Werner asked:

After reading about ‘transcendental’ Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, others, I am still confused.

I am looking for a down to earth explanation and I would like to get examples of transcendental things or terms and why they are transcendental.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

I would like to ask you a counter question: Why read ‘about’ Kant, Husserl and Heidegger? Why don’t you read the philosophers themselves? After all, they didn’t purposely write books for other people to write ‘about’ them, but for readers in search of philosophy to read the originals!

A good reason for reading philosophy, rather than ‘about’ philosophy, is this: most philosophers are actually very good writers and express themselves quite clearly. Men like Hume, Bacon, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Plato, Augustinus etc. belong among the most brilliant writers of their language and literature. Even Kant writes better prose than most of his commentators. So let me encourage you to open his book and discover what he says himself, about transcendental philosophy:

‘I call all such cognitions ‘transcendental’ that are not concerned with objects, but with our capacity for the cognition of these objects, to the extent that the latter are supposed to be a priori possible. A system of such concepts would have the name ‘transcendental philosophy’.’

I can’t imagine anyone writing clearer than this.

If you’re a bit dubious about the ‘a priori’, it means, simply, that we humans presuppose objects to exist (they don’t suddenly come into existence when we look). So the issue is: How come we sense and perceive them, and how do we make concepts about them after perception? So you can see that ‘transcendental philosophy’ is a philosophy of mind, perception, reason and such matters; and of course the same applies to Husserl and Heidegger.

The passage I have quoted comes from the end of Kant’s Introduction to the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. If you have a mind for finding out what this is all about, I would recommend that this is what you should read first. By all means have a commentary to hand, to help you along. But don’t go hunting for ‘easy ways’. Anyone interested in these three philosophers is never going to find an easy way!

Answer by Tony Fahey

Wow Werner!, this is a mighty task to put to the panel and, taking into to consideration the breadth and complexity of the works of the three philosophers, something of a difficult task given the limited space this forum affords. I should add that if you have been trying to glean an understanding of ‘transcendental’ by reading through each of the above named thinkers works, I can understand why you are confused. That being said, in response to first part of your question, I would say that, for me, the ‘down to earth’ explanation is that the term ‘transcendental’ refers to that which exists in the mind prior to empirical experience. The second part is not so easily dealt with. However, I would say that whilst each of the above thinkers seems to have his own unique understanding of the term, in the following response I hope I can show that in each’s understanding of term there is a common thread.

For Kant, ‘transcendental’ means a priori or necessary experience. That is, experience that does not depend on outside influences – empirical experience. David Hume had maintained that it was only the force of habit that made us see the causal connection behind all natural processes. Kant refuted this argument: the law of causality, he held, is eternal and absolute: it is an attribute of human reason. Human reason, he said, perceives everything that happens as a matter of cause and effect. That is, Kant’s transcendental philosophy states that the law of causality is inherent in the human mind. He agreed with Hume that we cannot know with certainty what the world is like in itself, but we can know what it is like ‘for me’ – or for all human beings. We can never know things-in-themselves (noumena), said Kant, we can only know them as they appear to us (phenomena). However, before we experience ‘things’ we can know how they will be perceived by the mind – we know a priori.

The mind, says Kant, receives data of the phenomenal world through sensory perceptions. However, in order to understand this information these sensory perceptions must be processed by certain conditions inherent in the human mind. As well as the ‘intuitions’ space and time, Kant lists ten categories which were meant to define every possible form of prediction: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, and passivity. These concepts (or categories) were reorganised to consist of four types: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In short, everything we, as humans, experience we can be certain will be imposed within the a priori framework of the intuitions space and time, and subject to the law of causality – the law of cause and effect.

Thus, for Kant, the mind contains conditions that contribute to our understanding of the world. Everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and so on, happening in the phenomenal world occurs in space and time. However, we do not know that space and time is part of the phenomenal world; all we know is that they are part of the way in which we perceive the world. Time and space, he says, are irremovable spectacles through which we view the world. They are a priori forms of intuition that shape our sensory experience on the way to being processed into thought. Space and time are innate modes of perception that predetermine the way we think. It cannot be said that space and time exist in things themselves, things ‘out there’ in the world, rather they inherent intuitions through which we perceive and conceive our world. Time and space, says Kant, belong to the human condition. They are first and foremost modes of perception, not attributes of the physical world. Kant called this approach the Copernican Revolution in the problem of human knowledge. That is, it was just as radically different from earlier thinking as Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolved around the sun.

