratic dialogues . . . or, again, in the writings of a contemporary analytic philosopher.
24. Epictetus, Discourses III.21.1819 (henceforth Disc.); Long, Epictetus, 5459.
25. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, VI.2.22, http://www.perseus
.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D6%3
Achapter%3D2, last accessed September 2013.
26. Cooper departs from the ancients understandings by asserting that the Cynics should
not be considered as philosophers at all: I think it is better to treat the long-lasting
and fascinating movement of Cynicism in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire as
aspects of social history, rather than as part of the history of philosophy. Here, as
elsewhere, he departs from ancient opinion. Cooper, Pursuits, 62n54; cf. pp. 2122.
27. Aristotle described them this way: the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a
cult of shamelessness [], not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to
it. Aristotle, Rhetoric, Scholium; quotes found in Luis Navia, Classical Cynicism: A
Critical Study (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), 94.
28. Epictetus, Disc. III.22.69.
29. Ibid., I.24.6
30. Ibid., 1.24.78; III.22.56; IV.11.23.
31. See especially Stobaeus, Anthology, 2.512 (which is Text 102 in The Stoics Reader:
Selected Writings and Testimonia, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson and Brad Inwood [London:
Hackett Publishing, 2008], 12451; the relevant sections on the surpassing virtues
of the sage are numbered by the editors 5b1012 (pp. 12829), 11d (pp. 14041),
11g (pp. 14243), 11jk (pp. 14446). For modern commentaries, see Pierre Hadot,
La Figure du Sage dans LAntiquit Grco-Latine, in Pierre Hadot, tudes de Phi-
losophie Antique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998), 23358; also Julia Annas, The Sage
in Ancient Philosophy, in Anthropine Sophia, ed. F. Alesse et al. (Naples: Bibliopolis
2008), 1127.
32. Epictetus, Disc. III.22.26; cf. 8182; Plato, Cleitophon 407ab; Apology 30ab.
33. Characteristically, Epictetus then passes straight into the genuine article: But tell me
who, when he hears you reading or speaking, is solicitous about himself? Or turns his
attention upon himself? Or says, when he is gone away from you: The philosopher
moved me. I mustnt act this way in future. Epictetus, Disc. III.23.3437.
390 Matthew Sharpe
34. Epictetus, Disc. I.1.
35. See A. A. Long, Dialectic and the Stoic Sage (pp. 85106) and The Logical Basis of
Stoic Ethics (pp. 10733), both in A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996).
36. Epictetus, Disc. I.28 start.
37. Ibid., II.23 3035; cf. Plato, Symposium, 216b.
38. Epictetus, Disc. II.26
39. Ibid., I.22.
40. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide, 83.
41. Epictetus, Disc. II.26
42. Gisela Striker, Platos Socrates and the Stoics, in The Socratic Movement, ed. Paul
A.Vander Waerdt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 24151; & A. A. Long,
Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy, in A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996), 134.
43. I am adapting and formalising this from Plato, Euthydemus 278c281e, guided by
A. A. Long, Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy, 2332.
44. Epictetus, Disc. III.22.26; cf. Plato, Cleitophon 407ab.
45. Plato, Apology of Socrates 30bc.
46. On the , see Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2007), 5760.
47. Disc. III.9.11.
48. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, book VII 128. Again, Epictetus describes such enviable
virtue as like having the golden wand of the god Hermes: This is the magic wand
of Hermes. Touch what you will, he says, and it will turn to gold. Nay, bring what you
will and I will turn it to good. Bring illness, bring death, bring poverty, bring reviling,
bring the utmost peril of the law-court: the wand of Hermes will turn them all to
good purpose! etc. Epictetus, Disc. III.20.
49. Epictetus, Disc. IV.11.23
50. Cf. Cooper, Pursuits, all of pp. 150214 precedes a single last section on The Stoic
Way of Life (pp. 21425).
51. See Sellars, Art of Living, 69.
52. In a key passage in his summary of Stoic philosophy in his Lives of the Philosophers,
Diogenes Laertius highlights a distinction of great importance for us in trying to
understand Epictetus. The Stoics, he tells usincluding the rst Hellenistic Stoics,
the object of his chapterdivided discourse concerning philosophy (
) from philosophia herself. Philosophy herself, they said, could
not be divided, but was like an animal with different parts. Diogenes Laertius, Lives,
book VII 3940 (Life of Zeno) at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=
Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0257%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D1, last accessed
September 2013. Hadot makes much of this passage in La Philosophie Antique: une
thique ou une Pratique?, in tudes de Philosophie Ancienne, 20732, at pp. 22021.
53. See Sellars, Art of Living, 88100.
54. Ibid., 12022; cf. on dyeing Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book V.16; bk. III.4.
55. See Bernard Williams, Do Not Disturb, London Review of Books 16:20 (October 20,
1994), 2526; or consider this magnaminity in Nigel Gullys review of Holowchaks
On Cooper, Hadot, Epictetus, and Stoicism as a Way of Life 391
Stoicism: A Guide for the Perplexed: In opting for almost exclusively Roman Stoic
literature he bypasses the rich collection of variegated, and sometimes obfuscated,
contributions from the Hellenistic Stoics, thereby taking the simpler, easier route to
support the focus of his own brand of ethics-centred Stoicism. . . . Regardless of Ho-
lowchaks focus, there are certainly some merits in using the book as an introductory
piece for beginnersor the stymied. Nigel Gully, The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed,
reviewed by Nigel T. Gully, University of Liverpool, in Praxis 2(2) (Summer 2010)
(italics ours), at http://www.castela.net/praxis/vol2issue2/2.2Gully.pdf, last accessed
September 2013.
