Emperor and Slave: Classics 95 Midterm
  1. Short questions: write at most a few sentences about the following: this should take you at most 15 minutes. Leave a full blank sheet in the blue book after each answer, so that you can come back and add more if it occurs to you and you have time.

    1. How do we improve our rational faculty? what role do internal things and external things play in the process?

    2. What does Epictetus think about the value of life?

    3. What is evil according to Epictetus?

  2. For each of the following quotations, do the following: this part should take at most one hour (about 8 minutes per quotation): leave a full blank page in the blue book after each answer so that you can come back and add if you have time.
    1. BEGIN the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away. (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations Book II §1)

    2. This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which thou art a part. (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations Book II §9)

    3. the animal is constituted so as to do all things for itself ... universally, Zeus has made the nature of the rational animal such that it cannot obtain any one of its own proper interests, if it does not contribute something to the common interest. In this manner and sense it is not unsociable for a man to do everything, for the sake of himself. For what do you expect? that a man should neglect himself and his own interest? And how in that case can there be one and the same principle in all animals, the principle of attachment to themselves? (Epictetus Discourse 19)

    4. Now reason, for what purpose has it been given by nature? For the right use of appearances. What is it then itself? A system of certain appearances. So by its nature it has the faculty of contemplating itself so. Again, sound sense, for the contemplation of what things does it belong to us? Good and evil, and things which are neither. What is it then itself? Good. And want of sense, what is it? Evil. Do you see then that good sense necessarily contemplates both itself and the opposite? For this reason it is the chief and the first work of a philosopher to examine appearances, and to distinguish them, and to admit none without examination. (Epictetus Discourses 20)

    5. “I have pain in the head.” Do not say, “Alas!” “I have pain in the ear.” Do not say, “Alas!” I do not say that you are not allowed to groan, but do not groan inwardly (Epictetus Discourse 18) (OVER: THERE IS MORE ON THE BACK)

    6. “Ought not then this robber and this adulterer to be destroyed?” By no means say so, but speak rather in this way: “This man who has been mistaken and deceived about the most important things, and blinded, not in the faculty of vision which distinguishes white and black, but in the faculty which distinguishes good and bad, should we not destroy him?” If you speak thus, you will see how inhuman this is which you say, and that it is just as if you would say, “Ought we not to destroy this blind and deaf man?” But if the greatest harm is the privation of the greatest things, and the greatest thing in every man is the will or choice such as it ought to be, and a man is deprived of this will, why are you also angry with him? Man, you ought not to be affected contrary to nature by the bad things of another. Pity him rather (Epictetus Discourse 18)

    7. you have a will free by nature from hindrance and compulsion; this is written here in the viscera. I will show you this first in the matter of assent. Can any man hinder you from assenting to the truth? No man can. Can any man compel you to receive what is false? No man can. You see that in this matter you have the faculty of the will free from hindrance, free from compulsion, unimpeded.” Well, then, in the matter of desire and pursuit of an object, is it otherwise? And what can overcome pursuit except another pursuit? And what can overcome desire and aversion except another desire and aversion? But, you object: “If you place before me the fear of death, you do compel me.” No, it is not what is placed before you that compels, but your opinion that it is better to do so-and-so than to die. In this matter, then, it is your opinion that compelled you: that is, will compelled will. (Epictetus Discourse 17)