Anthony A. Long - Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life

A. A. Long

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A. A. Long 2002

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ISBN 978-0-19-926885-6

The idea of writing this book began to crystallize while I was teaching a graduate seminar on Epictetus at Berkeley in the spring of 1999. My students were far more responsive to his Stoic discourses than I had dared to hope, and by the end of the semester I myself was thinking about little else. By a happy coincidence, I was about to begin a sabbatical year of research leave, generously assisted by grants from my university. My official project for this leave had not been a study of Epictetus, but now I knew that this was what I wanted to write, and so I set to work.

Although the idea of this book arose only recently, Epictetus has been on or near my desk for more years than I care to recall. I have been fascinated by him ever since I began to work on Hellenistic philosophy, and I have incorporated him in much that I have previously published. But I had never devoted a whole course to Epictetus before, and I had never immersed myself in him completely. Like many others, I tended to read him piecemeal, concentrating on passages that bore on my general interests in Stoicism rather than trying to engage with his singular mind and arresting style for their own sake. Now, instead, I read him through in entirety several times.

In doing so, I became especially interested in his educational strategies and his devotion to Socrates, and I also found myself increasingly impressed by the distinctive stamp of his Stoicism and by his remarkable personality. Quite coincidentally, excerpts of Epictetus were beginning to reach a large public through Tom Wolfes brilliant novel A Man in Full. Reactions to that book in newspapers had shown that Epictetus text, just by itself, was capable of touching modern nerves. Yet, there was no up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to Epictetus. All the more reason, I thought, to write a book that would offer a sufficiently in-depth treatment in a manner that could attract new readers to him as well as those to whom he needs no introduction.

That is what I have tried to do, with the strong encouragement of Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press and his anonymous advisers, for whose advice at the planning and later stages I am most grateful. I do not presume any prior knowledge of Epictetus or Stoic philosophy, and I have liberally included my own translations of numerous passages, using these as the basis for all my detailed discussions. These excerpts are the most important part of the book, because its main purpose is to provide sufficient background and analysis to enable Epictetus to speak for himself. What he says, however, often stands in need of clarification and interpretation. Research on Epictetus has a long way to go. I hope I have contributed a number of fresh ideas, but it would defeat the purpose of this book if I defended them in the main text with a barrage of scholarship. At the end of chapters I append bibliographical details and provide guidelines on various details and points of controversy.

My warm thanks are due to numerous people. First, I am delighted to mention all those who attended my seminar on Epictetus: Chris Brooke, Tamara Chin, Luca Castagnoli, James Ker, Erin Orzel, Miguel Pizarro, Walter Roberts, Tricia Slatin, Belle Waring, and two visiting scholars, Antonio Bravo Garcia and Bill Stephens. I learnt a lot from them all, and I especially thank Chris Brooke, whose seminar paper on Epictetus in early modern Europe introduced me to some references I have gratefully incorporated in my Epilogue. I have been wonderfully served by Christopher Gill, Brad Inwood, Vicky Kahn, and David Sedley. They read the entire first draft of the book and gave me extremely helpful comments. Peter Momtchiloff has been a splendid editor, not only through his publishing expertise but also by acting as the books model reader. Our e-mail correspondence over the past year has been a great stimulus and pleasure to me.

The final product is appreciably better as a result of all this advice. I have benefited from the publications of scholars too numerous to acknowledge completely, but among my contemporaries I especially thank Rob Dobbin, Christopher Gill, Rachana Kamtekar, Susanne Bobzien, Michael Frede, David Sedley, Pierre and Ilsetraut Hadot, Brad Inwood, Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, and Robin Hard. James Ker, a graduate student at Berkeley, has earned my gratitude not only by assembling data and checking references but also by vetting my translations and suggesting other improvements. I am also very grateful to Hilary Walford for her care and courtesy as my copy-editor and to Charlotte Jenkins for her fine management of the books production.

I presented some of the material in as Corbett Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and this is now published in my article, Epictetus as Socratic Mentor, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 45 (2000), 7998. I also gave related talks to the Loemker Conference on Stoicism, at Emory University, Atlanta, the Stoicism seminar at the Centre Lon Robin of the University of Paris Sorbonne, the Philosophy Department of the State University of Milan, and the Philosophy and Classics Departments of the University of Iowa. I am very grateful for these invitations, especially to Steve Strange, Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, and John Finnamore, and for the feedback I received in discussions following the lectures. When my typescript was in its final stages, I delivered some of the material in a series of seminars at the cole Normale Strpricurc of Paris under the kind auspices of Claude Imbert. My French colleagues and students were a wonderful audience, and their comments enabled me to make several last-minute corrections and additions. Finally I thank the University of California Berkeley for the Humanities Research Fellowship I was given and also the Office of the President of the University of California for the award of a Presidents Research Fellowship in the Humanities.

I dedicate this book to my wife, Monique Elias. With her artistry, beauty, and spontaneity, she has seen me through all the dry days, and she has been a magnificent companion at every stage of composition.

A.A.L.

Berkeley
June 2001