Exploring Encheiridion 21 – Episode 63

Set before your eyes every day death and exile and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything. (Ench 21)

That’s an interesting list: death, exile, and everything else that looks terrible. We can all relate to death and other things that look terrible. However, there is no modern equivalent to Roman exile. To full appreciate the inclusion of exile in this list, we need to understand that exile was a form of capital punishment under Roman law. It was an alternative to the death penalty. Sometimes, a person was allowed to choose exile instead of being put to death. That was considered voluntary exile. In other cases, people were banished and involuntarily removed from Roman territories.

Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Seneca were all exiled at different times. It was not uncommon for philosophers to be exiled because they were often considered a threat to those in power. Why? Because philosophy taught people to think for themselves and have an allegiance to truth instead of political authority.

We don’t fear exile today. Those with political power or far-reaching social influence may fear getting canceled in modern times. For some, that may be just as frightening as exile was in ancient times. Nevertheless, I suspect the list of terrible things in Encheiridion 21 would be different if Epictetus were teaching today. He might say:

Set before your eyes every day death and social ostracism, pandemics, government lockdowns, inflation, high gas prices, exploding houses costs, recession, the war in Ukraine, mass immigration, mass shootings, high crime, racism, sexism, and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything.

The last sentence of Encheiridion 21 offers two extremes we can avoid if we practice setting death and everything else that looks terrible before our eyes daily. However, the phrase “mean thought” seemed a little vague to me, so I looked at every translation of the Encheiridion I have to see if they would provide some insight.

Have any mean thought	be too keen on anything	A.A. Long
Have any abject thought	Yearn for anything	W.A. Oldfather
Harbour any mean thought	Desire anything beyond due measure	Robin Hard
Entertain any abject thought	Long for anything excessively	Keith Seddon
Think of anything mean	Desire anything extravagantly	George Long
Have any abject thought	Desire anything to excess	Robert Dobbin

Do you see the pattern here? In this passage, Epictetus is referring to aversions and desires. This lesson is another, among many, in which Epictetus reminds us that true freedom is internal. Freedom cannot be dependent on externals. When we fear external events and circumstances, we tend to blame others. We blame the other political party, another race of people, the opposite sex, those who have what we think we deserve, those with religious beliefs and lifestyles different from ours, etc. Those aversions tend to create abject and mean thoughts toward others. Likewise, those aversions typically entail excess desires for circumstances to be different. Before anyone concludes that Epictetus is preaching quietism here, look at the language.

Epictetus did not instruct his student not to desire a change in circumstances. The English translations tell us not to be too keen on anything, yearn for anything, desire anything beyond measure, desire anything in excess, etc. As Stoics, we should desire and work for change leading toward a virtuous end. However, if your desire for change produces mean and abject thoughts toward those who disagree with you, you are a slave to your passions. You desire something excessively when you allow yourself to hate others you believe are preventing you from attaining it.

Lesson 1

So, what is the message of Encheiridion 21? I think we can derive two important lessons from this short passage. The first is pretty obvious. Encheiridion 21 is a reminder to practice Premeditatio Malorum. By contemplating those events and circumstances we consider terrible, we prepare our minds so they will not be overwhelmed should they occur. Seneca wrote about this practice in Letters 24:

But what I will do is lead you down a different road to tranquility. If you want to be rid of worry, then fix your mind on whatever it is that you are afraid might happen as a thing that definitely will happen. Whatever bad event that might be, take the measure of it mentally and so assess your fear. You will soon realize that what you fear is either no great matter or not long lasting. Nor do I need to cast about very long for examples to strengthen you with. Every age supplies them. (Letters 24. 2-3)

As Seneca wisely noted, every age supplies us with circumstances and events to trouble our minds. However, the Stoic practice of premeditaio malorum helps to keep us on the path of virtue toward true freedom and well-being.

Lesson 2

That is the obvious lesson of Encheiridion 21, and if we stop here, we have plenty of opportunity for practice and growth on the path of the Stoic prokopton. However, there’s an equally important lesson here I think we frequently overlook.

While the practice of premeditatio malorum has us consider events in the future, its purpose is to prepare our minds for life in the present moment. As Stoicism teaches, the present is all we have, and we do not know how much time we are allotted. As Marcus noted:

Remember how long you have been deferring these things, and how many times you have been granted further grace by the gods, and yet have failed to make use of it. But it is now high time that you realized what kind of a universe this is of which you form a part, and from what governor of that universe you exist as an emanation; and that your time here is strictly limited, and, unless you make use of it to clear the fog from your mind, the moment will be gone, as you are gone, and never be yours again. (Meditations 2.4)

This passage reminds me of a famous scene from the 1989 movie The Dead Poets Society. The teacher, John Keating, played by Robin Williams, takes his young students into the hallway and has one of them read the opening lines from a poem by Robert Herrick, which reads:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

Keating then informs them the Latin phrase for this sentiment is carpe diem, which means “seize the day.” Keating then tells the class the poet used these lines to remind us that “we are food for worms.” Next, he has the students look into the school’s trophy case, which displays the photos of past sports teams alongside the trophies they won. Listen as Keating delivers a powerful lesson to his students.

Audio clip from The Dead Poets Society. ^[1]

Why does Keating want his student to consider their death? He has two goals in mind. He wants to discourage them from waiting until it’s “too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable.” Second, he is attempting to inspire his students to “seize the day” and make their lives extraordinary.

