Freedom

Hypomnemata

Exercising the gifts of autonomy and choice of attitude, I free myself from the human-made dogmas and reach escape velocity to dwell with the divine. My freedom grants me liberty.

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Others are free to introduce false value claims and narratives into discourse. I am free to agree or reject or even to ignore. Keep your ear and compass directed to the Cosmos at all times. And when others speak, you will either hear resonance or dissonance.

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And while your ear is listening to the Cosmos, and you hear what Fortune wishes to send your way, remind yourself you are free to love what Nature wants; or not. If not, then delve into the question: why? The answer will be within.

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Align your wants and needs with Nature.

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Will you be courageous enough to love what Nature loves? Will you be equal to the test She sends your way?

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Better to be tested than ignored.

Thoughts

One passage, in all my reading, which has stayed with me for quite some time (and one which I seem to refer often to) is from Long who observes the Stoics' faith in Nature can be "chilling" and "insensitive." He summarizes by stating the Stoics were "the only Greek philosophers who tried to find a rationale for everything within their concept of a perfect, all-embracing Nature" (see full quote and citation below in the Quotes section).

Is this a blind spot for me? Ought I to have the same faith in Nature as the Stoics? While it is not full resignation, the attitude does feel awfully close Christian faith and ultimate discipleship. Have I gone from one fundamentalist dogma to another? I'm not so sure.

I think the emphasis is on the attitude. I can attempt to see things and events from a Cosmic perspective, which will alleviate anxiety and fears. But I can also keep the tension between faith-in-Cosmos and exercising arete by making my own stamp. I can be an optimist and participate along with Nature, rather than fight against it. This would be in the same vein as "if Nature gives you lemons, make lemonade." Seneca said it differently, "misfortune is virtue's opportunity" (On Providence 4).

So, while I don't have absolute freedom of outcome, I do have freedom and liberty of attitude and a choice of options; this is 'up to me.'

Knowing my place in this massive Cosmos, and knowing Stoic perspective on it all, it is liberating to know where I ought to place my attention and limited mental resources. I can objectively look at events and use my reason to decide which appropriate moral virtue to apply and how to react. I can simply focus on being present in each moment and free myself from the burdens of the future and past.

Quotes

Practice being in need of only a few things, for this is the closest thing to god. For the gods need nothing. But, so that you may learn more exactly what is involved in having few needs ... reflect that children have more needs than adults, women than men, invalids than the healthy, and, in general, the inferior everywhere has more needs than the superior. Therefore the gods have need of nothing and those nearest to them have the fewest needs (Crates of Thebes, Sextus, Wilson, p. 87).

From Severus: love of family, love of truth, love of justice; to have come by his help to understand Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, Brutus; to have conceived the idea of a balanced constitution, a commonwealth based on equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy which values above all the liberty of the subject (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.14).

What liberty man has to do only what god will approve, and to welcome all that god assigns him in the course of nature! (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.11).

One who is making progress, having learned from the philosophers that desire has good things for its object, and aversion bad things, and having also learned that serenity and freedom from passion can be achieved only by one who is neither frustrated in his desires nor falls into what he wants to avoid—such a person, then, has rid himself of desire altogether and put it aside for the present, and feels aversion only towards those things that lie within the sphere of choice (Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.1).

That person is free who lives as he wishes, who can neither be constrained, nor hindered, nor compelled, whose motives are unimpeded, and who achieves his desires and doesn’t fall into what he wants to avoid. Who wishes, then, to live in error? ‘No one does.’ (Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.1).

Diogenes remarks accordingly somewhere that the only sure means to secure one’s freedom is to be happy to die, and he writes to the king of the Persians, ‘You cannot enslave the Athenian state,’ so he says, ‘any more than you can enslave the fishes.’ —‘How so? Can’t I capture them?’—‘If you do,’ he replies, ‘they’ll immediately leave you and be gone like fish. For as soon as you catch one of those, it dies; and if the Athenians come to die when they’re caught, what good will you gain from your armed force?’ This is the language of a free man who has examined the question in all seriousness and, as might be expected, has found the right answer. But if you look elsewhere than where it is to be found, why be surprised that you never find it? (Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.30-32).

The principle of all Stoicism is, moreover, precisely indifference to indifferent things. This means, in the first place, that the only value is moral good, which depends on our freedom, and that everything that does not depend on our freedom-poverty, wealth, sickness, and health-is neither good nor bad, and is therefore indifferent (Hadot, p. 71).

