In fact, the Stoics appear to me to be carving out a new concept of individuality in their very

logical formulation of impressions, hegemonikon etc. They were telling us how to preserve our
essential identity even as they were demonstrating what it actually was.
Nice trick.
The Stoics advocated fate and yet insisted that we can achive our identity only by exercising
choice. This seems to be a contradiction. How can we have any real choice if things be inevitable ?
The nature of our choice involves an interior perception. This inner construct of our impressions
and imagination is so important to the Stoics that our very authenticity of being depended on it, if
not the determination o fthe world outside of us. One might employ the Hiesenberg notion that
our perception does indeed affect the thing perceived, though proving this external causality is
shall we say pointless?
Perhaps we settle with the articulation ascribed to Max Planck: When you change the way you
look at things, the things you look at change .
In the ancient world the world of appearances had a parallel. There was a real world and the
world our conscious mind tracks. In fact generally the opposite of how we assume it to be today.
What seems to be the case for the Stoics is that the stablisation of self identity necessitates a
binding of self consous self with the greater self. If there is a track of the reality that is the course
of logos, yet our reading of the world as it passes through our senses are by identifying with the
immediate sensual impression, immature responses, conventional tases, evaluations and opinions
we will never have any sense of what is really happening, why it happened and what the
consequences are.
It is like beliving innacurate science , that cholera is caused by bad air instead of bad water. The
problem will never be solved.
But was this early exercise of getting right concepts aligned with right physics only a preliminary
to science or does the stratagem stand on its own, having a basis as much in biological maturation
as it does in mental powers of abstraction?
First of all does a kind of mental health necessitate that we conceptualize a dialogue between our
impressions and their continuities, all the while checking them against something we can
construe to the best of our intuitive/verifiable methods as real?
To back up. The Stoics were not this far along. They were mostly concerned with the problem of
the common sort: those who only responded to the immediate, that is to say, unaware that there
was mediation already happening. They proposed that to the degree one is able to discern
mediation, they can aquire self agency. They begin to participate with nous.
Plotinus distinguishes two modes of thought: discursive thought of everyday reason (dianoia) and
intellection (noesis). Where the former uses concepts acquired by perception and reasons discur- sively
about things in the external world, the latter thinks the objects of knowledge themselves, that is, is in
identity with being. A list of salient differences may help in appreciating the respective natures of the two:

Nous

Dianoia

knowledge (infallible)

opinion (fallible)

eternal/non-temporal

temporal, moving in time (e.g. Enn. VI.1.4.719)

objects: internal, the forms

objects: external, both the sensible and the forms

unmediated, direct

representational, mediated by images (eidola), imprints

of phantasia, or by concepts (e.g. V.3.2; VI.5.7.)

non-inferential (V.5.1.3841)

inferential

connected to the hypostasis Intellect and the

particular to one soul in one body

same as it in form and content, yet perhaps

retaining somehow some individuality
(IV.3.5.69)

its own higher consciousness,

everyday consciousness

unavailable to the embodied person

without dialectical work

(Remes, Neoplatonism p.147)

Compare to Evagrius Gnostic:

Praktikoi\ lo/gouv noh/sousi praktikou/v, gnwstikoi\ de\ o1yontai gnwstika/.
Praktiko\v me/n e0stin o9 to\ paqhtiko\n me/rov th~v yuxh~v mo/non a0paqe\v kekthme/nov.
Gnwstiko\v de\ o9 a9lo\v me\n lo/gon e0pe/xwn toi~v a0kaqa/rtoiv, fwto\v de\ toi~v kaqaroi~v.

Translation:
Practitioners understand the reasons in practice, but for gnostic things, the gnostics will see.

A practitioner is one who's impassioned part of the soul has acquired apathea.
A gnostic is one who plays the role of salt for the impure and light for the purea.

