Assignment
One: Defining a Position
Epictetus
on God
Fall 2012
Introduction
The Handbook
of Epictetus begins with a crucial distinction between things that are up to us
and things that are not up to us. Epictetus argues that we can lead happy lives
if we learn to confine our desires to what is up to us, instead of wanting
things that we can lose, such as wealth, popularity, or professional success.
Some present-day psychotherapists give much the same advice to their clients.
Unhappiness, they say, comes not from what happens to you but from how you
think about what happens to you. For example, when somebody makes an unkind
remark about your appearance, you might spend hours ruminating over it, feeling
hurt and angry. What caused your misery? Not the remark itself but the
importance you yourself attached to it and the time you spent thinking about
it.
Interpreted
as nothing more than ancient version of psychotherapy, Epictetus’s teachings
seem to depend on no religious beliefs whatsoever. However, passages in both
the Handbook and the Discourses emphasize the importance of
correct beliefs about god and our relation to him. While Epictetus sometimes
follows convention by using the plural (“the gods”), he usually refers to a
single divinity (god or Zeus), but one very different from the temperamental
being described in ancient mythology.
Assignment
Write a
paragraph, 1-2 pages in length, defining Epictetus’s representation of divinity.
Bear in
mind that effective definition accounts for, and often centers on, ideas that
are ambiguous, or might be in conflict with one another.
In
addition, keep in mind that you are not being asked to judge whether
Epictetus’s account of god is correct. You are being asked to define his
representation of god.
Steps in
the Process
As you begin the
drafting process for Assignment 1,
you should devote substantial attention to the concepts and arguments in the
following Writer’s
Handbook chapters: Chapter 1, “Analyzing Philosophical Texts”;
Chapter 8, “Warrants”; Chapter 9, “Claims, Evidence, Warrants:
A Practical Approach to Composing A CEW Paragraph.”
Your
paragraph must include these critical elements: