Discourses and Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)

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If we take off these masks of fear and pain and suffering, what we can find is our own emancipation. Like Plato’s hero (and unlike Plato himself), Epictetus did not trouble himself with questions of logic, epistemology, or metaphysics. I went through Epictetus at approximately half my usual reading speed, as I am unaccustomed to philosophy and wanted to understand it as best I could. Some great stuff, although it's a bit repetitive, which will be largely due to its origins in lecture notes by a devoted pupil.

Both points make Stoic ethics hard to implement - it's simply inhuman (humans are not simply reasonable minds, they are social animals first and foremost) and it's immensely vulnerable to cheaters and immoralists.

This power—the power to change our attitude towards the external world—Epictetus regards as the ultimate and quintessential human faculty. Stoicism thus refutes passivity, as it makes clear that the good citizen should be prepared to stand up for what is good and right, if necessary dying for it. These were all written by Epictetus’s student Arrian, as Epictetus never wrote anything down himself. Together with the Roman senator Seneca and the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the freed slave Epictetus is one of the most influential and famous of these ancient Stoic philosophers. If the Discourses on their own do not achieve this, then perhaps I am to blame or it simply cannot be helped.

At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills. Yet serving this master at the court of Nero gave Epictetus a window into the personal lives of men who occupied the highest echelons of Roman power; and the young slave seems to have wondered whether their respective stations in life were not the opposite of what they appeared to be. Remember, he says, that books are ultimately just another external good, like money or power, and by prizing them, like any external good, we simply make ourselves victims of circumstances. I must depart into exile; so can anyone prevent me from setting off with a smile, cheerfully and serenely?The outside world—the world outside our minds—will always be able to overpower us, outmaneuver us, and surprise us. These times in which we now live demand normal daily functioning, combined with active resistance to viciously regressive political forces, in a chaotic atmosphere of propaganda and violence.

This means that these works are full of dull everyday situations, which at times convey interesting details about the Greco-Roman world during the first two centuries A. Personally, I got a lot out of this collection, but mainly from the 30-page final section 'The Enchiridion', which is a miniature bible of staggeringly clear and concise gems of Stoic thoughts; I found that I could extract its wisdom easily and apply it to my own life philosophy effortlessly. And then, even so, in practice it is so often difficult to tell whether we are fulfilling our duties to the best of our abilities.Back to my petty concerns, I would consider that during the next interview it would be best to remember beforehand very sincerely that there's nothing I can do to guarantee acceptance, and that all I can do is give it my all and fail gracefully, because it seems that jobs, possessions, relationships, and health are not enough by themselves to bring us peace of mind, and that accepting loss may be one of the most important abilities that any human being can learn. When Epictetus uses the term “God,” he can mean the gods, Jupiter, and/or a guardian spirit within us. While that is true from a logical perspective, why should people mute themselves in this act of self-control when they lose nothing from their complaints? The morality of Greek philosophers was the antithesis of our modern one: they believed we should eschew all material desires, not because of some dictate of the heavens, but because they can never be satisfied and come to tyrannise us rather than make us happy.