Monday, December 28, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Aristotle: the "theoretical" form of life
Pierre Hadot: What Is Ancient Philosophy?
Aristotle's school, Lyceum, trained people only for the philosophical life. Aristotle distinguishes between the happiness man can find in political life, in active life, and philosophical happiness, which corresponds to theoria---a kind of life devoted entirely to the activity of the mind. Political and practical happiness is happiness only in a secondary way. Philosophical happiness is found in life according to the mind, which is situated in man's highest excellence and virtue. This virtue corresponds to the mind, the highest part of man, and is free of inconveniences brought by the active life. It is not subject to the intermittent nature of action, and does not produce fatigue. It brings marvelous pleasures, which are unmixed with pain or impurity and are stable and solid. These pleasures are greater for those who reach reality and truth than for those who are still searching for them. It ensures independence from others, insofar as we otherwise assured of independence with regard to material things. A person who devotes himself to the activity of the mind depends only on himself. Perhaps his intellectual activity will be of higher quality if he has collaborators; but the more a sage he is, the more he will be able to be alone. Life in accordance with the mind does not seek any result other than itself, and is therefore loved for itself. It is its own goal and its own reward.
The life of the mind also eliminates worry. By practicing the moral virtues, we find ourselves involved in a struggle against the passions and also mired in material cares. In order to act within the city, we must become involved in political struggles; in order to help others, we must have money; in order to practice courage, we must go to war. The philosophical life, by contrast, can be lived only in leisure and in detachment from material worries.
This form of life represents the highest form of human happiness. Yet it can also be said that such happiness is superhuman: "Then, man no longer lives qua man, but insofar as there is something divine about him." This paradox corresponds to Aristotle's paradoxical and enigmatic view of the mind and the intellect: the intellect is what is most essential in man, yet at the same time it is something divine which enters into him; what transcends man constitutes his true personality. It is as if man's true essence consisted in being above himself: "The mind is our self, insofar as it represents that which decides and which is best."
We must take into consideration the distance which separates man from the deity; and Aristotle admits that we can attain it only in infrequent moments. If the deity is perpetually in a state of joy comparable to that in which we sometimes find ourselves, that is admirable. If he is in a state of still greater joy, then that is still more marvelous. Thus, the summit of philosophical happiness and the of the activity of the mind, that is, the contemplation of the divine intellect is accessible to man only in rare moments, for the proprium of the human condition is that it cannot be continuously in actuality. This implies that for the rest of the time, the philosopher must be content with the inferior grade of happiness which consists in searching.
Aristotle uses the word "theoretical" to designate, on one hand, the mode of knowledge whose goal is knowledge for knowledge's sake, and not some goal outside itself; and on the other, the way of life which consists in devoting one's life to this mode of knowledge. The word is not opposed to "practical." "Theoretical" can be applied to a philosophy which is practiced, lived, and active, and which brings happiness. Aristotle hints that the mode of contemplative action is the deity and the universe, which exert no action directed toward the outside ut take themselves as the object of their action. It appears that the model of a knowledge which does not seek any gaol other than itself is the divine Intellect, which has no interest in anything else. So theoretical praxis consists in choosing no goal other than knowledge. It means wanting knowledge for its own sake, without pursuing any other particular, egoistic interest which would be alien to knowledge. This is an ethics of disinterestedness and of objectivity.
Kant: "To take an immediate interest in the beauties of nature...is always the sign of a good soul."
Aristotle's school, Lyceum, trained people only for the philosophical life. Aristotle distinguishes between the happiness man can find in political life, in active life, and philosophical happiness, which corresponds to theoria---a kind of life devoted entirely to the activity of the mind. Political and practical happiness is happiness only in a secondary way. Philosophical happiness is found in life according to the mind, which is situated in man's highest excellence and virtue. This virtue corresponds to the mind, the highest part of man, and is free of inconveniences brought by the active life. It is not subject to the intermittent nature of action, and does not produce fatigue. It brings marvelous pleasures, which are unmixed with pain or impurity and are stable and solid. These pleasures are greater for those who reach reality and truth than for those who are still searching for them. It ensures independence from others, insofar as we otherwise assured of independence with regard to material things. A person who devotes himself to the activity of the mind depends only on himself. Perhaps his intellectual activity will be of higher quality if he has collaborators; but the more a sage he is, the more he will be able to be alone. Life in accordance with the mind does not seek any result other than itself, and is therefore loved for itself. It is its own goal and its own reward.
The life of the mind also eliminates worry. By practicing the moral virtues, we find ourselves involved in a struggle against the passions and also mired in material cares. In order to act within the city, we must become involved in political struggles; in order to help others, we must have money; in order to practice courage, we must go to war. The philosophical life, by contrast, can be lived only in leisure and in detachment from material worries.
This form of life represents the highest form of human happiness. Yet it can also be said that such happiness is superhuman: "Then, man no longer lives qua man, but insofar as there is something divine about him." This paradox corresponds to Aristotle's paradoxical and enigmatic view of the mind and the intellect: the intellect is what is most essential in man, yet at the same time it is something divine which enters into him; what transcends man constitutes his true personality. It is as if man's true essence consisted in being above himself: "The mind is our self, insofar as it represents that which decides and which is best."
We must take into consideration the distance which separates man from the deity; and Aristotle admits that we can attain it only in infrequent moments. If the deity is perpetually in a state of joy comparable to that in which we sometimes find ourselves, that is admirable. If he is in a state of still greater joy, then that is still more marvelous. Thus, the summit of philosophical happiness and the of the activity of the mind, that is, the contemplation of the divine intellect is accessible to man only in rare moments, for the proprium of the human condition is that it cannot be continuously in actuality. This implies that for the rest of the time, the philosopher must be content with the inferior grade of happiness which consists in searching.
Aristotle uses the word "theoretical" to designate, on one hand, the mode of knowledge whose goal is knowledge for knowledge's sake, and not some goal outside itself; and on the other, the way of life which consists in devoting one's life to this mode of knowledge. The word is not opposed to "practical." "Theoretical" can be applied to a philosophy which is practiced, lived, and active, and which brings happiness. Aristotle hints that the mode of contemplative action is the deity and the universe, which exert no action directed toward the outside ut take themselves as the object of their action. It appears that the model of a knowledge which does not seek any gaol other than itself is the divine Intellect, which has no interest in anything else. So theoretical praxis consists in choosing no goal other than knowledge. It means wanting knowledge for its own sake, without pursuing any other particular, egoistic interest which would be alien to knowledge. This is an ethics of disinterestedness and of objectivity.
Kant: "To take an immediate interest in the beauties of nature...is always the sign of a good soul."
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Plato's spiritual exercises
Pierre Hadot: What Is Ancient Philosophy?
Plato's writing: Seventh Letters, Timaeus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Theatetus.
For Plato, the philosophical way of life requires a considerable effort, which must be renewed every day. It consists in setting more store by virtue than by pleasure, in renouncing the pleasures of senses, in observing a special diet, and in living every day in such of way as to become master of oneself as much as possible.
Preparation for sleep: If we wish to avoid bad dreams, we must prepare ourselves every evening by trying to awaken the rational part of the soul through inner discourses an research on elevated subjects.
Meditation: It will calm our desire and anger.
Exercise of how to maintain our calm in misfortune, without rebelling. We must tell ourselves that we do not know what is good and what is bad in such accidents; that it does no good to become upset; that no human matter is worth being considered very important; and that, as in a dice game, we must deal with things as they are, and act appropriately.
The practice of death: in Phaedo, Socrates declareds that a man who has spent his life in philosophy necessarily has the courage to die, since ophilosophy is nothing other than an exercise of death. Death is the separation of the soul and body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. The body causes us no end of trouble, because of the passions which it engenders and the needs it imposes upon us. The practice is a divestment of passions in order to accede to the purity of th eintelligence.
From Phaedo, the "I" which must die transcends itself and becomes an "I" which is henceforth a stranger to death, since it has identified itself with the logos and with thought. "Corporeal individuality ceases to exist the moment it is externalized in the logos."
In Republic, the exercise of death appears as something like the soul's flight on high, or a look down upon reality from above: "Small-mindedness is what is most opposed to a soul which must always stretch itself toward the entire totality of the divine and the human." In embracing the whole of reality within one universal vision, the exercise allows us to defeat the fear of death.
This is way Plato describes him as an alien, lost in a world which is human, all too human; like Thales the sage, he runs the risk of falling down a well. He is ignorant of fights over magistracy, political debates, and parties with flute players. He does not know how to plead his case at court, or how to insult others, or how to flatter them. Even the most enormous estates seem insignificant to him, "since he is used to embracing the entire earth in his vision.
The sublimation of love: We learn only from people we love.
Whitehead: "Concepts are always dressed in emotions."
Plato's writing: Seventh Letters, Timaeus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Theatetus.
For Plato, the philosophical way of life requires a considerable effort, which must be renewed every day. It consists in setting more store by virtue than by pleasure, in renouncing the pleasures of senses, in observing a special diet, and in living every day in such of way as to become master of oneself as much as possible.
Preparation for sleep: If we wish to avoid bad dreams, we must prepare ourselves every evening by trying to awaken the rational part of the soul through inner discourses an research on elevated subjects.
Meditation: It will calm our desire and anger.
Exercise of how to maintain our calm in misfortune, without rebelling. We must tell ourselves that we do not know what is good and what is bad in such accidents; that it does no good to become upset; that no human matter is worth being considered very important; and that, as in a dice game, we must deal with things as they are, and act appropriately.
The practice of death: in Phaedo, Socrates declareds that a man who has spent his life in philosophy necessarily has the courage to die, since ophilosophy is nothing other than an exercise of death. Death is the separation of the soul and body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. The body causes us no end of trouble, because of the passions which it engenders and the needs it imposes upon us. The practice is a divestment of passions in order to accede to the purity of th eintelligence.
From Phaedo, the "I" which must die transcends itself and becomes an "I" which is henceforth a stranger to death, since it has identified itself with the logos and with thought. "Corporeal individuality ceases to exist the moment it is externalized in the logos."
In Republic, the exercise of death appears as something like the soul's flight on high, or a look down upon reality from above: "Small-mindedness is what is most opposed to a soul which must always stretch itself toward the entire totality of the divine and the human." In embracing the whole of reality within one universal vision, the exercise allows us to defeat the fear of death.
This is way Plato describes him as an alien, lost in a world which is human, all too human; like Thales the sage, he runs the risk of falling down a well. He is ignorant of fights over magistracy, political debates, and parties with flute players. He does not know how to plead his case at court, or how to insult others, or how to flatter them. Even the most enormous estates seem insignificant to him, "since he is used to embracing the entire earth in his vision.
The sublimation of love: We learn only from people we love.
Whitehead: "Concepts are always dressed in emotions."
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dead Poets Society
We have to constantly look at things in a different way.
Just when you're thinking that you have known something, you have to look at it in another way. You must to strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you'll find it at all. Break out. Dare to try out and find a new ground.
Conformity: the difficulty to maintain your own beliefs in facing of others. We all have great needs for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are your own.
Just when you're thinking that you have known something, you have to look at it in another way. You must to strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you'll find it at all. Break out. Dare to try out and find a new ground.
Conformity: the difficulty to maintain your own beliefs in facing of others. We all have great needs for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are your own.
The Pythagorean community
Pythagoreans: the full-time residents of the community.
Pythagoritst: people who live in the surrounding region but attended Pythagoras' lectures on a regular basis.
Pythagoreans were divided into two groups:
Disciples: people who had completed the full term of probation.
Auditors: the rest of the group.
Before acceptance as a resident, each applicant to the community was rigorously examined. Pythagoras first asked about their relation to their parents and family. Next he observed the tone of their speech and laughter, and inquired about their desires, their friendships, how they employed their leisure, and what were the causes of their joy and sadness. He observed their posture and the shape and motions of their body, regarding these as visible signs of the qualities of the soul.
After subjecting each candidate to such careful screening, those deemed acceptable were invited to join the community as Auditors for a period of three years. During this time, Pythagoras carefully observed their character and habits, evaluating their susceptibility to desire and passion, and how they were affected by conflict and disappointment. He tested their acquisitiveness and pride, and placed a high value on generosity, reticence and modesty.
After this survey of manners, he directed his attention to their memory and facility in learning. He examined their ability to follow what was said quickly and accurately, and then whether they were driven y pure motivation and love to master all the disciplines presented to them. He stressed the importance of open mindedness, and this he called culture.
After the third year, those who were found unfit in any detail were required to leave the community; those who remained advanced toward discipleship. Because Pythagoras considered mastery over one's tongue as the most difficult challenge, successful Auditors were required at this stage to observe strict silence for five years. All their possessions and property were given to the community and committed to trustees. Finally, after five years of silence, those who had won Pythagoras' approval were initiated as Disciples.
Pythagoras explained that the extraordinary disciplines he imposed on applicants were necessary to clear away the thickets of excess and greed that obscure the natural reasoning power of the soul. "Excess brings lust, intoxication and uncontrolled emotions, which drive men and women into the abyss, " he taught. "Greed brings envy, theft and exploitation. Theses thickets, which choke the soul, must be cleared out by systematic discipline, as if with fire and sword. Only when reason is liberated from such evils are we able to implant what is useful and good within the soul."
Life in the community followed a strict routine. Special regard was given to two times of day---the hour of waking and the hour of falling asleep. Auditors and Disciples began the day with solitary walks to quiet places in the around the retreat---to groves, streams, temples and other sacred sites.
Pythagoritst: people who live in the surrounding region but attended Pythagoras' lectures on a regular basis.
Pythagoreans were divided into two groups:
Disciples: people who had completed the full term of probation.
Auditors: the rest of the group.
Before acceptance as a resident, each applicant to the community was rigorously examined. Pythagoras first asked about their relation to their parents and family. Next he observed the tone of their speech and laughter, and inquired about their desires, their friendships, how they employed their leisure, and what were the causes of their joy and sadness. He observed their posture and the shape and motions of their body, regarding these as visible signs of the qualities of the soul.
After subjecting each candidate to such careful screening, those deemed acceptable were invited to join the community as Auditors for a period of three years. During this time, Pythagoras carefully observed their character and habits, evaluating their susceptibility to desire and passion, and how they were affected by conflict and disappointment. He tested their acquisitiveness and pride, and placed a high value on generosity, reticence and modesty.
After this survey of manners, he directed his attention to their memory and facility in learning. He examined their ability to follow what was said quickly and accurately, and then whether they were driven y pure motivation and love to master all the disciplines presented to them. He stressed the importance of open mindedness, and this he called culture.
After the third year, those who were found unfit in any detail were required to leave the community; those who remained advanced toward discipleship. Because Pythagoras considered mastery over one's tongue as the most difficult challenge, successful Auditors were required at this stage to observe strict silence for five years. All their possessions and property were given to the community and committed to trustees. Finally, after five years of silence, those who had won Pythagoras' approval were initiated as Disciples.
Pythagoras explained that the extraordinary disciplines he imposed on applicants were necessary to clear away the thickets of excess and greed that obscure the natural reasoning power of the soul. "Excess brings lust, intoxication and uncontrolled emotions, which drive men and women into the abyss, " he taught. "Greed brings envy, theft and exploitation. Theses thickets, which choke the soul, must be cleared out by systematic discipline, as if with fire and sword. Only when reason is liberated from such evils are we able to implant what is useful and good within the soul."
Life in the community followed a strict routine. Special regard was given to two times of day---the hour of waking and the hour of falling asleep. Auditors and Disciples began the day with solitary walks to quiet places in the around the retreat---to groves, streams, temples and other sacred sites.
Pythagoras, an introduction
And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.
--T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Pythagoras: 570-c. 495 BC. Buddha is his contemporary.
These three men wrote about Pythagoras:
Porphyry (233-305 C.E.), a student of Plotinus
Iamblichus (250-325 C.E.): On the Pythagorean Life
Diogenes Laertius
Some of Plato's dialogues directly reflect Pythagorean thought. Aristotle wrote specifically about it.
And know the place for the first time.
--T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Pythagoras: 570-c. 495 BC. Buddha is his contemporary.
These three men wrote about Pythagoras:
Porphyry (233-305 C.E.), a student of Plotinus
Iamblichus (250-325 C.E.): On the Pythagorean Life
Diogenes Laertius
Some of Plato's dialogues directly reflect Pythagorean thought. Aristotle wrote specifically about it.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Lucian
Musonius Rufus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Musonius_Rufus
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/musonius.html
Gaius Musonius Rufus was a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1st century AD. He taught philosophy in Rome during the reign of Nero, as consequence of which he was sent into exile in 65 AD, only returning to Rome under Galba. He was allowed to stay in Rome when Vespasian banished all the other philosophers from the city in 71 AD, although he was eventually banished anyway, only returning after Vespasian's death. A collection of extracts of his lectures still survive. He is the teacher of Epictetus.
Philosophy, which he wanted everyone to cultivate, is not a mere matter of words, of instruction, or of the school; but everyone by their own reflection and practice may pursue for themselves. He considers it becoming in a philosopher to wear the philosopher's robe, to allow the hair to grow, and to retire from society. His philosophy consists entirely of the rules for the conduct of life; all knowledge ought to be serviceable to action.