Epictetus delivered this same message to his students in a variety of ways. He prodded, coaxed, and occasionally admonished them to abandon their enslaved manner of thinking and living so they could follow the Stoic path toward an extraordinary life. As we will see soon, Seneca counseled his friend Lucilius to do the same. Finally, we see the same throughout the Meditations. That is why Marcus reminded himself in Meditations 2.4 not to defer things but to use what time he has. Later, in book 12, Marcus wrote:

In no great while you will be no one and nowhere, and nothing that you now behold will be in existence, nor will anyone now alive. For it is in the nature of all things to change and alter and perish, so that others may arise in their turn. (Meditations 12.21) …the life of every one of us is confined to the present moment and this is all that we have. (Meditations 12.26)

Seneca echoed this sentiment when he wrote to Lucilius:

I strive to make a day count for a whole lifetime. It’s not that I cling to it as if it were my last—not by any means, and yet I do look at it as if it could actually be my last. (Letters 61.1)

Later, in Letters 93, Seneca wrote:

What we need to be concerned about is not how long we live but whether we live sufficiently. For a long life, you need the help of fate; but to live sufficiently, the essential thing is one’s character. A life is long if it is full, and it is full only when the mind bestows on itself the goodness that is proper to it, claiming for itself the authority over itself. (Letters 93.2)

During my career as a law enforcement officer, I learned first-hand how fleeting life could be. In the final three years of my law enforcement career, I was a traffic homicide investigator. That means that every scene I arrived at involved the death of at least one person. Many fatal crash scenes involved a person simply driving to the store, to work, or a friend’s house, going out for a run, or a bike ride when they were struck and killed by a driver who was impaired or simply not paying attention. None of them could have predicted their life would end that day, but it did. None of us knows when our life will end, and our Stoic practice trains us not to fear death.

However, I think we often overlook this equally important lesson as we prepare our minds for death and other terrible events and circumstances. It’s easy to lose sight of why preparation for death is such an important part of philosophy in general and Stoic practice in particular. We keep the specter of our death and other terrible things before our eyes to remind us of two important lessons. First, there is no reason to fear death or other seemingly terrible circumstances if we value the only thing we control—our character. Second, the certainty and unspecified time of our death should inspire us to live each moment in a way that improves our character and enhances our well-being.

What we, as Stoic practitioners, should value and how we should live our life differs significantly from social norms. That was true in ancient times, and it remains true today. Arguably, it also differs from what John Keating taught his students in The Dead Poets Society. For the Stoic, the length of one’s life and the number of experiences is not the measure of a life well-lived. As Pierre Hadot notes, for the Stoics, “the only value is not just life itself, but moral life.”^[2]

As Stoics, our life is measured by the quality of our character and nothing else. Fortunately, the quality of our character is up to us; it is not determined by external circumstances. We are solely responsible for the development of our character, which leads to either a life enslaved by fears and desires or an extraordinary life progressing toward an excellent character and well-being.

Listen closely to this counsel Seneca offered to Lucilius in Letters 101:

The biggest problem with our lives is that they are always unfinished, that some part of them is always being postponed. By putting the final touch on one’s life every day, you don’t lack time. It is this lack that generates fear and gnawing desire for the future. Nothing is more wretched than worrying about how things are going to turn out. We are constantly in the grip of panic as to how much is left or what the future holds. How shall we escape this turmoil? There is only one way—by not allowing our life to look to the future but gathering it into itself. People hang on the future because they are frustrated by the present. But once my debt to myself has been paid and my mind has firmly accepted the fact that there is no difference between a day and an era, it can take a long view of all the days and things that are to come, and merrily contemplate the whole extent of time. If one is firm in one’s attitude to uncertainty, why should one be disturbed by the fluctuation and instability of fortune? And so, dear Lucilius, make haste to live, and treat each day as a life in itself. A person who prepares himself like this, making the daily round his entire life, is quite secure. Those who live on hope find every present moment slipping away; they are taken over by greed and the fear of death, a most miserable state that makes everything else quite miserable. (Seneca, Letters 101.8-10)… We have to shake off this passion for life. We need to learn that it makes no difference when you suffer, because you are bound to suffer sooner or later. What matters is not how long you live but how well. (Seneca, Letters 101.15)

None of us knows the moment when we will take our last breath and our heart will beat for the last time. It may occur during our sleep, after a long life; it may happen unexpectedly in our prime. The circumstances that will lead to our inevitable death are not up to us. However, we can control the quality of our life until we take that last breath. However, the choice to improve our character and thereby move incrementally closer to those high ideals of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice is up to us. We can strive to live in agreement with Nature, which gave us this opportunity to create an extraordinary life. Marcus Aurelius attempted to live his life that way. He sought the true freedom offered by the Stoic of life—the freedom of our soul. I close this episode with a quote from the final chapter of his Meditations, where Marcus reminded himself:

If then, when the time for your departure draws near, you have put all else behind you and you honour your ruling centre alone and what is divine within you, and if what you hold in fear is not that some day you will cease to live, but rather that you may never begin to live according to nature, you will be a man who is worthy of the universe that brought you to birth, and you will no longer be a stranger in your native land, wondering at what happens day after day as if it were beyond foreseeing, and hanging on to one thing after another. (Meditations 12.1.2)