The greatest disability?

An MP is in the news – it seems that there was a scuffle in a bar in the House of Commons involving several MPs, people were pushed, someone was head-butted, punches were thrown and one MP, Eric Joyce, has been arrested and charged with assault. He has been suspended from the parliamentary party and there has been discussion on the radio at least about what happens if he gets jailed, under what circumstances he would lose his seat and an election be called, who'd win the election (which is rather getting ahead of things) and so on. Members of Parliament are not supposed to be involved in scuffles, although there is in fact a history. The then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, famously punched someone who had thrown eggs at him when campaigning. Anyway, the general atmosphere is misbehaviour and punishment. That's what we do with criminals and suchlike, isn't it?

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (55-135 CE) had a different view. I'm only just beginning to read his work, but already I have encountered this alternative several times. For example, in Book 1 of The Discourses, chapter 18 discusses his observation that we should not be angry with those who fall into error. Briefly, his argument goes like this: no-one deliberately does something he knows to be wrong, to his disadvantage. So if they do something wrong, this is due to some error on their part, because at the time they thought it was right. There is something the matter with their faculty for making judgements. Thus, thieves and robbers, for example, have gone astray in matters of good and evil, their critical faculty has led them down the wrong path.

So, asks Epictetus, should such criminals be put to death? (Punishments were on a different scale to those we currently consider appropriate in the days of the Roman Emperors, and Epictetus lived under Nero.) By no means, says Epictetus, and instead wants to rephrase the question. Look at it this way, he says. This man errs in things of great importance, right and wrong. It is not that he is blinded, or defective in sight, and cannot tell white from black. It's similar, but much worse. If you look at it that way you see at once how inhuman the suggestion of capital punishment is. The greatest harm a man can suffer is to be blinded in matters of good and evil. Just like any other disabled person what someone in that position needs is help, support and therapy.

If the reports are to be believed, someone who had been a successful MP for years “lost it” as we say, when our emotions run away with us and we do or say something totally non-rational. Seneca, writing on anger, describes an angry person as someone taken over by something other than his rational self. So Epectetus' view is that he should be helped to find it, rather than punished for his serious misfortune.

It's a point of view worth considering.

Considerations...

I can't help wondering how things might have been... The Stoics (who I am currently reading) were materialists and determinists, so we start with something in common. And their ethics appeal to me, being not dissimilar in some ways to Immanuel Kant.

Taking the determinist view without question for now, I've had reason of late to reflect on the Headmaster of my Grammar School, Dr W. No-one gets a Ph.D without academic ability, a lot of work, and without gaining a lot of knowledge. Yet at school I was one of many who found it hard to take him seriously and in later years I was very critical of him indeed. I shall never forget the morning of my 'O' Level Religious Knowledge paper. I turned the paper over, and found that the first two questions were in Greek – a long Greek passage and then a question about that passage. It had been part of the course syllabus that we learn New Testament Greek, and Dr W was supposed to teach us. Two of us boys were scheduled two lessons a week. At the start of the first of these the deputy head gave us our text books, Wenham's Greek Grammar and a Greek New Testament, and left the room. We waited for Dr W. He did not come to a single lesson in 2 years.

On another occasion I was accused by one of the masters of a minor misdemeanor, quite wrongly. He exaggerated the alleged – indeed fictitious - crime out of all proportion, and hauled me before the Head. Dr W refused even to let me speak in my defence, and issued a significant punishment. I have always had a fierce sense of justice, and I was deeply angered and offended by such treatment. As he was also a Justice of the Peace I became deeply sceptical of our criminal justice system, unfairly on the strength of one example, but that's schoolboys for you. I have nursed these criticisms for years.

I have often wondered how Dr W, who must have had a serious enthusiasm for and knowledge of Greece and the ancient world, came to miss the chance to pass it on to another generation. I found, in one of the books on Stoicism that I am currently reading, a reference to a work of his from 1931. The author of that work plainly took Dr W's scholarship seriously enough. His obituary in The Times speaks of his love of and enthusiasm for Greece and the classical period. He had, apparently, a detailed knowledge of the same Stoics that I am studying now. If he had seized that opportunity maybe I'd have discovered them over 50 years earlier – my temperament hasn't changed that much, so I think I would have been attracted. In those days I was a serious Christian believer, and I'd have seen even then the issues between Stoicism and Christianity. What kind of difference might that have made to my life path? Who knows? An academic career in the Classics in some way? Who can tell?

