Making Stoic Progress

When I have noticed myself slipping in the practice and application of Stoicism, Epictetus Discourse 3.2 is the place I turn to most often, Epictetus lays out the 3 disciplines, or domains, that we must train in to become good. Importantly they are laid out in a progressive manner, it offers a road map for what we should be doing. Epictetus' description of the disciplines gives a very logical and easy to follow path for what we should be doing and focusing on to improve ourselves. Discourses 1.4 and 3.12 are others I return in these times when I feel I need to get back to doing a better job at applying Stoicism.

“There are three domains in which a person must be trained if he’s to become truly good. The first is the domain of desires and aversions, and the upshot of the training is that he never fails to get what he desires and never experiences what he wants to avoid. The second is the domain of inclination and disinclination, and in general of appropriate behavior, and the upshot of the training is that he acts in an orderly and well-reasoned manner, rather than being careless. The third is the domain of immunity to error and rash judgment, and in general the domain of assent.*

Discourses 3.2, Epictetus. The Complete Works, tr. Robin Waterfield

First and foremost we need to get our desires and aversions in check, if we don't then we aren't even able to listen to reason and would be a slave in the deepest sense that Epictetus means. Without getting a grip on our desires and bringing them further into alignment with nature we will be at the mercy of every impression that we receive. “Ooh that cupcake looks yummy!” And then we eat it without a second thought. “This person is inconvenient to me, and that is bad '' and we get angry and lash out. And all the other mistaken desires and aversions that lead to emotional disturbance. When these desires and aversions are overwhelming us we need to work deeply in examining our impressions and understanding that the only good lies within our sphere of choice, and also reflect on how it is we are actually valuing things. It is one thing to say that externals have no value, and another to properly understand and act in that regard.

And since we follow the lead of habit, a powerful influence, then given that we’ve become accustomed to feel desire and aversion only for externals, we must set a contrary habit to counteract this habit, and where impressions are especially slippery, we must set our training to counteract this slipperiness. [7] “I have a propensity for pleasure; for the sake of my training, I’ll correct the list by going over to the opposite extreme. I have an aversion to work; I’ll train and exercise my impressions with a view to detaching my aversion from everything of that kind.

Discourses 3.12.5-1, Epictetus. The Complete Works. tr. Robin Waterfield

After having a good grasp on desires and aversions we can more strongly focus on the second area, our appropriate actions. I say more strongly because I don't think we can just abandon responsibilities to others because we can't keep our hands off of cupcakes. Likewise we can't wait until all of our desires are perfectly in order because then we'd be a Sage and wouldn't need to focus on any specific training or discipline. 

But as we progress to the point of not being generally perturbed by externals; and have a grasp of how to appropriately deal with the emotional disturbance caused by our failure to live up to Stoic ideals; that is when we can really focus on our roles and duties to others. It is at this point that we would be a truly dependable and caring person for those in our lives. 

When working through this second discipline we are also fine tuning our desires. We might get to a point where we are doing all of our appropriate acts but are not quite at sagehood, and this is where the third discipline would come into play. The sage does all the appropriate acts perfectly and has all the right reasons for doing so. Unlike us when we are performing appropriate acts we may have hesitation, desires we have to get into agreement with nature etc. We might help someone in need just as we are supposed to but need to deliberate and realize that it's the right thing to do. The Sage just knows it's the right thing to do, and won't change their mind on that at all. 

A favourite fragment of mine from Chrysippus explaining this final shift to being a sage: 

“The man who progresses to the furthest point performs all proper functions without exception and omits none. Yet his life’, he says, ‘is not yet happy, but happiness supervenes on it when these intermediate actions acquire the additional properties of firmness and tenor and their own particular fixity.”

-Chrysippus via Strobaeus, from Long & Sedley's Hellenistic Philosophers 59I. 

When our path of progression is laid out in this manner I find the concept of a Sage to be a realistic goal. Maybe not realistic in the sense that any of us may become one, but realistic in a sense that it is humanly possible.

“Courage, intelligence, fairness, and self-control are possibilities inherent in our rational nature, even if we in our current condition do not properly exemplify them. Becoming like the sage would be becoming more human, not less; it would be recognizable as human maturation.”

-Stoicism and Emotion, Margaret Graver p. 51