21 of his discourses (Cora Lutz edition):
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/musonius.html
Gaius Musonius Rufus was a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1st century AD. He taught philosophy in Rome during the reign of Nero, as consequence of which he was sent into exile in 65 AD, only returning to Rome under Galba. He was allowed to stay in Rome when Vespasian banished all the other philosophers from the city in 71 AD, although he was eventually banished anyway, only returning after Vespasian's death. A collection of extracts of his lectures still survive. He is the teacher of Epictetus.
Philosophy, which he wanted everyone to cultivate, is not a mere matter of words, of instruction, or of the school; but everyone by their own reflection and practice may pursue for themselves. He considers it becoming in a philosopher to wear the philosopher's robe, to allow the hair to grow, and to retire from society. His philosophy consists entirely of the rules for the conduct of life; all knowledge ought to be serviceable to action.
21 of his discourses (Cora Lutz edition):
- That There is No Need of Giving Many Proofs for One Problem
- That Man is Born with an Inclination Toward Virtue
- That Women Too Should Study Philosophy
- Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?
- Which is more Effective, Theory or Practice?
- On Training
- That One Should Disdain Hardships
- That Kings Also Should Study Philosophy
- That Exile is not an Evil
- Will the Philosopher Prosecute Anyone for Personal Injury?
- What means of Livelihood is Appropriate for a Philosopher?
- On Sexual Indulgence
- What is the Chief End of Marriage
- Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?
- Should Every Child that is Born be Raised?
- Must One Obey One's Parents under all Circumstances?
- What is the Best Viaticum for Old Age?
- On Food
- On Clothing and Shelter
- On Furnishings
- On Cutting the Hair
Friday, October 23, 2009
MF 01: epimeleia heautou
本体的分析 or 主体的分析
Epmeleia heautou (Latin: cura sui): care of oneself
Socrates is essentially the only philosopher who stopped young people in the street and tell them: "You must care about yourself."
epimeleia heautou is fundamental principle for describing the philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture.
Greek Delphic precepts in the cult of Apollo:
1: neden agan (not too much)
2. eggue (the pledges. do not make vows that you will not be able to honor)
3. gnothi seauton (know yourself)
In general, the precepts demand for prudence: not too much in your requests and hopes and no excess in how you conduct yourself. People who came to the god should always remember that you are only a mortal, not a god, and that you should neither presume too much on your strength nor oppose the powers of the deity.
Plato's Apology 《申辩篇》 柏拉图的申辩
Different ways to say "care of the self": taking care of the self, withdrawing into oneself, retiring into the self, finding one's pleasure in oneself, seeking no other delight but in the self, remaining in the company of oneself, being the friend of oneself, devoting oneself to oneself, respecting oneself...
epimeleia heautou is an attitude towards the self, others, and world. It is a general standpoint that we should have and a certain ways for us to behave in the world, undertake actions, and have relations with other people.
epimeleia heautou asks us for certain form of attention or looking. Being concerned about oneself implies that we look away from the outside world to the inside towards ourselves, attending to what we think and what takes place in our thought.
epimeleia also designates a number of actions exercised on the self by the self, taking responsibility for oneself and by which changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself through meditation, memorization of the past, examination of conscience...
Care of the self describes a fundamental philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture. (Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca, Plotinus...)
From fifth century B.C. up to fifth century A.D， from the Greek to the first forms of Christian asceticism, with the notion of epimeleia heautou, we have a body of work that defines a way of being, a standpoint, and certain forms of reflections and practices.
Socrates in Apology: "Dear friend, you are an Athenian citizen of the greatest city, more famous than any other for its knowledge and might, yet are you not ashamed for devoting all your care to increasing your wealth, reputation and honors while not caring for or even considering your reason, truth and the constant improvement of your soul?" For Socrates, the care of oneself is a sort of thorn which must be stuck in men's flesh, driven into their existence, and which is a principle of restlessness and movement, of continuous concern throughout life.
Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity: "That the care of oneself begins with freedom from marriage."That has become the matrix of Christian asceticism.
Epicurus: "Every man should take care of his soul day and night and throughout his life."
Philosophy: the form of thought that asks what determines that there is and can be truth and falsehood and whether or not we can separate the true and the false.
Spirituality: the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth.
Spirituality postulates that 1) the truth is never given to the subject by right; 2) for the subject to have right of access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself (through love-eros and ascesis), for as he is, the subject is not capable of truth; 3) the truth enlightens the subject, gives beatitude to the subject, the tranquility of the soul.
（In modern sense, if knowledge is the only necessity to truth, then without any request on the subject's being, the truth can't save the subject.)
(The Cartesian moment: know yourself, which overshadowed care of the self.)
The epimeleia heautou designates precisely the set of conditions of spirituality, the set of transformations of the self, that are the necessary conditions for having access to the truth. So, throughout Antiquity, the philosophical theme (how to have access to the truth?) and the question of spiritualty (what transformations in the being of the subject are necessary for access to the truth?) were never separate.
In modern age, the condition for the subject's access to the truth is knowledge and knowledge alone. It is when the philosopher can recognize the truth and have access to it in himself and solely through his activity of knowing, without anything else being demanded of him and without him having to change or alter his being as subject.
There are all conditions that are either intrinsic to knowledge or extrinsic to the act of knowledge, but which do not concern the subject in his being; they only concern the individual in his concrete existence, and not the structure of the subject as such.
The access to truth, whose sole condition is henceforth knowledge, will find reward and fulfillment in nothing else but the indefinite development of knowledge. The point of enlightenment and fulfillment, the moment of the subject's transfiguration by the "rebound effect" on himself of the truth he knows, and which passes through, permeates, and transfigures his being, can no longer exist. Henceforth the truth cannot save the subject.
Writings related to epimeleia:
Philo: De Vita contemplative
Plotinus: Ennead, II
Methodius of Olympus (Christian ascenticism)
Basil of Caesarea
Gregory of Nyssa: The Lofe of Moses
Epmeleia heautou (Latin: cura sui): care of oneself
Socrates is essentially the only philosopher who stopped young people in the street and tell them: "You must care about yourself."
epimeleia heautou is fundamental principle for describing the philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture.
Greek Delphic precepts in the cult of Apollo:
1: neden agan (not too much)
2. eggue (the pledges. do not make vows that you will not be able to honor)
3. gnothi seauton (know yourself)
In general, the precepts demand for prudence: not too much in your requests and hopes and no excess in how you conduct yourself. People who came to the god should always remember that you are only a mortal, not a god, and that you should neither presume too much on your strength nor oppose the powers of the deity.
Plato's Apology 《申辩篇》 柏拉图的申辩
Different ways to say "care of the self": taking care of the self, withdrawing into oneself, retiring into the self, finding one's pleasure in oneself, seeking no other delight but in the self, remaining in the company of oneself, being the friend of oneself, devoting oneself to oneself, respecting oneself...
epimeleia heautou is an attitude towards the self, others, and world. It is a general standpoint that we should have and a certain ways for us to behave in the world, undertake actions, and have relations with other people.
epimeleia heautou asks us for certain form of attention or looking. Being concerned about oneself implies that we look away from the outside world to the inside towards ourselves, attending to what we think and what takes place in our thought.
epimeleia also designates a number of actions exercised on the self by the self, taking responsibility for oneself and by which changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself through meditation, memorization of the past, examination of conscience...
Care of the self describes a fundamental philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture. (Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca, Plotinus...)
From fifth century B.C. up to fifth century A.D， from the Greek to the first forms of Christian asceticism, with the notion of epimeleia heautou, we have a body of work that defines a way of being, a standpoint, and certain forms of reflections and practices.
Socrates in Apology: "Dear friend, you are an Athenian citizen of the greatest city, more famous than any other for its knowledge and might, yet are you not ashamed for devoting all your care to increasing your wealth, reputation and honors while not caring for or even considering your reason, truth and the constant improvement of your soul?" For Socrates, the care of oneself is a sort of thorn which must be stuck in men's flesh, driven into their existence, and which is a principle of restlessness and movement, of continuous concern throughout life.
Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity: "That the care of oneself begins with freedom from marriage."That has become the matrix of Christian asceticism.
Epicurus: "Every man should take care of his soul day and night and throughout his life."
Philosophy: the form of thought that asks what determines that there is and can be truth and falsehood and whether or not we can separate the true and the false.
Spirituality: the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth.
Spirituality postulates that 1) the truth is never given to the subject by right; 2) for the subject to have right of access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself (through love-eros and ascesis), for as he is, the subject is not capable of truth; 3) the truth enlightens the subject, gives beatitude to the subject, the tranquility of the soul.
（In modern sense, if knowledge is the only necessity to truth, then without any request on the subject's being, the truth can't save the subject.)
(The Cartesian moment: know yourself, which overshadowed care of the self.)
The epimeleia heautou designates precisely the set of conditions of spirituality, the set of transformations of the self, that are the necessary conditions for having access to the truth. So, throughout Antiquity, the philosophical theme (how to have access to the truth?) and the question of spiritualty (what transformations in the being of the subject are necessary for access to the truth?) were never separate.
In modern age, the condition for the subject's access to the truth is knowledge and knowledge alone. It is when the philosopher can recognize the truth and have access to it in himself and solely through his activity of knowing, without anything else being demanded of him and without him having to change or alter his being as subject.
There are all conditions that are either intrinsic to knowledge or extrinsic to the act of knowledge, but which do not concern the subject in his being; they only concern the individual in his concrete existence, and not the structure of the subject as such.
The access to truth, whose sole condition is henceforth knowledge, will find reward and fulfillment in nothing else but the indefinite development of knowledge. The point of enlightenment and fulfillment, the moment of the subject's transfiguration by the "rebound effect" on himself of the truth he knows, and which passes through, permeates, and transfigures his being, can no longer exist. Henceforth the truth cannot save the subject.
Writings related to epimeleia:
Philo: De Vita contemplative
Plotinus: Ennead, II
Methodius of Olympus (Christian ascenticism)
Basil of Caesarea
Gregory of Nyssa: The Lofe of Moses
MF 02: the three moments
Faust: there are cannot be knowledge without a profound modification in the subject's being.
The opposition in modern philosophy started from theological thought and the requirement of spirituality.
The relations of the subject to truth cannot be posed in terms of knowledge.
The three moments in history on care of the self:
1. the Socratic-Platonic moment, the appearance of the epimeleia heautou in philosophical reflection;
2. the period of the golden age of the culture of the self, which can be placed in the first two centuries.
3. the transition from pagan philosophical ascesis to Christian asceticism in the 4th and 5th centuries.
"One ought to take care of oneself" was an old maxim of Greek culture, not specifically or necessarily a philosopher's work. From Plutarch, a Spartan was asked one day: You Spartans really are a bit strange. You have a lot of land and your territory is huge. Why don't you cultivate it yourselves? The Spartan says: we have to take care of ourselves and so we do not have to cultivate our lands. Taking care of themselves was the affirmation of a form of existence linked to a privilege: If we have helots, if we do not cultivate our lands ourselves, if we delegate all these material cares to others, it is so that we can take care of ourselves. We have to look after ourselves, and to be able to do that we have entrusted our work to others.
Socrates takes up the epimeleia heautou question based on a tradition.
Alcibiades
One cannot govern others well, one cannot transform one's privileges into political action on others, into rational action, if one is not concerned about oneself.
Spartan education: an education that ensures firmness, greatness of soul, courage, endurance, the taste for victory and honor, etc.
A Spartan prince has four teachers: a teacher of wisdom, another justice, another temperance, and fourth a master of courage.
Wisdom - sophia
Justice - dikaiosune
Temperance - sophrosune
Courage - andreia
Socrates to Alcibiades of why he needs to take care himself: 1. the self linked to the exercise of power; 2. it is linked to Alcibiades's lack of proper education; 3. he has to take care of himself at the critical age, otherwise it would be too late to rectify matters if Alcibiades were fifty.
In Apology, the epimeleia heautou appears as a general function of the whole life, whereas in the Alcibiades it appears as a necessary moment of the young man's training. In this Socratic-Platonic form, the care of the self is an activity, a necessity for young people, within a relationship of them to their master or lover. A major debate and a turning point in the care of the self arises when the care of the self in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy becomes a permanent obligation for every individual throughout his life.
The opposition in modern philosophy started from theological thought and the requirement of spirituality.
The relations of the subject to truth cannot be posed in terms of knowledge.
The three moments in history on care of the self:
1. the Socratic-Platonic moment, the appearance of the epimeleia heautou in philosophical reflection;
2. the period of the golden age of the culture of the self, which can be placed in the first two centuries.
3. the transition from pagan philosophical ascesis to Christian asceticism in the 4th and 5th centuries.
"One ought to take care of oneself" was an old maxim of Greek culture, not specifically or necessarily a philosopher's work. From Plutarch, a Spartan was asked one day: You Spartans really are a bit strange. You have a lot of land and your territory is huge. Why don't you cultivate it yourselves? The Spartan says: we have to take care of ourselves and so we do not have to cultivate our lands. Taking care of themselves was the affirmation of a form of existence linked to a privilege: If we have helots, if we do not cultivate our lands ourselves, if we delegate all these material cares to others, it is so that we can take care of ourselves. We have to look after ourselves, and to be able to do that we have entrusted our work to others.
Socrates takes up the epimeleia heautou question based on a tradition.
Alcibiades
One cannot govern others well, one cannot transform one's privileges into political action on others, into rational action, if one is not concerned about oneself.
Spartan education: an education that ensures firmness, greatness of soul, courage, endurance, the taste for victory and honor, etc.
A Spartan prince has four teachers: a teacher of wisdom, another justice, another temperance, and fourth a master of courage.
Wisdom - sophia
Justice - dikaiosune
Temperance - sophrosune
Courage - andreia
Socrates to Alcibiades of why he needs to take care himself: 1. the self linked to the exercise of power; 2. it is linked to Alcibiades's lack of proper education; 3. he has to take care of himself at the critical age, otherwise it would be too late to rectify matters if Alcibiades were fifty.
In Apology, the epimeleia heautou appears as a general function of the whole life, whereas in the Alcibiades it appears as a necessary moment of the young man's training. In this Socratic-Platonic form, the care of the self is an activity, a necessity for young people, within a relationship of them to their master or lover. A major debate and a turning point in the care of the self arises when the care of the self in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy becomes a permanent obligation for every individual throughout his life.
MF 03: Alcibiaes & the soul
Two questions in Alcibiades: What is one's self and what is "taking care of"?
ti esti to hautou epimeleisthai---what is it to take care of oneself?
psukhes epimeleteon---one must take care of one's soul.
"What is this 'oneself' one must care for? ---Well, it is the soul."
psukhes epimeleteon: one must take care of one's soul.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being, and modify it by transfiguring it.
Socrates: It's all very well to take care of oneself, but there is a grave danger of going wrong. We risk not really knowing what we should do when we want to take care of ourselves, and instead of blindly obeying the principle.
How to take care oneself? The answer is quite simple, it consists in knowing oneself first. One must know oneself for him to care of himself. gnothi seauton is called upon for one to find out who he (Alcibiades) is, what he is capable of doing, what is his nature, his passion, his abilities, whether his is mortal or immortal...
Ways to know yourself: practices of the concentration of thought on itself, of the consolidation of the soul around its axis, of withdrawal into the self, of endurance...
It is in order to know oneself that one must withdraw into the self; it is in order to know oneself that one must detach oneself from sensations which are the source of illusions; it is in order to know oneself that one must establish one's soul in an immobile fixity which is not open to external events, etc.
The human body is only instrumental. The soul uses language, tools, and the body. But the soul is the prisoner of the body, it must be set free. Socrates does not want to designate an instrumental relationship of the soul to the rest of the world or to the body, but rather the subject's singular, transcendent position with regard to what surrounds him, to the objects available to him, but also to other people with whom he has a relationship, to his body itself, and finally to himself.
The soul is the subject, not substance. Taking care of oneself will be to take care of the self insofar as it is the "subject of" a certain number of things: the subject of instrumental action, of relationships with other people, of behavior and attitudes in general, and the subject also of relationships to oneself.
If the soul is immortal, then epimeleias deitai (it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care).
Socrates: "We see ourselves better when the mirror is brighter than our own eye, we will see our soul better if we look at it, not in a soul similar to our own, with the same brightness, but if we look at it in a brighter and purer element, that is to say in God." Therefore, to see oneself one must look at oneself in the divine element: one must know the divine in order to see oneself. This knowledge of divine enables the soul to achieve wisdom when the soul is able to think and know the divine as the source of thought and knowledge. Then the soul is able to distinguish good from evil, the true from the false. At this point the soul will be able to conduct itself properly.
Knowledge and access to the truth could only take place on condition of a spiritual movement of the soul with regard to itself and the divine.
Care of the self involves: know yourself---see your soul by looking towards the divine---discover the essence of wisdom---find truth.
The body cannot make use of itself. it is the soul uses language, tools, and the body. The soul as prisoner of the body must be set free. Soul is the subject of the action, the subject's singular, transcendent position with regard to what surrounds him, to the objects available to him, but also to other people with whom he has a relationship, to his body, and finally to himself.
___________________________________
Techniques to care of the soul:
From Plato (Phaedo), Pythagoreans, Roman Stoics, and etc.
1. Rites of purification. Without first being purified, you cannot have access to the gods, make sacrifices, hear the oracle and understand the truth, and you cannot benefit from a dream which will enlighten you through ambiguous but decipherable signs.