Note to Foucault:

14
Respond only to priests, or the foremost among them, if they ask you what the mysteries signify
which they perform and which purify your interior being (the vessels that receive them indicating the
passionate aspect of the soul and the rational aspect) and concerning their inseparable mixture (the
potency of each one of them and the fulfillment reached due to the efforts of all having a single goal). Also
reiterate the figure who achieves this and the ones with him who resist those who are creating obstacles to
clear conduct. And who among the living have the memory and the remnant who do not.

The mysteries... which purify the interior (S1 and S2 have "our internal man"), compare TP 100:
"The priests should be loved after the Lord, they who purify us through the sacred mysteries" (and see
note ad loc.) these "mysteries" are obviously the celebration of the Eucharist, whose symbolic meaning is
explained here in this chapter.
The vessels that receive them, the Greek word "vessels" was probably ta/ skeu/h, as only S3
indicates with )N*)M, the usual equivalent of skeu~v [equipment, apparel, uniform]. As for the meaning
intended here the other versions substitute as follows: S2 "the powers of the soul which receive this
mystery", S1 "the receiver and the observer in us", Arm. is not very clear, "the council (adyan, "the
meeting" of the faithful?) who is receptive". Whereas "receives" is attested by all, the vessels are probably
the sacred vessels intended to receive the bread and wine. For other texts in Evagrius on the symbolism of
the bread and the wine, the flesh and the blood of Christ, see Monks 119-120: "Flesh of Christ is the
practical virtues, and the one who ingests it will become impassive; blood of Christ is the contemplation of
the beings, and the one who drinks it will acquire wisdom". Also compare Dogmatic Letter 4, 20-27, KG II,
44 and on Ps. 67, 24 (Pitra III, p. 84).

14. This particularly difficult chapter was no less so for the original translators, as indicated by the
dissensions of their versions. In the absence of the Greek original, it is consequently impossible to give a
confident translation and an interpretation. The translation suggested here essentially follows S3.
Respond only to preists... the foremost: the gnostic, being one who must adapt the teaching case by
case, will limit to priests, and to only the best of them, the explanation of the profound meaning of the rites
which they perform. "Those among them who are the best", perhaps xrhsto/tatoi, as S2 suggests by
)Y*BG, "elected officials", "the elite", as well as S3 with oYrtY*M (? dubious reading), "superiors",
"excellent". S1 reads "those who fear God in earnest" and Arm. "those who greatly fear God" rather
indicative of qeosebe/statoi. As for the second dwxLB , "only", the word is found in Frankenberg and
Add. 14578, but not in the other manuscripts of S1.
The rational part, probably logistiko/n, distinguished from the "impassioned part of the soul", cf.
TP 84. For the latter see above ch. 2, where it is further broken down into the irascible part and the
concupiscible part, cf. on Ps. 25, 2 (PG 12, 1273 A). Partially quoted in the notes in TP 38.
Their inseparable mixture: rather than the mixture of water and wine, to which Evagrius gives a
symbolic construction elsewhere (cf. KG V, 32), what is referred to here is the rite in which the priest drops
a piece of consecrated bread into the chalice, a rite known as commixtio or immixtio, cf. S1 nwhN+LwX
S3 nwhtw+YLX, "mixture", which suggests the Greek su/mmiciv or, according to S2 )twPtw$,

"union", e3nwsiv (on the technical meaning of this term, see L. CLUGNET, Dictionnaire grec-franais des
noms liturgiques dans l'glise grecque, Paris 1895, p. 48). "Their" in S1 and S3 (Arm. "the") is given a
masc. pl. suffix in order to agree with "vessels" (or S1 "receiver and observer"), but actually the expression
applies, by hypallage, to the contents of the vessels.
Potency of each one of them, from the text of S3 (lit. "of each of among them", here again a
grammatical agreement is made with the word "vessels", although in this case the vessels signify the parts
of the soul). "Potency" the Greek substrate was probably kra/tov, in S1 "when one part overrides the other"
and, more clearly, S2 "what is the success, )twKz, of the one" taken in the meaning of "victory". Arm.
omitted these words and those following (up to "the efforts of each one"), perhaps due to erroneously
jumping from one phrase to the other.

