No More Learning

We nd the same ambiguity in Marcus Aurelius. Sometimes he tells us that we must conserve this inner divinity and preserve it om all con­ tamination, as ifit could be stained (II, 13, l; II, 17, 4; III, 12, l; III, 16, 3). Elsewhere, however, Marcus asserts that we must carry out the will of the daimon which God has given to us, as though we had to do with a reality which transcends us (III, 5, 2; V, 27).
In ct, however, such assertions do not mean that Marcus thinks of the daimon as something di erent om the intellect or the power of re ection. For instance, he says ofthe power ofre ection (III, 7, 4)-just as he says ofthe daimon-that we must take care all our lives "to preserve it om a de rmation which would not be tting r a being which thinks and lives in community with other human beings . "
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Everything becomes clear ifwe replace the word daimon by "reason. " On the one hand, reason r the Stoics is a part of universal divine Reason; it was given to us by the latter, and we must do what reason wishes. On the other hand, however, our reason may become corrupted, and we must there re take care to preserve it against every attack. This celestial gi is a agile one.
What, however, is the precise relationship between this daimon and the self? To be sure, it corresponds to the transcendent Norm, which, as we have seen, was equivalent to Reason. It also corresponds to the "Other" mentioned by Epictetus: a kind of inner voice which imposes itself upon us. Here, however, we come ce to ce with the paradox ofmoral li , r the self identi es itself with a transcendent Reason which is simulta­ neously above it and identical with it; it is a case of"Someone within me, more myself than mysel£ "18 As Plotinus19 said of the Intellect, by virtue ofwhich we lead a spiritual life: "It is a part ofourselves, and we ascend toward it. "
Although the selfmay thus raise itselfto a transcendent level, it is ve di cult r it to keep itselfthere. The gure ofthe daimon allows Marcus Aurelius to express, in religious terms, the absolute value ofmoral intent and the love ofmoral good. No value is superior to virtue and the inner daimon (III, 6, r-2), and everything else, compared to the mysteries which honor the eminent dignity ofthe inner daimon, is worthless petty­ mindedness (III, 6, 3).
There is something quite remarkable in this Stoic a rmation of the transcendence ofthe realm ofmoral intent, compared to all other reality. It could be compared to the distinction between the three orders which we nd in Pascal: the order ofthe " esh"; that ofthe "spirit"; and that of the "will. "20 Above all, it can be compared to Pascal's distinction be­ tween the triad of "bodies," "spirits," and "charity. " Each order tran­ scends the others to an in nite degree:21
One little thought could not be made to arise om all bodies taken together, r this is impossible and they are ofdi erent orders. One single movement of true charity could not be derived om all bodies and spirits; r that is impossible. It is of another order, and is supernatural.
In Pascal, this idea is intended to allow us to understand that Jesus Christ has neither the splendor of physical grandeur, nor that of intellectual genius. There is nothing more simple than He, and yet more hidden. His
The Discipline ofAssent 125
grandeur is of another order. Similarly, r the Stoics, the order of good will and moral intent in nitely transcends the order of thought and of theoretical discourse, as well as that ofphysical magnitude. What makes humankind equal to God is reason, when it chooses moral good.
"Eve thing is a matter ofjudgment"
The discipline of assent, then, orders us to consent only to comprehen­ sive representations, and it represents logic as the latter is lived and put into practice. It might there re appear that this discipline is exercised only in a limited and determinate area-the rectitude of our inner dis­ course-and that it does not interfere with the other areas of exercise, namely those of desire and of action.
In ct, however, this is by no means the case. In the rst place, the discipline of assent is not exercised only with regard to inner discourse, but also with regard to outer discourse. In other words, part ofit consists in not lying, either to oneselfor to others. It is r this reason that Marcus calls the virtue which corresponds to this discipline "truth" (IX, I, 2). Above all, however, as we have seen throughout this chapter, there is a sense in which the discipline ofassent embraces all the other disciplines, which can only be practiced through the perpetual recti cation of our inner discourse-that is, what we say to ourselves about things. On the one hand, the discipline of assent is the same thing as the criticism of our value-judgments, and to practice it presupposes that we accept a nda­ mental Stoic principle of action: that the only good is moral good, and the only evil is moral evil. On the other hand, practicing the disciplines of desire and of action consists essentially in recti ing the judgments which we bring to bear upon things. Leaving aside doctrinal re nements and quarrels within the school, we can say that r the Stoics in general, desire and impulses to action are essentially acts ofassent. 22 It is no doubt true that their notion implies that of "movement-toward," but this movement is inseparable om our inner adherence to a speci c judg­ ment or discourse which is uttered about things.
