Discourses

Overview

The Discourses are the record of the teaching of Epictetus, the four books of his lectures compiled by his pupil Arrian in the early second century CE. Where the Enchiridion is the distillation of the teaching into maxims, the Discourses preserve the teaching in full: the conversations, the arguments, the rebukes, and the exhortations of the Stoic master as he trained his students in the philosophical life. The work is one of the great documents of the ancient philosophy of practice, and it is the fullest surviving account of the Stoic discipline of the inner life. Its central theme is freedom: the freedom that no external power can touch, won by the discipline of desire, action, and assent. Its most famous chapters — "On Freedom" (4.1), "On the Art of Argument" (1.17), "How One Should Bear Illness" (3.10) — are among the masterpieces of Stoic literature.

Author

Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) was born a slave and taught philosophy at Nicopolis after the expulsion of the philosophers from Rome. Like Socrates, he wrote nothing himself; like Socrates, his teaching was recorded by his students. Arrian, who was a Roman senator and a man of letters, compiled the Discourses from his own notes of Epictetus's lectures, and he tells us in his prefatory letter that he wrote them down "as far as possible in the very words of the philosopher." The voice that emerges is one of the most distinctive in ancient philosophy: direct, demanding, humorous, and utterly serious — the voice of a man who believed that philosophy is not a subject but a training, and that its test is not what one knows but how one lives.

Historical Background

The Discourses belong to the great age of Roman Stoicism, the period in which the philosophy of the Greek schools was being practiced, and tested, in the setting of the Roman empire. Epictetus taught at Nicopolis at the same time that Plutarch was writing in Greece and Marcus Aurelius was being educated in Rome, and his school attracted students from across the empire — senators, knights, and the sons of the elite, as well as the poor and the enslaved. The teaching was Socratic in method: Epictetus interrogated his students, exposed their confusions, and drove them to the point where they had to choose between their comfortable illusions and the demanding truth of the Stoic life. The Discourses preserve this interrogation, and they are the closest we have, in the later Stoic tradition, to the living voice of a philosophical master.

Key Ideas

The Discourses develop the three disciplines of the Stoic life in full. The discipline of desire is the theme of the book's most famous passages: the chapter "On Freedom" argues that the person who desires only what is up to them cannot be enslaved, while the person who desires externals is a slave however free they appear. The discipline of action is the theme of the practical chapters: how to bear illness, how to deal with a difficult father, how to conduct oneself in public life. The discipline of assent is the theme of the epistemological chapters: Epictetus insists that our impressions are not in our power, but our assent to them is, and the whole of wisdom consists in the right use of impressions — "it is not the things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them."

The Discourses also develop the Socratic dimension of Stoicism. Epictetus presents Socrates as the model of the philosophical life and philosophy itself as the care of the self: "the beginning of philosophy is the consciousness of one's own weakness and helplessness." The work is thus not only a manual of practice but a meditation on what philosophy is: not the accumulation of knowledge but the transformation of the person, the conversion of the whole soul from the false values of the world to the true value of virtue.

Important Passages

The most celebrated passage of the Discourses is the opening of the chapter "On Freedom" (4.1), which defines the free person: "He is free who lives as he wishes, whom no one can compel, whom no one can hinder, whom no one can force to do anything against his will." The most quoted formula is the account of the impressions (1.5): "It is not the things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them." And the most moving passages are those in which Epictetus speaks of his own experience: the former slave who teaches that "no one is free who is not master of himself," and the philosopher who tells his students, "If you would be free, do not seek or avoid anything that is not up to you."

Influence

The Discourses had a decisive influence on the subsequent history of Stoicism. They were the school text of the later Stoic tradition, and they shaped the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, whose private notes repeatedly echo the teaching of Epictetus. In the modern period, the Discourses were among the first Greek philosophical works printed in the Renaissance, and they have been continuously in print since. The modern Stoic revival has made them a central text: the Discourses are the fullest record of the Stoic discipline of practice, and they are the source of some of the most quoted sayings in the modern Stoic literature — the distinction between what is up to us and what is not, the correction of the impressions, and the definition of freedom.

Sources

• Epictetus. Discourses. Trans. Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Long, A.A. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Epictetus" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/epictetus)