And then again, my indignation at Dr W's dereliction of his teaching responsibilities worked in my favour. When I was studying to become a clergyman I leapt at the chance to do a year of Greek on top of the curriculum requirements that no doubt greatly aided my New Testament studies and lead to some quite good results. And now, more or less 40 years on from those days, what remains of my Greek has helped me to get to grips with the Stoics, and motivated me to take a second go at learning Classical Greek now, to enrich this new opportunity. I can thank him for that then.

The Stoic teacher Epictetus would probably chide me on my attitude to Dr W. There was little in those events that was, in his phrase, “up to me”. What Epictetus would say I am in fact responsible for is my attitude, my decisions – all the rest was out of my control. Indeed, that's how it felt when I was a schoolboy, out of my control.

And the same is true of Dr W too. He would not have chosen to be headmaster of a North London Grammar School I'm sure. His vocation was to be an academic and to enjoy his enthusiasm for Ancient Greece. I have no idea why things worked out differently for him. A book he published in 1971 when he was retired was reissued as a paperback 20 years later, and a reviewer on Amazon gives it 5 stars. No doubt he regarded us as hopeless and helpless and no doubt he could not bring himself to waste his time and knowledge on us. Not, I think, the right decision, but given who he was, the assumptions he held about life, and so on, it is hard to see how he could have done differently, even if one can justly say that he should. No matter what brought him to being scheduled to give two Greek lessons a week to two North London kids he didn't have any regard for, his knowledge of the Stoics could have shown him a different path of action. I can imagine him looking at the timetable – he didn't normally teach at all – and groaning in anticipation of casting his beloved pearls before us swine.

I can no longer hold all that against him. What he did was not “up to me”. I am responsible now for my attitude and how I make my decisions – at least that's what Epictetus would say. And there are benefits. I am greatly enjoying my present study of the Stoics, I have learned some important lessons from them and the important thing is to make the most of these current opportunities, and not to regret past ones.

Syria

I heard the Syrian town of Idlib mentioned on the news today, for the second time in a few weeks. Previously I'd not heard of the place for 50 years – but I was actually there, passing through, on my way to Jerusalem in 1961.

We were on a Lambretta 175 that had somehow got us overland from London, and went on to see us home too. We'd left the south east corner of Turkey and entered Syria and headed south and went towards Hama and Homs and on to Damascus. I was on the back with the map, my friend Colin was driving. We came to a junction and Colin asked “Which way?”. The junction was not on our map, so I decided that left headed broadly towards the desert, and the right headed broadly towards the sea, and that was the safer option.

Shortly we came to a small town and decided we needed a closer look at our map. We stopped and were, as usual, surrounded at once by a crowd of small children. After a while I looked up and said quietly to Colin “There are soldiers all round us”. And so there were, a ring of them, carrying their weapons. We folded our map and smiled as broadly as we knew how, and one of the soldiers came over and asked where we were heading. I said “Damascus”. He pointed the way we had come - “That way”. “But we've just come that way, it must be that way,” I said, pointing in the other direction. The soldier frowned. “Where is your pam?” he demanded. “What?” “Your pam! You must have pam!” He sounded belligerent. In one of those rare flashes of genius I have been known to have from time to time, I realised he was an Arab, and was mentally reading the word from right to left. He was asking for our map!

It was soon clear that we were off the map and off the road to Damascus. The guy who had first approached us then asked us to the café – we were on some kind of Army post. We were brought food and drink, and then the phone behind the counter rang. The man of the shop answered it, brought the phone over to us and said “It's for you”. “It can't be, no-one knows we're here!” But it was, it was the officer in charge who offered us accommodation for the night. All in all we were made incredibly welcome, fed, watered and accommodated at no charge, and in the morning after breakfast sent on our way with directions to Damascus.

On our way home from Jerusalem we stopped for about 3 weeks in Damascus and got to know the city quite well. Locals made friends in the café, helped us sort out our visas when we were in danger of overstaying, and were generally welcoming and hospitable. We loved the place.

And now I hear about the violence in that leafy historic City, where we walked down the Street Called Straight, which appears in the bible, among those friendly people. It is heart-breaking, utterly heart-breaking.