HKB
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Often appears with: temperance and self-mastery · tobacco and stored food · the fear of death · supply, logistics, and encampment · solitude · reverence and renown · religious persecution and toleration · pottery and tobacco pipes · pleasure, pain, and the good life · performative asceticism · living by example · household management and servants
Usually: argument (3) · censure (2) · exhortation (2) · narrative (1) · the stranger's arrival (1) · curiosity (1) · skepticism (1) · wonder (1)
Robinson settles into a near-year of reflection without his boat, improving his skills in carpentry-like work, earthenware (tobacco pipes), wicker baskets, and food storage for goats and turtles.
how did I come here? and where had I been?” just as if he had been overjoyed to see me again; and so I carried him home along with me. I had now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to do for many days to sit still and reflect upon the danger I had been in. I would have been very glad to have had my boat again on my side of the island; but I knew not how it was practicable to get it about. As …
Epictetus teaches self-sufficiency, warns about harmful influence of bad conversation, condemns performative asceticism, and gives practical guidance for living virtuously and profitably in society.
Even as bad actors cannot sing alone, but only in chorus: so some cannot walk alone. Man, if thou art aught, strive to walk alone and hold converse with thyself, instead of skulking in the chorus! at length think; look around thee; bestir thyself, that thou mayest know who thou art! CIV You would fain be victor at the Olympic games, you say. Yes, but weigh the conditions, weigh the consequences; then and then only…
Epictetus argues that true solitude is not mere being alone but helplessness; a person should learn self-sufficiency like Zeus, and should use reason to endure fear and distraction.
stronger than yourself; the contest is unequal between a charming young girl and a beginner in philosophy. The earthen pitcher, as the saying is, and the rock do not agree. WHAT SOLITUDE IS, AND WHAT KIND OF PERSON A SOLITARY MAN IS.—Solitude is a certain condition of a helpless man. For because a man is alone, he is not for that reason also solitary; just as though a man is among numbers, he is not therefore not so…
Philosophy critiques Epicurus’ claim that pleasure alone is happiness and argues that real happiness requires self-sufficiency and true goodness, not external goods sought for reverence and power.
judgment the supreme good. And we have defined the supreme good to be happiness. Therefore, that state which each wishes in preference to all others is in his judgment happy. 'Thou hast, then, set before thine eyes something like a scheme of human happiness--wealth, rank, power, glory, pleasure. Now Epicurus, from a sole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the highest good to be pleasure,…