Moral Independence
This week's concept is Moral Independence, rooted in the Stoic idea of the "hegemonikon" (the Greek word for what the Stoics called your governing self or ruling faculty, meaning the part of you that judges, chooses, and decides who you are). Moral Independence is the recognition that this inner faculty cannot be touched, overruled, or corrupted by anything outside you unless you hand it over willingly. By the end of this week, you will have a clearer sense of where you actually live inside yourself, and why protecting that place is the most important work you can do.
Passage
and if you are thoroughly convinced of this (for, at the beginning of this discourse, you allowed that there appeared to you more evil in infamy than in pain), it follows that you ought to have the command over yourself, though I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one, which appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one should be in command and the other be subject to it. [21.] Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a two-fold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it; when, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. There is in the soul of every man, something naturally soft, low, enervated in a manner, and languid. Were there nothing besides this, men would be the greatest of monsters; but there is present to every man reason, which presides over, and gives laws to all; which, by improving itself, and making continual advances, becomes perfect virtue. It behoves a man, then, to take care that reason shall have the command over that part which is bound to practise obedience.
— Cicero, Tusculans 2.47
Reflection
Cicero brings a slightly different angle, and it is worth noticing what he does with it. He acknowledges the awkwardness of telling yourself to command yourself, since that seems to require two people inside one. His answer is that the soul really does have two sides: one that participates in reason, and one that does not. Rashness, softness, languid drifting, those are real features of human experience, not illusions to be dismissed. Moral Independence does not pretend they do not exist. It says that reason, the part capable of improvement and of becoming what the Stoics called virtue, is equipped to govern the rest. The work is not to eliminate the unruly parts but to practice, steadily, letting reason be in charge of them. This is a skill, not a permanent achievement.
Go deeper
Which part of you, the reasoning, deliberate part or the impulsive, reactive part, tends to win when they are in conflict, and what specific conditions tip the balance one way or the other for you?
Practice
Two Voices
Think of a decision you are currently sitting with, large or small. Write two short paragraphs: one in the voice of the impulsive, reactive part of you (what it wants, why it wants it, what it fears), and one in the voice of the reasoning part (what it actually values and what it recommends). Read both back. Notice which one you have been listening to, and whether that is the one you want to follow.