For Husserl meaning is neither in the mind, nor in the world alone, rather it is discovered by the a priori modes of intentionality. These intentional modes fall into three categories – perception, imagination, and signification. What this means is that intentionality is like a screen between consciousness and the world onto which objects and acts are projected; without the screen objects and acts would not exist. Intentionality, then is a conduit, a channel, between consciousness and phenomena. Consciousness itself cannot be grasped as itself because it is intentional: it is always directed towards that which is not consciousness: it is always looking away from itself. It is only by an analysis of intentionality that consciousness itself can be discovered. Thus, when we peel away the encrustations of preconditioning not only can we intuit the essence of things themselves but also the essence of consciousness – pure consciousness. To examine consciousness, we need to bracket out all objects and facts. What remains is ‘the transcendental ego’, which, for Husserl, is pure being – Absolute Being. It is important to realise that Husserl does not deny that the real world exists; rather that it is only realisable in virtue of the transcendental ego. Without pure consciousness, nothing is possible. Pure consciousness is before all acts and objects. It is only through pure consciousness that all other entities are known; and they are known as entities that appear in consciousness.

For Husserl, the ultimate truth is that all we can know for certain is that we have pure consciousness. All objects and acts that appear to consciousness must be treated with circumspection: they must be kept under constant review. Before feelings, imaginings, fears, doubts, and even thought itself, there is pure consciousness – the transcendental ego. Thus, while Husserl seems to echo Descartes, in effect he goes beyond the cogito. For Descartes the only thing we can know with any certainty is that we are thinking things – ‘I think, therefore I am’. For Husserl, it is more the case that ‘I am, therefore I think’. Pure consciousness can be grasped by thought, but it is not synonymous with thought. For Husserl, in order to think, first we must be: we must have consciousness.

Martin Heidegger was a student of Husserl and was expected to carry the phenomenological movement forward in the spirit of his former master. However, Heidegger chose to go his own way and caused great surprise in Germany when, in 1927, he published Being and Time. Heidegger’s ambition in Being and Time is to show what it means for a person to be – what is the meaning of Being? According to Heidegger we are not, as Husserl held, separate from the world – not something laid up in some realm to which the phenomenologist has some mysterious access, but are ourselves an integral part of the world; and our being cannot even be conceived of as other than in a world of some kind. For Heidegger, to be human, is to ask questions about Being. And it is in relation to his approach to human existence, or Dasein, (the German term for existence, but literally means ‘being-here’ or ‘being there’) that we encounter Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendental’. Whilst, in Being and Time, it may seem that Heidegger is keen to divorce himself from Husserl, it should be said that in his concept of Dasein he echoes both Kant and Husserl when, in his attempt to explain his concept of Dasein he says ‘we all have an understanding of being, even if we are not conscious of it’. Thus, in the same way that Kant argues that the mind possesses, a priori, the intuitions space and time and the various categories, and Husserl argues that pure consciousness or the ‘transcendental ego’ is inherent in the mind, so too does Heidegger make the case that there exists, a priori, an awareness of ‘being’ that is unique to human existence.

In finishing, I should add that the later Kant admitted that he regretted not including a concept of self – the ego – in his list of ‘transcendental’ categories.

Johnny asked:

I was wondering about a few of the basic tenets of Transcendentalism. As far as the Oversoul, or even Mind-Body Dualism, is there a particular philosophy which challenges the idea of a soul? Also, is Occam’s Razor really a good argument against the idea of a ‘God’ or higher being, or are there stronger arguments? And who should I be studying to get a strong basis for the argument of Altruism against Transcendentalism’s idea of individualism? My goal is to contrive as much information as possible to provide an alternative dissent to Transcendentalism.

Answer by Peter Jones

As someone new to this particular ‘ism’ I find myself unable to determine quite what the word ‘transcendentalism describes. This term seems to have been coined by opponents of various views held by a quite disparate group of philosophers. This group does at least seem to have had in common an appreciation of the Hindu scriptures, but this would make the term ‘transcendentalism’ inappropriate. I cannot comment on the basic tenets that define it.

