Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World’s Classics)
Last read March 1, 2022
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A recurrent theme of Epictetus’ teachings is that studying philosophy is not just a matter of interpreting texts or developing facility in intellectual activities, notably logical reasoning. It is a matter of learning to give an overall shape and purpose to your life and of using your understanding to inform all aspects of your actions, attitudes, and relationships.
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Stoics make this claim in a particularly strong form, which is linked with their view that happiness is constituted by virtue; more precisely, that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for happiness.
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human beings move from instinctive attraction to natural goods, such as health, to ‘selecting’ between such things in a rational way. Finally, if they progress properly, they will come to understand that what matters, ultimately, is not obtaining these natural goods but doing so in the right way, that is, in a way that expresses the qualities fundamental to a good human life, or the virtues.
Location: 188
The faculty that takes both itself and everything else as an object of study. And what is that? The faculty of reason. For that alone of all the faculties that we’ve been granted is capable of understanding both itself—what it is, what it is capable of, and what value it contributes—and all the other faculties too.
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the gods have placed in our power only the best faculty of all, the one that rules over all the others, that which enables us to make right use of our impressions; but everything else they haven’t placed within our power.
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this faculty of motivation to act and not to act, of desire and aversion, and, in a word, the power to make proper use of impressions; if you pay good heed to this, and entrust all that you have to its keeping, you’ll never be hindered, never obstructed, and you’ll never groan, never find fault, and never flatter anyone at all.
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although we have it in our power to apply ourselves to one thing alone, and devote ourselves to that, we choose instead to apply ourselves to many things, and attach ourselves to many, to our body, and our possessions, and our brother, and friend, and child, and slave.
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What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes. ‘How does it come, then?’ As God wills.
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In short, if we look with due care, we’ll find that there is nothing by which the rational creature is so distressed as by that which is contrary to reason, and that, conversely, there is nothing to which he is so attracted as that which is reasonable.
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Now, to determine what is reasonable or unreasonable, not only do we have to form a judgement about the value of external things, but we also have to judge how they stand in relation to our own specific character.
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‘Yes, but that would be beneath me.’ It is for you to take that further point into consideration, not me, since you’re the one who knows yourself, and knows what value you set on yourself, and at what price you’ll sell yourself; for different people sell themselves at different prices.
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You fulfil your role, and I’ll fulfil mine. It is yours to have me killed, and mine to die without a tremor; it is yours to send me into exile, and mine to depart without a qualm.’
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Only, consider at what price you’re willing to sell your power of choice. If nothing else, make sure, man, that you don’t sell it cheap. But what is great and exceptional is perhaps the province of others, of Socrates* and people of that kind.
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And then, because I’m not naturally gifted, shall I therefore abandon all effort to do my best? Heaven forbid.
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If one has to be deceived into learning that external things that lie outside the sphere of choice are nothing to us, I for my part would willingly undergo such deception, if it would enable me to live a life of undisturbed serenity from that time onward; but as to what you wish for, it is for you to look to that.
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For having granted us corn or the vine, we offer up sacrifices to the gods, and yet when they have brought forth such a wonderful fruit in the human mind, by setting out to reveal to us the truth about happiness, shall we fail to offer thanks to God for that?
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