Except by Professor Sharon Lebell in her translation of Epictetus’ Handbook

:::: THE SOUL’S CRY

Philosophy’s main task is to respond to the soul’s cry; to make sense of and thereby free ourselves from the hold of our grief and fears.

Philosophy calls us when we’ve reached the end of our rope.  The insistent feeling that something is not right with our lives and the longing to be restored to our better selves will not go away.  Our fears of death and being alone, our confusion about love and sex, and our sense of impotence in the face of our anger and outsized ambitions bring us to ask our first sincere philosophical questions.

It’s true: there is no obviously apparent meaning to our lives.  Cruelty, injustice, bodily discomfort, illness, annoyances, and inconveniences big and small are the prosaic facts of any day.  So what do we do about this?  How do we — in spite of the pain and suffering in the outside world and our own wayward emotions — live ennobled lives rather than succumbing to a despairing numbness and merely coping like a mule with tedium and unbidden responsibilities?

When the soul cries out, it is a sign that we have arrived at a necessary, mature stage of self-reflection.  The secret is not to get stuck there dithering or wringing our hands, but to move forward by resolving to heal yourself.  Philosophy asks us to move into courage.  Its remedy is the unblinking excavation of the faulty and specious premises on which we base our lives and our personal identity.

:::: THE REAL PURPOSE OF PHILOSOPHY

True philosophy doesn’t involve exotic rituals, mysterious liturgy, or quaint beliefs.  Nor is it just abstract theorizing and analysis.  It is, of course, the love of wisdom [Greek: philo or love, sophy or wisdom].  It is the art of living a good life.  As such, it must be rescued from religious gurus and from professional philosophers lest it be exploited as an esoteric cult or as a set of detached intellectual techniques or brain teasers to show how clever you are.  Philosophy is intended for everyone, and it is authentically practiced only by those who wed it with action in the world toward a better life for all.

Philosophy’s purpose is to illuminate the ways our soul has been infected by unsound beliefs, untrained tumultuous desires, and dubious life choices and preferences that are unworthy of us.  Self-scrutiny applied with kindness is the main antidote.  Besides rooting out the soul’s corruptions, the life of wisdom is also meant to stir us from our lassitude and move us in the direction of an energetic, cheerful life.

Skilled use of logic, disputation, and the developed ability to name things correctly are some of the instruments philosophy gives us to achieve abiding clear-sightedness and inner tranquility, which is true happiness.

This happiness, which is our aim, must be correctly understood.  Happiness is commonly mistaken for passively experienced pleasure or leisure.  That conception of happiness is good only as far as is goes.  The only worthy object of all our efforts is a flourishing life.

True happiness is a verb.  It’s the ongoing dynamic performance of worthy deeds.  The flourishing life, whose foundation is virtuous intention, is something we continually improvise, and in doing so our souls mature.  Our life has usefulness to ourselves and to the people we touch.

We become philosophers to discover what is really true and what is merely the accidental result of our flawed reasoning, recklessly acquired erroneous judgments, well-intentioned but misguided teachings of parents and teachers, and unexamined acculturation.

To ease our soul’s suffering, we engage in disciplined introspection in which we conduct thought-experiments to strengthen our ability to distinguish between wholesome and lazy, hurtful beliefs and habits.

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If this excerpt from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus resonates with you, pursue his ideas.  He began his life in 55 AD as a slave in the far reaches of the Eastern Roman Empire and eventually became one of Rome’s foremost philosophers.  His most well-known student was Marcus Aurelius, possibly the best of Rome’s emperors and author of Meditations.