2. Concentrating of the soul (the breath, the pneuma). The soul is something mobile that can be disturbed and over which the outside can exercise a hold. One must avoid exposing it to external danger and something or someone having a hold over it. One must avoid dispersal of the soul. One must concentrate the soul, gather it up, condense it, and unite it in itself in order to give it a mode of existence, a solidity, which will enable it to last, to endure, and hold out throughout life and not be scattered when death comes.
3. The technique of withdrawal (anakhoresis). A particular way of detaching yourself and absenting yourself from the world in which you happen to be, but doing it so "on the spot": somehow breaking contact with the external world, no longer feeling sensations, no longer being disturbed by everything taking place around the self, acting as if you no longer see, and actually no longer seeing what is there before your eyes. A technique of visible absence. You are always there, visible to the eyes of others. But you are absent, elsewhere.
4. Practice of endurance and resistance to temptation. It enables one either to bear painful and hard ordeals or to resist temptations one may be offered. Pythagorea's resist good and Socrates's standing in the snow in his feet, control desire, etc.
5. Th technique of testing. Organize a tempting situation and test your ability to resist it.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being.
Pythagoreans: the purifying preparation for the dream, for the dream is to be in contact with a divine world, which is the world of immortality, beyond death, and also the world of truth, you must prepare yourself for the dream. Engage number of rituals that will purify the soul: listen the music, inhaling perfumes, examine the conscience, review the whole day, recall the faults.
In Phaedo: the technique of concentrate the soul, take the soul in hand, the practice of seclusion , of withdrawing into oneself, immobilize the soul.If the soul is immortal then "epimeleias deitai"--it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care.
In Stoics: immobility of though undisturbed by either internal or external excitement. The tranquillitas. the notion of withdraw, cutting oneself from the external world, in Marcus Aurelius.
________________________________
Three other types of activities: the activities of the doctor, the head of the household, and the lover. The doctor attend the body, the head of the household takes care his goods, the lover cares the look of the body. They are not care of the soul or himself.
The master who care about the subject's care for himself cares him as a subject.
***********
Books on techniques of the self in Ancient Greece:
1.The Anthropology of Ancient Greece by L. Gernet
2. Myth and Thought Among the Greeks by J. P. Vernant
3. The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece translated by Janet Lloyd
4. Philosophy as a Way of Life by P. Hadot
ti esti to hautou epimeleisthai---what is it to take care of oneself?
psukhes epimeleteon---one must take care of one's soul.
"What is this 'oneself' one must care for? ---Well, it is the soul."
psukhes epimeleteon: one must take care of one's soul.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being, and modify it by transfiguring it.
Socrates: It's all very well to take care of oneself, but there is a grave danger of going wrong. We risk not really knowing what we should do when we want to take care of ourselves, and instead of blindly obeying the principle.
How to take care oneself? The answer is quite simple, it consists in knowing oneself first. One must know oneself for him to care of himself. gnothi seauton is called upon for one to find out who he (Alcibiades) is, what he is capable of doing, what is his nature, his passion, his abilities, whether his is mortal or immortal...
Ways to know yourself: practices of the concentration of thought on itself, of the consolidation of the soul around its axis, of withdrawal into the self, of endurance...
It is in order to know oneself that one must withdraw into the self; it is in order to know oneself that one must detach oneself from sensations which are the source of illusions; it is in order to know oneself that one must establish one's soul in an immobile fixity which is not open to external events, etc.
The human body is only instrumental. The soul uses language, tools, and the body. But the soul is the prisoner of the body, it must be set free. Socrates does not want to designate an instrumental relationship of the soul to the rest of the world or to the body, but rather the subject's singular, transcendent position with regard to what surrounds him, to the objects available to him, but also to other people with whom he has a relationship, to his body itself, and finally to himself.
The soul is the subject, not substance. Taking care of oneself will be to take care of the self insofar as it is the "subject of" a certain number of things: the subject of instrumental action, of relationships with other people, of behavior and attitudes in general, and the subject also of relationships to oneself.
If the soul is immortal, then epimeleias deitai (it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care).
Socrates: "We see ourselves better when the mirror is brighter than our own eye, we will see our soul better if we look at it, not in a soul similar to our own, with the same brightness, but if we look at it in a brighter and purer element, that is to say in God." Therefore, to see oneself one must look at oneself in the divine element: one must know the divine in order to see oneself. This knowledge of divine enables the soul to achieve wisdom when the soul is able to think and know the divine as the source of thought and knowledge. Then the soul is able to distinguish good from evil, the true from the false. At this point the soul will be able to conduct itself properly.
Knowledge and access to the truth could only take place on condition of a spiritual movement of the soul with regard to itself and the divine.
Care of the self involves: know yourself---see your soul by looking towards the divine---discover the essence of wisdom---find truth.
The body cannot make use of itself. it is the soul uses language, tools, and the body. The soul as prisoner of the body must be set free. Soul is the subject of the action, the subject's singular, transcendent position with regard to what surrounds him, to the objects available to him, but also to other people with whom he has a relationship, to his body, and finally to himself.
___________________________________
Techniques to care of the soul:
From Plato (Phaedo), Pythagoreans, Roman Stoics, and etc.
1. Rites of purification. Without first being purified, you cannot have access to the gods, make sacrifices, hear the oracle and understand the truth, and you cannot benefit from a dream which will enlighten you through ambiguous but decipherable signs.
2. Concentrating of the soul (the breath, the pneuma). The soul is something mobile that can be disturbed and over which the outside can exercise a hold. One must avoid exposing it to external danger and something or someone having a hold over it. One must avoid dispersal of the soul. One must concentrate the soul, gather it up, condense it, and unite it in itself in order to give it a mode of existence, a solidity, which will enable it to last, to endure, and hold out throughout life and not be scattered when death comes.
3. The technique of withdrawal (anakhoresis). A particular way of detaching yourself and absenting yourself from the world in which you happen to be, but doing it so "on the spot": somehow breaking contact with the external world, no longer feeling sensations, no longer being disturbed by everything taking place around the self, acting as if you no longer see, and actually no longer seeing what is there before your eyes. A technique of visible absence. You are always there, visible to the eyes of others. But you are absent, elsewhere.
4. Practice of endurance and resistance to temptation. It enables one either to bear painful and hard ordeals or to resist temptations one may be offered. Pythagorea's resist good and Socrates's standing in the snow in his feet, control desire, etc.
5. Th technique of testing. Organize a tempting situation and test your ability to resist it.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being.
Pythagoreans: the purifying preparation for the dream, for the dream is to be in contact with a divine world, which is the world of immortality, beyond death, and also the world of truth, you must prepare yourself for the dream. Engage number of rituals that will purify the soul: listen the music, inhaling perfumes, examine the conscience, review the whole day, recall the faults.
In Phaedo: the technique of concentrate the soul, take the soul in hand, the practice of seclusion , of withdrawing into oneself, immobilize the soul.If the soul is immortal then "epimeleias deitai"--it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care.
In Stoics: immobility of though undisturbed by either internal or external excitement. The tranquillitas. the notion of withdraw, cutting oneself from the external world, in Marcus Aurelius.
________________________________
Three other types of activities: the activities of the doctor, the head of the household, and the lover. The doctor attend the body, the head of the household takes care his goods, the lover cares the look of the body. They are not care of the soul or himself.
The master who care about the subject's care for himself cares him as a subject.
***********
Books on techniques of the self in Ancient Greece:
1.The Anthropology of Ancient Greece by L. Gernet
2. Myth and Thought Among the Greeks by J. P. Vernant
3. The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece translated by Janet Lloyd
4. Philosophy as a Way of Life by P. Hadot
MF 04: the knowledge of divine
The soul will be endowed with wisdom as soon as it is in contact with the divine, when it has grasped it and been able to think and know the divine as the source of thought and knowledge.
Alcibiades: for Socrates, care of the self is 1) related to political action for those who wish to govern others, 2) because the education is inadequate and this care can't be provided by any education, and one must take care of the self throughout one's life with the crucial, decisive age of maturity. The adult must prepare himself for his old age, 3) the relationship to the erotics of boys.
Knowing oneself, knowing the divine, and seeing the divine in the self is typical of the Platonic and Neo-Platonist form of the care of the self. But it is not found in the other Epicurean, Stoic, and even Pythagorean forms of care of the self.
For Platonism, knowledge and access to the truth could only take place on condition of a spiritual movement of the soul with regard to itself and the divine, with the self as divine and with the divine as self.
Alcibiades: for Socrates, care of the self is 1) related to political action for those who wish to govern others, 2) because the education is inadequate and this care can't be provided by any education, and one must take care of the self throughout one's life with the crucial, decisive age of maturity. The adult must prepare himself for his old age, 3) the relationship to the erotics of boys.
Knowing oneself, knowing the divine, and seeing the divine in the self is typical of the Platonic and Neo-Platonist form of the care of the self. But it is not found in the other Epicurean, Stoic, and even Pythagorean forms of care of the self.
For Platonism, knowledge and access to the truth could only take place on condition of a spiritual movement of the soul with regard to itself and the divine, with the self as divine and with the divine as self.
MF 05: the end is self
For Socrates, care of the self is for the young aristocrats: to run the city-state one day, to exercise power properly and virtuously, and to gain knowledge of oneself.
In the neoclassical culture, of the imperial golden age, care of the self changed around 1st and 2nd century. It became the art of living, a general and unconditional principle, a requirement addressed to everyone, all the time, and without any condition of status, self as object and end, and not determined solely by self-knowledge.
epimeleisthai heautou also means to practice, train, and exercise. Four families of expressions:
hora: the moment or season of life when one must take care of oneself. In Alcibiades, it is the age young people enter adulthood because education deficiency and political and erotic reasons. Later care of the self becomes an obligation that should last for the whole of one's life. young to prepare for life, old to grow young again.
Epicurus: we must not hesitate to practice philosophy when we are young or grow weary of it when we are old. It is never too early or too late for taking care of one's soul.
Musonius Rufus: we can save ourselves by constantly treating ourselves.
Seneca in De Tranquillitate Animi, Natural Questions, De Vita Contemplativa.
Lucian's satire. 20 years taking lessons from philosophers.
Care of the self is an adult activity and that far from adolescence being the focal point and the privileged temporal axis in the care of the self, it is rather the middle of adult life, and perhaps even the end of adult life rather than the end of adolescence.(p88)
Pythagoreans divided human life into four periods of twenty years.
paraskheue (instructio in Latin): The training for care of the self is not a professional kind of preparation or preparation for social activity, but rather of training him, as in Alcibiades, to withstand in the right way all the possible accidents, misfortunes, disgrace, and setbacks that may befall him. It is the individual's armature for dealing with events rather training for definite professional goal.
The practice of self is no longer imposed simply against a background of ignorance, and of ignorance unaware of itself, as in the case of Alcibiades. The practice of the self is established against a background of errors, bad habits, and an established and deeply ingrained deformation and dependence that must be shaken off.
Seneca: In this practice of ourselves we must work to expel and expurgate this evil within us, to master it, throw it off and free ourselves from it.
Seneca: the bona mens (the noble soul) never comes before the mala mens, the soul's imperfection.
virtutes discere vitia dediscere est: learning virtue is unlearning vices.
To become what we never were is one of the most fundamental elements of this practice of the self.
Cicero in Tusculan Disputations: "As soon as we are born and admitted into our families we find ourselves in an entirely distorted milieu in which the perversion of judgment is so complete that we say we took in error with our nursemaid's milk."
Seneca to Lucilius: I desire for you a general contempt for everything that your parents wished for you in abundance.
The care of the self must completely reverse the system of values conveyed and laid down by the family.
Rhetoric is a teaching of embellishment, pretence, and seduction. It is not a matter of taking care of oneself but of pleasing others.
Musonius: We call on the philosopher as we call on he doctor in cases of illness. The philosopher's action on the soul is in every respect analogous to the doctor's action on the body.
pathos (pertubatio in Latin): an irrational impulse of the soul.
therapeuein: to perform a medical action whose purpose is to cure or to treat. the activity of the servant who obeys and serves his master. to worship. The word means to give medical care to oneself, to be one's own serant, and to devote oneself to oneself.
Philo of Alexandria: the Therapeutae people
A philosophy school is an iatrion (a clinic). You should not come to the philosophy school because you are well and in good health. You should not walk out of the philosophy school in pleasure, but in pain.
The intelligence from from passions is citadel.
Marcus Aurelius: "Remember that your inner guide becomes impregnable when it withdraws into itself and is content not to do what it does not wish to...The intelligence free from passions is citadel. Man has no stronger place into which to withdraw and henceforth be impregnable. Philosophy raises an impregnable wall around us that Fortune attacks with its thousand engines without gaining entrance. The soul detached from external things holds an unassailable position, defending itself in the fortress it has constructed."
raison d'etre: 存在的理由和目的
In the neoclassical culture, of the imperial golden age, care of the self changed around 1st and 2nd century. It became the art of living, a general and unconditional principle, a requirement addressed to everyone, all the time, and without any condition of status, self as object and end, and not determined solely by self-knowledge.
epimeleisthai heautou also means to practice, train, and exercise. Four families of expressions:
- pay attention to self, close the window and concentrate, analysis of the self, turn around towards self (p85), collect oneself, install oneself in a place of refuge, a well-fortified citadel, a fortress protected by walls
- in medical terms: treat oneself, cure oneself, conduct amputations on self
- in legal terms: lay claim to yourself, assert the right to yourself, free oneself, honor oneself, respect oneself.
- a relationship of mastery and sovereignty. a relationship of sensations: have pleasure in oneself, be happy with oneself, be content with oneself, experience delight with oneself.
hora: the moment or season of life when one must take care of oneself. In Alcibiades, it is the age young people enter adulthood because education deficiency and political and erotic reasons. Later care of the self becomes an obligation that should last for the whole of one's life. young to prepare for life, old to grow young again.
Epicurus: we must not hesitate to practice philosophy when we are young or grow weary of it when we are old. It is never too early or too late for taking care of one's soul.
Musonius Rufus: we can save ourselves by constantly treating ourselves.
Seneca in De Tranquillitate Animi, Natural Questions, De Vita Contemplativa.
Lucian's satire. 20 years taking lessons from philosophers.
Care of the self is an adult activity and that far from adolescence being the focal point and the privileged temporal axis in the care of the self, it is rather the middle of adult life, and perhaps even the end of adult life rather than the end of adolescence.(p88)
Pythagoreans divided human life into four periods of twenty years.
paraskheue (instructio in Latin): The training for care of the self is not a professional kind of preparation or preparation for social activity, but rather of training him, as in Alcibiades, to withstand in the right way all the possible accidents, misfortunes, disgrace, and setbacks that may befall him. It is the individual's armature for dealing with events rather training for definite professional goal.
The practice of self is no longer imposed simply against a background of ignorance, and of ignorance unaware of itself, as in the case of Alcibiades. The practice of the self is established against a background of errors, bad habits, and an established and deeply ingrained deformation and dependence that must be shaken off.
Seneca: In this practice of ourselves we must work to expel and expurgate this evil within us, to master it, throw it off and free ourselves from it.
Seneca: the bona mens (the noble soul) never comes before the mala mens, the soul's imperfection.
virtutes discere vitia dediscere est: learning virtue is unlearning vices.
To become what we never were is one of the most fundamental elements of this practice of the self.
Cicero in Tusculan Disputations: "As soon as we are born and admitted into our families we find ourselves in an entirely distorted milieu in which the perversion of judgment is so complete that we say we took in error with our nursemaid's milk."
Seneca to Lucilius: I desire for you a general contempt for everything that your parents wished for you in abundance.
The care of the self must completely reverse the system of values conveyed and laid down by the family.
Rhetoric is a teaching of embellishment, pretence, and seduction. It is not a matter of taking care of oneself but of pleasing others.
Musonius: We call on the philosopher as we call on he doctor in cases of illness. The philosopher's action on the soul is in every respect analogous to the doctor's action on the body.
pathos (pertubatio in Latin): an irrational impulse of the soul.
therapeuein: to perform a medical action whose purpose is to cure or to treat. the activity of the servant who obeys and serves his master. to worship. The word means to give medical care to oneself, to be one's own serant, and to devote oneself to oneself.
Philo of Alexandria: the Therapeutae people
A philosophy school is an iatrion (a clinic). You should not come to the philosophy school because you are well and in good health. You should not walk out of the philosophy school in pleasure, but in pain.
The intelligence from from passions is citadel.
Marcus Aurelius: "Remember that your inner guide becomes impregnable when it withdraws into itself and is content not to do what it does not wish to...The intelligence free from passions is citadel. Man has no stronger place into which to withdraw and henceforth be impregnable. Philosophy raises an impregnable wall around us that Fortune attacks with its thousand engines without gaining entrance. The soul detached from external things holds an unassailable position, defending itself in the fortress it has constructed."
raison d'etre: 存在的理由和目的
MF 07: the condition of stultitia
Seneca letter #52 & De Tranquillitate
Stultitia is defined by the nonrelationship to the self.
The stultus is essentially someone who does not will , who does not will himself, who does not want the self, whose will is not directed towards the only object one can freely will: one self. In stultitia there is a disconnection between the will and the self. The will of the stultus is not a free will, a will that does not always will. Free will means willing without what it is that one wills being determined by this or that event, this or that representation, and the stultus is determined by what comes from both outside and inside. The stultus wants several things at once, and these are divergent without being contradictory. So he does not want one and only one thing absolutely.
The stultus wants something and at the same time regrets it. The stultus wants glory and, and at the same time, regrets not leading a peaceful life. The will is constantly interrepted and changes its objective.
