Epictetus - The chief business in life
"Thus in life also the chief business is this: distinguish and separate things, and say,
'Externals are not in my power: will is in my power. Where shall I seek the good and the bad? Within, in the things which are my own.' "
- Epictetus: Discourses; Book 2, Chapter 5 as in [1]
A few days ago I wrote a little overview about the discipline of stoicism in general. The above quote is attributed to Epictetus, one of the most famous stoics of the hellenistic hemisphere, who emerged from slavery to study and eventually found his own school of philosophy. By the way all the known records of his works are no publications of his but actually lecture notes by his students.
I choose this quote because it epitomizes a lot of the major teachings of stoicism particularly about the role of perception and will. It also reveals Epictetus' disposition for fatalism and moral relativism which you can see in a lot of lectures of his. He likes to argue that in general a lot more depends on our perception of things rather than those things themselves. But let's inspect this more closely:
First of all he emphasizes the need of clarity to distinguish the nature of things. Namely the externals such as weather, luck, fate etc. which are not under your control and the only thing you can really control - your mind.
Epictetus reminds us that despite feeling to be in control of everything our environment, the self-aware aggregation of biomatter that is a human only truly controls one thing, namely his own mental faculties.
But this means that our reaction to those externals beyond our control should also be a matter of our own will or at least be moderated by reason:
- Did someone offend you? Maybe yes, but you are suffering from the induced emotional disturbance not the offence itself. It is up to your will to feel offended or not.
- Did you make a mistake? By any means correct it and avoid it in the future but you can choose to set your mind away from about things you cannot change any more.
- Did your bus arrive late because the roads are snowed in? No amount of blaming the driver is likely to improve your immediate situation
- ...
Likewise Epictetus suggests good and bad are moral categories that largely exist within our mind. If someone who did you an injustice didn't know any better or did it on purpose should not matter in your moral perception. The only thing that matters is if you choose to let it bother you.
References
- [1] Epictetus, Discourses, e.g. on the Internet Classics Archive