Thus, we can say that, r Marcus, "everything is a matter ofvalue­ judgments. " This does not imply any kind ofsubjectivism or skepticism, but is the simple application ofwhat we could call Stoic "intellectual­ ism. " Inherited om Socratism, this doctrine proclaims that all virtue is a kind ofknowledge,23 and that all vice is ignorance. Whatever the precise meaning ofthis Socratic doctrine may have been, it is clear that it is not a question of theoretical or abstract knowledge and ignorance, but of a
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knowledge and a non-knowing which engage the individual. The kind of knowledge at issue does not have to do with judgments of existence, but with value-judgments, which bring into question one's entire way of living. This nuance is conveyed well by the term "realize. " A person who commits a ult does not "realize" that his action is bad. He thinks it is good, by means of a lse value-judgment. A good man, by contrast, "realizes" that moral good is the only good, which is the same as to say that he understands the kind of li to which his value-judgment com­ mits him. There is implied within this doctrine the idea that every person has a natural desire r the good, and that he can only il to achieve it by being mistaken about the nature of the good. As Rene Schaerer24 has correctly observed, this is the postulate upon which Socratic and Platonic dialectics are based: "No discussion is possible ifone's adversary re ses to admit that good-in one rm or another-is better than evil. "
It is om the viewpoint of this "intellectualism" that we can say that "no one is evil voluntarily"; r the apparently evil person, although he naturally desires the good, is simply mistaken by the value-judgment he brings to bear upon the nature of the good. As Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius both say, llowing Plato: "each soul is deprived of the truth involuntarily. "
Epictetus elsewhere gives rce l expression to this doctrine (II, 26):
All errors imply a contradiction, r since he who errs does not wish to err, but to succeed, it is obvious that he is not doing what he wishes. What does the thiefwant to do? That which is pro table to him. If there re, the is a harm l thing r him, then he is not doing what he wishes. Now contradiction is, r every rational soul, naturally abhorrent. So long as the soul is not aware that it is in­ volved in a contradiction, nothing prevents it om doing contra­ dictory things. Once it has become aware, however, it is absolutely necessary that it desist om contradiction and ee, just as in the case of error. He who notices his error is obliged by harsh necessity to renounce it; but as long as the error does not appear, he adheres to it as if it were the truth. He who is able to show each person the contradiction which is the cause of his error, and to make clear to him in what sense he is not doing what he wants, and is doing what he does not want, is there re a skilled talker, and knows how to re te and persuade at the same time. Indeed, if a person can be shown this, then he will retreat of his own accord. As long as you do not show this, however, do not be surprised if he persists in his
The Discipline ofAssent 127
error, r he does what he does because he believes it is a good action. Socrates was ll of con dence in his ability to do this, and that is why he used to say: " I don't usually quote authorities to back up what I say, but am always satis ed with my interlocutor. It is he whose vote I take, and him I call rth as a witness, and he alone replaces all the others r me. " For he knew that once the rational soul is set in motion, like a scale, it is going to tip whether people want it to or not. Point out a contradiction to the guiding principle, and it will give it up. Ifyou do not, then it is yourselfyou should accuse, rather than the person you cannot persuade.
"Everything is a matter ofvalue-judgment," says Marcus (II, I 5; XII, 26, 2), whether the subject is the discipline ofassent, the discipline of desire, or that of action. Can the last two, then, be reduced to the rst? The descriptions given by Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus incline us to think that they apply to di erent domains, in accordance with the vari­ ous relationships with reality into which we enter. My relationship to universal Nature and the cosmos is the subject ofthe discipline ofdesire; my relationship to human nature is that of the discipline of action; and my relationship with myself-inso r as I am a power of assent-is the domain of the discipline of assent. Nevertheless, it is the same method which is used in the three disciplines. It is always a matter of examining and criticizing the judgments which I bring to bear, either on the events which happen to me, or on the actions which I want to undertake. From this point ofview, as Emile Brehier has said, "logic penetrates the whole of our conduct. "25
7
THE DISCIPLINE OF DESIRE, OR AMOR FATI
Discipline ofdesire and discipline ofthe impulses
The ancient Stoics distinguished two main nctions ofthe guiding prin­ ciple: assent, which is concerned with the areas of representation and knowledge, and active impulse orme) or the will, which is concerned with the area ofthe motor nctions, or ofthe movement toward objects which is caused by our representations. 1 After them, Epictetus and Mar­ cus Aurelius are the only Stoic thinkers who distinguish not two, but three nctions: assent, desire, and active impulse, to which the three disciplines of assent, desire, and impulse correspond. It is interesting to note that we nd in Marcus Aurelius a systematic description of reality, which justi es this opposition between desire and impulse in a way that is much more precise than anything to be und in the sayings of Epictetus as reported by Arrian.
Desire and active impulse represent a reduplication of the notion of the will. Desire is, as it were, an ine ective will, whereas active impulse or tendency is will which produces an action. Desire is related to a ectiv­ ity, while tendency is related to the motor nctions. Desire is situated in the area of what we feel-pleasure and pain-and of what we wish to feel: it is the domain of passion, in the double sense of a state of the soul and of passivity with regard to an external rce which imposes itself upon us. Tendency, by contrast, is situated in the domain of what we want or do not want to do. It is the domain of action and initiative, and implies the idea ofa rce within us which wants to exercise itself
For Marcus, desire and aversion presuppose passivity. They are pro­ voked by external events, which are themselves the product of a cause which is exte al to us; the tendency to act or not to act, by contrast, is the e ect of that cause which is within us (IX, 3 r ) . For Marcus, these two causes correspond respectively to common and universal Nature, on the one hand, and to our nature, on the other (XII, 32, 3):
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Don't imagine that anything is important except that you act as your own nature leads you, and that you su er as common Nature ordains.
Elsewhere, Marcus writes (y, 25):
At this moment, I have what common Nature wants me to have in this moment, and I'm doing what my own nature wants me to be doing at this moment.
And again (yl, 58):
No one is going to stop you om living according to the reason of your own nature, and nothing will happen to you contrary to the reason of common Nature.
By opposing external and internal causes, common Nature and one's own nature, Marcus provides an ontological undation r the disci­ plines of desire and of impulse. The rmer's object is my relationship with the immense, inexorable, and imperturbable course ofNature, with its ceaseless ux ofevents. At every instant, I encounter the event which has been reserved r me by Destiny; that is, in the last analysis, the unique, universal, and common Cause of all things. The discipline of desire will there re consist in re sing to desire anything other than what is willed by the Nature ofthe All.
The obj ect of the second discipline-that of active impulses and the will-is the way in which my own minuscule causality inserts itself within the causality of the world. In other words, this discipline consists in wanting to do that which my own nature wants me to do.
We saw earlier that the discipline of assent constitutes, as it were, the ndamental method of the other two disciplines, since both desire and impulse depend on the assent which we either give to, or withhold om, our representations.
If this is the case, and the discipline of assent is somehow implied by the two others, then one can say that the practice ofthe philosophical li can be summed up in the two disciplines of desire and the active will (Marcus Aurelius, XI, 13, 4):
What evil can there be r you, ifyou do that which, in this present moment, is appropriate to your nature;
and if you accept that which, in this present moment, comes at the moment which is opportune r the Nature efthe All?