The stultus is someone who remembers nothing, who lets his life pass by, who does not try to restore unity to his life, who does not direct his attention and will to a precise and well-determined end. The stultus lets life pass by and constantly changes his viewpoint. Hence stultus is constantly changing his way of life. According to Seneca, nothing is more harmful than changing one's mode of life according to one's age. In reality one must dirct one's life as quickly as possible towards its objective, which is the fulfillment of the self in old age.
"Hasten to be old," old age is the point of orientation that enables life to be set in a single unity.
From De Tranquillitate: stultus is unable to will properly because of his openness to representations coming from the external world, and of this being dipersed in time.
Stultitia is something that is not settled on anything and not satisfied by anything. No one in such good health that he can get out of this condition by himself. Someone myst lend him a hand and pull him out. The need for a master. What is this morbid, pathological condition one must rise above?
sapientia: the one who has achieved a relationship of self-control, self-possession, and pleasure in the self.
The only object that one can feely will, without having to take into consideration external determinations, is the self. What object can one will absolutely is the self.
Stultitia is defined by the nonrelationship to the self.
The stultus is essentially someone who does not will , who does not will himself, who does not want the self, whose will is not directed towards the only object one can freely will: one self. In stultitia there is a disconnection between the will and the self. The will of the stultus is not a free will, a will that does not always will. Free will means willing without what it is that one wills being determined by this or that event, this or that representation, and the stultus is determined by what comes from both outside and inside. The stultus wants several things at once, and these are divergent without being contradictory. So he does not want one and only one thing absolutely.
The stultus wants something and at the same time regrets it. The stultus wants glory and, and at the same time, regrets not leading a peaceful life. The will is constantly interrepted and changes its objective.
The stultus is someone who remembers nothing, who lets his life pass by, who does not try to restore unity to his life, who does not direct his attention and will to a precise and well-determined end. The stultus lets life pass by and constantly changes his viewpoint. Hence stultus is constantly changing his way of life. According to Seneca, nothing is more harmful than changing one's mode of life according to one's age. In reality one must dirct one's life as quickly as possible towards its objective, which is the fulfillment of the self in old age.
"Hasten to be old," old age is the point of orientation that enables life to be set in a single unity.
From De Tranquillitate: stultus is unable to will properly because of his openness to representations coming from the external world, and of this being dipersed in time.
Stultitia is something that is not settled on anything and not satisfied by anything. No one in such good health that he can get out of this condition by himself. Someone myst lend him a hand and pull him out. The need for a master. What is this morbid, pathological condition one must rise above?
sapientia: the one who has achieved a relationship of self-control, self-possession, and pleasure in the self.
The only object that one can feely will, without having to take into consideration external determinations, is the self. What object can one will absolutely is the self.
MF 08: Dietetics, economics, erotics
Dietetics, economics, and erotics
Pliny's Letters #10 - Euphrates, a Stoic philosopher
from Pliny: "I have worked to be loved by him, though that was not difficult."
Seneca's De Beneficiis: one must not only provide services in a friendship, but that it is said that it is quite a job, quite a labor to get oneself loved by the person whose friendship one desires.
The body, the family circle and household; love. These are the three major domains in which the practice of the self is actualized in the Roman period. In Plato's text, care of the self is definitely distinguished from the care of the body, that is to say dietetics, the care for one's goods, that is to say economics, and the lover's care, that is to say erotics. These three domains are reintegrated, but as a reflecting surface, as the occasion for the self to test itself, train itself, and develop the practice of itself which is its rule of life and its objective. They are application for the practice of the self.
身体、事业、爱情
Pliny's Letters #10 - Euphrates, a Stoic philosopher
from Pliny: "I have worked to be loved by him, though that was not difficult."
Seneca's De Beneficiis: one must not only provide services in a friendship, but that it is said that it is quite a job, quite a labor to get oneself loved by the person whose friendship one desires.
The body, the family circle and household; love. These are the three major domains in which the practice of the self is actualized in the Roman period. In Plato's text, care of the self is definitely distinguished from the care of the body, that is to say dietetics, the care for one's goods, that is to say economics, and the lover's care, that is to say erotics. These three domains are reintegrated, but as a reflecting surface, as the occasion for the self to test itself, train itself, and develop the practice of itself which is its rule of life and its objective. They are application for the practice of the self.
身体、事业、爱情
MF 09: ALcibiades's position
The first and second century. From Hellenisitic and Roman period we see a real development of the culture of the self. The culture in sense: 1.there is a set of value, 2. these values are both as universal but also as only accessible to a few.3. effort and sacrifice is required, 4. regular techniques and procedures are developed and taught
Alcibiades as the head and summary of Plato's works and that of Platonism.
Plato in Phaedrus: it is absurd not know oneself if one aspires to know everything else.
Socrates proceeded to philosophy through the precept of 'know yourself.'
gnothi seauton as the very foundation of philosophy.
The aim of this dialogue is knowing oneself, not in terms of body, not in terms of external objects, but in terms of the soul, not the vegetable, not the irrational soul, but the rational soul. The know yourself calls for a number of operations by which the subject must purify himelf and become, in his own nature, able to have contact with and to recognize the divine element withing him.
Care of the self has gradually emerged as a self-sufficient end, without the care of others being the ultimate aim and indicator by reference to which care of the slef is valued.
First, care of self is no longer one element among others, not a pivotal, not a relay, not a transitional element leading to something else, to the city-state or others. It is an activity focused solely on the self and whose outcome and satisfaction are found only in the self, in the activity itself that is exercised on the self.
The question of "what should I do to live properly?" will become identified with "What shall we o so that the self becomes and remains what it ought to be?"
Then: How must I transform my own self so as to be able to have access to the truth?
the art of living: tekhne tou biou
The concept of salvation. When the object of salvation is attained, you need nothing and no one but yourself.
The two great themes of ataraxy and autarchy are the two forms in which salvation, the act of salvation, the activity of savlation carried on throughout one's life find their rewards.
ataraxy: the absence of inner turmoil, the self-control that ensures that nothing disturbs one.
autarchy: the self-sufficiency which ensures that one needs nothing but the self.
The Hellenistic and Roman salvation: salvation is an activity, the subject's constant action on himself, which finds its reward in a certain relationship of the subject to himself when he has become inaccessible to external disorders and finds a satisfaction in himself, needing nothng but himself. The salvation is the vigilant, continuous, and completed form of the relationship to self closed in on itself. One saves oneself for the self, one is saved by the self, one saves oneself in order to arrive at nothing other than oneself.
Alcibiades as the head and summary of Plato's works and that of Platonism.
Plato in Phaedrus: it is absurd not know oneself if one aspires to know everything else.
Socrates proceeded to philosophy through the precept of 'know yourself.'
gnothi seauton as the very foundation of philosophy.
The aim of this dialogue is knowing oneself, not in terms of body, not in terms of external objects, but in terms of the soul, not the vegetable, not the irrational soul, but the rational soul. The know yourself calls for a number of operations by which the subject must purify himelf and become, in his own nature, able to have contact with and to recognize the divine element withing him.
Care of the self has gradually emerged as a self-sufficient end, without the care of others being the ultimate aim and indicator by reference to which care of the slef is valued.
First, care of self is no longer one element among others, not a pivotal, not a relay, not a transitional element leading to something else, to the city-state or others. It is an activity focused solely on the self and whose outcome and satisfaction are found only in the self, in the activity itself that is exercised on the self.
The question of "what should I do to live properly?" will become identified with "What shall we o so that the self becomes and remains what it ought to be?"
Then: How must I transform my own self so as to be able to have access to the truth?
the art of living: tekhne tou biou
The concept of salvation. When the object of salvation is attained, you need nothing and no one but yourself.
The two great themes of ataraxy and autarchy are the two forms in which salvation, the act of salvation, the activity of savlation carried on throughout one's life find their rewards.
ataraxy: the absence of inner turmoil, the self-control that ensures that nothing disturbs one.
autarchy: the self-sufficiency which ensures that one needs nothing but the self.
The Hellenistic and Roman salvation: salvation is an activity, the subject's constant action on himself, which finds its reward in a certain relationship of the subject to himself when he has become inaccessible to external disorders and finds a satisfaction in himself, needing nothng but himself. The salvation is the vigilant, continuous, and completed form of the relationship to self closed in on itself. One saves oneself for the self, one is saved by the self, one saves oneself in order to arrive at nothing other than oneself.
MF 10: Friendship
Epicurean friendship: Vatican Saying 23, "Every friendship is desirable in itself; however it begins with usefulness." Vatican Saying 39, "The friend is neither the one who always seeks what is useful nor the one who never joins usefulness to friendship: for the first makes a trade of the benefit and what is given in return, while the other removes hope for the future.""Of all the things that wisdom prepares for ensuring lifelong happiness, by far the greatest is the possession of friends." Vatican Saying 34, "We do not welcome the hepl of our friends, the help that comes to us from them, so much as our trust in the subject of this help."
Friendship is desirable because it is part of happiness. Happiness consists in knowing that we are as well protected as possible against the evils that may come from the world and that we are completely independent of them.
Our awareness of friendship that we are surrounded by friends who will reciprocate our attitude of friendship towards them, which constitutes one of the guarantees of our happiness. Its objective is to establish the soul in a state resting on ataraxy, that is to say the absence of inner turmoil, wisdom surrounds itself with friends because we find in these friends, and our trust in them, one of the guarantees of ataraxy and the absence of inner turmoil.
Epicurean friendship remains within the care of the self and includes the necessary reciprocity of friends as guarantee of ataraxy and happiness.
So it is the balance between utility and something other than utility. Friendship must be chosen for itself, on account of itself. Usefulness designates an external relationship between what one does and why one does it.
For Stoics, the conception comes from that man as a communal being. Epictetus says, the order of the world is so organized that all living beings, whatever they are seek their own good. The God has determined that whenever one is seeking its own good, and without wishing to or seeking to, it acts for the good of others. Discourse 19 of book I: Zeus has arranged the nature of the rational animal in such a way that he can attain no particular good without bringing about the common utility. Thus it is not antisocial to do everything for oneself.
One cannot have access to the truth if one does not change one's mode of being. Zeus has entrusted men to themselves. He has determined that unlike animals, and this is one of the fundamental differences between the rational animal and nonrational animals, men are entrusted to themselves an have to take care of themselves.
He has to ask himself what depends on him and what does not depend on him, and what is appropriate for him to do or not do. In discourse 14 of book II: those who succeed in taking care of themselves "have a life free from pain, fear, and distress, and they observe the order of natural and acquired relationships."
The "princely" duty from Marcus Aurelius: You have to forget that you are Caesar, and you will only perform your work, your task, and fulfill your obligations as Caesar if you conduct yourself like any man. (p.200 & p.201-important.)
The examination of conscience in Stoic and Pythagorean practice: the morning and night examinations.
Descartes: to be capable of truth you only have open your eyes and to reason soundly and honestly, always holding to the line of self-evidence and never letting it go. A man has to ask himself what he is, what he is not. He has
Friendship is desirable because it is part of happiness. Happiness consists in knowing that we are as well protected as possible against the evils that may come from the world and that we are completely independent of them.
Our awareness of friendship that we are surrounded by friends who will reciprocate our attitude of friendship towards them, which constitutes one of the guarantees of our happiness. Its objective is to establish the soul in a state resting on ataraxy, that is to say the absence of inner turmoil, wisdom surrounds itself with friends because we find in these friends, and our trust in them, one of the guarantees of ataraxy and the absence of inner turmoil.
Epicurean friendship remains within the care of the self and includes the necessary reciprocity of friends as guarantee of ataraxy and happiness.
So it is the balance between utility and something other than utility. Friendship must be chosen for itself, on account of itself. Usefulness designates an external relationship between what one does and why one does it.
For Stoics, the conception comes from that man as a communal being. Epictetus says, the order of the world is so organized that all living beings, whatever they are seek their own good. The God has determined that whenever one is seeking its own good, and without wishing to or seeking to, it acts for the good of others. Discourse 19 of book I: Zeus has arranged the nature of the rational animal in such a way that he can attain no particular good without bringing about the common utility. Thus it is not antisocial to do everything for oneself.
One cannot have access to the truth if one does not change one's mode of being. Zeus has entrusted men to themselves. He has determined that unlike animals, and this is one of the fundamental differences between the rational animal and nonrational animals, men are entrusted to themselves an have to take care of themselves.
He has to ask himself what depends on him and what does not depend on him, and what is appropriate for him to do or not do. In discourse 14 of book II: those who succeed in taking care of themselves "have a life free from pain, fear, and distress, and they observe the order of natural and acquired relationships."
The "princely" duty from Marcus Aurelius: You have to forget that you are Caesar, and you will only perform your work, your task, and fulfill your obligations as Caesar if you conduct yourself like any man. (p.200 & p.201-important.)
The examination of conscience in Stoic and Pythagorean practice: the morning and night examinations.
Descartes: to be capable of truth you only have open your eyes and to reason soundly and honestly, always holding to the line of self-evidence and never letting it go. A man has to ask himself what he is, what he is not. He has
MF 11: Conversion to the self & the gaze
p.205
Marcus Aurelius knows that he will be able to look after mankind, which has been entrusted to him, insofar as he knows how to take care of himself properly.
We must apply ourselves to ourselves, we turn away from everything that is not part of ourselves but which might grab our attention, our diligence, and arouse our zeal. We must turn away from this in order to turn around to the self. Our attention, eyes, mind, and finally our whole being must be turned towards the self throughout our life.
A top as an example: the top is something that turns on itself at the behest and on the instigation of an external impulse. By turning on itself, the top successively presents different faces in different directions and to the different components of its surroundings. And finally, although the tip apparently remains immobile, in reality it is always in movement. Wisdom, in contrast, consists in never allowing ourselves to be induced to make an involuntary movement at the behest of or through the instigation of an external impulse. Rather, we must seek the point at the center of ourselves to which we will be fixed and in relation to which we will remain immobile. It is towards ourselves, towards the center of ourselves, in the center of ourselves, that we must fix our aim.
epistrephein pros heauton: turning towards the self, converting to the self.
Seneca: convertere ad se: converting to the self.
Plato's notion of epistrophe: first, in turning away from appearances; second, acknowledging one's own ignorance and by deciding precisely to care about the self; third, then we will be able to return to our homeland, the homeland of essences, truth and Being.
There is a fundamental opposition between the world down here and the other world, and it is governed by the theme of a liberation, of the soul's release from the body, the prison-body, the tomb body. o know oneself is to know the true. To know the true is to free oneself.
In the Hellenistic and Roman culture of the self conversion gets us to move from that does not depend on us to that which does, a liberation from what we do not control so as finally to arrive at what we can control. It does not appear as a liberation from the body, but rather as the establishment of a complete, perfect,and adequate relationship of self to self. The essential element is much more exercise, practice, and training; askesis rather than knowledge.
Christian conversion (metanoia): it involves a sudden change and a transition from one type of being to another, from death to life, from mortality to immortality, from dark to light, from the reign of the devil to that of God. It is renunciation of oneself, dying to oneself, and being reborn in a different self and new form which no longer has anything to do with the earlier self in itsw being, its mode of being, in its habits or its ethos.
In philosophy, Seneca says that philosophy spins the subject around on himself in order to free himself. People converted by turning to look towards the self. Yo protect and equip the self.
The Gaze:
In Christian and monastic literature: Pay attention to all the images and representations which enter your mind; always examine every movement in your heart so as to decipher in them the signs or traces of a temptation; try to determine whether what comes to your mind has been sent by God or the devil, or even by yourself.
For the Romans, look at yourself is to look inside yourself to discover the seeds of the truth within yourself. It means to turn away from others at first and then later to turn the gaze away from the things of the world, to turn away from the curiosity that makes interested in other people.
Plutarch's On Curiosity: the windows of a house should not open onto the neighbors' houses. Don't look at wat is going on in the houses of other people, but look rather at what is going on in our own.
Marcus Aurelius: We are generally never unhappy because we pay no heed to what is going on in another person's soul. Don't use up what is left of your life thinking about what the other person is doing.
Curiosity: It is meddling in what does not concern us. Plutarch defines it as the desire, the pleasure of hearing about the troubles of other people, about what ills the other person is suffering. It is being interested in what is not going well for others.
Plutarch's advice: Don't be curious. Instead of concerning other people's flaws, be concerned about your own flaws. We should shift our attention to three things: 1) study the secrets of nature, 2) it is more worthwhile to read history, and 3) we should retire to the countryside and take pleasure in the calm and comforting scene around us.
His anti-curiosity exercises: 1) memory exercises, 2) exercise by going for a walk without looking here and there, 3) putting good dishes in front of us and not eating them.
It is so as to be able to concentrate on keeping the straight line we must follow in heading to our destination. We must focus ourselves. If we must turn away from others, it is so as better to listen solely to the internal guide. We should think about preparation as an athletic kind of concentration, as an archer launches his arrow towards his target.
To clear a space around the self, to think of the aim, or rather of the relation between yourself and the aim. Think of the trajectory separating you from that towards which you wish to advance, or which you wish to reach. All your attention should be concentrated on this trajectory from self to self. Presence of self to self.
From self to the true, there is a distance.
Marcus Aurelius knows that he will be able to look after mankind, which has been entrusted to him, insofar as he knows how to take care of himself properly.
