An Edification by Epictetus: On Faith, Reason, Immanence, and Transcendentalism

Faith and Reason united, by Ludwig Seitz, circa 1887. Public Domain via Wikimedia

The Discourses by Epictetus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Today's entry in Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic reads: "There is hardly an idea in Stoic philosophy that wouldn't be immediately agreeable to a child". This is how I feel about Epictetus' The Discourses. It all seems like so much common sense once argued in the written word. The Discourses is a transcription of Epictetus' various lectures, recorded by his student, Arrian. Once, my lectures on political economy were transcribed for an entire semester for a hearing-impaired student, and I recall reading my spoken words with a sense of awe: how was it that I could speak such things but could not readily put these same ideas on paper? It is a powerful way to record ideas. The parallels between Epictetus' Stoicism and Christianity, especially the New Testament, are remarkable. Many of the key gospel sayings are apparent in Epictetus; work. This is not a new discovery - many have demonstrated the links between Stoicism and the Abrahamic religions, with Thomas Aquinas apparently quoting Epictetus in City of God - but some links remain confusing. For instance, Epictetus constantly refers to "god" (as opposed to "God"), but he is not always referring to Zeus (except were the name Zeus is used explicitly). The absence of the other Greek and Roman gods gives me the impression (managing one's "impressions" is a large part of Stoic philosophy) that Epictetus was a monotheist. I have discovered links between the Stoics and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but there is a difference that is worthy of further investigation, which requires a study of Kant. Epictetus' "god" is "immanent", meaning: "being within the limits of possible experience and knowledge". This contrasts with Emerson's "transcendent" God, where "transcendence" is defined in the Kantian sense as "being beyond the limits of of all possible experience and knowledge". I find the distinction between the Transcendentalists and the Stoics to be somewhat difficult to comprehend. For Emerson, God was in each of us individually, but what was in us was also part of a greater God that we all shared. If the Stoics' immanent god is wholly within our experience, as in, one's "acting in accordance with nature", or, to put it another way, one's "acting in accordance with god" - or otherwise suffering the consequences which include unhappiness, to the point where suicide, not through personal trauma, but for one's inability to act in accordance with nature, is a legitimate Stoic "opt out" action - but at the same time, being human necessarily means sharing fellowship in accordance with nature, then is this not Transcendentalist? Clearly, a thorough reading of Kant is required to comprehend this distinction. Yet Epictetus provides, for me, the most thorough understanding of Stoic philosophy. It is probably necessary to have a firm grasp on the ideas of Heraclitus, the works of Homer, and at least a working knowledge of Epicurus and the Cynics, but otherwise, The Discourses comes close to a practical religious handbook. I mean this in the sense that The Handbook (Enchiridion) is like an overview of Stoic thought, whereas The Discourses fills in the spiritual dimensions of the philosophy. I have often cringed when reading Atheistic and science-reifying comments about religion, but Epictetus does no such thing. It is apparent that faith and reason are not incompatible, and Nietzsche was right in that "God is dead and we killed Him". I have often met academic colleagues who will state that racism has no place in Academe, in that it has no basis in reason; yet applying the same argument to religion is a bridge too far. Epictetus makes it clear that faith and reason go hand in hand, in that first principles of Stoic philosophy require an understanding that acting in accordance with god (or God, does it matter?) requires faith in the existence of a god, which without would mean that philosophy is built on shifting sands, in that if God does not exist then there is no meaning to life. To be sure, to cling dogmatically to any one interpretation of the first-principle god would be to challenge the philosophy built upon it, but if one were seeking to apply faith and reason in one sitting, then The Discourses is the most comprehensible philosophy to do just that. And this, to me, makes The Discourses one of the most useful, insightful, and edifying books I have ever read.

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On Women, Booze, and Bureaucracy: Bukowski's Post Office

Charles Bukowski. Photo by Carl via Flickr CC BY 2.0

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I knew nothing of Bukowski until his work was recommended to me, especially his poetry, but I opted for his first novel instead. I recall watching Mickey Rourke and Fay Dunaway in Barfly, but I was just out of high school and it bored me. I found Woody Allen movies to be boring, then, too. Today, Woody Allen's movies are my favourite, so it might be worth giving Mickey another chance soon. Post Office reads like a cross between Jack Kerouac and a beatnik version of John Steinbeck. The cover blurb suggests his punctuation is all over the shop, but aside from a few instances of bizarrely-placed periods, it wasn't as distracting as I thought. It was also meant to be a story about American low-lifes, but that, too, seemed to be a misnomer. The protagonist, Henry Chinaski, is an anti-hero par excellence. His womanising, boozing, and gambling may have been somewhat shocking in 1971, but by today's standards, his conventional vices are more Dean Martin than Ozzy Osbourne. Even Kerouac's Sal Paradise was more hard-core than Chinaski. I'd even go so far to say that Chinaski was a moralising anti-hero, with moments of compassion and Protestant-like work ethic interrupting his otherwise conventional shenanigans. At the same time, much like Burt Reynolds in the opening scene of The Longest Yard (1974), Chinaski isn't, let's say, very chivalrous. But then he is a dog-lover, so his crassness balances itself out somewhat. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in one sitting. There are some elements of unconventional literature, such as an entire chapter of official letters from the post office, but these are used cleverly and the reader will sympathise with Chinaski's boredom with bureaucracy. One gets the sense that Chinaski is not only physically missing while one reads this part, and the innovation serves its purpose well. I am not sure if I am ready to start reading poetry in detail, but this work, along with my current reading of Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History with one chapter devoted to Dante and Shakespeare focusing on "The Hero as Poet", has piqued my interest. If one can suspend current realities and overlook the attitudes of the past that are distasteful in the present, then the work is enjoyable. But what excites me is that this is Bukowski's first novel, written at age fifty. His protagonist is about my age now at the end of the book. Typically, the anti-hero has upset all the other characters by about age 30, and the masterpiece was authored by some 23 year-old genius. Rather, Bukowski leaves me with at least a sliver of hope that I haven't squandered my last 47 years entirely.

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Love in the Time of Hollywood

Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald 1921. Photo: Smithsonian Institution via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories is #12 of Penguin's "Great Loves" series. It includes three I have not read before: The Sensible Thing, The Bridal Party, and Magnetism, along with the classic early flapper story, Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Published in 1928, these were the very early days of Hollywood, yet Magnetism captures the celebrity spirit in a way that is all too familiar today. One can imagine, however, the low-tech environment where famous actors still roamed the suburbs, startling elevator boys with their good looks and charm. Although Hemingway chastised Fitzgerald for writing short stories for money, instead of focusing on masterpieces like Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald's short stories are far from commercial ephemera that have lost their meaning in the present. It strikes me that the only difference is, back then, only the wealthy could experience such dramas as being considered dull and trying to project oneself as desirable, witty, and fun, whereas now almost any average consumer strives for the same thing. This is a very quick read, but Fitzgerald's work doesn't disappoint. It is only a shame that his short stories are scattered far and wide - as he would have delivered them to individual magazines in an effort to earn money - that a devoted Fitzgerald fan must constantly search for ever-more Fitzgerald stories to read. Nonetheless, part of the fun is discovering, from time to time, what seems to be an bottomless well of Fitzgerald ephemera still waiting to be discovered.

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