In regard to which particular philosophies challenge the idea of an individual soul, there are probably more of these than there are philosophies that endorse it. Eastern philosophy generally rejects the idea. It is rejected by Hegel, Schopenhauer, Jung, Schroedinger and many other well known thinkers. Specific philosophies for which it is rejected would include Buddhism’s ‘Middle Way’ doctrine and, of course, atheism, materialism and others. For a precise and expert description of a philosophy that challenges the idea of an individual soul I would recommend Radhakrishnan’s The Philosophy of the Upanishads.

It seems to me that Occam’s Razor is a good argument against many of our ideas of God, When we explain a steam engine we do not need to invoke Him so we do not. If we can explain a phenomenon without invoking Him then why invoke Him? This is a very big ‘if’, however, and here is one problem with the principle of least hypothesis. We cannot know whether we require another hypothetical entity in our theory until we have completed the theory without requiring it. This is not a problem for steam engines, but in the case of the universe as a whole it is may be impossible to complete a theory without God in some form or other, and even if we do hypothesise God in some form or other it may still be impossible. We may need yet another hypothetical entity, or even two or three, or perhaps far fewer, or perhaps explanations of everything can never be complete by their very nature.

Are there are stronger arguments against God than the principle of least hypothesis? They would have to be addressed to quite specific definitions of ‘God’ and to quite specific instances of His supposed powers and properties, for otherwise their generality would render them ineffective. Each person may mean something different when they use this word ‘God’ and almost certainly they do. They may mean the bright shiny thing that rises every morning over the forest to which they occasionally sacrifice a virgin or two, or they may mean what your vicar or my priest means, or they may mean what the Sufi poet Rumi means, or what the biologist Dawkins means. Without knowing which God is our target no strong argument for or against would be possible. This is not to say that there either is or is not a way to define God such that there would be no strong argument against Him.

The next question appears a little odd to my eyes, for I struggle to see how there can be any opposition between altruism and individualism. The question of which of them is correct seems to be a clear example of a category error. If Thoreau, Emerson and the others took the Hindu vedas as a common inspiration then they must have been all for altruism and individualism, and also for selfishness and society. These would not be mutually exclusive categories for a philosophy of unity, as if we must choose between them, as the terms ‘nondualism’ and advaita imply when they refer to the Upanishadic teachings.

As for the final question, I doubt you will be able to find a good argument against Transcendentalism until it is defined more clearly than in any source I have yet found. It may be more a more practical plan to attack the ideas of people like Emerson and Thoreau directly without worrying about which ‘ism’ you have filed them under. It seems unlikely that they agreed about everything. Or better still attack the Upanishads rather than their interpreters.

Dana asked:

Is the nature of fundamentally understanding reality intrinsically illogical, and would this subsequently imply that reality itself is fundamentally illogical (since reality is defined by perception/understanding)?

Also, this would lead to many consequences, such as the inability for science, or logic, to ever refute God, since logic itself breaks down at the essence of existence, and therefore the rules by which we govern any means of defining what explanations may or may not be sensible.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

In all such arguments or questions, you must examine your own presuppositions – especially where they come from. In this case, the idea of logical entailment. It is absolutely compelling, but at some stage you might listen to the little whisper in your ear which suggests that you are privileging a human faculty with God-like prescience without any evidence other than what this same faculty adjudges to be ‘real’ and ‘illusory’, ‘illogical’ and ‘proved’.

It is a fact, after all, that we cannot describe the nature and performance of this faculty in terms other than presuppositions about a reality that is independent of human input. But this depends in turn on a conception to which this faculty must first give birth! And so we go round in circles.

So you can see that understanding is prior to logic. This is supported by human history as well. Prior to Aristotle, we did not have much of an idea of logical entailment; hence logical thinking was a product of deliberations on how chains of demonstrations must be linked in order to have the understanding giving its consent to the compelling intellectual force of a logical argument.

It seems, indeed, that our notions of reality and our effort to apply criteria of logic to it, emanate from the Greek idea of the world as a cosmos, which is an ‘ordered’ entity. The problem conjoint to this notion is that we then proceed to distinguish what the mind conceives from what the senses perceive. We seem to be happy enough to declare that sensory perception is not characterised by logic, and is therefore not entirely trustworthy.

