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- Epictetus was also a bishop of Zaragoza (Spain) in ca. 105 AD.
Life
Epictetus spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a very wealthy freedman of Nero. Even as a slave, Epictetus used his time productively, studying Stoic Philosophy under Musonius Rufus. He was eventually freed and lived a relatively hard life in ill health in Rome. It is known that he became crippled, yet the exact cause remains in dispute. Some reports claim that his injuries were a result of cruel treatment by his owner, Epaphroditos, while yet other reports claim that Epaphroditos was an ideal master who enthusiastically supported Epictetus' studies. He was exiled along with other philosophers by the emperor Domitian sometime between 89 and 95.
It was Epictetus' exile by Domitian that began what would later come to be the most celebrated part of his life. After his exile, Epictetus traveled to Nicopolis, Greece, where he founded a famed philosophical school. This school was even visited by Hadrian, and its most famous student, Arrian, became a great historian in his own right.
True to Stoic form, Epictetus lived a life of great simplicity, marked by teaching and intellectual pursuits. Some claim that he married once, late in life, to help raise a child who would have otherwise been left to die. Others say that he did not marry, and remained childless.
Demonax supposedly rebuked Epictetus' exhortation to marry by sarcastically asking whether he could marry one of the philosopher's daughters.
Philosophy
Epictetus' main work is The Discourses, four books of which have been preserved complete (out of an original eight). A popular digest, entitled the Enchiridion—or "Handbook"—also survives. These were not written by Epictetus himself, but were penned by his pupil Arrian. In a preface to the Discourses, addressed to Lucius Gellius, Arrian states that "whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech."
Epictetus focused on ethics to a greater extent than the early Stoics had. He held that our aim was to be masters of our own lives. The role of the Stoic teacher, according to Epictetus, was to encourage his students to learn, first of all, the true ‘nature of things’, which is invariable, inviolable and valid for all human beings without exceptions. The ‘nature of things’ is their bipartition into two categories; those things that are subject to our exclusive power (prohairetic things) and those things that are not subject to our exclusive power (aprohairetic things). The first category of things includes judgement, impulse, desire, aversion, etc. The second category of things, which can also be called adiaphora, includes health, material wealth, fame, etc. Epictetus then introduced his students to two cardinal concepts: the concept of ‘Prohairesis’ and the concept of ‘Dihairesis’. Prohairesis is what distinguishes humans from all other creatures. It is the faculty that makes us desire or avert, feel impelled or repel something, assent to or dissent about something, according to our own judgements. Epictetus repeatedly says that ‘we are our prohairesis’. Dihairesis is the judgement that is performed by our Prohairesis, and that enables us to distinguish what is subject to our exclusive power from what is not subject to our exclusive power. Finally, Epictetus taught his students that good and evil exist only in our Prohairesis and never in external or aprohairetic things. The good student who had thoroughly grasped these concepts and employed them in everyday life was prepared to live the philosophic life, whose objective was eudaimonia (‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’). This meant living virtuously, in accordance with reason and in accordance with the ‘nature of things’.
In the last chapter in Enchiridion he concludes his ethics with four maxims meant to help during everyday life:
"Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny,
To that goal long ago to me assigned.
I'll follow and not falter; if my will
Prove weak and craven, still I'll follow on.
"Whoever has complied well with necessity
Is counted wise by us, and understands divine affairs. (From Euripides, Frag. 965)
"O Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be." (From Plato's Crito)
"Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they can't harm me." (From Plato's Apology)
The philosophy of Epictetus plays a key role in the 1998 novel by Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full.
References
- Epictetus, Nicholas P. White (trans.), The Handbook, ISBN 0915145693, 1983.
- Epictetus, George Long (trans.), Enchiridion, ISBN 0879757035, 1955.
- Adolf Friedrich Bonhoffer, William O. Stephens, The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus, ISBN 0820451398, 2000.
- A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life, ISBN 0199245568, 2002.
- Epictetus, The Discourses (The Handbook, Fragments), Everyman Edition, Edited by Christopher Gill, ISBN 0460873121, 2003.
- Robert Dobbin, Epictetus Discourses: Book 1 (Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers), Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0198236646, 1998.
- Epictetus: The Discourses, trans. W.A. Oldfather. 2 vols. (Loeb Classical Library edition.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925 & 1928. ISBN 0674991451 and ISBN 0674992407.
- Hendrik Selle, Dichtung oder Wahrheit — Der Autor der Epiktetischen Predigten, Philologus 145 * 269-290
External links
- Epictetus entry at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Epictetus' writings at the Internet Classics Archive
- Books of the Discourses
- Epitteto: Diairesi, antidiairesi e felicità
Ancient Greek philosophers | Stoic philosophers | Roman era philosophers | Roman slaves and freedmen
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"Epictetus"