DiscoursesEpictetus

Epictetus was a former slave, and his Discourses (recorded by his student Arrian) return constantly to the question of what is and is not in our power. The answer is stark. Our judgments, intentions, desires, and aversions are in our power. Everything else, including the body, reputation, property, and other people's actions, is not. Freedom consists in wanting only what is up to us and being indifferent to what is not.

This is Stoic orthodoxy, but Epictetus pushes it with a personal intensity the earlier Stoics lack. He addresses students directly, challenges them, mocks their pretensions, and dramatizes the philosophical life as a kind of athletic training. The sage is an athlete of the will. He practices with small annoyances (a broken cup, an insult) so that he is prepared for the large ones (exile, illness, death). Habit is the mechanism: what you practice daily is what you become.

The Discourses cover a wide range of topics: the proper use of impressions, the role of fate, the nature of the good, the relation between philosophy and ordinary life, how to handle a tyrant, how to endure poverty. But the underlying structure is always the same. Every disturbance of mind comes from confusing what is ours with what is not. Correct the confusion and tranquility follows.

Epictetus influenced Marcus Aurelius directly and, through the Enchiridion (a condensed manual drawn from the Discourses), shaped moral thought from the Stoic revival of the Renaissance through modern cognitive therapy.