Epictetus - Discourses Pt. 5: Against the Sceptics

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2:40Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

3:31Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We've talked about Epictetus here quite a bit. Actually, we just rolled out this really cool new YouTube video about Epictetus's secrets for resilience. You can check that out at youtube.com slash daily stoic. But Epictetus is fascinating because unlike all the other Stoics, he actually experienced profound and real adversity without any of the privileges that would have balanced out the life of Marcus Aurelius or Seneca or Cato, right? He's born a slave. He spends 30 years in slavery. In fact, even his name, Epictetus, it means acquired one.

4:10This dude doesn't even get his own name. Now, Epictetus doesn't write anything down as far as we know. Epictetus that we're going to hear from today, even the Epictetus that Marcus Aurelius quotes in his meditations is coming to us from lecture notes from his students. Was Marcus's from his philosophy teacher, Rusticus? Are these Rusticus's notes? Or is Rusticus himself just handing Marcus Aurelius the notes from Arian, who also writes a fascinating book about Alexander the Great, who was a favorite of Hadrian, the emperor. Anyways, that's why Epictetus' work is called The Discourses, because it's the lecture notes.

4:49It's what Epictetus is talking about at his philosophy school in Nicopolis in Greece, the early second century AD. And there's a bunch of different translations. I like the Penguin Classics translation. Robin Waterfeld has a new translation of Epictetus. It's also quite good. In today's episode, we're reading one from an older translation. This is going to be read to us by Michael Reed, who's been doing a bunch of awesome voiceover work for Daily Stoic, including the Epictetus video that I mentioned earlier. But Epictetus starts at the beginning, right? He says, this is about what's in our control and what isn't, how to make use of what's in our power and treat the rest as something we accept, something as we put up with, something we put up with, something we come to terms with, something we find out how to use, how to be made better for having gone through, which is all the more poignant, again, when you think about what Epictetus went through in his life, the things he had to come to terms with, things he had to accept.

5:47You know, he's not being glib about it. He's not talking about being stuck in traffic, right? He's talking about his lame leg, which was broken by a cruel slave master. He's talking about the years of his life that were stolen. He's talking about the injustices of the society that he lives in, which came down so hard on him. So I wanted to bring you some thoughts directly from Epictetus himself, although not direct. Epictetus gives his lectures, Arian, and other students write them down. Then these get translated and translated and translated, and then they were read. And then this excerpt of Epictetus' Discourses is brought to you by Daily Stoic and Michael Reed, and you You can grab any of the translations of Epictetus from The Painted Porch, grab them anywhere books are sold.

6:34But I hope this is a little intro into the one and only Epictetus.

6:46If a man objects to truths that are all too evident, it is no easy task finding arguments that will change his mind. This is proof neither of his own strength nor of his teacher's weakness. When someone caught in an argument hardens to stone, there is just no more reasoning with them. Now, a person can suffer two kinds of petrification, that of the intellect and that of the sense of honor. When somebody assumes a defiant stance, resolved neither to assent to self-evident truths nor leave off fighting, Most of us dread the deadening of the body and will do anything to avoid it. About the deadening of the soul, however, we don't care one iota.

7:33Even in the case of the soul, we regard a man as pitiable if he is deficient in thinking or learning. We pity the mentally retarded and students with learning difficulties. But if somebody's sense of shame and respect are dead, we will actually call this determination. Do you realize that you are awake? No, any more than when I dream and I have the impression that I am awake. And is the one impression in no way different from the other? No. Can I go on reasoning with such a person? What fire or iron can be applied to him to make him conscious of his condition? He senses it, but pretends he doesn't.

8:21That makes him even worse off than a corpse. One person does not notice a contradiction in his reasoning. He is unfortunate. Another person notices it, all right, but does not budge and does not back down. He is even more unfortunate. it. His sense of honor and truthfulness has been excised, and his reason, not excised, but brutalized. Am I to call this strength of character? I can't, any more than I can apply the same name to the strength of degenerates that enables them to say and do in public whatever they please.

9:13Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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