Consolations For An Age of Unfreedom
A few spiritual reflections to stave off despair in these somewhat desperate times.
First, from Epictetus:
In every feast remember that there are two guests to be entertained, the body and the soul; and that what you give the body you presently lose, but what you give the soul remains forever.1Epictetus, Moral Discourses (Elizabeth Carter translation), London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1937, Fragment XXVII, p. 280.
This deceptively simple contrast between the priorities of body and soul invites reflection. For at a feast, as such, what you give the body is inseparable from what you give the soul. Or rather it is inseparable in material fact, though separable in substance or definition, and therein lies the key to the wisdom of Epictetus’ observation. For example, if in eating and drinking what is placed before you, you exceed the body’s natural hunger and the moderate delight in variety and flavor, to the point where you are no longer feeding yourself in the proper sense at all, but merely indulging the body’s unnatural (superfluous, unnecessary) craving for the pleasures of taste and ingestion (possession), then you are training your soul to immoderation and inuring it to a weakness for giving yourself over to immediate gratification and material gain, at the expense of rational restraint with a view to ultimate well-being. And yet all that food and drink you forced down your throat when you knew your body had had enough will very soon be expelled from the body and gone forever, whereas the bad habits of soul that you fostered (or the good habits you undermined) with that unthinking indulgence will remain a part of your spiritual life, long after you have forgotten the feast itself entirely. In other words, what you “give the soul” through your choices and behavior during the feast is determined by, or proportionate with, what you give the body, for better or worse.
Now from Pascal:
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.2Blaise Pascal, Pensees (W.F. Trotter translation), New York: Modern Library, 1941, ยง533.
In an age of religious faith, there may be some question as to which of these two kinds of men forms the majority. At a time such as ours, however, there is no doubt at all. For an age of ubiquitous nihilism, with its associated relativism of convenience — no one is truly a relativist, but every nihilist plays one for the benefit of his ego — is the ideal condition for the rationalization of license and the unbridled pursuit of vested interests, which necessarily results in an increase in both unrepentant sinners as such, and sinners who are able to maintain, both in their own minds and in their self-presentation, the delusion of being not merely righteous, but even The Righteous. For the witches’ brew of nihilism and its accompanying (performative) relativism poisons the general air with a dangerous steam of freedom released from any theory of human nature or belief in a highest good. Freedom without a defining context rooted in philosophical reason or moral belief soon becomes an end in itself, thus infusing its adherents with a sense that they are righteous precisely because, or to the extent that, they are exhibiting their freedom for its own sake, i.e., acting without regard for either rational consideration or respect for received norms. Sin itself, if you will, becomes their righteousness.
In an age such as ours, then, Pascal’s first category, the righteous who believe themselves sinners, becomes the vastly outnumbered group — thus making them easier to identify against the contrasting background, as well as more inherently admirable and cherishable for that relentless self-criticism and self-rebuke which, in a time of endless social incentives to self-righteous rationalization, shows them to have an inner strength worthy of heroes.
We may conclude these reflections, then, by returning to Epictetus for a fragment that may, in other times, have seemed more rhetorically pleasing than profoundly insightful, but which, in our time, speaks to the very heart of the situation, as we seek out that tiny band of sincerely self-accused sinners — glimmering signs of life and true freedom — amid the greater dehumanized darkness of The Righteous.
It is better, by living with one free person, to be fearless and free, than to be a slave in company with many.3Epictetus, Moral Discourses, Fragment XXXVII, p. 282.
