Dear friend,. this is a message of peace for you. You may be young or old, a woman or a man, poor or rich… You may find this message decades after it was written. So if there is one idea I would like to share with you, and that hopefully you will want to share around you, is that the two words “good” and “bad” must be handled with care because they are bombs in disguise. 

We use labels life 'theif' and 'robber' but what do these words mean?

What is it that makes people go to war, fight, exert violence against one another, insult each other, hate each other? It’s a confusion about the nature of good and bad. I’m not the one saying this, actually. There once was a philosopher, Epictetus, from the Stoic philosophical school of life, who explained it in plain, clear words. People usually think that when they agree with something, it is because they think it is true. And when they disagree, it’s because they think it is untrue. When people act in a certain way, it is because they feel it is to their advantage or that it is right. 

“If all this is true, then what grounds do we have for being angry with anyone ? We use labels life ‘thief’ and ‘robber’ in connection with them, but what do these words mean ? They merely signify that people are confused about what is good and what is bad.” 

Epictetus 

When people do "bad" things, they are actually mistaken about good and bad

What Epictetus is telling us is that when people do “bad” things, they are actually mistaken about good and bad. In that sense, Epictetus agrees with another philosopher you may have heard of, Socrates, who said no one ever does harm intentionally. i.e., If they do harm (or what you consider to be harmful), they actually consider it to be something good. They suffer from amathia - ignorance. Not technical ignorance, but ethical ignorance. 

Good and bad are not qualities of things in themselves or of actions as such, they are representations of our mind and these people have lost their ability to distinguish good from bad. We should therefore not be angry at them, but pity them. 

We should really be attached to our integrity and our internal freedom

Epictetus was famous for saying that gold is not good in itself. It is because we value it that we think it is good. 

“We get angry because we put too high a premium on things that they (thieves) can steal. Don’t attach such value to your clothes, and you won’t get angry with the thief who takes them.” 

Epictetus 

The point here is that we get too attached to the wrong things. Because for the Stoics, the most precious of all, and that to which we should really be attached, is our integrity and our internal freedom. 

There is a certain way of behaving that is the way to a good life - however you may want to definite it.

Maybe you’re asking yourself: are there no universal values, then? In nature as a whole, no. A storm is neither good or bad. Death in itself is neither good or bad. There is no moral judgement attached to it. But in the world of human beings, there is a certain way of behaving that is the way to a good life—however you may want to define it. Ancient philosophers called them virtues, they had four: justice, courage, practical wisdom, and temperance. 

If we all behaved according to these virtues, Stoic philosophers hoped we could create a free and peaceful world. That’s what I hope too. 

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Flora Bernard co-founded the Paris-based philosophy agency, Thae, in 2013. Flora now works to help organisations give meaning to what they do.

 

 

 

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