Thus, the Stoic delimits a center of autonomy-the soul, as opposed to the body; and a guiding principle (hegemonikon) as opposed to the rest of the soul. It is within this guiding principle that freedom and our true self are located. It is also there, and only there, that moral good and evil can be found, for the only moral good and evil are voluntary good and evil (Hadot, p. 84)

As Pope, following Shaftesbury, wrote: 'All discord, harmony not understood, all partial evil, universal good.' But all the facts cannot be known and therefore the supposed value of much that happens must be taken on trust. This optimistic attitude towards natural events, no matter how terrible they may seem, is one of the least palatable features of Stoicism. It is one thing to say that human vision is limited, unable to grasp the full cosmic perspective. But even at its noblest, in the writings of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, there is something chilling and insensitive about the Stoic's faith that all will turn out well in the end. They were the only Greek philosophers who tried to find a rationale for everything within their concept of a perfect, all-embracing Nature (Long, p. 170).

Only he [the wise man] is free, but the inferior are slaves. For freedom is the power of autonomous action, but slavery is the lack of autonomous action. There is also a different slavery which consists in subordination, and a third consisting in possession as well as subordination; this last is contrasted with despotism, which is also a morally inferior state. Besides being free the wise are also kings, since kingship is rule that is answerable to no one; and this can occur only among the wise, as Chrysippus says in his work On Zeno's proper use of terminology. For he says that a ruler must have knowledge of what is good and bad, and that no inferior man has this. Likewise only the wise are holders of public offices, judges and orators, whereas no inferior man is (Diogenes Laertius, LS, 67 M).

Surely it is worth mentioning Zeno's statement that: 'Someone could sooner immerse a bladder filled with air than compel any virtuous man against his will to do anything he does not want.' For the soul which right reason has braced with firm doctrines is unyielding and invincible (Philo, LS, 67 N).

Our minds are fragments of the divine mind, and by lining up our own impulses with the pre-ordained good we can achieve individual goodness, and the only true freedom (LS, p. 394).

It is philosophy alone which can cure us by its remedy of reason which teaches how to live in accord with nature so that we may develop the excellences which are peculiar to a human being. Of these virtues, prudence or understanding will enable a person to· make correct judgments concerning all the phenomena which touch his life. By means of it he will realize that virtue is the only good and vice the only evil, that everything else is indifferent. Hence he will raise himself above all indifferent things and achieve inner freedom. Understanding the good, he will, of course, avoid all wrong and engage only in honorable action. Through temperance a man will so toughen his body and discipline his mind, that he will achieve mastery of himself. Both understanding and self-mastery are the means to the real end of philosophy which is to attain true happiness (Lutz, p. 28).

These goods, however, are indivisible, – I mean peace and liberty, – and they belong in their entirety to all men just as much as they belong to each individual (Seneca, Letter 73).

There await us, if ever we escape from these low dregs to that sublime and lofty height, peace of mind and, when all error has been driven out, perfect liberty. You ask what this freedom is? It means not fearing either men or gods; it means not craving wickedness or excess; it means possessing supreme power over oneself And it is a priceless good to be master of oneself (Seneca, Letter 75).

What then, you ask, is an evil? It is the yielding to those things which are called evils; it is the surrendering of one's liberty into their control, when really we ought to suffer all things in order to preserve this liberty. Liberty is lost unless we despise those things which put the yoke upon our necks (Seneca, Letter 85).

Citations and further reading

My commentary on Epictetus Discourses 4.1 - On Freedom

Aurelius, M., & Hammond, M. (2014). Meditations.

Epictetus, ., Hard, R., & Gill, C. (2014). Discourses, fragments, handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hadot, P., & Hadot, P. (2001). The inner citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press.

Long, A. A., & Sedley, D. N. (January 01, 1987). The Hellenistic Philosophers.

Long, A. A. (1986). Hellenistic philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Musonius, R. G., & Lutz, C. E. (1947). Musonius Rufus - "the Roman Socrates". New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ. Press.

Seneca, L. A., & Gummere, R. M. (1917). Ad Lucilium epistulae morales: London: Heinemann.

Sextus, ., & Wilson, W. T. (2012). The sentences of Sextus. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.