PATIENT
The Enchiridion
COMPOSED
c. 100–135 CE (approx.)
FORM
A short handbook of rules
SETTING
A classroom in Greece; compiled by his student Arrian
CHIEF COMPLAINT
Why do other people and events keep disturbing me, and what can I actually do about it?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) was a former slave who taught philosophy in Greece. His student Arrian gathered the practical core of that teaching into a few pages: what is up to you and what is not, how to hold what you love, and how to act well in the part you are given. It is short, blunt and meant to be used. The book opens by dividing everything into what is in our power (our opinions, impulses, desires and aversions) and what is not (body, property, reputation, office), and the rest is an application of that one split. It closes by quoting Socrates' claim that his accusers may kill him but cannot hurt him.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
UP TO US
The first and last distinction: what is in your power and what is not. Everything else follows from it.
IMPRESSION
What first arrives in the mind. Not yet a judgment, and so not yet a source of distress.
ASSENT
The act of agreeing to an impression. This is the step where Stoic training does its work.
ROLES
You are an actor in a play whose author chooses the length and your part. Your business is to play the given part well; choosing it belongs to another.
PROGRESS
Moving forward without claiming to have arrived. An untrained person blames others, a beginner blames himself, and one who has finished the training blames neither.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Short numbered sections, closer to a rulebook than an essay. It is meant to be used, not admired.
- —Blunt and practical, with almost no theory on show. The opening distinction does the work, and the rest applies it.
- —Carried by plain images: two handles on everything, an actor in a play, a ship and the shore, a banquet.
- —The book is Arrian's compilation of the teaching, not Epictetus writing; the voice is a teacher speaking to students.
- —Ends on Socrates, the model of a life lived by its own standards.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
The practical companion to the Meditations. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor writing private notes, and Epictetus was a former slave teaching in a classroom, working the same ideas from opposite ends of Roman society. A good way in is four places: the opening distinction, section V (views, not things), section XVII (the actor and the play) and section XX (insult is an opinion). For a first read, try Robin Hard (Oxford World's Classics), Nicholas White (Hackett) or A. A. Long's How to Be Free (Princeton); the public-domain Higginson translation is quoted in the full guide.