Book Club: The Inner Citadel, 7, The discipline of desire, or amor fati

Before we get into the thick of the seventh chapter of Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel(last entry here), a masterpiece of analysis of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the philosophy of Epictetus, and Stoicism more generally, let me apologize for how slowly the book club has been proceeding of late. It is taking me a long time to finish this book because it is not exactly easy going — which is why I flatter myself that I am providing a public service with these extended chapter-by-chapter summaries.

So let’s get back to it! And specifically to Hadot’s treatment, in the central part of the book, of Epictetus’ famous three disciplines: assent (i.e., how to critically examine our own judgments), which we treated last time; desire (i.e., what is proper for us to desire or stay away from), which we will discuss in the current post; and action (i.e., how to behave with others), which will be the topic of the next entry in this series.

Right at the beginning of the chapter Hadot provides a good summary of what the discipline of desire is all about: what we feel vs what we should feel, which will struck non-Stoics as bizarre. What do you mean what I should feel?? If by “feeling” we mean what the Stoics called proto-emotions, i.e., automatic, instinctive reactions to events, then they are what they are, and…