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What precisely is meant by these two natures? "My" nature is not my particular individual character, but my nature as a human being and my reason, which I have in common with all human beings. Thus, it corre­ sponds to that transcendent selfwhich we have seen in the context ofthe discipline of assent: that divine principle or daimon which is within us 0/, IO, 6):
Nothing will happen to me which is not in accordance with the Nature of the Whole, and it is possible r me to do nothing which is contrary to mygod and my daimon.
"My" nature and the common Nature are not opposed, nor external to each other, r "my" nature and "my" reason are nothing other than an emanation om universal Reason and universal Nature, which are immanent in all things. Thus, these two natures are identical (VII, 55, 1):
Keep looking straight ahead, in order to see where nature is leading you; both the nature ofthe All, by means ofthe events which happen to you, and your own nature, by means ofthat which you must do.
These ideas go back to the Old Stoa, and can be traced at least as r back as Chrysippus. 2 While de ning the moral goal as life in con rmity with nature, Chrysippus speci ed that he understood by this term both universal Nature and that nature which is peculiar to humankind. The identity between "nature" hysis) and "reason" �ogos) is, moreover, attested throughout the Stoic tradition. 3 The ct that these two terms are identical means that the wo d, together with all beings, is produced by a process of growth (in a sense, this is the meaning of the word physis), which has within itself its own method, rational law of cause and e ect, and organization (this is the meaning of the word logos) . Human beings, as rational animals, live according to nature when they live according to that inner law which is reason.
We constantly return to the ndamental intuition of Stoicism: self­ coherence, which is at the same time the law which generates reality and that which regulates human thought and conduct. The two disciplines of desire and impulse thus consist, in the last analysis, in remaining coherent with oneself; and this is the same thing as remaining coherent with the Whole of which we are only a part (IV, 29, 2) :
He who ees the reason ofthe human community is a gitive. . . . He who separates and distances himself om the Reason of com-
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man Nature, and complains about what happens to him, is an abscess upon the world . . . He who splits o his own particular soul om the soul of other rational beings is like an amputated limb of the city, r the soul is one.
By means ofthe discipline ofdesire, we are to desire only that which is use l to the constituted by the world, because that is what universal Reason wants. By means of the disciplines of the will and of our im­ pulses, we must want only that which serves the Whole constituted by the human city, because that is what is wanted by right reason, which is common to humankind.
Circumscribing the present
As the reader has perhaps already noticed, what characterizes the presen­ tation ofthe three exercise-themes in Marcus Aurelius, and di erentiates it considerably om the analogous expositions und in the sayings of Epictetus as written down by Arrian, is the insistence with which Marcus emphasizes that these exercises are concerned with the present. In the case of the discipline of assent, they are concerned with our present representations. In the discipline of desire, these exercises are directed toward the present event; and in the discipline of active impulse what counts are our present actions. We have already seen that the exercise intended to delimit and circumscribe the self was, simultaneously and indissolubly, an e ort to concentrate upon the present.
This process of delimiting the present is entirely analogous to the process by means ofwhich we hold st to the cts and to reality in our objective and adequate representations, and re se to add value-judg­ ments to them. There is, a er all, a sense in which the value-judgments which trouble us are always related either to the past or to the ture. We become agitated about the consequences which a present event-or even something that happened long ago-may have r us in the ture; or else we are a aid ofsome ture event. In any case, instead ofsticking exclusively to what is happening right here and now, our representations constantly over ow toward the past and the ture-in other words, toward something which does not depend on us, and is there re indif­ rent (VI, 32, 2):
Everything other than its own activity is indi erent to the culty of re ection (dianoia). Everything that is its own activity, however, is within its power. Moreover, even among these latter activities, the
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re ective culty concerns itself only about the present; r even its past or ture activities are now indi erent to it.
Only the present is within our power, simply because the only thing that we live is the present moment (II, 14; III, ro, r ; XII, 26, 2). Becom­ ing aware of the present means becoming aware of our eedom.
For the present is real and has value only ifwe become aware ofit; that is to say, if we delimit it by distinguishing the present action or event om the past and om the ture. We must there re recognize that our real lives are limited to a minuscule point which, by the intermediary of the present event or action, places us in constant contact-whether ac­ tively or passively-with the overall movement of the universe. "To circumscribe that which is lived in the present" means simultaneously to isolate oneselfwith regard to the past and to the ture, and to recognize our pumness.
The delimitation of the present has two principal aspects. On the one hand, its goal is to make di culties and hardships bearable, by reducing them to a succession of brief instants. On the other, it is a matter of increasing the attention we bring to bear upon our actions, as well as the consent which we grant to the events that happen to us. These two aspects can, moreover, be reduced to one ndamental attitude, which consists, as we can already glimpse, in trans rming our way of seeing things, and our relationship to time.
The rst of these aspects appears very clearly in the llowing passage (VIII, 36):
Don't trouble yourselfby representing to yourselfthe totality oflife in advance. Don't try to go over in your mind all the pain l hardships, in all their varying intensity and number, which might possibly happen. Rather, when each of them occurs, ask yoursel "What is there about this situation that is unbearable or intoler­ able? ", r you will be ashamed if you answer a rmatively. In addition, remind yourself that it is not the present, nor the past, which weighs upon you, but always the present; and this present will seem smaller to you if you circumscribe it by de ning and isolating it, and if you make your re ective culty ashamed at the ct that it cannot put up with such a small, isolated little matter.
We always encounter the same method of the criticism of repre­ sentations and value-judgments, which consists in tearing away om
The Discipline ofDesire 1 3 3
things their lse appearance-which is what ightens us-and in de n­ ing them adequately, without mixing in any representations which are alien to the initial, objective representation we have of them. This is what I have ca ed the method of physical de nition. For Marcus, it consists not only in reducing a given reality to what it is, but also in decomposing it into its parts, in order to discover that it is only an assembly ofits parts, and nothing else. No object can make us lose our mastery over ourselves, ifwe submit it to this method ofdivision (XI, 2):
A seductive melody . . . you can despise it ifyou divide it into each ofits sounds, and ifyou ask yourselfifyou are lesser than each one of them taken separately; if you are, you would be lled with shame. The same thing will happen ifyou repeat this procedure in the case of the dance, by decomposing it into each movement or each gure. . . . In general, then, and with the exception ofvirtue and its e ects, remember to head as quickly as you can r the parts of a process, in order, by dividing them, to get to the point where you have contempt r them. Transpose this method, moreover, to life in its entirety.