We must apply ourselves to ourselves, we turn away from everything that is not part of ourselves but which might grab our attention, our diligence, and arouse our zeal. We must turn away from this in order to turn around to the self. Our attention, eyes, mind, and finally our whole being must be turned towards the self throughout our life.
A top as an example: the top is something that turns on itself at the behest and on the instigation of an external impulse. By turning on itself, the top successively presents different faces in different directions and to the different components of its surroundings. And finally, although the tip apparently remains immobile, in reality it is always in movement. Wisdom, in contrast, consists in never allowing ourselves to be induced to make an involuntary movement at the behest of or through the instigation of an external impulse. Rather, we must seek the point at the center of ourselves to which we will be fixed and in relation to which we will remain immobile. It is towards ourselves, towards the center of ourselves, in the center of ourselves, that we must fix our aim.
epistrephein pros heauton: turning towards the self, converting to the self.
Seneca: convertere ad se: converting to the self.
Plato's notion of epistrophe: first, in turning away from appearances; second, acknowledging one's own ignorance and by deciding precisely to care about the self; third, then we will be able to return to our homeland, the homeland of essences, truth and Being.
There is a fundamental opposition between the world down here and the other world, and it is governed by the theme of a liberation, of the soul's release from the body, the prison-body, the tomb body. o know oneself is to know the true. To know the true is to free oneself.
In the Hellenistic and Roman culture of the self conversion gets us to move from that does not depend on us to that which does, a liberation from what we do not control so as finally to arrive at what we can control. It does not appear as a liberation from the body, but rather as the establishment of a complete, perfect,and adequate relationship of self to self. The essential element is much more exercise, practice, and training; askesis rather than knowledge.
Christian conversion (metanoia): it involves a sudden change and a transition from one type of being to another, from death to life, from mortality to immortality, from dark to light, from the reign of the devil to that of God. It is renunciation of oneself, dying to oneself, and being reborn in a different self and new form which no longer has anything to do with the earlier self in itsw being, its mode of being, in its habits or its ethos.
In philosophy, Seneca says that philosophy spins the subject around on himself in order to free himself. People converted by turning to look towards the self. Yo protect and equip the self.
The Gaze:
In Christian and monastic literature: Pay attention to all the images and representations which enter your mind; always examine every movement in your heart so as to decipher in them the signs or traces of a temptation; try to determine whether what comes to your mind has been sent by God or the devil, or even by yourself.
For the Romans, look at yourself is to look inside yourself to discover the seeds of the truth within yourself. It means to turn away from others at first and then later to turn the gaze away from the things of the world, to turn away from the curiosity that makes interested in other people.
Plutarch's On Curiosity: the windows of a house should not open onto the neighbors' houses. Don't look at wat is going on in the houses of other people, but look rather at what is going on in our own.
Marcus Aurelius: We are generally never unhappy because we pay no heed to what is going on in another person's soul. Don't use up what is left of your life thinking about what the other person is doing.
Curiosity: It is meddling in what does not concern us. Plutarch defines it as the desire, the pleasure of hearing about the troubles of other people, about what ills the other person is suffering. It is being interested in what is not going well for others.
Plutarch's advice: Don't be curious. Instead of concerning other people's flaws, be concerned about your own flaws. We should shift our attention to three things: 1) study the secrets of nature, 2) it is more worthwhile to read history, and 3) we should retire to the countryside and take pleasure in the calm and comforting scene around us.
His anti-curiosity exercises: 1) memory exercises, 2) exercise by going for a walk without looking here and there, 3) putting good dishes in front of us and not eating them.
It is so as to be able to concentrate on keeping the straight line we must follow in heading to our destination. We must focus ourselves. If we must turn away from others, it is so as better to listen solely to the internal guide. We should think about preparation as an athletic kind of concentration, as an archer launches his arrow towards his target.
To clear a space around the self, to think of the aim, or rather of the relation between yourself and the aim. Think of the trajectory separating you from that towards which you wish to advance, or which you wish to reach. All your attention should be concentrated on this trajectory from self to self. Presence of self to self.
From self to the true, there is a distance.
MF 12: Knowledge & phusiologia
Knowledge of nature and knowledge of human beings. Knowledge of things and knowledge of oneself.
What is interesting and decisive is not knowing the world's secrets but knowing man himself.
Useful knowledge vs. useless knowledge.
Knowledge through cause is useless. Knowledge through causes as cultural, ornamental knowledge.
Demetrius (a Cynic): to be a good athlete it is enough to know only those actions that can actually be used and that are used most frequently in the struggle. And these well-mastere actions must have become so familiar that they are always available an can be resorted to whenever the opportunity arises.
Demetrius: You may not know what causes the ebb and flow of the ocean tides; you may not know why every seventh year imprints a new character on the life of man; why it is that twins are conceived separately, but are born together; why those who are born together have different destinies...
Everything that can make us better or happier, Nature has placed in plain sight and within our reach. If man has fortified himself against the accidents of fortune, if he has risen above fear, if, in the greed of his hopes he does not embrace the infinite but learns to seek his riches in himself; if he has cast out the dread of men and gods, convinced that he has little to fear from man and nothing from God; if, despising all frivolities which are the torment as well as the ornament of life, he has come to understand that death produces no evils, and ends many; if he has dedicated himself to Virtue, and finds every path to which she calls him easy; if he sees himself as a social being born to live in a community; if he views the world as the universal home of mankind, if he has opened his conscience to the gods and always lives as if in public---then , respecting himelf more than others, from from storms, he is settled in an unalterable calm; then he has gathered withing him all truly useful and necessary science: the rest is only the diversion of leisure.
A soul alreay retired to shelter may occasionally lose itself in these speculations which serve to embellish the mind rather than strengthen it.
So what we should know are relations: the subject's relations with everything around him. These kinds of knowledge such that the subject's mode of being is transformed when he has them, when he possesses them, he becomes better.
It is thanks to this also that, respecting ourselves more than we respect others, free from storms, we are settled in an unalterable calm. In solido et sereno stare: We can stand in the firm and serene element.
Cultural embellishment is something that may well be true but does not change the subject's mode of being in any way.
ethos: the individual's way of being, his mode of existence.
Knowing, knowledge of something, is useful when it has a form and functions in such a way that it can prouce ethos.
Epicurus (Vatican Sayings 45): You must preactice philosophy for yourself and not for Greece.
The study of nature does not form men who are fond of boasting and who are verbal performers, or those who make a show of the culture which is envied by the asses, but men, rather, who are haughty and independent, and who take pride in what is theri own and not what comes from curcumstances.
Epicurus's phusiologia: it gives individual boldness and courage, a kind of intrepidity, which enables hi to stand firm not only against the many beliefs that otherw wish to impose on him, but also against life's dangers and the authority of those who want to lay down the law, Absence of fear, boldness, a sort of recalcitrance and spiritedness.
The effects from phusiologia:
autarkeis: they will depend only on themselves.contenti: to be satisfied with oneself. They need nothing other than themselves, but will find a number of resources within themselves, and the possibility in particular of experiencing pleasure and delight in the full relationship they will have with themselves.
another effect is that of enabling individuals to take pride in what is their own and not what derives from circumstances.
At every moment being able to say whether or not it depends on oneself; putting all one's pride, all one's satisfaction, and all one's self-affirmation with regard to others, in the fact that one can recognize what depends on oneself; and establishing a total, absolute, an limitless mastery over that which depends on oneself.
Epicurus: You must convince yourslef that knowlege of celestial phinomena has no other end than peace of mind and firm confidence.... Our life, in fact, does not need foolishness and empty opinion, it needs untroubled renewal. **
What is interesting and decisive is not knowing the world's secrets but knowing man himself.
Useful knowledge vs. useless knowledge.
Knowledge through cause is useless. Knowledge through causes as cultural, ornamental knowledge.
Demetrius (a Cynic): to be a good athlete it is enough to know only those actions that can actually be used and that are used most frequently in the struggle. And these well-mastere actions must have become so familiar that they are always available an can be resorted to whenever the opportunity arises.
Demetrius: You may not know what causes the ebb and flow of the ocean tides; you may not know why every seventh year imprints a new character on the life of man; why it is that twins are conceived separately, but are born together; why those who are born together have different destinies...
Everything that can make us better or happier, Nature has placed in plain sight and within our reach. If man has fortified himself against the accidents of fortune, if he has risen above fear, if, in the greed of his hopes he does not embrace the infinite but learns to seek his riches in himself; if he has cast out the dread of men and gods, convinced that he has little to fear from man and nothing from God; if, despising all frivolities which are the torment as well as the ornament of life, he has come to understand that death produces no evils, and ends many; if he has dedicated himself to Virtue, and finds every path to which she calls him easy; if he sees himself as a social being born to live in a community; if he views the world as the universal home of mankind, if he has opened his conscience to the gods and always lives as if in public---then , respecting himelf more than others, from from storms, he is settled in an unalterable calm; then he has gathered withing him all truly useful and necessary science: the rest is only the diversion of leisure.
A soul alreay retired to shelter may occasionally lose itself in these speculations which serve to embellish the mind rather than strengthen it.
So what we should know are relations: the subject's relations with everything around him. These kinds of knowledge such that the subject's mode of being is transformed when he has them, when he possesses them, he becomes better.
It is thanks to this also that, respecting ourselves more than we respect others, free from storms, we are settled in an unalterable calm. In solido et sereno stare: We can stand in the firm and serene element.
Cultural embellishment is something that may well be true but does not change the subject's mode of being in any way.
ethos: the individual's way of being, his mode of existence.
Knowing, knowledge of something, is useful when it has a form and functions in such a way that it can prouce ethos.
Epicurus (Vatican Sayings 45): You must preactice philosophy for yourself and not for Greece.
The study of nature does not form men who are fond of boasting and who are verbal performers, or those who make a show of the culture which is envied by the asses, but men, rather, who are haughty and independent, and who take pride in what is theri own and not what comes from curcumstances.
Epicurus's phusiologia: it gives individual boldness and courage, a kind of intrepidity, which enables hi to stand firm not only against the many beliefs that otherw wish to impose on him, but also against life's dangers and the authority of those who want to lay down the law, Absence of fear, boldness, a sort of recalcitrance and spiritedness.
The effects from phusiologia:
autarkeis: they will depend only on themselves.contenti: to be satisfied with oneself. They need nothing other than themselves, but will find a number of resources within themselves, and the possibility in particular of experiencing pleasure and delight in the full relationship they will have with themselves.
another effect is that of enabling individuals to take pride in what is their own and not what derives from circumstances.
At every moment being able to say whether or not it depends on oneself; putting all one's pride, all one's satisfaction, and all one's self-affirmation with regard to others, in the fact that one can recognize what depends on oneself; and establishing a total, absolute, an limitless mastery over that which depends on oneself.
Epicurus: You must convince yourslef that knowlege of celestial phinomena has no other end than peace of mind and firm confidence.... Our life, in fact, does not need foolishness and empty opinion, it needs untroubled renewal. **
MF 13: the Hellenistic model
The Hellenistic model is a hidden model between the Platonic model and the Christian model.
The Platonic model: the model of recollection
Three basic points: 1) if one must care about the self it is because one is ignorant; 2) care of oneself consists in knowing oneself; 3) recollection is situated exactly at the point where care of the self and self-knowledge meet.
The Christian model: the model of self-exegesis or self-renunciation.
The relationship of self-knowledge, knowledge of the truth, and care of the self.
Christian model is not to turn back to the self in an act of recollection in order to rediscover the truth it had once contemplated and the being that it is.
The Hellenistic model contered on the self-finalization of the relationship to self and conversion to self.
Seneca: we must hasten to its point of completion, not in the sense that it will have reached its most distant chronological term, but complete by the fact of having achieved its fullness. We must pass through our life at the greatest speed, at a stroke without even dividing it up into distinct phases with distinct modes of existence in order to arrive at that ideal point of ideal old age.
Seneca: he must not concern himself with an estate, a property far from its master. He must take care of the estate close by. This estate is oneself. In the movement of time that carries us to the final point of our life, we must turn our gaze around and take ourselves as the object of contemplation.
He thinks that it would be better to overcome and defeat our own passions than to recount the passions of others, as historians do. Those who have made themselves masers of towns and entire nations are countless; but how few have been masters of themselves.
Life is a journey: 1) a real movement from one point to another; 2) there is aim or objective; 3) there is a homeport; 4) the navigation to reach homeport is dangerous; 5) the journey will be the one that leads you to the place of safety through a number of known and little known.
The art of living: the idea of piloting as an art, as a theoretical and practical technique necessary to existence. Montaigne should be reread in this perspective, as an attempt to reconstitute an aesthetics and an ethics of the self.
Three types of techniques are usually associated with this model of piloting: medicine, political government, and the direction of government of oneself.
The Platonic model: the model of recollection
Three basic points: 1) if one must care about the self it is because one is ignorant; 2) care of oneself consists in knowing oneself; 3) recollection is situated exactly at the point where care of the self and self-knowledge meet.
The Christian model: the model of self-exegesis or self-renunciation.
The relationship of self-knowledge, knowledge of the truth, and care of the self.
Christian model is not to turn back to the self in an act of recollection in order to rediscover the truth it had once contemplated and the being that it is.
The Hellenistic model contered on the self-finalization of the relationship to self and conversion to self.
Seneca: we must hasten to its point of completion, not in the sense that it will have reached its most distant chronological term, but complete by the fact of having achieved its fullness. We must pass through our life at the greatest speed, at a stroke without even dividing it up into distinct phases with distinct modes of existence in order to arrive at that ideal point of ideal old age.
Seneca: he must not concern himself with an estate, a property far from its master. He must take care of the estate close by. This estate is oneself. In the movement of time that carries us to the final point of our life, we must turn our gaze around and take ourselves as the object of contemplation.
He thinks that it would be better to overcome and defeat our own passions than to recount the passions of others, as historians do. Those who have made themselves masers of towns and entire nations are countless; but how few have been masters of themselves.
Life is a journey: 1) a real movement from one point to another; 2) there is aim or objective; 3) there is a homeport; 4) the navigation to reach homeport is dangerous; 5) the journey will be the one that leads you to the place of safety through a number of known and little known.
The art of living: the idea of piloting as an art, as a theoretical and practical technique necessary to existence. Montaigne should be reread in this perspective, as an attempt to reconstitute an aesthetics and an ethics of the self.
Three types of techniques are usually associated with this model of piloting: medicine, political government, and the direction of government of oneself.
MF 14: Seneca's living in this world
For Seneca, taking care of our own property means defeating your passions, being steadfast in the face of adversity, resisting temptation, setting your own mind as your objective, and being ready to die. It is not about reading the chronicles of historians who recount the exploits of kings.
Seneca: "What is great is having one's soul at one's lips, ready to depart; then one is free not by the laws of the city, but by the law of nature." For him, to be free is effugere servitutem. It is to flee servitude, servitude to the self. To be the slave of oneself is the most serious and grave of all servitudes, and it is an unremitting servitude, weighing upon us constantly. We can stop it on two conditions: 1) we stop demanding too much of ourselves, which means giving yourself difficulties, imposing great effort and toil on yourself. 2) we can free ourselves from this self-servitude by not granting ourselves what we usually give ourselves as salary, reward and recompense for the work we have done. You must stop "mercedem sibi referre" (making profit for yourself) if you want to free yourself from the self.
We impose obligations on ourselves and we try to get back some profit. We live within this system of obligation-reward, of indebtedness-activity-pleasure. Study of nature will help us to liberate ourselves.
Natural Questions: there are two parts of philosophy. There is the part that is concerned with men. This part says what we must do on earth. The other part of philosophy does not examine men, but the gods. It tells us what happens in the heavens. The difference of the two parts is as great as that between the ordinary arts and philosophy itself. the incompleteness of the first with regard to the second, and by the fact that only the second can complete the first. The concerning of men allows us to avoid errors. It casts the light on earth that enables us to discriminate between life's ambiguous paths. The second, however, is not content with using this light to light up life's paths, as it were. It leads us to the source of light by dragging us out of the shadows: it leads us to teh place from which the light comes to us. What is involved then is a real movement of the subject, of the soul, which is thus lifted above the world and dragged from the shadows made by the world here.
From the first part: you have escaped the vices of the soul, you have stopped composing your features and your speech, you have stopped lying and deceiving, and you have renounced greed, lust, and ambition. And yet, you have escaped many things, but you have not escaped yourself. It is then this flight from ourselves that knowledge of nature can ensure. It leads us to the source of light, leads us to God, but not in the form of losing ourselves in God but in the form that allows us to find ourselves again. By penetrating the innermost secret of nature, we rise towards the highest point.
What is involved is not an uprooting from this world into another world. It is not a matter of freeing oneself from one reality in order to arrive at a different reality. It is a movement going towards the point from which the light comes, which places us a the very peak, the highest point, and at the same time, opens up to us the secrets of nature, which allows us to look down to earth from above. By grasping the secret of nature, we can grasp how small we are.
Platonic movement consisted in turning away from this world in order to look towards another. The stoic movement defined by Seneca is completely different. It involves a sort of stepping back from the point we occupy. This liberation enables us to reach the highest regions of the world without ever losing ourselves from sight and without the world to which we belong ever being out of our sight. We reach the point from which God himself sees the world and, without our ever actually turning away from this world, we see the world to which we belong and consequently can see ourselves within this world.
