“Training”

On the binding of the first volume of one set of his notebooks, Shaftesbury inscribed the Greek word, Askémata, “exercises,” which can be taken as a title for the notebooks. The later Roman stoic inspiration for the title is clear enough, since, on the first page of this volume, Shaftesbury copied passages from the chapter in Arrian's Epictetus, Peri askēseōs, “Of training” or “Of exercise.” However, the title indicates more than intellectual genealogy, for it describes the function of the notebooks.

The chapter Peri askēseōs revealed a central preoccupation of Epictetus, namely, the training that conduced to wisdom. Wisdom arose in the willingness to limit strivings to what was within the power of the moral athlete or, in Epictetus's characteristic vocabulary, “within the sphere of his moral purpose [proairesis]” The sphere of moral purpose was that of will and choice. Since wisdom was identified with a rigorous ideal of moral autonomy, training aimed to enhance acting “without hindrance in choice [orexis] and in aversion [ekklisis]” Training was necessitated by the fact that habit, ethos, was “a powerful influence,” and men were usually habituated to direct their choice and aversion only over external things. As Epictetus wrote, “if you allow training to turn outwards, towards the things that are not in the realm of moral purpose, you will have neither your desire successful in attaining what it would, nor your aversion successful in avoiding what it would.” The response of the therapeutic stoic was to “set a contrary habit to counteract this habit.”