Either because of his reading of Marcus Aurelius, or as a result of a personal experience, Anatole France wrote something similar:4
My mother used to say that when you went over them one by one, there was nothing extraordinary about Mme. Gance's atures. Every time my mother expressed this opinion, however, my ther used to shake his head in disbelief No doubt, my worthy ther was doing the same thing I was: he wasn't going over Mme. Gance's features one by one; and whatever they may have been like m detail, their total e ect was charming.
In any case, the reader will not have iled to notice Marcus' conclud­ ing remark: "Transpose this method to life in its entirety. " Here we recognize the methods of de nition and delimitation of the present instant, which I have just discussed. We must not, says Marcus, lose our self-control because of a song or a dance, since these things can ulti­ mately be resolved into a series ofnotes or movements which are noth­ ing but so many successive instants. Similarly, we must not let ourselves become discouraged by the obal representation of the whole of life­ that is, of the hardships and di culties which await us. Like a song or
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a dance, our lives are divisible into smaller units, and consist only ofsuch units. In order to execute a song or a dance step, we need to perform each one ofthese units in succession. Li , too, consists only ofa series of such instants which we live in succession, and the better we are able to isolate each one and de ne it precisely, the better we shall be able to gain control over the entire series.
The other intention ofthe exercise ofde ning the present is to inten­ si the attention we bring to bear upon what we are doing or experienc­ ing. Here, we are no longer concerned with diminishing hardships or su ering; on the contrary, our goal is to exalt the consciousness of our existence and our eedom. Marcus does not expand upon this theme, but we can sense it in the insistence with which he returns to the necessity of concentrating upon our present representations, our present actions, and the present event, as well as the necessity of avoiding worry aboutthepastorthe ture(XII,r, r-2):
the happiness you are seeking by such long, roundabout ways: you can have it right now. . . . I mean, ifyou leave all ofthe past behind you, if you abandon the ture to providence, and if you arrange the present in accordance with piety andjustice.
It should be pointed out here that, r Marcus, "piety" represents that discipline of desire which makes us consent "piously" to the divine will, as the latter is made manifest in events. Likewise, "justice" corresponds to the discipline of action, which makes us act in the service of the human community.
Marcus repeats the same exhortation elsewhere (XII, 3 , 4) :
If you apply yourself to living only that which you are living-in other words, the present-then you can live the rest of your life until your death in peace, benevolence, and serenity.
What is required is that we dedicate ourselves, completely and whole­ heartedly, to what we are in the process of doing at a given instant, without worrying about either the past or the ture (VI, 7):
Take joy and repose in one thing only: to pass om one action accomplished in the service of the community to another action accomplished in the service ofthe community; all this accompanied by the remembrance of God.
The Discipline ofDesire 135 There is also a feeling of urgency about this attitude, r death can
arriveatanymoment(II,5, 2):
Each oflife's actions must be performed as ifit were the last.
When we view things om the perspective ofdeath, it is impossible to let a sin e one of li 's instants pass by lightly. I like Marcus and the Stoics, we believe that the only good thing is moral action and a perfectly good and pure intent, then we must trans rm our way of thinking and of acting in this very instant. The thought of death confers seriousness, in nite value, and splendor to every present instant ofli . "To perform each oflife's actions as ifit were the last" means to live the present instant with such intensity and such love that, in a sense, an entire li time is contained and completed within it.
Most people are not alive, because they do not live in the present, but are always outside of themselves, alienated, and dragged backwards and rwards by the past and by the present. They do not know that the present is the only point at which they are truly themselves and ee. The present is the only point which, thanks to our action and our conscious­ ness, gives us access to the totality ofthe wo d.
In order to lly comprehend Marcus' attitude toward the present, we must recall the Stoic de nition ofthe present, as it is given in a summary of Stoic philosophy:5
Just as the entire void is in nite in every direction, so all of time is in nite in both directions. Both the past and the ture are in nite. He [i. e. , Chrysippus] states very clearly that, in general, time is never present, r since that which is continuous is divisible ad in nitum, then in accordance with this division all of time is also divisible ad in nitum. There re, there is no present time, in the proper sense ofthe term; rather, it is spoken ofin an extended sense (kata platos). Chrysippus says that only the present "actually be­ longs" yparchein) [to a subject]; whereas the past and the ture are realized yphestanai), but "do not at all belong actually [to a sub­ ject]," just as it is said that only those predicates which really occur "actually belong. " For instance, "walking" belongs to me actually when I am walking, but does not belong to me actually when I am lying or sitting down . . .
Here we are ced with two diametrically opposed conceptions ofthe present: the rst considers the present as the limit between the past and
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the ture, within a time which is continuous, and hence in nitely divisible. From this quasi-mathematical point of view, the present does not exist. According to the second conception, the present is de ned in relation to the human consciousness which perceives it, as well as to the unity of the intention and attention which I bring to bear upon it. It is, on this analysis, that which I am currently doing, expressing, and feeling. From this point of view, the present does have a certain duration or "thickness" which admits ofgreater or lesser degrees (kata platos). In this sense, the Stoic de nition of the present is entirely analogous to that of Henri Bergson, who in Pensee et le mouvant drew a distinction be­ tween the present as a mathematical instant, which is nothing but a pure abstraction, and that present which has a certain thickness or duration,
which is more or less de ned and delimited by my attention. 6
In attempting to understand the opposition introduced by Chrysippus between, on the one hand, the present, and on the other the past and the ture, the reader will no doubt have been willing to grant that the present is "that which currently belongs to me," but may have been quite astonished to read that the past and the ture "are realized.
