Aug 22 2008
Never look for the matter itself in one place and progress in another. [That is not progress.] If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will ([Greek: proairesis]) to exercise it and to improve it by labor, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; [...]
Aug 22 2008
I know this kind of a long one, and doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to blogging. So, I’ve divided it into two separate posts. It’s less cohesive this way, but Epictetus’s emphasis is stronger, more prominent.
In the first post, Epictetus discusses the nature of progress. One of my favorite lines from Alfred North Whitehead [...]
Aug 21 2008
One more before we take ‘er in for the night. Here is a hint of good old fashioned duality. There exists in every person the duality between the divinity of one’s soul and the materialism of one’s body. A theme running through most of philosophy’s history. Here, however, since Epictetus is a stoic, rather than [...]
Aug 21 2008
The following excerpt contains one of my favorite lines from the Discourses. “Only consider at what price you sell your own will: if for no other reason, at least for this, that you sell it not for a small sum.” There’s no escaping the complexity of influences we encounter every day—advertising, conversation, news media, print [...]
Aug 20 2008
—Of all the faculties (except that which I shall soon mention), you will find not one which is capable of contemplating itself, and, consequently, not capable either of approving or disapproving. How far does the grammatic art possess the [ability to contemplate]? As far as forming a judgment about what is written and spoken? And [...]
Aug 19 2008
One thing I’d hoped to accomplish with GIP was to publish a series of books I felt mirrored the concept and values behind the company. But, when we lost GIP, we lost the project, and with it most of the titles we’d accumulated. Rather than abandon the project entirely, I thought I might use my [...]