56. Epictetus, Disc. Book I.26.3.
57. See our Introductory remarks above, and Cooper, Pursuits, 2022.
58. Epictetus, Disc. book I.1.2125.
59. , then , at Epictetus Encheiridion, #1.4, then #2.
60. Epictetus, Ench. #22 start. The desiring verb here is, in the second person, .
61. Ibid., #1213, 2225, 29, 4652.
62. Simplicius, Preface to Commentary on Encheiridion, 1820; at I. and P. Hadot, Ap-
prendre Philosopher dans lAntiquit: Lenseignement du Manuel dEpictte et son
commentaire noplatonicien (Poche: Paris, 2004), 53. Cf. Sellars, Art of Living 12931.
63. Epictetus, Ench. #33, 50.
64. Ibid., #50.
65. Ibid., #2, 3]
66. Ibid., #4.
67. Ibid., #50.
68. Pierre Hadot, Marcus Aurelius, in Philosophy as a Way of Life; also Inner Citadel, trans.
Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), chap. 5, pp. 8298,
and several untranslated pieces in French, notably Hadot, La Physique Comme Exercise
Spirituel ou Pessimisme et Optimisme chez Marc Aurle(pp. 14564), and Une Cl des
Penses de Marc Aurle: Les Trois Topoi Philosophiques selon pictte (pp.16592), both in
Pierre Hadot, Exercises Spirituels et Philosophie Antique, Prface dArnold Davidson (Paris:
ditions Albin Michel, 2002).
69. Epictetus, Disc. III.2 start.
70. Epictetus, Ench. #1.1.
71. Ibid., #1.3.
72. Ibid., #1.4.
73. Epictetus, Disc. III.3.16: (
).
74. Epictetus, Ench. 1.5.
75. Epictetus, Disc. III.12.15.
76. Epictetus, Ench. #44; cf. #18, #32.
77. Ibid., #5 start.
78. Ibid., #8 start.
79. Ibid., #3.
80. Ibid., #14.
81. Ibid., #29.
82. Cooper, Pursuits, 17.
392 Matthew Sharpe
83. Ibid., 20.
84. Ibid., 22.
85. A fact Cooper is forced to concede, in his chapter on the Stoics: a good deal of what the
famous Roman Stoics . . . write emphasises precisely rhetorical inducements, aimed at
providing materials for such ights of imagination. They offer encouragements for a
better life . . . but they downplay or even, in some cases, omit altogether the philosophi-
cal argumentation and analysis [of] Stoic theory. Cooper, Pursuits, 22223. Such a
concession would imply, read against other of his statements, that Seneca or Epictetus
or Marcus Aurelius are not, properly speaking, philosophers, at least of his mainline.
86. Cooper, Pursuits, 21.
87. Ibid., 2021.
88. Hadot, Spiritual Exercises, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, 82. While he recognises the
term comes from Ignatius, Hadot claims, here as elsewhere, that Christian monasti-
cism inherited the exercises from the pagan philosophical schools.
89. As Marcus punned (Meditations VIII.34; esp. VII.13), for the Roman Stoics we are
not simply a part () but as a limb () of the whole; and it is our passions,
which we should overcome insofar as they allow us, whether fondly or in despair,
to imagine we have somehow been singled out for special treatment, as if we were
outside the ordinary order of things. When he is isolated, man will no longer be a
man, any more than a foot would be a genuine foot. For what is a man? A part of the
city (cf. Meditations VIII.34).
90. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book II, chapter 1.
91. Consider, paradigmatically, Ench. #51, but also this from #29: In every affair consider
what precedes and follows, and then undertake it. Otherwise you will begin with
spirit indeed, careless of the consequences, and when these are developed, you will
shamefully desist. I would conquer at the Olympic games. But consider what pre-
cedes and follows, and then, if it be for your advantage, engage in the affair. You must
conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from dainties; exercise your body, whether
you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water,
and sometimes no wine,in a word, you must give yourself up to your trainer as
to a physician. . . . For you have never entered upon anything considerately, nor after
having surveyed and tested the whole matter; but carelessly, and with a half-way
zeal. Thus some, when they have seen a philosopher, and heard a man speaking like
Euphrates,though indeed who can speak like him?have a mind to be philosophers
too. Consider rst, man, what the matter is, and what your own nature is able to bear.
If you would be a wrestler, consider your shoulders, your back, your thighs; for different
persons are made for different things. Do you think that you can act as you do, and be
a philosopher; that you can eat, drink, be angry, be discontented, as you are now? You
must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain appetites; must quit your
acquaintance, be despised by your servant, be laughed at by those you meet; come off
worse than others in everything,in ofces, in honors, before tribunals. When you have
fully considered all these things, approach, if you please; if, by parting with them,
you have a mind to purchase serenity, freedom, and tranquillity. If not, do not come
hither; do not, like children, be now a philosopher, then a publican, then an orator,
and then one of Caesars ofcers (italics ours).
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