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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jules Evans
Epicurus is right: we don’t need that much to be happy.”
“No one is saying we should ask ourselves constantly if we’re happy. If you want to be happy, don’t think about it all the time.”
From a cosmic perspective, everything is good, everything is as it should be, everything is beautiful.
“God has introduced man to be a spectator of his works,” as Epictetus puts it, “and not just a spectator, but an interpreter.”
Some students, today, even get philosophical maxims tattooed onto their body, taking Seneca’s words literally that the teachings should merge with their “tissue and blood,” and become part of their body until the Logos becomes flesh.5 The point of maxims is that humans are incredibly forgetful animals, therefore, like the amnesiac hero of Memento, we need constant little reminders if we are to steer a rational course through life.
Coué declared that the mind could make whatever it thought into a reality — it could think itself into health, wealth, and happiness, or think itself into misery, sickness, and destitution, simply by repeating phrases to itself.
Epictetus told his students: “Land, wealth, reputation — philosophy promises none of these things.”8 Philosophers suggested it could bring you inner wealth — not external riches.
In fact, many of the greatest minds and wisest souls of our species died violent deaths — think of Pythagoras, Socrates, Seneca, Cicero, Hypatia, Jesus, Boethius, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. Philosophy can give you inner strength and control over yourself, but it can’t protect you from all the vicissitudes of the outside world.
“What you resist persists,”
The reason people practice philosophy is because they suspect that some of the beliefs they have been carrying around are not that wise, and not that conducive to their flourishing.
As the emperor Marcus Aurelius told himself: “Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in [wise] trains of thought.”12
When you control someone’s inner self-talk, you control their selves.
Accentuating the positive is itself a false system of belief, since there is no scientific truth to the statements that ‘Day by day in every way I’m getting better and better.’ In fact, this kind of Pollyannaism can be as pernicious as the negative claptrap which clients tell themselves to bring about neurotic conditions.”13
He was once asked which prisoners found captivity the hardest to endure. He replied: “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists.
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
In the United States, everyone tries to be so unique, so they’re scared of giving up the self for something collective.
YOU ARE WHO YOU IMITATE
The social psychologist Albert Bandura has called this “modeling.” He writes: “Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”
We are who we know. But even more than that, we are who we imitate.
All of us use other people as patterns to copy, or as standards to measure ourselves against. Louis, for example, naturally imitated the dominant male figures in his environment, who happened to be gangsters — and it cost him dearly. But this process does not have to be
He put Achilles’s motto above his tent — “Ever to be the best and far above all others” —
To exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and study
there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as an illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar Alexander, Scipio Cyrus.7
Alexander restrained himself because he “considered self-mastery a more kingly
thing than the conquest of his enemies.”
Perhaps the most important passion the ruler must learn to control is the passion for fame and popularity.
One thinks of Churchill, and how he steered the British public between excessive complacency and excessive despair before and during the Second World War, guided by what his biographer, Martin Gilbert, calls the “twin pillars” of his oratory: realism and vision.9
Philosophy gives rulers the “equipment,” as Plutarch puts it, that they need to rule: a knowledge of rhetoric, of history, of statecraft, and above all a knowledge of how to rule themselves and live a good life.
Plutarch’s political solution for his society, then, is for philosophers to train an elite of military and political heroes, who will reshape their society through the sheer force of their personalities. You don’t need a revolution, he suggests. You just need the right person in the right place at the right time.
To go on a pilgrimage is to make yourself vulnerable, to put yourself at the mercy of others.
You learn to accept the gift of others’ help, and to accept your own dependency.1
We’re not killing time, we’re making meaning. As
The good life is whatever works for you.
He suggests there are five different versions of happiness, which he calls PERMA: Positive emotion, or feeling good in an Epicurean sense; Engagement, or feeling absorbed in an activity; Relationships; Meaning, or feeling like you’re serving a worthwhile higher cause; and Achievement.21
we can know ourselves, we can change ourselves, we can make ourselves happier through rational philosophy. But they take these Socratic beliefs in quite different directions, with respect to our relationship to society and to God. These philosophies involve different value judgments that the individual must make for themselves. Science can “prove” that the core Socratic beliefs are, on the whole, true. So in that sense, Socratic ethics do seem to “fit” our nature, and perhaps governments could teach the basic Socratic techniques
I suggest they teach the various different ethical approaches, and highlight the differences and arguments between those approaches, rather than pouring them all into the same punchbowl and stirring them until they lose their edges, their differences, their arguments with each other. We need to empower people to consider the multiple approaches to the good life, and then to experiment, innovate, and decide for themselves.
we’re all weak, we’re all handicapped. We’re all fragile. And that’s okay. That’s part of being human. We learn to accept our own weakness and fragility, which is extremely difficult in today’s society, which puts such a great emphasis on
being competent, and efficacious, and strong, and self-sufficient.”
Marcus Aurelius says, as I remember it, ‘If there is a God, be comforted. If we’re just atoms, then you won’t feel anything anyway.’ If there is a God, I am sure he will understand the way I think, and why I think like I do.”
Death is, in fact, the end of the philosopher’s long searching after truth, the moment when his or her quest for God finally reaches a climax. Therefore, says Socrates, “Will he not depart with joy? Surely he will, my friend, if he is a true philosopher.”
To quote Montaigne: “We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to
borrow and to beg…[and yet] we need little doctrine to live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us, that this is in us, and the way to find it, and how to use it.”
“kingdom of heaven is within”
Marcus Aurelius’s injunction to “be like the cliff against which the waves break, but which stands firm.”
“the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Dionysus is great for a party, but he’s never there to pick up the bill.
