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Jeffrey J. Fisher 77 Epictetus’s Moral Epistemology Jeffrey J. Fisher This paper is an attempt to trace the outlines of Epictetus’s moral epistemology. The argument of the paper is that, in his conception of knowledge, Epictetus is an orthodox Stoic, upholding the main tenets of Stoic epistemology. Now I ultimately see this argument as a prolegomena to understanding Epictetus’s own novel contributions to Stoic epistemology, which I think are considerable. In short, I think his contribution is that he shows his students (and us, his readers) how they can best go about acquiring moral knowledge— how they can make progress towards knowledge from where they are right now. What makes this contribution particularly interesting, not just for scholars of Stoicism, but for anyone interested in moral knowledge in general, is that the acquisition of moral knowledge, according to Epictetus, is much less a matter of reading treatises or articles, or memorizing arguments and theories, than it is a matter of desiring, acting, and living properly—our practical lives, for Epictetus, play a much more important role in attaining moral knowledge than our intellectual ones. But all that must wait. For to have that discussion, we need to first determine what Epictetus’s account of ethical knowledge is, which is an interesting and worthwhile pursuit in its own right. For not much attention has been paid to it, but exploring the epistemological theory of one of the leading Stoics should add much to our understanding of Stoic epistemology. More specifically, exploring Epictetus’s epistemology will shed light, as I hope to show, on the epistemological aspects of the famous notion of the “art of living”, for, as we will see, this notion is central to Epictetus’s moral epistemology. I. The Epistēmē of Life The standard Stoic view of knowledge, or epistēmē, is found, among other places, in Stobaeus: “knowledge [epistēmēn] is a system” of cognitions (katalēpsis) that are “secure and unchangeable by reason” (LS 41H, with modifications).1 One important upshot of this conception of knowledge is that only masters or experts possess it. Now this, of course, is a far cry from how we today use the word “knowledge”. Today, we tend to use the word “knowledge” in a much less robust sense. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to say that I know x even though my belief that x may be shaken and even though my 1 All translations cited as being in LS are those of Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, unless otherwise noted. Bibliographic information for all references can be found in the Select Bibliography at the end of this essay. 78 EPICTETUS: his continuing influence and contemporary relevance belief might not be situated within a system of unshakeable beliefs. I can know x without being a “master” of the domain of which x is a member. Now, in Discourses IV.1, Epictetus mentions the “art of living”, but not by that name—he refers to it as the “epistēmē of living” (IV.1.62–64), or the “epistēmē concerning life” (IV.1.117–118).2 As will become clear in what follows, this epistēmē is what we would call ethical or moral knowledge. The goal of this paper is to flesh out why exactly Epictetus’s epistēmē of life should be understood as an epistēmē in the orthodox Stoic sense—that is, should be understood as a system of cognitions—as opposed to some other sense of knowledge, such as our contemporary one. A first clue that it should be is given by the fact that the epistēmē of life ranges over a particular domain—namely, life—which makes it much more like an expertise than like justified true belief of some proposition or other. This clue is further corroborated by (1) the fact that in the two places where Epictetus discusses the epistēmē of life, he compares it to other organized bodies of expertise (IV.1.62–64; IV.1.117–118), and (2) possession of this epistēmē, Epictetus tells us, makes one a “master” (IV.1.118). Now while this may make it plausible that the epistēmē of life is a Stoic epistēmē, it doesn’t establish it. And I would like to see how firmly we can establish it. To make a stronger connection, we will need to take a bit of a longer path, one that begins with elucidating the relationship...

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