Book Club: The Inner Citadel, 6, The discipline of assent

One might be forgiven for beginning to suspect that The Inner Citadel, Pierre Hadot’s classic study of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, is in fact a study of the philosophy of Epictetus. We have seen that chapter 5, for instance, is devoted to “the beautifully coherent Stoicism of Epictetus.” And we are now beginning to look at three chapters devoted respectively to Epictetus’ disciplines of assent (this post), desire (next post), and action (two posts down the road). Then again, other authors, for instance William Stephens, in his enlightening Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed, have remarked how Marcus’ philosophy is heavily influenced by the sage from Hierapolis. No matter, a better understanding of the three disciplines will do all of us some good, so let us proceed!

The discipline of assent trains us to make better judgments about things. Hadot defines it concisely in the following manner:

The discipline of assent consists essentially in refusing to accept within oneself all representations which are other than objective or adequate. (p. 101)

What are these “representations,” referred to in Greek as phantasia (which, interestingly, is the root of the English word phantasm, i.e., ghost)? Even though I have covered Stoic psychology 101 on this site, let us follow Hadot’s version of the…