The fulfillment reached due to the efforts of all having a single goal, the text of S3. The other
versions differ: S1 "each activity achieves a unique type", S2 "the end of the task realized in their
cooperation"; Arm. has merely "to see the fulfillment of each type". Though unclear, we may assume (cf.
Monks 119-120, quoted above) this sentence describes the state of apathea reached by purifying the
passionate division of the soul wherein each part of the soul, in its respective attributes, works toward one
goal, that being contemplation, the proper activity of intellect, cf. TP 86.
The figure who achieves this: S2 specifies "the priests who achieve this mystery". For "figure" the
Greek substrate was probably tu/pov, cf. S2 )SPw+; S1 and S3 have )z)r; "mystery", "symbol"; Arm.
n,anag, "sign"; the priest is the "figure" of Christ.
The ones with him who resist: the angels, which are considered to be assisting the priest in the
celebration of the eucharistic, cf. E PETERSON, Le livre des anges, ed. fr., Paris 1954, p. 73-74.
Those who are creating obstacles to clear conduct are obviously the demons, as S2 specifies "those
with them who drive the impure demons away from us". "Conduct", probably politei/a, which, in ch. 13,
is translated by words )D8Bwd in S2 and S3 and wauk in Arm., precisely as these versions have here; S1
translates more liberaly: "who prevents us from living in purity". Like "true control" in the preceding
chapter the expression "clear conduct" refers to the practice, the goal of which is purification. Cf. TP 78.
Among the living.... Here Evagrius appears to have a text of ARISTOTLE in mind, Metaphysics A
1 980a 29: "Among the living, memory is born to those of sensitivity, not to the others", e9k th~v ai9sqh/sewv
toi~v me\n tw~n cw> < ?/wn ou0k e0ggi/gnetai mnh/mh, toi~v d0 e9ggi/gnetai. S2 has removed this last sentence,
undoubtedly because it was judged to have no relationship to the remainder of the chapter, quite an
understandble difficulty! The other versions are in agreement, which allows us an assured translation. The
words )twY8X in S1 and S3 and anasovnk in Arm. certainly translates ta\ zw~?a. But this term should be
understood here, like in the text of Aristotle and elsewhere in Evagrius (cf. KG IV, 37), in the general sense
of "being alive" and not as Arm. has ("among the dumb animals") in the limited sense of "animal" being
opposed to "man"in which case would be the demons that Evagrius, following Origen, sometimes
compares to animals (i.e. KG 1,53 of HAUSHERR's Greek text, Nouveaux fragments, p. 230). Under the
cover of a text borrowed from the academic tradition, and with an implicit reference to I Cor. 11:24-25 (the
words Jesus spoke during the institution of Eucharist): "Do this in remembrance of me" it seems that
Evagrius is indirectly formulating the idea that not everyone is ready to grasp, to "discern" (cf. ibid., v. 29),
the profound meaning of the eucharistic mystery; hence the caveate of prudence at the beginning of the
chapter. Compare on Prov. 5, 11 (sch. 61, p. 152-153): "Through the Vices the depraved waste the flesh of
Christ and spill his blood which they consider to be ordinary (koino/n)".
Compare ORIGEN, Homelies on Numbers IV, 3 (ed. Baehrens, GCS 30, p. 23; trans. Mhat, SC 29, p. 106107): "If someone is truly a priest, to whom is entrusted the sacred vessels, which is to say the secrets to the
mysteries of the wisdom, and practices accordingly (cf. Num. 4:5-18) remembering that they should be
kept under the veil of conscience and not hastily divulged to anyone. Because it is granted only to the
linage of Aaron, that is to say to the priests, to see the Arc of the Covenant naked and unveiled."