It will enable us to grasp the pettiness and the false and artificial character of everything that seemed good to us before we were freed. Wealth, pleasure, glory: all these transitory events will take on their real proportions again when we reach the highest point where the secrets of the whole world will be open to us. When looking down from above, we are then able to despise all the false splendors built by men. We see how few things matter and endure. Reaching this point enables us to dismiss and exclude all the false values and all the false dealings in which we are caught up, to gauge what we really are on the earth, and to take the measure of our existence and of our smallness.
All armies are no more than ants. Like ants, they move around a great deal, but over a very small space. "You sail on a point, and you share out empires on a point, and only on a point."
To Marcia, ON Consolation: Here is the threshold of entrance rather than departure into life. You could see the stars, their regular course, the moon, and the planets whose movements govern men's fortune. You will find mountains, and towns, the ocean, sea monsters, and the ships which cross the sea. But at the same time, you would see that in this world there will be a thousand plagues of the body and the soul, wars and robberies, poisonings, bad weather and illness, and the premature loss of those close to us, and death, maybe gentle or maybe full of pain and torture. Consider and weigh carefully your choice; once you have entered this life of marvels, you must pass through these things to leave it. It is up to you to accept it on these conditions.
Seneca is shown the world not so that he can, like Plato's souls, choose his destiny. He is shown the world precisely so that he clearly understands that there is no choice, that nothing can be chosen without choosing the rest, that there is only one possible world, that we are bound to this world. The only choice is this: Consider and weigh carefully your choice; once you have entered this life of marvels, you must pass through these things to leave it. The only choice given to the soul on the threshold of life, at the moment of being born into this world is: Consider whether you want to enter or leave, whether or not you want to live. We have here the point symmetrical to, but as it were prior to, what we will find as the form of wisdom, precisely when it is acquired at te end of life and life is completed. When we reach that ideal completion of life, in ideal old age, then we will be able to ponder whether or not we want to live, whether we want to kill ourselves or go on living.
If you choose to live, you will have to choose the whole of this world spread out before your eyes, with all its marvels and sorrows. In the same way, at the end of life, when he has the whole world before his eyes---its sequence, and its sorrows and its splendors---thanks to this great view from above that ascent to the summit of the world, in the consortium Dei, has given him through the study of nature, the sage will then be free to choose whether to live or die.
What prescribes for the sage at the end of his life when one is at the frontier of life and death.
Why such foolishness, effort and sweat? Why plough the soil and besiege the forum? I need so little, and for a short time.
What we find in Seneca is that, by looking from above, he is able to penetrate into the innermost secret of nature, and then at the same time, allows him to gauge the infinitesimal size of the point in space he occupies and of the moment in time in which he lives.
**
Seneca: "What is great is having one's soul at one's lips, ready to depart; then one is free not by the laws of the city, but by the law of nature." For him, to be free is effugere servitutem. It is to flee servitude, servitude to the self. To be the slave of oneself is the most serious and grave of all servitudes, and it is an unremitting servitude, weighing upon us constantly. We can stop it on two conditions: 1) we stop demanding too much of ourselves, which means giving yourself difficulties, imposing great effort and toil on yourself. 2) we can free ourselves from this self-servitude by not granting ourselves what we usually give ourselves as salary, reward and recompense for the work we have done. You must stop "mercedem sibi referre" (making profit for yourself) if you want to free yourself from the self.
We impose obligations on ourselves and we try to get back some profit. We live within this system of obligation-reward, of indebtedness-activity-pleasure. Study of nature will help us to liberate ourselves.
Natural Questions: there are two parts of philosophy. There is the part that is concerned with men. This part says what we must do on earth. The other part of philosophy does not examine men, but the gods. It tells us what happens in the heavens. The difference of the two parts is as great as that between the ordinary arts and philosophy itself. the incompleteness of the first with regard to the second, and by the fact that only the second can complete the first. The concerning of men allows us to avoid errors. It casts the light on earth that enables us to discriminate between life's ambiguous paths. The second, however, is not content with using this light to light up life's paths, as it were. It leads us to the source of light by dragging us out of the shadows: it leads us to teh place from which the light comes to us. What is involved then is a real movement of the subject, of the soul, which is thus lifted above the world and dragged from the shadows made by the world here.
From the first part: you have escaped the vices of the soul, you have stopped composing your features and your speech, you have stopped lying and deceiving, and you have renounced greed, lust, and ambition. And yet, you have escaped many things, but you have not escaped yourself. It is then this flight from ourselves that knowledge of nature can ensure. It leads us to the source of light, leads us to God, but not in the form of losing ourselves in God but in the form that allows us to find ourselves again. By penetrating the innermost secret of nature, we rise towards the highest point.
What is involved is not an uprooting from this world into another world. It is not a matter of freeing oneself from one reality in order to arrive at a different reality. It is a movement going towards the point from which the light comes, which places us a the very peak, the highest point, and at the same time, opens up to us the secrets of nature, which allows us to look down to earth from above. By grasping the secret of nature, we can grasp how small we are.
Platonic movement consisted in turning away from this world in order to look towards another. The stoic movement defined by Seneca is completely different. It involves a sort of stepping back from the point we occupy. This liberation enables us to reach the highest regions of the world without ever losing ourselves from sight and without the world to which we belong ever being out of our sight. We reach the point from which God himself sees the world and, without our ever actually turning away from this world, we see the world to which we belong and consequently can see ourselves within this world.
It will enable us to grasp the pettiness and the false and artificial character of everything that seemed good to us before we were freed. Wealth, pleasure, glory: all these transitory events will take on their real proportions again when we reach the highest point where the secrets of the whole world will be open to us. When looking down from above, we are then able to despise all the false splendors built by men. We see how few things matter and endure. Reaching this point enables us to dismiss and exclude all the false values and all the false dealings in which we are caught up, to gauge what we really are on the earth, and to take the measure of our existence and of our smallness.
All armies are no more than ants. Like ants, they move around a great deal, but over a very small space. "You sail on a point, and you share out empires on a point, and only on a point."
To Marcia, ON Consolation: Here is the threshold of entrance rather than departure into life. You could see the stars, their regular course, the moon, and the planets whose movements govern men's fortune. You will find mountains, and towns, the ocean, sea monsters, and the ships which cross the sea. But at the same time, you would see that in this world there will be a thousand plagues of the body and the soul, wars and robberies, poisonings, bad weather and illness, and the premature loss of those close to us, and death, maybe gentle or maybe full of pain and torture. Consider and weigh carefully your choice; once you have entered this life of marvels, you must pass through these things to leave it. It is up to you to accept it on these conditions.
Seneca is shown the world not so that he can, like Plato's souls, choose his destiny. He is shown the world precisely so that he clearly understands that there is no choice, that nothing can be chosen without choosing the rest, that there is only one possible world, that we are bound to this world. The only choice is this: Consider and weigh carefully your choice; once you have entered this life of marvels, you must pass through these things to leave it. The only choice given to the soul on the threshold of life, at the moment of being born into this world is: Consider whether you want to enter or leave, whether or not you want to live. We have here the point symmetrical to, but as it were prior to, what we will find as the form of wisdom, precisely when it is acquired at te end of life and life is completed. When we reach that ideal completion of life, in ideal old age, then we will be able to ponder whether or not we want to live, whether we want to kill ourselves or go on living.
If you choose to live, you will have to choose the whole of this world spread out before your eyes, with all its marvels and sorrows. In the same way, at the end of life, when he has the whole world before his eyes---its sequence, and its sorrows and its splendors---thanks to this great view from above that ascent to the summit of the world, in the consortium Dei, has given him through the study of nature, the sage will then be free to choose whether to live or die.
What prescribes for the sage at the end of his life when one is at the frontier of life and death.
Why such foolishness, effort and sweat? Why plough the soil and besiege the forum? I need so little, and for a short time.
What we find in Seneca is that, by looking from above, he is able to penetrate into the innermost secret of nature, and then at the same time, allows him to gauge the infinitesimal size of the point in space he occupies and of the moment in time in which he lives.
**
MF 15: Marcus Aurelius's decomposition
Virtues: gentleness, courage, sincerity, good faith, simplicity, abstinence...
Marcus Aurelius' s book III: "Always define and describe the object whose image appears in the mind."
eidetic meditation and onomastic meditation.
eidetic: （头脑中的映像）极为逼真的
onomastic: 1. (Linguistics) of or relating to proper names
2. (Law) Law denoting a signature in a different handwriting from that of the document to which it is attached.
The concept of parastema: 1) what we should consider good, 2) our freedom and everything depends on our own freedom to form an opinion, 3) there is only one level of reality for the subject and it is the moment itself--the infinitely small moment that constitutes the present, prior o which nothing exists any longer and after which everything is still uncertain.
Contemplating the object as it is in essence. We must grasp the object as it is represented: naked without anything else, shorn of anything that could conceal and surround it; secondly, in its entirety; and thirdly, by distinguishing its constituent elements.
Marcus Aurelius's exercise and observe of mind. “In short, save in the case of virtue and what is connected to virtue, always remember to go straight for the parts themselves, and by analysis, come to scorn them. And now, apply the same procedure to life as a whole."
Whereas in Seneca looking down takes place from the summit of the world, in Marcus Aurelius the point of departure for this downward gaze is not the summit of the world but at the same level as human existence. We look precisely from the point where we happen to be, and the problem is to descend beneath this point in order to plunge into the heart of things so as to penetrate them thoroughly. For Seneca it involved seeing the whole of the world set out below us. For M, it involves a disqualifying, reductive, and ironic view of each thing in its specificity. On one hand, in penetrating to the heart of things and grasping all their most singular elements we demonstrate our freedom with regard to them. However, it also involves showing the extent to which our own identity is in reality only made up of singular, distinct elements, which are separate from each other, and that basically we are dealing with a false unity.
Marcus Aurelius' s book III: "Always define and describe the object whose image appears in the mind."
eidetic meditation and onomastic meditation.
eidetic: （头脑中的映像）极为逼真的
onomastic: 1. (Linguistics) of or relating to proper names
2. (Law) Law denoting a signature in a different handwriting from that of the document to which it is attached.
The concept of parastema: 1) what we should consider good, 2) our freedom and everything depends on our own freedom to form an opinion, 3) there is only one level of reality for the subject and it is the moment itself--the infinitely small moment that constitutes the present, prior o which nothing exists any longer and after which everything is still uncertain.
Contemplating the object as it is in essence. We must grasp the object as it is represented: naked without anything else, shorn of anything that could conceal and surround it; secondly, in its entirety; and thirdly, by distinguishing its constituent elements.
Marcus Aurelius's exercise and observe of mind. “In short, save in the case of virtue and what is connected to virtue, always remember to go straight for the parts themselves, and by analysis, come to scorn them. And now, apply the same procedure to life as a whole."
Whereas in Seneca looking down takes place from the summit of the world, in Marcus Aurelius the point of departure for this downward gaze is not the summit of the world but at the same level as human existence. We look precisely from the point where we happen to be, and the problem is to descend beneath this point in order to plunge into the heart of things so as to penetrate them thoroughly. For Seneca it involved seeing the whole of the world set out below us. For M, it involves a disqualifying, reductive, and ironic view of each thing in its specificity. On one hand, in penetrating to the heart of things and grasping all their most singular elements we demonstrate our freedom with regard to them. However, it also involves showing the extent to which our own identity is in reality only made up of singular, distinct elements, which are separate from each other, and that basically we are dealing with a false unity.
MF 16: askesis, paraskeue
askesis: askein, to exercise. asceticism: (in psychiatry) a defense mechanism that involves repudiation of all instinctual impulses. The concept is derived from the religious doctrine that material things are evil and only spiritual things are good.
In reality, askesis is a practice of truth, it is not a way of subjecting the subject to the law; it is a way of binding him to the truth.
Musonius Rufus: the acquisition of virtue involves tow things, theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
Paraskeue: an open and an orientated preparation of the individual for the events of life. The paraskeue involves preparing the individual for the future, for a future of unforeseen events whose general nature may be familiar to us, but which we cannot know whether and when they will occur.
Demetrius the Cynic in the text Seneca quotes in book VII of De Beneficiis. Demetrius compare the life of the person who wish to achieve wisdom in life with the athlete. The good athlete appears as one who practices. It involves preparing ourselves only for what we may come up against, for only those events we may encounter, but not in such a way as to outdo others, or even to surpass ourselves. The notion of "excelling oneself" involves being stronger than, or not weaker than, whatever may occur. The good athlete's training must be training in some elementary moves which are sufficiently general and effective for them to be adapted to every circumstance and for one to be able to make immediate use of them when the need arises. It is this apprenticeship in some elementary moves, necessary and sufficient for every possible circumstance that constitutes good training, good ascesis. The paraskeue will be nothing other than the set of necessary and sufficient moves which will enable us to be stronger than anything that may happen in our life. This is the athletic training of the sage.
Marcus Aurelius: The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that you must stay on guard and steady on your feet against the blows which rain down on you, and without warning.
The Christian athlete is on the indefinite path of progress towards holiness in which he must surpass himself even to the point of renouncing himself. Also, the Christian athlete is especially someone who has an enemy, an adversary, who keeps him on guard. The adversary is himself. To himself, inasmuch as the most malign and dangerous powers he has to confront. Sins are within himself.
The Stoic athlete also has to struggle. He has to be ready for a struggle in which his adversary is anything coming to him from the external world: the event.
logos: propositions justified by reason. The logos must be "ready to hand".
In reality, askesis is a practice of truth, it is not a way of subjecting the subject to the law; it is a way of binding him to the truth.
Musonius Rufus: the acquisition of virtue involves tow things, theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
Paraskeue: an open and an orientated preparation of the individual for the events of life. The paraskeue involves preparing the individual for the future, for a future of unforeseen events whose general nature may be familiar to us, but which we cannot know whether and when they will occur.
Demetrius the Cynic in the text Seneca quotes in book VII of De Beneficiis. Demetrius compare the life of the person who wish to achieve wisdom in life with the athlete. The good athlete appears as one who practices. It involves preparing ourselves only for what we may come up against, for only those events we may encounter, but not in such a way as to outdo others, or even to surpass ourselves. The notion of "excelling oneself" involves being stronger than, or not weaker than, whatever may occur. The good athlete's training must be training in some elementary moves which are sufficiently general and effective for them to be adapted to every circumstance and for one to be able to make immediate use of them when the need arises. It is this apprenticeship in some elementary moves, necessary and sufficient for every possible circumstance that constitutes good training, good ascesis. The paraskeue will be nothing other than the set of necessary and sufficient moves which will enable us to be stronger than anything that may happen in our life. This is the athletic training of the sage.
Marcus Aurelius: The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that you must stay on guard and steady on your feet against the blows which rain down on you, and without warning.
The Christian athlete is on the indefinite path of progress towards holiness in which he must surpass himself even to the point of renouncing himself. Also, the Christian athlete is especially someone who has an enemy, an adversary, who keeps him on guard. The adversary is himself. To himself, inasmuch as the most malign and dangerous powers he has to confront. Sins are within himself.
The Stoic athlete also has to struggle. He has to be ready for a struggle in which his adversary is anything coming to him from the external world: the event.
logos: propositions justified by reason. The logos must be "ready to hand".
MF 17: listening skills & silence
Philosophical ascesis involves putting together a defensive equipment against possible events in your life. THis is what the Greeks called the paraskeue. The function of ascesis is to form a paraskeue so that the subject constitutes himself.Its principle is not the individual's submission to the law, but to bind the individual to the truth.
Ascesis is what makes possible the acquisition of the true discourses we need in every circumstance, event, and episode of life in order to establish an adequate, full, and perfect relationship to ourselves.
Listening, reading, writing, these are the techniques and practices that support ascesis.
Plutarch's On Listening: listening is the most passive sense. We cannot avoid hearing what take place around us. The sense of hearing is more than any other sense capable of bewitching the soul. The example of Ulysses when encountered Sirens. He had to block up the ears of his sailors and have himself tied to his own mast, knowing that his sense of hearing is his most passive sense. But Plutarch also says that hearing is the most logikos. It can receive the logos better than any other senses. The only access to the soul for the logos is through the ear.
The sense of hearing is ambiguous, therefore.
Epictetus on listening: to listen, we need empeiria, that is to say, competence, experience, or acquired skill. We also need tribe, that is, diligent practice. How can we purify logical listening in the practice of the self?
First is silence. This is an ancestral, age-old, even millennial rule in practices of the self.
Pythagoras, Plutarch, and Seneca.
Plutarch makes apprenticeship in silence an essential component of good education, For him, silence possesses something profound, mysterious, and sober. It was the gods who taught men silence, and it was men who taught us to speak. And children who receive a truly noble and royal education learn first of all to keep silent and only learn to speak afterward. Not only should silence, the education of the gods, be the fundamental principle of the education of human beings, but we should impose a sort of strict economy of speech on ourselves. We should keep as quiet as we can. It means we should not speak when someone else is talking. We should not immediately convert what we have heard into speech. We should keep hold of it, preserve it and refrain from immediately converting it into words. He jokes that the ear of the the chatterbox is not connected directly with his soul, but rather with his tongue. The chatterbox is always an empty vessel. The passion for chatter, like the other passions, can only be cured by the logos.
Philo of Alexandria: how to hold a posture to the obligation of a fixed attention, guaranteed and expressed by immobility.