" Without entering into Chrysippus' technical re nements, which already seemed exaggerated to the writers of antiquity, one can say in response that what is important in the passage discussed above is not so much the opposition between the two Greek terms which Chrysippus chose to use-hyparchein and hyphestanai, elsewhere hyphestekenai, both of which mean "to exist, " "to be real"-but rather their di erence of tense. The word hyparchein, when used with relation to the present, means "to be real qua current process"; whereas the word hyphestanai, used with regard to the past and the ture, means "to be real qua something determined and de nitive. " The rmer has an inchoative and durative rce: it denotes that which is happening right at this moment. The latter, by contrast, has a de nitive value. The reader may, moreover, be willing to
grant that the past has a de nitive value. But the ture?
Here we must recall that, r the Stoics, the ture was just as much determined as the past. 7 For Destiny, there is neither ture nor past, but everything is determined and de nite. 8 Chrysippus chose the verb hy­ parchein because it was a technical term of logic, which Aristotle e­ quently used to designate the inherence ofan accident or an attribute in a subject; thus it is a word which denotes a relationship to a subject. Walking is "present"-that is, it belongs to me currently-when I am walking. The past and the ture, by contrast, do not currently belong to me. Even if I think about them, they are independent of my initiative and do not depend on me. There re, the present has reality only in
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relation to my consciousness, thought, initiative, and eedom. It is these which ve it a kind ofthickness and duration, which in tum is linked to a series of unities: of the meaning of the discourse which I utter, of my moral intention, and ofthe intensity ofmy attention.
When Marcus speaks of the present, he is always talking about this durative present, which has a kind of thickness. Clearly, it is within this present that I situate the representation which I am having at this mo­ ment, the desire I am feeling at this moment, and the action which, at this moment, I am performing. It is also this "thick" present, however, which I can lessen by circumscribing and delimiting it, in order to make it more bearable. Such a "shrinkage" of the present does not imply, as Goldschmidt thought,9 that the lived present would then be reduced to a mathematical, in nitely divisible instant. Goldschmidt thought he could percieve two attitudes toward the present in Marcus: one which de­ nounced the unreality of the present instant, and another which be­ stowed reality upon the present instant via the initiative of a moral agent. On the contrary: we have seen how Marcus compared life to songs and to dance. Songs and dance are made up of units-notes and move­ ments-which do have a certain thickness, however slight it may be. Now, a succession of unreal entities can never be put together so as to give rise to a dance, a song, or a life. Moreover, when Marcus speaks of the present in terms of a point within in nity, we can tell om the context that he is still talking about a lived present, which has a certain thickness (VI, 36, r):
Asia and Europe are comers ofthe world. The sea is a drop ofthe world. Athas is a lump of earth, and all present time is a point within in nity. Everything is tiny and unstable, and everything vanishes (in immensity) .
Here, Marcus is not a rming the unreality of Asia, of the sea, or of Mount Athas, and hence not of the present, either. Rather, he is a rming-in a very scienti c way, so to speak-their relative smallness within the immensity ofthe Whole, and not their nonexistence. 10 Once again, we are dealing with the method of"physical" de nition.
Events, the present, and cosmic consciousness
According to Epictetus, the goal of the discipline of desire was that we not be ustrated in our desires, nor fall into that which we had been trying to avoid. In order to realize this goal, we had to desire only that
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which depends upon us-that is, the moral good-and ee only om that which depends on us: in this case, moral evil. That which does not depend on us is the realm ofthe indi erent: we must not desire it, but we must not ee om it either, r ifwe do we risk " lling into what we are trying to avoid. " Epictetus, we noted, linked this attitude to our consent to Destiny.
Marcus Aurelius takes up this doctrine point r point, yet in his writings its implications and its consequences appear more clearly and explicitly. Above all, the discipline of desire in Marcus is related rst and remost to the way in which we are to greet the events which result om the overall movement of universal Nature, which are produced by what Marcus calls the "exterior cause" (VIII, 7):
Rational nature (that is, the nature peculiar to human beings) l­ lows the path which is appropriate to it . . . if it has desires and aversions only r that which depends upon us, and ifit greets with
joy all that common Nature allots to it.
What is thus allotted to human nature is nothing other than the events which happen to it (III, 16, 3):
The proper characteristic of the good man is to love and to greet joy lly all those events which he encounters (ta sumbainonta), and
which are linked to him by Destiny.
We have already seen that, r the Stoics, what is present r me is that which is currently happening to me: in other words, not merely my current actions, but also the present event with which I am con onted. Here again, as in the case of the present in general, it is my thought and my attention which singles out om the ux of things that which has meaning r me; at which point my inner discourse will declare that such-and-such an event is happening to me. Moreover-whether I know it or not-the overall movement ofthe universe, set in motion by divine Reason, has brought it about that I have been destined, om all eternity, to encounter such-and-such an event. This is why I have trans­ lated the word sumbainon (etymologically "that which goes together [with] ") , which Marcus customarily uses to denote that which happens, by the phrase "the events which we encounter. " To be still more precise, one would have to translate this as "the event which adjusts itselfto us,"
The Discipline ofDesire 139 but such an expression cannot always be used. This is, however, precisely
the meaning which Marcus gives to the word sumbainon (V, 8 , 3 ) :
We say that events are tting to us (sumbainein), just as masons say that the square stones they use in walls or in pyramids " t each other" (sumbainein), when they are well-adapted to each other in a given combination.
The imagery of the construction of the edi ce of the universe is rein rced by that of weaving. The interweaving of the woof and the wa was a traditional, archaic image, linked to the gure ofthe Moirai, who, as early as Homer, spun the destiny of each human being. 11 The three Parcai, named Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, appear- rst in the Orphic Derveni papyrus,12 and then in Plato13 and the Stoics-as the mythical gures ofthe cosmic law which emanates om divine Reason. The llowing is a testimony to the Stoic doctrine:14
The Moirai (or "Parts") are so named because of the process of separation (diame smos) which they carry out: Clotho ("the spin­ ner"), Lachesis ("she who distributes the lots"), and Atropos ("the in exible one ") . Lachesis is so called because she distributes the lots which individuals have received according to justice; Atropos [gets her name] because the division of the parts is unchangeable in any ofits details, and is immutable since eternal time. Fina y, Clotho is so named because the distribution takes place in accordance with Destiny, and that which occurs reaches its end in con rmity with what she has spun.
