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PROFESSOR: So what I want to
talk about in today's lecture
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is a strand in the philosophical
tradition that
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looks not at the ways in which
human interconnectedness can
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provide meaning and the
possibility for flourishing,
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but which looks rather at a
certain sort of psychological
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detachment as a way of dealing
with the inevitable
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vicissitudes of lived
experience.
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And the clearest articulation
of the outlook that we'll be
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considering today in the
context of the Western
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tradition can be found
in the writing of
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the philosopher Epictetus.
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Here's a wonderful imaginary
portrait of him from 1715,
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sitting at a table, famously
with his cane, which he used
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to walk as the result
of his limp.
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As you know from the reading
guide, Epictetus lived at the
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beginning of two
millennia ago.
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He lived roughly from 50 to
130 in the common era.
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He was born in Greek-speaking
Asia Minor, and spent his life
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living in the Roman Empire
during that era.
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He spent the early portion of
his life as a slave. There's
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some dissent as to whether he
spent it until the age of
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thirteen or until the age of
twenty seven, but in any case,
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a significant portion of his
life was spent in slavery.
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But he eventually gained
freedom, and at some point,
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either before or after gaining
freedom, he studied the works
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and philosophical outlook of a
tradition known as Stoicism.
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And the works that were produced
on his behalf that
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have survived are two.
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The first is a major four
volume collection of his
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discussions of a range of
topics: questions in
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metaphysics, questions about
the way the world is,
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questions in epistemology--how
we should understand the
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world--and also questions
in ethics.
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And in addition to that has
survived the extraordinary
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book that we read for today.
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The little forty-five epigraph
essay known as The Handbook,
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which was, as in the case of
Aristotle, apparently recorded
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by one of Epictetus's students
and preserved in that way.
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Now, the work that Epictetus
produced in the context of The
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Handbook was enormously
influential for most of the
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two thousand years that
it has been part
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of the Western tradition.
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In particular, the frontispiece
that I used to
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show you a picture of Epictetus
is drawn from the
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library of none other than
John Adams, the second
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president of the United States,
who had this book in
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his collection in its
1715 Latin edition.
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(Wait until the eclipse
passes.)
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Another interesting thing to
know, historically, about the
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volume that we're reading is
that the first English
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