Seneca, letter 52: if you examine carefully, everything in the world reveals itself through all kinds of external signs, and the smallest details may be enough to give an indication of morality. The man of loose morals is betrayed by his gait, by a movement of the hand, sometimes by a sing answer, by his touching his head with a finger. The cheat is betrayed by his laugh; he madman by his face and general appearance. Do you want to plump the character of an individual? Observe how he gives and receives praise.
Epictetus: you really must arouse my desire, because one can't do anything without a certain desire. For example, the shiip is only moved to graze if it is shown a green meadow.
Virgil: "Time flies, time beyond repair." Virgil always puts the flight of time, old age, and illness together, for old age is a disease which we cannot cure. "Here comes illness, sad old age."
The days fly, which is the quickest kind of movement. It says says, "our finest days are also the first to be snatched away; why, then, do we delay to increase our speed to keep up with the thing which is the quickest to flee us? The best of the batch flies past and the bad takes its place. The purest wine flows from the top of the amphora; the thickest, the dregs always fall to the bottom. Thus in our life, the best is at the start. Shall we leave it to others to use it up, keeping only the dregs for ourselves? Let us engrave this on our soul, take it in like a heavenly oracle: time flies, time beyond repair.
How to focus our attention: As soon as one has heard something from the month of the person uttering it, it must be taken in, understood, firmly grasped by the mind, so that it does not immediately escape. When you have heard someone say something important, do not start quibbling straightaway but try to collect yourself and spend some moments in silence.
The soul that listens must keep watch on itself. In paying proper attention to what it hears it pays attention to what it hears as signification. It also pays attention to itself so that, through this listening and memory, the true thing gradually becomes the discourse that it clutches to itself.
Ascesis is what makes possible the acquisition of the true discourses we need in every circumstance, event, and episode of life in order to establish an adequate, full, and perfect relationship to ourselves.
Listening, reading, writing, these are the techniques and practices that support ascesis.
Plutarch's On Listening: listening is the most passive sense. We cannot avoid hearing what take place around us. The sense of hearing is more than any other sense capable of bewitching the soul. The example of Ulysses when encountered Sirens. He had to block up the ears of his sailors and have himself tied to his own mast, knowing that his sense of hearing is his most passive sense. But Plutarch also says that hearing is the most logikos. It can receive the logos better than any other senses. The only access to the soul for the logos is through the ear.
The sense of hearing is ambiguous, therefore.
Epictetus on listening: to listen, we need empeiria, that is to say, competence, experience, or acquired skill. We also need tribe, that is, diligent practice. How can we purify logical listening in the practice of the self?
First is silence. This is an ancestral, age-old, even millennial rule in practices of the self.
Pythagoras, Plutarch, and Seneca.
Plutarch makes apprenticeship in silence an essential component of good education, For him, silence possesses something profound, mysterious, and sober. It was the gods who taught men silence, and it was men who taught us to speak. And children who receive a truly noble and royal education learn first of all to keep silent and only learn to speak afterward. Not only should silence, the education of the gods, be the fundamental principle of the education of human beings, but we should impose a sort of strict economy of speech on ourselves. We should keep as quiet as we can. It means we should not speak when someone else is talking. We should not immediately convert what we have heard into speech. We should keep hold of it, preserve it and refrain from immediately converting it into words. He jokes that the ear of the the chatterbox is not connected directly with his soul, but rather with his tongue. The chatterbox is always an empty vessel. The passion for chatter, like the other passions, can only be cured by the logos.
Philo of Alexandria: how to hold a posture to the obligation of a fixed attention, guaranteed and expressed by immobility.
Seneca, letter 52: if you examine carefully, everything in the world reveals itself through all kinds of external signs, and the smallest details may be enough to give an indication of morality. The man of loose morals is betrayed by his gait, by a movement of the hand, sometimes by a sing answer, by his touching his head with a finger. The cheat is betrayed by his laugh; he madman by his face and general appearance. Do you want to plump the character of an individual? Observe how he gives and receives praise.
Epictetus: you really must arouse my desire, because one can't do anything without a certain desire. For example, the shiip is only moved to graze if it is shown a green meadow.
Virgil: "Time flies, time beyond repair." Virgil always puts the flight of time, old age, and illness together, for old age is a disease which we cannot cure. "Here comes illness, sad old age."
The days fly, which is the quickest kind of movement. It says says, "our finest days are also the first to be snatched away; why, then, do we delay to increase our speed to keep up with the thing which is the quickest to flee us? The best of the batch flies past and the bad takes its place. The purest wine flows from the top of the amphora; the thickest, the dregs always fall to the bottom. Thus in our life, the best is at the start. Shall we leave it to others to use it up, keeping only the dregs for ourselves? Let us engrave this on our soul, take it in like a heavenly oracle: time flies, time beyond repair.
How to focus our attention: As soon as one has heard something from the month of the person uttering it, it must be taken in, understood, firmly grasped by the mind, so that it does not immediately escape. When you have heard someone say something important, do not start quibbling straightaway but try to collect yourself and spend some moments in silence.
The soul that listens must keep watch on itself. In paying proper attention to what it hears it pays attention to what it hears as signification. It also pays attention to itself so that, through this listening and memory, the true thing gradually becomes the discourse that it clutches to itself.
MF 18: Reading, writing, & meditation
Read few books; read few authors; read few works; within these works, read a few passages; chose passages considered to be important and sufficient.
Reading basically involves providing an opportunity for meditation.
Meletan-meditation: it is exercise, to train oneself, a sort of mental exercise, a way of confronting an adversary, in order to find out if you can resist him or be the stronger. For Greeks or Latins, the meletan is to perform an exercise of appropriation of a thought. It involves ensuring that this truth is engraved in the mind in such a way that it is recalled immediately the need arises, and in such a way that we have, consequently making it a principle of action.
For example, the meditation of death. In a sense, meditating death does not mean thing that you are going to die, or convincing you that you are really going to die. Meditating death is placing yourself, in thought, in the situation of someone who is in the process of dying, or who is about to die, or who is living his last days.Through thought, the person who is dying or whose death is imminent.
Seneca, Letter 84: we should alternate between writing and reading. We should neither always write or always read; the former of the two activities will end up exhausting our energy if we keep at it constantly. The second lessens and dilutes our energy. We should meditate, write, and train.
Epictetus: "May death take me while I am thinking, writing, and reading these phrases."
Writing is a part of exercise with the advantage of two possible and simultaneous uses. The use for oneself. For simply by writing we absorb the thing itself we are thinking about. We help it to be established in the soul and we help it to be established in the body, to become a kind of habit for the body, or at any rate a physical virtuality. It was a recommended custom to write after having read something, and after having written it, to read it again and read it again out loud. The exercise of reading was not something easy: it was not a matter of just reading at sight. You had to stress the words properly, you had to utter them in a low voice. So the exercise of reading, writing, and rereading what you had written and the notes you had taken was an almost physical exercise of the assimilation of the truth and the logos you were holding on to. Epictetus says: "Keep these thoughts ready at hand night and day; put them into writing and read them." They are aids to memory, allowing the one who gives advice to rememorize the truths he passes on to the others but which he also needs for his own life.
Reading basically involves providing an opportunity for meditation.
Meletan-meditation: it is exercise, to train oneself, a sort of mental exercise, a way of confronting an adversary, in order to find out if you can resist him or be the stronger. For Greeks or Latins, the meletan is to perform an exercise of appropriation of a thought. It involves ensuring that this truth is engraved in the mind in such a way that it is recalled immediately the need arises, and in such a way that we have, consequently making it a principle of action.
For example, the meditation of death. In a sense, meditating death does not mean thing that you are going to die, or convincing you that you are really going to die. Meditating death is placing yourself, in thought, in the situation of someone who is in the process of dying, or who is about to die, or who is living his last days.Through thought, the person who is dying or whose death is imminent.
Seneca, Letter 84: we should alternate between writing and reading. We should neither always write or always read; the former of the two activities will end up exhausting our energy if we keep at it constantly. The second lessens and dilutes our energy. We should meditate, write, and train.
Epictetus: "May death take me while I am thinking, writing, and reading these phrases."
Writing is a part of exercise with the advantage of two possible and simultaneous uses. The use for oneself. For simply by writing we absorb the thing itself we are thinking about. We help it to be established in the soul and we help it to be established in the body, to become a kind of habit for the body, or at any rate a physical virtuality. It was a recommended custom to write after having read something, and after having written it, to read it again and read it again out loud. The exercise of reading was not something easy: it was not a matter of just reading at sight. You had to stress the words properly, you had to utter them in a low voice. So the exercise of reading, writing, and rereading what you had written and the notes you had taken was an almost physical exercise of the assimilation of the truth and the logos you were holding on to. Epictetus says: "Keep these thoughts ready at hand night and day; put them into writing and read them." They are aids to memory, allowing the one who gives advice to rememorize the truths he passes on to the others but which he also needs for his own life.
MF 19: Speak freely
What is anger? Anger is the uncontrolled, violent rage of someone towards someone else over whom the former is entitled to exercise his power, is in a position to do so, and who is therefore in a position to abuse his power.
Seneca, Natural Questions: What is it to conduct himself well in his job as procurator? On one hand, he exercises his functions. He exercises them, but without abandoning what is indispensable for exercising them well, that is to say free time and literature. A studious free time, applied to study, to reading and writing, etc, as complement, accompaniment, and regulative principle, is the guarantee that Lucilius properly discharges his office as procurator.
Most men are tormented by either disgust or self-love with themselves, which leads, in the former case, to being concerned about things that are really not worth caring about; by caring things external to the self; and, in the later case, through self-love, it leads to being attracted by sensual pleasures, by all the pleasures through which one tries to please oneself. These people are never alone with themselves. They are never alone with themselves in the sense that they never have that full, adequate, and sufficient relationship to themselves that ensures that we do not feel dependent on anything, neither on the misfortunes that threaten nor on the pleasures we may encounter or obtain from around us. The figure of the flatterer and the dangers of flattery rush in here, in this insufficiency that ensures that we are never alone with ourselves, in this inability to be alone, when we are either disgusted with or too attached to ourselves.
Speaking freely is anti-flattery. It is anti-flattery that someone who speaks and who speaks to the other but, unlike what happens in flattery, he speaks to the other in such a way that this other will be able to form an autonomous, independent, full and satisfying relationship to himself.
It would be better if the person being guided were not much richer and more powerful than the person guiding him.
Seneca, Natural Questions: What is it to conduct himself well in his job as procurator? On one hand, he exercises his functions. He exercises them, but without abandoning what is indispensable for exercising them well, that is to say free time and literature. A studious free time, applied to study, to reading and writing, etc, as complement, accompaniment, and regulative principle, is the guarantee that Lucilius properly discharges his office as procurator.
Most men are tormented by either disgust or self-love with themselves, which leads, in the former case, to being concerned about things that are really not worth caring about; by caring things external to the self; and, in the later case, through self-love, it leads to being attracted by sensual pleasures, by all the pleasures through which one tries to please oneself. These people are never alone with themselves. They are never alone with themselves in the sense that they never have that full, adequate, and sufficient relationship to themselves that ensures that we do not feel dependent on anything, neither on the misfortunes that threaten nor on the pleasures we may encounter or obtain from around us. The figure of the flatterer and the dangers of flattery rush in here, in this insufficiency that ensures that we are never alone with ourselves, in this inability to be alone, when we are either disgusted with or too attached to ourselves.
Speaking freely is anti-flattery. It is anti-flattery that someone who speaks and who speaks to the other but, unlike what happens in flattery, he speaks to the other in such a way that this other will be able to form an autonomous, independent, full and satisfying relationship to himself.
It would be better if the person being guided were not much richer and more powerful than the person guiding him.
MF 20: Speak the truth without embellishment
Galen, On the Passions: Everyone who wishes to conduct themselves properly in life needs a guide. What we require of the guide are certain moral qualities: First, frankness, the exercise of speaking freely. We have to test the frankness and truthfulness of the person who speaks about himself. Second, he should possess a moral quality by showing by his life that he is a decent man.
Seneca, Letter 7: Philosophy does not renounce the charms of the mind. But one should not take such great pains over words. Let us say what we think and think what we say; let speech harmonize with conduct. That man who is the same both when you see him and when you hear him has fulfilled his commitments. We will see the originality of his nature, its greatness. Our discourse should strive not to please, but to be useful. If you can attain eloquence without painstaking, if it comes naturally and at slight cost, accept it, so that it may serve the finest thing sand so that it shows things rather than displays itself. Other arts are concerned solely with cleverness, but we are concerned only with the soul.
A sick man does not go in search of an eloquent doctor. However, if he finds that the man who can cure also discourses elegantly about the treatment to be followed, the patient will reconcile himself to this. But this will be no reason for him to congratulate himslef on having discovered a doctor who, in addition to his skill, is eloquent.
Seneca: It is a matter of showing what I feel rather than speaking, if I have conveyed my thought without studied embellishment or platitude. Not only do I feel and consider the things I say to be true, but I even love them. I am attached to them and my whole life is governed by them.
Seneca, Letter 7: Philosophy does not renounce the charms of the mind. But one should not take such great pains over words. Let us say what we think and think what we say; let speech harmonize with conduct. That man who is the same both when you see him and when you hear him has fulfilled his commitments. We will see the originality of his nature, its greatness. Our discourse should strive not to please, but to be useful. If you can attain eloquence without painstaking, if it comes naturally and at slight cost, accept it, so that it may serve the finest thing sand so that it shows things rather than displays itself. Other arts are concerned solely with cleverness, but we are concerned only with the soul.
A sick man does not go in search of an eloquent doctor. However, if he finds that the man who can cure also discourses elegantly about the treatment to be followed, the patient will reconcile himself to this. But this will be no reason for him to congratulate himslef on having discovered a doctor who, in addition to his skill, is eloquent.
Seneca: It is a matter of showing what I feel rather than speaking, if I have conveyed my thought without studied embellishment or platitude. Not only do I feel and consider the things I say to be true, but I even love them. I am attached to them and my whole life is governed by them.
MF 21: Self exercise techniques
Pythagorean instruction of silence. (two most difficult things of all, keeping quiet and listening)
An exercise of memory
techniques for concentrating though and breathing
ascesis exercises: abstinence, meditation, meditation on death, meditation on future evils, the examination of conscience, etc.
The body must not be neglected in the exercises, even when it is a matter of practicing philosophy. Virtue must go through the body to become active.
Musonius: There are exercises of the body itself, of the soul itself, and of the body and the soul. The objectives are, on the one hand, training and strengthening courage, which we should understand as resistance to external events, the ability to bear them without suffering, collapsing, and letting oneself be overcome by them; resistance to external events, misfortunes, and all the rigors of the world. Then, second, training and strengthening that other virtue, the ability to control oneself.
To bear what comes from the external world and enables us to limit, regulate, and master all the internal impulses, the impulses f one's self.
Plato in Law: In order to train a good citizen or a good guardian, we need to train both his courage and then his moderation or self-control. In Plato these two virtues---courage with regard to the external world; control of oneself----are secured by physical exercises. All this specifically athletic training is one of the guarantees that one will not be afraid of external adversity, that one will not be afraid of the adversaries with whom one learns to fight, the struggle with another person having to serve as the model for the struggle with events and misfortunes.
Athletic preparation involves many renunciations, many abstentions and sexual abstinence in particular: It is well known that one cannot win a contest a Olympia unless one has led a particularly chaste life. One must accustom oneself to bear hunger and thirst, and to bear extreme cold and heat. One must get used to sleeping rough. One must get used to coarse and inadequate clothing, etc.
Seneca: Light exercises only. Not let gymnastics burden the soul. Stoic ethics is concerned with the bodies of old men, of quadragenarians, not with the young man's athletic body. Practice wearing coarse clothes, eating little, and drinking water, to be sufficiently detached to be able to treat the wealth and goods around us with the necessary indifference and with correct and wise nonchalance. What he eats must be what is actually necessary to relieve his hunger. He must only drink knowing that the final purpose and real measure of what he drinks should be what enables him to quench his thirst, etc. Exercises of abstinence for forming a style of life, and not exercises of abstinence for regulating one's life in accordance with precise interdictions and prohibitions.
The exercise that "tomorrow you will die." This exercise, in which one both displays legitimate attachment and in which one detaches oneself through this work of the soul that clearly sees the real fragility of this bond with people you love, will be a test.
An exercise of memory
techniques for concentrating though and breathing
ascesis exercises: abstinence, meditation, meditation on death, meditation on future evils, the examination of conscience, etc.
The body must not be neglected in the exercises, even when it is a matter of practicing philosophy. Virtue must go through the body to become active.
Musonius: There are exercises of the body itself, of the soul itself, and of the body and the soul. The objectives are, on the one hand, training and strengthening courage, which we should understand as resistance to external events, the ability to bear them without suffering, collapsing, and letting oneself be overcome by them; resistance to external events, misfortunes, and all the rigors of the world. Then, second, training and strengthening that other virtue, the ability to control oneself.
To bear what comes from the external world and enables us to limit, regulate, and master all the internal impulses, the impulses f one's self.
Plato in Law: In order to train a good citizen or a good guardian, we need to train both his courage and then his moderation or self-control. In Plato these two virtues---courage with regard to the external world; control of oneself----are secured by physical exercises. All this specifically athletic training is one of the guarantees that one will not be afraid of external adversity, that one will not be afraid of the adversaries with whom one learns to fight, the struggle with another person having to serve as the model for the struggle with events and misfortunes.