Another testimony gives voice to approximately the same repre­ sentations:15
The Moirai get their name om the ct that they distribute and assign things to each one of us. . . . Chrysippus suggests that the number of the Moi i corresponds to the three times in which all things have their circular movement, and by means of which all things achieve their completion. Lachesis is so called because she attributes to each human being his or her destiny; Atropos is so called because of the immutable and unchanging character of the distribution; and Clotho is so called because ofthe ct that things
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are woven and linked together, and that they can travel only one path, which is perfectly well-ordered.
The "events which I encounter," and which "adjust themselves to me" have been woven together with me by Clotho, the gure ofDes­ tiny or universal Reason (IV, 3 4) :
Abandon yourself willingly to Clotho; let her weave you together with whatever event she pleases.
Marcus Aurelius is nd ofmentioning this interweaving:
This event which you are encountering . . . it happened to you; it was coordinated with you; and was in relation to you, since it was woven together with you, om as r back as the most ancient of causes (V, 8, 12).
So something has happened to you? Good! Every event that you encounter has been linked to you by Destiny, and has, since the beginning, been woven together with you om the l (IV, 26) .
Whatever happens to you has been prepared r you in advance om eternity, and the interweaving of causes has, since rever, woven together your substance and your encounter with this event (X, 5).
While this motif is strongly emphasized by Marcus, it is not absent om Epictetus' sayings, as recorded by Arrian (I, 12, 25):
Will you be an and unhappy with what Zeus has ordained? He de ned and ordained these things together with the Moirai, who were present at your birth and wove your destiny.
For the Stoics, events were predicates, as we saw in the case of"walk­ ing," which is present to me when "I am walking. " I then, an event happens to me, this means that it has been produced by the universal totality ofthe causes which constitute the cosmos. The relationship be­ tween myselfand such an event presupposes the entire universe, as well as the will of universal Reason. We shall have to examine later whether this will de nes the event in all its details, or merely gives it an initial
The Discipline ofDesire 141
impulse. For the moment, it is su cient to note that whether I am ill, or lose my child, or am the victim ofan accident, it is the entire cosmos which is implicated in the event.
This interconnection or interweaving-the mutual implication of things in all things-is one ofMarcus' vorite themes. For him, as r the Stoics in general, the cosmos is but a single living entity, endowed with a unique consciousness and will (IV, 40) :
How all things cooperate to produce everything that is produced; how everything is linked and wound up together
in order to rm a "sacred connection" (IV, 40; VI, 38; VII, 9).
Thus, each present moment, the event which I encounter within it, and my encounter with this event, imply and potentially contain all the movement of the universe. This notion is in agreement with the Stoic conception ofreality as total mixture, or the interpenetration of things within things. 16 Chrysippus used to speak ofa drop ofwine which rst becomes mixed with the entire sea, and thence is extended to the whole world. 17 Similar wo d-visions are not, moreover, out of date: Hubert Reeves, r example, speaks of E. Mach's notion according to which "the whole universe is mysteriously present in each place and at each instant of the world. "18 I am not trying to claim that such representations are based upon science; rather, they are based upon an original, nda­ ment , existential experience, which can be expressed in poetic rm, as
it is in these verses by Francis Thompson:
things
Near and r
Are linked to each other
In a hidden way
By an immortal power
So that you cannot pick a ower Without disturbing a star. 19
Here again, we encounter the ndamental intuition ofthe cohesion and coherence of reality with itself, an intuition which led the Stoics to perceive love of self and accord with oneself in each movement of a living being as much as in the movement ofthe universe as a whole, or in the perfection of the sage. This is what Marcus expresses in passages like the llowing (X, 2 1 ) :
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The Earth loves! She loves the rain! And the venerable Ether? I t loves too! The World, too, loves to produce that which must occur. And I say to the World: I, too, lov along with you. Don't we say: "such-and-such loves to happen"?
Everyday language, which could use the verb "to love" to signi "to be accustomed to," is here congruent with mythology, which gives us to understand, in its allegorical way, that it is characteristic of the to love itself What Marcus is alluding to here is the grandiose image ofthe hieros
gamos between the sky (or Ether) and the earth, such as it is described by Euripides:
The Earth loves! She loves the rain, when the waterless eld, sterile with dryness, needs moisture. The venerable Sky, too, when lled with rain, loves to fall upon the earth, by the power ofAphrodite. 20
This myth allows us to glimpse that such self-love is not the solitary, egoistic love of the Whole r itsel but rather the mutual love, within the Whole, ofthe parts r each other, ofthe parts r the Whole, and of the Whole r the parts. Between the parts and the Whole, there is a "harmony" or "co-respiration," which puts them in accord with one another. Everything that happens to the part is use l r the Whole, and everything that is "prescribed" r each part is, almost in the medical sense of the term, "prescribed" (V, 8) r the health of the Whole, and consequently r all the other parts as well.
The discipline of desire there re consists in replacing each event within the perspective of the Whole, and this is why it corresponds to the physical part of philosophy. To replace each event within the per­ spective of the Whole means to understand two things simultaneously: that I am encountering it, or that it is present to me, because it was destined r me by the Whole, but also that the Whole is present within it. Since such an event does not depend upon me, in itselfit is indi erent, and we might there re expect the Stoic to greet it with indi erence. Indi erence, however, does not mean coldness. On the contrary: since such an event is the expression ofthe love which the Whole has r itself, and since it is use l r and willed by the Whole, we too must want and love it. In this way, my will shall identi itself with the divine Will which has willed this event to happen. To be indi erent to indi erent things-that is, to things which do not depend on me-in ct means to make no di erence between them: it means to love them equally, just as Nature or the Whole produces them with equal love. It is the Whole
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which, through and by me, loves itself, and it is up to me not to destroy the cohesion of the Whole, by re sing to accept such-and-such an event.
Marcus describes this feeling of loving consent to the will of the Whole and identi cation with the divine will in terms of the need to " nd satis ction" in the events which happen to us. He writes that we must "greet them joyfully," "accept them with pleasure," "love" them and "wi " them. The Manual of Epictetus, as written by Arrian, ex­ pressed this same attitude in striking terms which encapsulate the entire
discipline ofdesire (chap. 8):
Do not seek r things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.
This entire attitude is admirably summed up in Marcus' prayer to the Wo d (IV, 23):
All that is in accord with you is in accord with me, 0 World! Nothing which occurs at the right time r you comes too soon or too late r me. that your seasons produce, 0 Nature, is uit r me. It is om you that all things come; all things are within you, and all things move toward you.
This brings us back to the theme of the present. A particular event is not predestined r me and accorded with me only because it is harmo­ nized with the World; rather, it is so because it occurs in this particular moment and no other. It occurs in accordance with the kairos ("right moment"), which, as the Greeks had always known, is unique. There­ re, that which is happening to me at this moment is happening at the right moment, in accordance with the necessary, methodical, and har­ monious un lding of all events, of which occur at their proper time and season.
To will the event that is happening at this moment, and in this present instant, is to will the entire universe which has brought it about.
Amor ti
Ihaveentitledthissection "amorJati. "MarcusAurelius,whowrotein Greek, obviously did not use these two Latin words; what is more, they are not, as r as I know, used by any Latin writer in antiquity. The phrase
144 THE INNER CITADEL
is Nietzsche's, and my intention in alluding to the love of Destiny of which Nietzsche speaks is to help us better to understand, by means of analogies and contrasts, the spiritual attitude which, in Marcus, corre­ sponds to the discipline ofdesire. Nietzsche writes, r example:
My rmula r what is great in mankind is amorJati: not to wish r anything other than that which is; whether behind, ahead, or r all eternity. Not just to put up with the inevitable-much less to hide it om onesel r all idealism is lying to oneself in the ce of the necessary-but to love it. 21
Everything that is necessary, when seen om above and om the perspective of the vast economy of the whole, is in itself equally use l. We must not only put up with it, but love it. . . . Amorfati: that is my innermost nature. 22
"To wish r nothing other than that which is": Marcus Aurelius could have said this, just as he could have concurred with the llowing:
The main question is not at all whether or not we are satis ed with ourselves, but whether, more generally, there is anything at all with which we are satis ed. Let us suppose we said Yes to one single instant: we have thereby said Yes not only to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing is su cient unto itself-neither in ourselves, nor among things-and i just one single time, our soul has vibrated and resonated with happiness, like a stretched cord, then it has taken all ofeternity to bring about that single event. And, at that unique instant of our Yes, all eternity was accepted, saved,
justi ed, and a rmed. 23
For Marcus, as r Epictetus, there is no link between this loving consent to the events which happen to us and the Stoic doctrine of the Eternal Retu . This doctrine asserted that the world repeats itself eter­ nally, r the rational Fire which spreads throughout the world is subject to a perpetual alternation ofdiastoles and systoles, which, in their succes­ sion, engender a series of periods all of which are unique, and during which the same events repeat themselves in a completely identical man­ ner. For the Stoics, the ideas of Providence and Destiny, together with the concepts of the complete inte enetration of all the parts of the wo d, and of the loving accord between the Whole and all its parts,
The Discipline ofDesire 1 45
were enough to justi that attitude ofloving acceptance in the ce of all that comes om Nature which constitutes the discipline of desire. Nietzsche, by contrast, links the love of Destiny to the myth of the Eternal Return. To love Destiny thus means to want that what I am doing in this moment, as well as the way in which I live my li , should be eternally, identically repeated. It means to live any given instant in such a way that I want to relive again this instant I am now living, eternally. This is where Nietzsche's amorfati takes on a highly idiosyn­ cratic meaning:
The highest state which a philosopher can attain: to have a
Dionysiac attitude toward existence. My rmula r that is amor fati. . . .
For this, we must conceive of the hereto re denied aspects of existence not only as necessary, but as desirable: and not only desir­ able with regard to the aspects which have been approved up until now (as their complements, r example, or as their presupposi­ tions) , but in themselves, as the aspects of existence which are more powerful, more fertile, and more true, in which its will expresses itselfmost clea y. 24
As we shall see, Marcus did indeed consider the repulsive aspects of existence as necessary complements or inevitable consequences of the initial will ofNature. Nietzsche, however, goes much rther: in ct, an abyss appears between his views and those ofStoicism. Whereas the Stoic "yes" means a ration consent to the wo d, the Dionysiac a rmation of the world ofwhich Nietzsche speaks is a "yes" given to irrationality, the blind cruelty of li , and the will to power which is beyond good and evil .
We have wandered r om Marcus; yet this detour has perhaps al­ lowed us to arrive at a better de nition ofthat consent to Destiny which is the essence ofthe discipline of desire.
As we have seen, the exercises of de nition of the self and concentra­ tion on the present, together with our consent to the will ofNature as it is mani sted in each event, raise our consciousness to a cosmic level. By consenting to the present event which is happening to me, in which the whole world is implied, I want that which universal Reason wants, and identi myselfwith it in my feeling ofparticipation and ofbelonging to a Whole which transcends the limits ofindividuality. I feel a sensation of
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intimacy with the universe, and plunge myself into the immensity of the cosmos. One thinks ofBlake's verses:25
To see the World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold In nity in the palm ofyour hand And Eternity in an hour.
Thus the self qua will or liber coincides with the will of universal Reason, or the logos which extends throughout all things. The self as guiding principle coincides with the guiding principle ofthe universe.
