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Stoicism: On that which we can and can't control...
8 years ago
Today I read distinctly over the first section of the Enchridion of Epictetus... There were some things that in particular felt important and so I took them as notes:
- As was fitting, therefore, the gods(*1) have put under our control only the most excellent faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely, the power to make the correct use of external impressions, but all the others they have not put under our control.
-> This faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion, or in a word, the faculty which makes use of external impressions.
-We must make the best of what is under our control, and take the rest as its nature is.
-> How, then, is its nature? As god(*1) wills.
- The point of the retort lies in the defiance of the officious but all-powerful "freedman"
->"If I wish anything, I will speak to your master."
- My Moral purpose not even Zeus himself has the power to overcome.
-> In response to a man threatening to fetter (to chain) him, he responds to fetter him, but...
Sub-note: I am not a religious person, I've build my own belief on my own life experiences but... stoicism views god, gods, the world as a construct. That is to say, nature itself. Perhaps the better use would be to say, The world, or the japanese word for many gods of the world, the Kami. Perhaps to think instead that the world as a whole is a living breathing thing and as we live we align with it's nature, this term is Logos. Logos being "The divine word of god" among Christian, but among the greeks, it had a different meaning:
- The divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.
- As was fitting, therefore, the gods(*1) have put under our control only the most excellent faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely, the power to make the correct use of external impressions, but all the others they have not put under our control.
-> This faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion, or in a word, the faculty which makes use of external impressions.
-We must make the best of what is under our control, and take the rest as its nature is.
-> How, then, is its nature? As god(*1) wills.
- The point of the retort lies in the defiance of the officious but all-powerful "freedman"
->"If I wish anything, I will speak to your master."
- My Moral purpose not even Zeus himself has the power to overcome.
-> In response to a man threatening to fetter (to chain) him, he responds to fetter him, but...
Sub-note: I am not a religious person, I've build my own belief on my own life experiences but... stoicism views god, gods, the world as a construct. That is to say, nature itself. Perhaps the better use would be to say, The world, or the japanese word for many gods of the world, the Kami. Perhaps to think instead that the world as a whole is a living breathing thing and as we live we align with it's nature, this term is Logos. Logos being "The divine word of god" among Christian, but among the greeks, it had a different meaning:
- The divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.
