Talk to Discourses and Selected Writings like its author wrote you back.
Get the ideas that fit your life — not generic summaries.
- Chat with the book
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- Adapts to your life and goals
- Helps you take action
What it argues
The Discourses are lecture transcripts recorded by Arrian, a student of Epictetus, sometime around 108 CE. Epictetus himself wrote nothing — he was a former slave who became one of the most influential philosophers of the Roman world, and what survives are Arrian's notes from his classes in Nicopolis, Greece. The Selected Writings in most modern editions include also the Enchiridion (or Handbook), a short distillation that has circulated separately since antiquity. Together they represent the most complete surviving record of Epictetus's philosophy.
The governing distinction in Epictetus is what he calls the "dichotomy of control" — the division of all things into those that are "up to us" (our judgments, desires, aversions, impulses — the operations of our own will) and those that are "not up to us" (everything outside our will: the body, reputation, property, other people's behavior, external events). This distinction is not original to Epictetus — it runs through earlier Stoicism — but he pursues it with more rigor and pedagogical insistence than any surviving Stoic text. The aim of Stoic practice, in his account, is to progressively confine your desires and aversions to things within your control, and to become indifferent to things outside it.
What it gets right
- 1.
The dichotomy of control is the foundation of Epictetus's philosophy: only your judgments, desires, aversions, and impulses are truly up to you. Everything else — your body, reputation, property, others' behavior — is not, and trying to control it produces suffering.
- 2.
Freedom, in Epictetus's account, is not the ability to get what you want but the liberation from wanting things that are not in your power. The slave who wants nothing outside his control is freer than the emperor who wants the world's obedience.
- 3.
Suffering comes not from events themselves but from the judgments we make about events. It is not death that harms us, but our belief that death is bad.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher born into slavery in Hierapolis (modern-day Turkey). He was brought to Rome as a slave, gained his freedom, and eventually established a philosophical school in Nicopolis, Greece, where he taught for decades. None of his own writing survives; the Discourses and the Enchiridion were recorded by his student Arrian. His influence on later Stoic thought was profound — Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations are in part a private engagement with Epictetan ideas, is the most famous case. He has been rediscovered repeatedly, including in twentieth-century cognitive behavioral therapy, which shares structural similarities with his core framework.