Yet this argument falls down on a quite fundamental issue – actually two of them. The first is, that in order to have a standard by which to measure the amount of reality conveyed to us by the senses, we must first collate all the knowledge they confer on us and then take note of the exceptions. This is why, e.g. Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt is an ultimately silly exercise, and as you know he suppressed this priority of sensory before logical knowledge. The second issue is, that ‘reality bites’, and if you ignore this by declaring your senses to be unreliable, then you may pay the consequence of having much pain or even becoming extinct.

This answers the first two parts of your question.

But you may still have the last arrow of solipsism in your quiver. Lacking external reasons, can we still claim existence for reality? There are two further indefeasible arguments against this.

First, that our knowledge of the work of the senses (under logical criteria!) shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do not work autonomously by ‘creating’ an external reality and projecting the same into your mind as imagery. The sensory system is responsive to stimuli received from beyond the periphery of the body; and in birth, there is a massive over-production of sensory fibres for the purpose of eliminating those which have found nothing to respond to in the external world. Therefore you end up, at a later stage in life, with a system that has been ‘primed’ by the world to report reliably to you the conditions of existence in your world. Therefore it is logically compelling to accept the existence of an external world and that its constitution corresponds to the possibilities of interpretation and understanding that is built into into our perceptive apparatus. Again this has adapted to reality, since extinction awaits those organisms who get the ‘wrong’ message.

The second argument is, that ‘matter’ (i.e. chemical elements) has no sensory or perceptive equipment, therefore the condition we call ‘life’ in the only means to establishing existence as a reality. Without the possibility of sensing existence, there is no existence!

On to your further questions with their ‘absolutist’ dimension. If you can smell smoke from a fire, and then calibrate an instrument which cannot smell, but can be designed so as to detect the molecules that comprise smoke, you have proved something. Namely that perceptions, understanding, reason and logical entailment do have a leg to stand on. That they argue convincingly and in concert for existence. The only difference between your nose and your fire alarm is the ‘consciousness’ of your nose. But this consciousness, as mentioned, is the decisive criterion for existence. Even supposing that a fire alarm could come into existence by itself, it would not report fire, but only the presence of certain molecules in its vicinity. The logical connection between smoke, fire and existence has to be performed by consciousness.

Finally God. No, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. You should acquaint yourself with Kant on this issue, who solved this problem 200 years ago, though admittedly over the heads of millions of people who chose to disbelieve his proof. This is not logical behaviour; but as you know logic is too difficult in any case for many people.

The point (keeping it simple) is this: that all existents are forms of energy; but in your and my dimension these energies may be perceived in varying degrees of solidity. Thus to you a table top may be hard and impenetrable, a microbe however may crawl into the pores and right through it. This difference is covered by the term ‘phenomena’. We humans necessarily perceive phenomena and our sensory system must decide from their strength such questions as ‘can I walk through this wall or not?’ In other words, phenomena are species of vibration. But God, spirits, ghosts, as well as magic and sorcery do not fall into this class of existents. They do no ‘vibrate’. Accordingly they cannot be perceived. From which the logical conclusion of an either/or must be derived. Either, that they don’t exist (are impossible) or else that there are forms of energy or vibration which we cannot detect even with our most sensitive instruments.

It stands to reason under those circumstances that it is futile practically, theoretically and logically, to make claims for or against their existence. Some, like sorcerers, can be absolutely declared to be false conceptions since they are humans and cannot command the powers they are supposed to have. Ghosts because they project phenomena without a substrate, which is impossible. Gods and spirits? Well, you decide.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

I don’t understand any of the things you say, they paint pictures but what do they mean. How are we (or you) supposed to decide if they are true or false.

Here are two quotations from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. ‘Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.’ ‘How high the seas of language rise, lets get back to dry land’.

I would suggest that that you get a better understanding of logic by taking a course of study of symbolic logic i.e. propositional calculus, predicate calculus and the proofs of their consistency and completeness.

You talk about the inability of science or logic to refute God. Logic is about valid arguments, God isn’t an argument so it makes no sense to talk about refuting him.

Science studies and explains the physical world, science doesn’t refute things. God isn’t part of the physical world, scientists have nothing to say about God but then neither do physiotherapists.

Reality is neither logical or illogical (except in a metaphorical sense). People can be logical or illogical.

