A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the EncheiridionEpictetus
Philosophy
A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
Epictetus
Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
Is that shameful to you which is not your own act, that of which you
are not the cause, that which has come to you by accident, as a
headache, as a fever? If your parents were poor, and left their
property to others, and if while they live, they do not help you at
all, is this shameful to you? Is this what you learned with the
philosophers? Did you never hear that the thing which is shameful ought
to be blamed, and that which is blamable is worthy of blame? Whom do
you blame for an act which is not his own, which he did not do himself?
Did you then make your father such as he is, or is it in your power to
improve him? Is this power given to you? Well then, ought you to wish
the things which are not given to you, or to be ashamed if you do not
obtain them? And have you also been accustomed while you were studying
philosophy to look to others and to hope for nothing from yourself?
Lament then and groan and eat with fear that you may not have food
to-morrow. Tremble about your poor slaves lest they steal, lest they
run away, lest they die. So live, and continue to live, you who in name
only have approached philosophy, and have disgraced its theorems as far
as you can by showing them to be useless and unprofitable to those who
take them up; you, who have never sought constancy, freedom from
perturbation, and from passions; you who have not sought any person for
the sake of this object, but many for the sake of syllogisms; you who
have never thoroughly examined any of these appearances by yourself, Am
I able to bear, or am I not able to bear? What remains for me to do?
But as if all your affairs were well and secure, you have been resting
on the third topic, that of things being unchanged, in order that you
may possess unchanged—what? cowardice, mean spirit, the admiration of
the rich, desire without attaining any end, and avoidance ([Greek:
echchlisin]) which fails in the attempt? About security in these things
you have been anxious.
Ought you not to have gained something in addition from reason, and
then to have protected this with security? And whom did you ever see
building a battlement all around and encircling it with a wall? And
what doorkeeper is placed with no door to watch? But you practise in
order to be able to prove—what? You practise that you may not be tossed
as on the sea through sophisms, and tossed about from what? Show me
first what you hold, what you measure, or what you weigh; and show me
the scales or the medimnus (the measure); or how long will you go on
measuring the dust? Ought you not to demonstrate those things which
make men happy, which make things go on for them in the way as they
wish, and why we ought to blame no man, accuse no man, and acquiesce in
the administration of the universe?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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