Happiness is all about focusing on what you have control over. Darin Gates explains the basic tenets of stoicism in the ongoing philosophy lectures.
PROVO, Utah (Oct. 23, 2014)—Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded in Athens in the third century B.C. Darin Gates, professor of philosophy, gave his lecture, “Stoicism: Virtue, Happiness, and Akrasia,” to explain the school and its most basic teachings. Though there have been many stoic philosophers through the ages, Gates focused his lecture on Epictetus (55-135 A.D.) and his teachings as recorded in the Enchiridion.
“Some things are in our control and others not,” Gates read from the Enchiridion. “Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.” The ability to recognize those things in our lives that we have control over is an important tenet of stoic philosophy.
Gates further expounded on those things out of our control, which the stoics termed “indifferents.” Indifferents are external things, so named because they are indifferent in a moral sense. Clarifying, Gates said, “That is, they are neither good nor bad in themselves.”
However, they are still classified in two groups by the way they are perceived by humanity: preferred and dispreferred. The preferred indifferents include money, health and honor/reputation. Though not inherently good, people seek after these things and perceive them as good and desirable. Dispreferred, on the other hand, include poverty, sickness and shame/disrepute. Though not inherently bad, they are avoided. At times, an individual may start to believe that the preferred indifferents are actually good or that dispreferred indifferents are truly bad; these false beliefs are identified as “passions.” And in order to achieve happiness, that individual must abandon these passions.
As an example of the belief that avoiding passions could stave off unhappiness, Gates read this passage from the Enchiridion: “If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.” Though extreme, the passage demonstrates how the stoics used perspective as a comforting agent in misfortune.
Towards the end of his lecture, Gates asked the assembled students what similarities they saw between stoicism and the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He pointed to a talk by Elder David A. Bednar called “And Nothing Shall Offend Them” in which Elder Bednar identified the choice to act upon things within our control, making a choice to not be offended by the actions of others.
Other Church leaders have likewise drawn from stoic beliefs while teaching; for example, President Thomas S. Monson quoted Epictetus directly in the Church’s April 2010 General Conference: “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
Nearing the end of his lecture, Gates asked, “What about working hard or excellence? Someone says, should we not care about external things?” Epictetus himself recognized the difficulty of giving up desires for externals completely, believing it against human nature.
“Be careful how you use them [external things] because they’re not unimportant,” Gates said, quoting Epictetus. “It isn’t easy to combine or reconcile the two – the carefulness of a person devoted to externals and the dignity of one who’s detached – but it’s not impossible.”
For a more information about the Philosophy Lecture Series, visit http://philosophy.byu.edu/static/documents/org/1614.pdf.
—Samuel Wright (B.A. American Studies ’16)