The Role Ethics of Epictetus by Brian E. Johnson

Author:Brian E. Johnson [Johnson, Brian E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2013-12-04T06:00:00+00:00

Beyond Socrates and Heracles

In view of the preceding discussion, it seems that Epictetus supplies two related considerations for claiming that we have multiple specific roles, that these roles generate specific appropriate acts, and that these appropriate acts can conflict. First, for Epictetus, it appears to be a basic fact about human beings that they are members of several different kinds of communities. It is because Socrates is a member of Athens and is a member of a specific family that he has the role of citizen and the role of father. Of course, Socrates’s humanity makes possible certain kinds of community roles (such as that of “gadfly”), but his humanity is not sufficient by itself to explain his role in the civic community. As I have argued, each community membership constitutes a distinctive role with distinctive obligations. In this way, when we consider that Epictetus takes humans to be members of at least two sorts of communities (cosmic and civic) and that humans have many different capacities and functions to be fulfilled within a given civic community, Epictetus has good grounds to conclude that humans have many roles.

Second, Epictetus supplies us with an account of how specific roles relate to their associated externals. In the case of Heracles, his heroic role is not simply an extension of his human role. If it were a mere extension and if there were no hydra or lion, it would be wrong for Heracles to sleep because dormancy would make him more of a plant than a human. Without those feats, Heracles should find some other way to express his humanity. By contrast, I have argued that we can account for why Heracles sleeps and why he is awoken by appeal to his specific role. Heracles did not fight the hydra in order to express his humanity, rather he fights the hydra because he has the role of the “bull in the herd.” Although it remains true that externals (such as mythic beasts) ought to be treated in a way that is consistent with one’s humanity, Epictetus nonetheless gives a special place to externals because he seems to treat specific roles (and their associated externals) as constitutive of who we are and as ends-in-themselves.

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