Mercy asked:

What are David Hume’s contributions to the debate on God, especially her/ his/ its attributes of first cause?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Religion holds that the world operates on cause and effect and that there must therefore be a First Cause, namely God. In Hume’s world view, causation is assumed but ultimately unknowable. We simply do not know there is a First Cause, or a place for God.

In his Natural History of Religion Hume argues that religious beliefs arise from Man’s propensity to attribute anthropomorphic attributes to unseen forces. In his Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion, he shows how the Argument for Design cannot survive careful application of the scientific standards.

According to Hume, God is a complex idea which we cobble together in our minds. Whilst he accepted that the degree of order evidenced by the universe suggests some kind of designing intelligence, he rejected the notion that this was proof of the existence God on the grounds that human reason was insufficient to provide such evidence.

Hume is generally believed to be an atheist, particularly given that his Dialogue concerning Natural Religion, notwithstanding its polite and careful ambiguity, was deemed to be powerfully anti-theistic. However, since he argued that the existence of God could neither be proved nor disproved, some philosophers, such as Jostein Gaarder, suggest that is more likely that was an agnostic. However, since Hume died without holding out any hope of an afterlife it seems there is no substance in this argument. Indeed, in his book, The Book of Dead Philosophers, Simon Critchley tells us that Hume, responding to arguments in favour of the immortality of the soul, said, ‘By what arguments or analogies can we prove any state of existence, which no one ever saw, and which no wise [no way] resembles any that was ever seen’. (2008, p.175)

Criss asked:

Why do people keep bearing children when life is so hard, ugly, and unfair?

It might sound depressive, but really, I rarely see people that enjoy their life and are happy they were born. most of them are only afraid to die and just go on… and keep struggling… keep suffering… and keep giving life…

Answer by Shaun Williamson

Well Criss it does seem as though you are a bit depressed and maybe seeing only the sad things in life. People have children because they have a very powerful instinct to have children. At the same time they also have a very powerful instinct to love, protect and care for their children.

Of course this doesn’t mean that all children are cared for and protected. Parents cannot protect their children against famine, disease or earthquakes but humans are not gods or saints and even if they do the best they can they may still fail.

Here is a poem from a British poet Christopher Logue. You have to try before you can succeed or fail. If you don’t try then maybe you don’t exist.

‘Be Not Too Hard’ by Christopher Logue

Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man
Be not too hard when he is sold and bought
For he must manage as best he can
Be not too hard when he gladly dies
Defending things he does not own
Be not too hard if he tells lies
And if his heart is sometimes like a stone
Be not too hard for soon he dies
Often no wiser than he began
Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man

Be not too hard for soon he dies
Often no wiser than he began
Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man
Nothing is given to man

Answer by Craig Skinner

A heartfelt plea.

And not the first. Consider:

Sophocles:

‘Never to have been born is best
But if we must see the light, the next best
Is quickly returning whence we came’

Heinrich Heine:

‘Sleep is good, death is better; but of course
The best would be never to have been born at all’

The old Jewish quip:

‘Life is terrible, it would have been better not to have been born.
Who is so lucky: not one in a hundred thousand’

Why then do we keep having children?

Explanation (how it comes about that we do this) is straightforward, justification (do we have good reasons for doing it) more problematic.

The explanation is that we are natural-born reproducers and optimists. These traits are inherited and have survival value. They are part of human nature. We are descendants of protohumans who were like this, whereas nonreproducers-cum-pessimists left no descendants. So in all societies we find unplanned and planned pregnancy, children being cherished, hopes for a better future invested in them, celebration of birth and mourning at death, rather than the reverse, and widespread overestimation of life’s quality (‘things could be worse’, ‘look on the bright side’, ‘chin up’ etc).

But can we justify having children and keeping the species going? Here are some attempts:

Religious justification:

Yes, life is a vale of tears, but it’s only a proving ground, and we (or some of us) will have a wonderful afterlife. If you believe this, no other justification is necessary.

Ethical justification:

There is an ethical necessity for good to exist, and this can only occur if there is a universe rather than absolutely nothing. Therefore, even if good must be accompanied by evil, it is better for these to exist than not to. Believing this is a bit like religious belief without gods, and without heaven to explain away evil.

Pragmatic justification:

Yes, life on Earth may well be a fluke in an unfeeling universe, it’s absurd, but let’s enjoy it if we can, and have children who can do likewise.

