Leslie's teaching the Handbook of Epictetus in her AP Great Books class, and she called a couple of nights ago to read this passage to me.
"If you now neglect things and are lazy and are always making delay after delay and set one day after another as the day for paying attention to yourself, then without realizing it you will make no progress, but will end up a non-philosopher all through life and death. So decide now that you are worthy of living as a full-grown man who is making progress, and make everything that seems best be a law that you cannot go against. And if you meet with any hardship or anything pleasant or reputable or disreputable, then remember that the contest is now and the Olympic games are now and you cannot put things off any more and that your progress is made or destroyed by a single day and a single action. Socrates became fully perfect in this way, by not paying attention to anything but his reason in everything that he met with. You, even if you are not yet Socrates, ought to live as someone wanting to be Socrates."
Amazing. No wonder she won't shut up about him.
2 comments:
damn those greeks. all wise and sh*t.
St. Paul obviously ripped him off in First Corinthians chapter 9. Who was Epictetus mashing up?
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