On the applicability of philosophy to "real life" so-called.

I am methodologically a moderate skeptic, an enthusiast by temperament. I do not believe in philosophical conclusions that are sepable from the process by which one has attained them (for if the question can be answered so simply, it's hard to see that we needed philosophy for it, really). I have no qualms about ascribing falsity and many about ascribing truth -- though fewest of the three to ascribing insight. My beloved Stoics had some crazy views -- I don't hesitate much about applying that term, either -- but much understanding.

Epictetus tells us that life is a game precisely in the respect that seems to distinguish the two, namely that in a game the outcome is not very important while adherence to the rules is imperative -- since inconsistent adherence means playing the game ill, or, at some point on the spectrum, ceasing to play the game at all. Now we are used to thinking that life is not like this. We are used to thinking that whether you win or lose within the game of life has quite a bit of importance to us the agents concerned, and should have. Clearly it makes a difference to one whether one's aorta bursts or not, and whether operations on our hearts are successful or not. ("Successful" -- it's built in already there.) Yes, this matters. But Epictetus (following his Stoic forebears) tries to show why it needn't matter in the way we might antecedently have assumed. This involves lots of high philosophy, naturally enough -- axiology (=consideration of what value is and of what is valuable), theology and metaphysics to ground value, logic including epistemology (as they divided it) to keep us from error and guide us towards understanding on the way. It is all very fascinating and largely the subject of my dissertation and not at all suitable for this sort or level of explanation.

Instead let me assume it all, and hint at some consequences.

Epictetus argues that if this is so, then we haven't anything to regret when we act correctly yet fail to attain our objective. This is so because nothing has been lost by our losing it that could determine whether our lives are happy or not -- I think by "happy" he very nearly means "meaningful, in such a way as to be worth living." So: failing to get a job does not eliminate the chance for a meaningful life. Dying destroys us, but not our lives, not the sense we'd learned to make of things. Losing a child, even, cannot mean losing all the worth one might ever have attained to -- though I would imagine it makes most things look very unworthy of the time we give to them.

Is this true? I wouldn't know how to answer that question. Certainly Epictetus relies on false beliefs to get to it, and not incidentally, not separably. Certainly the Stoic view is so radical as to be hard to understand. (What would it mean for a life to disappear yet for its happiness to match a god's?) Certainly such points can be hackneyed to death with the large axe, or is that a carriage, of Hollywood fairy tale treacle. All I can add is that learning to think of the ways in which merely doing something right in itself constitutes succeeding at it, no matter how all occasions do conspire against us, i.e., how external features cooperate with our efforts -- that exercise, that learning, that reflective choice to change perspective -- is not a matter of books, but of how books can change and shape our lives.

On self-sufficiency, non-technically and non-ethically.

As I've mentioned, much of my work concerns self-sufficiency. It's a fascinating thread to trace through the history of ancient ethics -- and also ancient theology and metaphysics, in ways that connect back with ethics.

For instance: pre-Socratic philosophical cosmology often begins with inquiry into the basic substances of the universe.* But what Thales (6 century BCE), Anaximenes, &c. &c. mean by substance is really: something that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence. They made self-sufficiency a basic concept of natural philosophy. (The term "natural philosophy," not much in use now, is meant to encompass theoretical and speculative levels of the natural and physical sciences, and also some other philosophy -- as, of course, do the sciences themselves.) When Thales (maybe) argued that water was the most basic component of the universe, he was saying that water was what could exist without anything else -- that it was self-sufficient. He was also adding something not strictly implied by self-sufficiency: that this basic thing is also productive of other things, even of everything else. This will become a theme in the intellectual history of self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile self-sufficiency was developing an explicit association with divinity. After all, what could be a better candidate for independence of external causation than a god? And Zeus, like water, is taken to have some productive or creative powers. Are they in virtue of his self-sufficiency? The power to influence things outside oneself seems to get mixed up with the power to sustain oneself when the self-sustainer we are discussing is taken to be ultimate: the most basic substance or divinity.

It's an interesting issue to raise with regard to any conception of self-sufficiency that we encounter: is it tied up with creative or productive capacities? If so, do they involve creating, producing, or sustaining something outside the self-sufficient self or not? -- It'll be especially interesting for later ethicists, especially those who accept a kind of analogy between virtue and the crafts, and also wonder whether that entails believing that virtue aims at producing something outside itself (like the craft of making musical instruments) or occupies itself only with the craft-activity itself (like the craft of making musical instruments).


* Ignoring the way Aristotle regularizes their terminology by applying his own. "Substance" is his term for something that exists independently. (Actually "substance" -- rather, "substantia" -- is Cicero's [I assume, since he invented about all Latin philosophical terminology] translation of Greek "hupokeimenon." Both mean roughly 'what lies beneath.' I know, it sounds like a horror movie.)