I don’t go, myself, for the religious or ethical justifications. I favour the pragmatic, but recognize that this may be no more than a ‘habit of the mind’, the phrase Hume uses when noting that philosophically we may be properly sceptical of the existence of the external world, of a persisting self, and of a link between cause and effect, but when we leave the study and join everyday life we all believe these things exist and act accordingly.

Note that even if it would have been better for me never to have existed, it doesn’t follow, now that I do exist, that it would be best to commit suicide. Not bringing a person into existence, and ending the life of an existing person, are two different things. A nonexistent person has no interests, no rights, no agenda, whereas an existent one has and usually has an interest in continuing to live.

In addition to the argument from the manifest suffering of most lives, there is another argument for nonexistence being better than existence, namely the Asymmetry Argument. It goes like this. Nonexistence prevents both suffering and joy. But, whereas this prevention of suffering is a good thing FULL STOP, the prevention of joy is not a bad thing because there is nobody who is deprived of it.

David Benatar’s Better Never To Have Been (OUP 2009) argues at length for existence always being a harm, procreation always wrong, failure to abort always wrong, and extinction of humanity (and other sentient life) desirable. Critics, rather than countering his arguments, mostly dismiss his conclusions as absurd, or misunderstand him as favouring mass suicide (rather than planned extinction), or misrepresent him as favouring selective abortion or euthanasia for the disabled. Although the conclusions seem grim, the book is engaging.

As for extinction, I doubt that planning for it well ever catch on, but unplanned extinction is a distinct long term possibility.

Bri asked:

What is a central aspect of Epictetus?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Bri, this is an interesting question about a philosopher of whom little is generally heard. What should be said is that, like many early philosophers, Epictetus (pronounce Epic-tee-tus) himself, as far as can be determined, wrote nothing down (or if he did nothing of his writings remain), and the little we do know of his philosophy is contained within by notes taken by his pupil Arrian.

Epictetus (c.55 AD–c.138 AD) was an exponent of Stoicism, one of the most popular philosophical systems in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. It was founded by Zeno of Citium about 300 BC and named after the Porch or Arcade (Stoa) in which Zeno taught. The major late Stoics were Seneca (c. 5 BC–65 AD), Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD). Stoic ethics defines virtue as living in accordance with logos. It is intrinsically connected with logic and physics, in that only a clear grasp of reality allows a person to be virtuous. Evil is defined negatively as not living in accordance with logos, that is, a kind of ignorance.

As to the issue of the central aspect of his philosophy, it seems to me that one can say that it closely follows Aristotle in that it focuses primarily on eudaemonia, ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’. However, again in the Aristotelian sense, this is not happiness of Utilitarianism, which closely associated with pleasure, but the happiness or flourishing one attains by achieving one’s true goal or telos: one’s true raison d’etre.

Probably what should be said at the outset is that philosophy, for Epictetus, was not just a theoretical discipline, but a way of life (a view which, I would argue, is shared by all true philosophers). According to Epictetus all external events are determined by fate, and thus beyond our control. However, whilst we cannot control external events, we can accept that which happens to us calmly and dispassionately, and, more importantly, we can control how we respond to these events. That is, for Epictetus, our emotions should only respond to things that we can control. Good and evil are exclusively involved in things under our control, not in external events. The events themselves are neither good nor evil, but these are in our view of events.

Individuals can, and should, take responsibility for their own of own actions which they can examine and control through rigorous discipline. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy (1991, p.271) tells us that, for Epictetus, every man is an actor in a play, in which God has assigned the parts; it is each person’s duty to perform his or her part worthily, whatever that part may be.

According to Epictetus, whilst individuals are prisoners in an earthly body, their minds are free. Like other Stoics, he also made a distinction between pleasure and happiness. For Epictetus, happiness actually arises out of a ‘freedom from passion and disturbance, [and] the sense that your affairs are in order’. Along with all other philosophers of the Hellenistic period, he saw moral philosophy as having the practical purpose of guiding people towards leading better lives. The aim was to live well, to secure for oneself eudaimonia (‘happiness’ or ‘a flourishing life’) (see ibid). Suffering, he claimed, arises from attempting to control that which is beyond our control, or by failing to control or put order on that which is within our power do so do.