I then, the self's awareness is accompanied by a consent to events, it does not become isolated, like some tiny island, in the universe. On the contrary: it is opened up to the whole ofcosmic becoming, to the extent that the self elevates itself om its limited situation and partial, restricted individual viewpoint, toward a universal perspective. Thus, my con­ sciousness is dilated until it coincides with the dimensions of cosmic consciousness. In the presence of each event-no matter how banal­ my vision now coincides with that of universal Reason.
When Marcus writes (IX, 6): "Your present inner disposition is enough r you, as long as it nds itsjoy within the present conjuncture ofevents," the expression "is enough r you" has two meanings. In the rst place, as we have seen, it means that we possess the whole ofreality within this present instant. As Seneca said,26 at each present moment we can say, with God, "Everything belongs to me. " This, however, means that if my moral intentions are good in this present moment, and I am consequently happy, neither a the duration ofli nor all eternity could bring me one iota more of happiness. In the words of Chrysippus:27 "If one has wisdom r one instant, he wi be no less happy than he who possesses it r all eternity. " Elsewhere, Seneca28 writes: "The measure of the good is the same, although its duration may vary. Whether one draws a large circle or a small one does not depend on its shape, but on the surface which they enclose. " A circle is a circle, whether it is large or small. Similarly, moral good, when it is lived within the present moment, is an absolute of in nite value, which neither duration nor any other external ctor can a ect. Once again, I can and I must live the present which I am living at this moment as ifit were the last moment ofmy life; r even ifit is not owed by any other instant, I wi be able, because of the absolute value of moral intention and of the love of the good which I have lived in this instant, to say in that very instant: I have
The Discipline ofDesire 147 realized my life, and have gotten everything I could have expected out of
it. 29 It is this that enables me to die. As Marcus says (XI, 1, 1):
The rational soul . . . attains its proper end wherever it achieves the limit ofits life. It is not like the dance or the theater or other arts of that kind, in which all the action is incomplete if they are inter­ rupted. On the contrary: the action ofthe rational soul, in each of its parts, and at whatever point one considers it, carries out r itself what it was planning lly and without ult, so that it can say, "I have reached my l llment. "
Whereas a dance or the reading ofa poem reach their goal only when they are nished, moral activity reaches its goal in the very instant when it is accomplished. It is there re entirely contained within the present moment, which is to say, within the unity ofthe moral intention which, in this very moment, animates my actions or my inner disposition. Once again, we note that the present instant can thus immediately open up the totality of being and of value. One thinks of the words of Wittgenstein: "Ifwe understand by "eternity" not an in nite temporal duration, but a lack of temporality, then he who lives within the present lives eter­ nally. "30
Providence or atoms?
Marcus asks, rather enigmatically (IV, 3, 5):
Are you unhappy with the part ofthe which has been allotted to
you? Then remember the disjunction: either providence or atoms.
In the rst sentence, we recognize the problematic characteristic of the discipline of desire: we must accept, and even love, that part of the which has been allotted to us. I says Marcus, we are initially unhappy at and irritated by events, then we must remember the disjunctive dilemma: either providence or atoms. Marcus is here alluding to an argument, and it is enough r him to cite its rst proposition-either providence or atoms-in order to remind his readers of the entire thing. This dilemma reappears throughout the Meditations, often accompanied by the argu­ ment, or by variations on the argument, which remains implicit in this rst quotation.
Be re we try to understand its meaning, it is necessary to spend some
time clari ing this initial proposition, which opposes two ctors: on the one hand, providence-elsewhere identi ed with Nature, the gods, or with Destiny-and on the other hand, atoms. These two opposing con­ cepts correspond respectively to the models of the universe set rth by Stoic and by Epicurean physics. Marcus uses a variety of images to describe these alternatives: there is either a well-ordered world or a con sed one; there is either union, order, and providence, or else a rmless mess, the blind linking up of atoms, and dispersion (IV, 27, l ; VI, IO, l; IX, 39, l).
Marcus thus opposes two models of the universe: that of Stoicism and that of Epicureanism. His reason r doing so is to show that, on any hypothesis, and even if one were to accept, in the eld of physics, the model most diametrically opposed to that of Stoicism, the Stoic moral attitude is still the only possible one. If one accepts Stoic physical the­ o that is to say, the rationality of the universe-then the Stoic moral attitude-that is, the discipline ofdesire, or rational consent to the events brought about by universal Reason-does not raise any di culties: one must simply live in accordance with reason. I however, one accepts the Epicurean physical theory-a model where the universe is a dust of atoms produced by chance and lacking unity-then the grandeur of humankind consists in our introduction ofreason into this chaos:
Ifthe is God, then all is well. But ifit is ruled by chance, don't you, too, be ruled by chance (IX, 28, 3).
Consider yourself rtunate i i n the midst o f such a whirlwind, youpossessaguidingintelligencewithinyourself(XII, 14,4).
On either hypothesis, then, we must maintain our serenity and accept events the way they are. It would be just as crazy to blame atoms as it would be to blame the gods (VI, 24).
This serenity must especially be maintained in the ce of death. Whether one accepts the Stoic or the Epicurean model, death is a physi­ cal phenomenon (VI, 24):
After their deaths, Alexander of Macedon and his mule-driver wound up in the same state: either they were taken back up into the rational rces which are the seeds of the universe, or else, in the same way, they were dispersed among the atoms.
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The Discipline ofDesire 149
Our choice of a model of the universe thus changes nothing with regard to the ndamental Stoic disposition ofconsent to events, which is nothing other than the discipline ofdesire (X, 7, 4). Ifwe reject the hypothesis of rational Nature, says Marcus, and choose to explain the trans rmations ofthe parts ofthe universe by saying that "that's just the way things are" (that is, that things occur by virtue ofsome kind ofblind spontaneity), then it would be ridiculous to a rm, on the one hand, that the parts ofthe All can thus spontaneously trans rm themselves, and yet, at the same time, to be su rised and angry at these trans rmations, as if they were something contrary to nature.
Such arguments are obviously not Marcus' inventions.