Athletic preparation involves many renunciations, many abstentions and sexual abstinence in particular: It is well known that one cannot win a contest a Olympia unless one has led a particularly chaste life. One must accustom oneself to bear hunger and thirst, and to bear extreme cold and heat. One must get used to sleeping rough. One must get used to coarse and inadequate clothing, etc.
Seneca: Light exercises only. Not let gymnastics burden the soul. Stoic ethics is concerned with the bodies of old men, of quadragenarians, not with the young man's athletic body. Practice wearing coarse clothes, eating little, and drinking water, to be sufficiently detached to be able to treat the wealth and goods around us with the necessary indifference and with correct and wise nonchalance. What he eats must be what is actually necessary to relieve his hunger. He must only drink knowing that the final purpose and real measure of what he drinks should be what enables him to quench his thirst, etc. Exercises of abstinence for forming a style of life, and not exercises of abstinence for regulating one's life in accordance with precise interdictions and prohibitions.
The exercise that "tomorrow you will die." This exercise, in which one both displays legitimate attachment and in which one detaches oneself through this work of the soul that clearly sees the real fragility of this bond with people you love, will be a test.
MF 22: Life itself as a test
Life must be recognized, thought, lived, and practiced as a constant test.
Life in its entirety, with its system of tests and hardships, is an education.
You don't become a champion at the Olympic games without sweat.
Epictetus: We can benefit from every difficulty and trouble. Confronted by something that happens to us, for example the death of someone close to us, an illness, loss of wealth, or an earthquake, we should say to ourselves that each of these events, whatever it may be and however accidental it may seem, is really part of the order of the world and its necessary sequence. We should consider that what we believe to be an evil is not really an evil. It is only our opinion that separates us and distances us from the rational point of view and from rational being. All these events are part of the order of the world, and consequently not an evil.
Oedipus at Colonus: Of all this I was innocent. No one can reproach me. Who then would not have killed an insolent old man as I did, since I did not know he was my father? Who then would not have married a woman, not knowing it was my mother? Of all this I was innocent and the gods have pursued me with a vengeance that was not and could not be a punishment. But now we are here, exhausted by ordeals, I come to give a power to the earth where I will die, a new, protective power given to me precisely by the gods.
It is gods that surround good men with the series of tests, misfortunes, etc, necessary to form them. God prepares them: the men he tests he prepared for himself.
Greek novels are long adventure stories which are also stories of voyages, misfortunes, and trials and tribulations, across the Mediterranean world and which in one sense slip easily into the lodge within the major form defined by the Odyssey. It involved knowing who would finally prevail, man or gods. The theme that life must be a formative test of the self appears very clearly. The outcome should be purity of the self in the sense of that over which one exercises vigilance, surveillance, protection, and mastery. The question permeating these novels is quite simple that of virginity. Will the girl keep her virginity, will the boy keep his virginity, will those who are committed to preserving this personal purity, keep their virginity? All these episodes are constructed in order to know the extent to which they will be able to preserve this virginity which, in this literature, seems to me to be like the visible form of the relationship to the self in its transparency and mastery. Preserving virginity so that it is still intact, integral, for both the boy and the girl when, having finally returned home, they find each other again and are legally married. It seems to me that the preservation of this virginity is nothing other than the figurative expression of what, throughout the trials and tribulations of life, must be preserved and maintained to the end: the relationship the one's self. Once again, one lives for one's self.
Life in its entirety, with its system of tests and hardships, is an education.
You don't become a champion at the Olympic games without sweat.
Epictetus: We can benefit from every difficulty and trouble. Confronted by something that happens to us, for example the death of someone close to us, an illness, loss of wealth, or an earthquake, we should say to ourselves that each of these events, whatever it may be and however accidental it may seem, is really part of the order of the world and its necessary sequence. We should consider that what we believe to be an evil is not really an evil. It is only our opinion that separates us and distances us from the rational point of view and from rational being. All these events are part of the order of the world, and consequently not an evil.
Oedipus at Colonus: Of all this I was innocent. No one can reproach me. Who then would not have killed an insolent old man as I did, since I did not know he was my father? Who then would not have married a woman, not knowing it was my mother? Of all this I was innocent and the gods have pursued me with a vengeance that was not and could not be a punishment. But now we are here, exhausted by ordeals, I come to give a power to the earth where I will die, a new, protective power given to me precisely by the gods.
It is gods that surround good men with the series of tests, misfortunes, etc, necessary to form them. God prepares them: the men he tests he prepared for himself.
Greek novels are long adventure stories which are also stories of voyages, misfortunes, and trials and tribulations, across the Mediterranean world and which in one sense slip easily into the lodge within the major form defined by the Odyssey. It involved knowing who would finally prevail, man or gods. The theme that life must be a formative test of the self appears very clearly. The outcome should be purity of the self in the sense of that over which one exercises vigilance, surveillance, protection, and mastery. The question permeating these novels is quite simple that of virginity. Will the girl keep her virginity, will the boy keep his virginity, will those who are committed to preserving this personal purity, keep their virginity? All these episodes are constructed in order to know the extent to which they will be able to preserve this virginity which, in this literature, seems to me to be like the visible form of the relationship to the self in its transparency and mastery. Preserving virginity so that it is still intact, integral, for both the boy and the girl when, having finally returned home, they find each other again and are legally married. It seems to me that the preservation of this virginity is nothing other than the figurative expression of what, throughout the trials and tribulations of life, must be preserved and maintained to the end: the relationship the one's self. Once again, one lives for one's self.
MF 23: Imagination of the future
Epictetus: Just as Zeus lives for himself, reposes in himself, reflects on the nature of his government, occupies himself with thoughts which are worthy of him, so also should we be able to converse with ourselves, be able to do without others, and not be at a loss as to how we spend our time; we must reflect on the divine government, on our relations with the rest of the world, to consider what our attitude hitherto has been towards events, what it is now, what things affect us, how we might remedy them also, and how we might eradicate them.
Epictetus: the great difference between animals and humans is that animals do not have to look after themselves. They are provided with everything so that they can be of use to us. As for humans, they are living beings who must take care of themselves because Zeus has entrusted them to themselves, by giving them the reason which enables them to determine the use to which all the other faculties may be put. So God has entrusted us to ourselves, so that we have to look after ourselves. If now, instead of passing from animals to humans, we go from humans to Zeus, what then is Zeus? He is simply the being who does nothing else but attend to himself. Zeus is the being who lives for himself: the one who is forever himself with himself, reflecting on the nature of his own government, knowing his reason, the reason of God, and finally occupying hiself with thoughts that are worthy of him, conversing with himself.
The portrait of a sage who has achieved wisdom: Living in complete independence; reflecting on the nature of the government on exercises on oneself and on others; conversing with one's own thoughts; speaking with oneself. Whereas the sage has arrived at this progressively, by stages, Zeus is put in this position by his very being. Zeus is the one who has only to take care of himself. We should be able to converse with ourselves, know how to do without others, not be at a loss as to how we spend our time. We must reflect on our relations with the rest of the world. We must meditate on these different things: 1) attitude towards events; 2) what things affect us; 3) how might we remedy them; 4) how might we eradicate them? These are the four great domains of the exercise of thought in Epictetus.
In Plato's case, the truth grasped is ultimately that essential truth that will enable us to lead other men. In the case of Stoics, it won't be a gaze directed towards the reality of essences, but one directed towards the truth of what we think. It also involves knowing if we will be able to act according to this tested truth of opinions, and if we can be the ethical subject of the truth that we think. The Stoics have several exercises for responding to this question , the most important of which are the exercise of death and the the examination of conscience.
A fundamental theme in the practice of the self is that we should not let ourselves be worried about the future. The future preoccupies. We are occupied in advance. The mind is pre-absorbed by the future, and this is something negative.
Thinking about past has a positive value.
The man of the future is the person who, not thinking about the past, cannot think about the present and who is therefore turned towards a future that is only nothingness and nonexistence, who allows what he is doing to be consumed by something else as he does it.
Seneca, Letter 99: We are ungrateful for benefits already obtained, because we count on the future, as if the future, supposing it falls to us in turn, must not swiftly join the past. He who limits the object of his pleasures to the present extremely contracts the field of his satisfactions.
The Stoics say, a man who is suddenly surprise by an event is really at risk of finding himself in a weak position if he is not prepare for it. First of all, we must assume that mot just the most frequent evils may happen to us, those that normally happen individuals, but that anything that can happen to us will happen to us.
Seneca, Letter 91: The person who said it only needs a day, an hour, or a moment to overturn the greatest Empire of the world has still granted too much time.
Seneca, Letter 24: Get it clear in your mind that whatever event you fear will happen without fail.
We should remove the mask not only from men but also from things, forcing them to take on their true appearance again.
An old Stoic aphorism: Either a pain is so violent that you cannot bear it, or a pain is bearable.
Epictetus: the great difference between animals and humans is that animals do not have to look after themselves. They are provided with everything so that they can be of use to us. As for humans, they are living beings who must take care of themselves because Zeus has entrusted them to themselves, by giving them the reason which enables them to determine the use to which all the other faculties may be put. So God has entrusted us to ourselves, so that we have to look after ourselves. If now, instead of passing from animals to humans, we go from humans to Zeus, what then is Zeus? He is simply the being who does nothing else but attend to himself. Zeus is the being who lives for himself: the one who is forever himself with himself, reflecting on the nature of his own government, knowing his reason, the reason of God, and finally occupying hiself with thoughts that are worthy of him, conversing with himself.
The portrait of a sage who has achieved wisdom: Living in complete independence; reflecting on the nature of the government on exercises on oneself and on others; conversing with one's own thoughts; speaking with oneself. Whereas the sage has arrived at this progressively, by stages, Zeus is put in this position by his very being. Zeus is the one who has only to take care of himself. We should be able to converse with ourselves, know how to do without others, not be at a loss as to how we spend our time. We must reflect on our relations with the rest of the world. We must meditate on these different things: 1) attitude towards events; 2) what things affect us; 3) how might we remedy them; 4) how might we eradicate them? These are the four great domains of the exercise of thought in Epictetus.
In Plato's case, the truth grasped is ultimately that essential truth that will enable us to lead other men. In the case of Stoics, it won't be a gaze directed towards the reality of essences, but one directed towards the truth of what we think. It also involves knowing if we will be able to act according to this tested truth of opinions, and if we can be the ethical subject of the truth that we think. The Stoics have several exercises for responding to this question , the most important of which are the exercise of death and the the examination of conscience.
A fundamental theme in the practice of the self is that we should not let ourselves be worried about the future. The future preoccupies. We are occupied in advance. The mind is pre-absorbed by the future, and this is something negative.
Thinking about past has a positive value.
The man of the future is the person who, not thinking about the past, cannot think about the present and who is therefore turned towards a future that is only nothingness and nonexistence, who allows what he is doing to be consumed by something else as he does it.
Seneca, Letter 99: We are ungrateful for benefits already obtained, because we count on the future, as if the future, supposing it falls to us in turn, must not swiftly join the past. He who limits the object of his pleasures to the present extremely contracts the field of his satisfactions.
The Stoics say, a man who is suddenly surprise by an event is really at risk of finding himself in a weak position if he is not prepare for it. First of all, we must assume that mot just the most frequent evils may happen to us, those that normally happen individuals, but that anything that can happen to us will happen to us.
Seneca, Letter 91: The person who said it only needs a day, an hour, or a moment to overturn the greatest Empire of the world has still granted too much time.
Seneca, Letter 24: Get it clear in your mind that whatever event you fear will happen without fail.
We should remove the mask not only from men but also from things, forcing them to take on their true appearance again.
An old Stoic aphorism: Either a pain is so violent that you cannot bear it, or a pain is bearable.
MF 24： Meditation on death
The ultimate form of this premeditation of evils is the meditation on death. The meditation on death is found in Plato, in the Pythagoreans. Death is not just a possible event; it is a necessary event. It is not just an event of some gravity: for man it has absolute gravity. And death may occur at any time, at any moment. So it is for this event, as the supreme misfortune if you like, that we must prepare ourselves, through which this premeditation of evils will be brought to its highest point.
In Stoics, the exercise consists in thinking death as present and one is living one's last day.
Seneca, Letter 12: the whole of life is only one long day with morning, which is childhood, midday, which is maturity, and evening, which is old age; that a year is also like a day, with the morning of spring and the night of winter; that each month is also like a sort of day; and that all in all a day, the passing of a single day, is the model for the organization of the time of a life, or of different organized times and durations in a human life. Living one's life as if not just a month or a year, but the whole of his life passes by in that day. We should think of each hour of the day we are living as a sort of age of life, so that when we arrive at the evening of the day we will also arrive at the evening of life as it were, that is to say at the moment of death itself. This is the exercise of the last day. It involves organizing and experiencing our day as if each moment of the day was the moment of the great day of life, and the last moment of the day was the last moment of our existence.
Marcus Aurelius: Moral perfection involves living each day as if it were the last.
Epictetus: Don't you know that illness and death must take us in the middle of some activity? They take the laborer at his work, the sailor navigating. And what activity would you like to be engaged in when you are taken? For you will be doing something when death takes. If you can be taken, while engaged in something better than our present activity, practice that.
Seneca: On the moral progress I have been able to make in the course of my life, I trust only in death. I await the day when I will pass judgment on myself and know whether virtue was only in my words or really in my heart. Whether or not you have wasted your time will be revealed when you lose your life.
The exercise, thinking about death, is only a means for taking this cross-section view of life which enables one to grasp the value of the present, or again to carry out the great loop of memorization, by which one totalizes one's life and reveals it as it is.
Pythagoras's examination of conscience at the end of each day to purify the thought before sleep. The dream is the test of the soul's purity.
Murcus Aurelius's morning examination: remembering the general aim you set yourself by these actions and the general aims you should always have in mind throughout life, and so the precautions to be taken so as to act according to these precise objectives and general aims in the situations that arise.
Epictetus: We should always have ready at hand the judgment of which we feel the need; at table, we should have ready at hand the judgment concerning everything to do with eating; at the bath, we should have ready at hand all the judgments concerning how to behave at the bath. When we are in bed, we should always have ready at hand all the judgments concerning how to behave in bed. To practice philosophy is to make preparation. To practice philosophy is to put oneself in a frame of mind such that one will regard the whole of life as a test. And the meaning of ascetics, the set of exercises available to us, is that of enabling us to be permanently prepared for this life which will only ever be, until its end, a life test in the sense that it will be a life that is a test.
For the Greek, caring about the self means equipping ourselves for a series of unforeseen events by practicing a number of exercises which actualized these events with an unavoidable necessity and in which we strip them of any imaginary reality they may have, in order to reduce their existence to the strict minimum. It is in these exercises, in the interplay of these exercises, that we will be able to live existence as a test throughout our life.
In Stoics, the exercise consists in thinking death as present and one is living one's last day.
Seneca, Letter 12: the whole of life is only one long day with morning, which is childhood, midday, which is maturity, and evening, which is old age; that a year is also like a day, with the morning of spring and the night of winter; that each month is also like a sort of day; and that all in all a day, the passing of a single day, is the model for the organization of the time of a life, or of different organized times and durations in a human life. Living one's life as if not just a month or a year, but the whole of his life passes by in that day. We should think of each hour of the day we are living as a sort of age of life, so that when we arrive at the evening of the day we will also arrive at the evening of life as it were, that is to say at the moment of death itself. This is the exercise of the last day. It involves organizing and experiencing our day as if each moment of the day was the moment of the great day of life, and the last moment of the day was the last moment of our existence.
Marcus Aurelius: Moral perfection involves living each day as if it were the last.
Epictetus: Don't you know that illness and death must take us in the middle of some activity? They take the laborer at his work, the sailor navigating. And what activity would you like to be engaged in when you are taken? For you will be doing something when death takes. If you can be taken, while engaged in something better than our present activity, practice that.
Seneca: On the moral progress I have been able to make in the course of my life, I trust only in death. I await the day when I will pass judgment on myself and know whether virtue was only in my words or really in my heart. Whether or not you have wasted your time will be revealed when you lose your life.
The exercise, thinking about death, is only a means for taking this cross-section view of life which enables one to grasp the value of the present, or again to carry out the great loop of memorization, by which one totalizes one's life and reveals it as it is.
Pythagoras's examination of conscience at the end of each day to purify the thought before sleep. The dream is the test of the soul's purity.
Murcus Aurelius's morning examination: remembering the general aim you set yourself by these actions and the general aims you should always have in mind throughout life, and so the precautions to be taken so as to act according to these precise objectives and general aims in the situations that arise.
Epictetus: We should always have ready at hand the judgment of which we feel the need; at table, we should have ready at hand the judgment concerning everything to do with eating; at the bath, we should have ready at hand all the judgments concerning how to behave at the bath. When we are in bed, we should always have ready at hand all the judgments concerning how to behave in bed. To practice philosophy is to make preparation. To practice philosophy is to put oneself in a frame of mind such that one will regard the whole of life as a test. And the meaning of ascetics, the set of exercises available to us, is that of enabling us to be permanently prepared for this life which will only ever be, until its end, a life test in the sense that it will be a life that is a test.
For the Greek, caring about the self means equipping ourselves for a series of unforeseen events by practicing a number of exercises which actualized these events with an unavoidable necessity and in which we strip them of any imaginary reality they may have, in order to reduce their existence to the strict minimum. It is in these exercises, in the interplay of these exercises, that we will be able to live existence as a test throughout our life.
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