Ethics 233
And he says that his life is not yet happy, but that happiness supervenes
on him when these intermediate actions become secure and conditioned
and acquire a special sort of fixity.
Epictetus Discourses 2.6.6-10 [11-98]- "Go and salute Mr. So-and-so." "All right, I salute him." "How?"
"Not in an abject fashion." "But you were shut out." "That's because I
haven't learned how to enter through the window. And when I find the
door shut [against me], I must either go away or enter through the
window." 7. "But speak with the man too!" "I do so." "How?" "Not in
an abject fashion." 8. "But you did not succeed."-Now surely that was
not your business, but his. So why do you encroach on what concerns
someone else? If you always remember what is yours and what concerns
someone else, you will never be disturbed. 9. That's why Chrysippus
was right to say, "As long as what comes next is non-evident to me, I
always cling to what is better suited to getting what is in accordance with
nature. For god himself made me such as to select those things. 10. But
if I knew for sure that it was fated for me now to be ill, I would even
seek [illness]. For my foot, if it had brains, would seek to be muddied."
Epictetus Discourses 2.10.1-6 [11-99]- Consider who you are. First of all a man, i.e., you have nothing more
authoritative than your power of moral choice and all else is subordinate to
it, but it itself is free and independent. 2. Consider, then, what you are
separate from in virtue of your rationality. You are separate from wild
beasts and from sheep. 3. And in addition you are a citizen of the cosmos
and a part of it-not one of the servile parts but one of its principal
parts. For you are able to follow the divine administration and figure out
what comes next. 4. So, what is the role of a citizen? To have no private
advantage, not to deliberate about anything as though one were a separate
part, but just as if the hand or foot had reasoning power and were able
to follow the arrangements of nature, they would never have sought or
desired anything except after referring to the whole. 5. That is why the
philosophers are right to say that if the honourable and good man knew
what was going to happen, he would even collaborate with disease and
death and lameness, being aware that these things are dispensed by the
arrangement of the whole and that the whole is more authoritative than
the part and the state more authoritative than the citizen. 6. But now,
because we do not have this foreknowledge, it is appropriate for us to
cling to what is better suited for selection, since we are also born for this.