Epictetus was born a slave about 55 A.D. in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey but back then part of the Roman Empire. His owner, Epaphroditus, was a prominent advisor to Nero, and Epictetus therefore spent his youth at Rome, eventually becoming a free man, though when and at what age is unknown. While the details of his education are likewise skimpy, we know that he did for a time study with the Roman senator and Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus. Epictetus was lame as an adult, and there is a tradition that this was the result of an injury incurred while being abused as a slave. Yet his education, which may have helped him gain his freedom, appears to have been tolerated or even encouraged. Another ancient writer attributes the lameness to what we know as arthritis. In the years leading up to 90 A.D. he was lecturing in philosophy at Rome, but he then moved to Nicopolis, on the Adriatic coast of northwest Greece. The presumed reason for the move was an edict of the Emperor Domitian, issued in 89, banning philosophers from the Italian peninsula. He taught and lectured at Nicopolis for many years before withdrawing, at an advanced age, to raise an abandoned child he had adopted. He died at Nicopolis in about 135, when he would have been approximately 80.
It is arguably a misnomer to speak of Epictetus as an “author" since, in the widely held scholarly view, the works that have come down to us under his name are the notes of probably his most assiduous Nicopolitan student, Arrian, who was in his own right a prominent essayist and historian of the period—he wrote a biography of Alexander the Great. Notably, Arrian's works are in a language and style completely unlike that of his "class notes," which has led to the conclusion that these notes are really more like a stenographer's transcript of Epictetus's lectures and that Arrian was indeed a devoted student. That these works represent the philosophy of Epictetus, not Arrian, isn't disputed. There are four books, together known as the Discourses, a distillation of the Discourses known as the Enchiridion (Greek for "Handbook"), and some fragments from which it is clear that there are lost books in addition to the four we have. To speak of four books may give a false impression—the Discourses, fragments, and the Enchiridion are collected in a Penguin classic paperback, edited by Robert Dobbin, that's 300 pages long, including an Introduction, Endnotes, and a name glossary.
Epictetus is interested almost exclusively in ethics. Within the field of ethics, he isn't much concerned with our duties toward others. The question he addresses is "How should one live to be content and happy?"—self-help for eggheads. Dobbin, in his introduction, summarizes:
According to [Epictetus] the faculty of choice distinguishes humans from irrational animals. We can make considered choices among "impressions" or "appearances," meaning anything that comes within range of our senses, together with whatever thoughts and feelings these sensations evoke. . . .
Human impressions have "propositional content," that is, our minds automatically frame them as a statement, such as "that is a good thing to have" or "this is the right thing to do." They also involve an intermediate step: the impression requires our assent before it generates the impulse to act on it. Drawing on this orthodox Stoic account of human psychology, Epictetus makes two points with an emphasis distinctly his own: (1) that rational animals can hold off acting on impressions until they are scrutinized and assessed; and (2) if they are judged unreasonable—i.e. irrational or merely impractical—we can and should withhold our assent from them.
This is accurate, but the experience of reading Epictetus is frequently more bracing than the summary suggests. For it turns out that, upon performing the recommended deliberations, virtually all "impressions" are "unreasonable," "irrational," "merely impractical": fame, wealth, status, high reputation, all the usual baubles fail the test. Thus one reads, for example, the following crystalline description of what laborers in today's counseling industry refer to as the hedonic treadmill:
[W]hat philosophers say may be contrary to expectation, but not to reason. For you will learn by experience that it's true: the things that men admire and work so hard to get prove useless to them once they're theirs. Meanwhile people to whom such things are still denied come to imagine that everything good will be theirs if only they could acquire them. Then they get them: and their longing is unchanged, their disgust is no less, and they still long for whatever is lacking. Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.
This was written almost 2000 years ago. It's roughly contemporaneous with the New Testament, which, besides being written in the same language (Koine Greek), is a product of the same culture and geographic locale. But only one reads like it's from a distant land long ago, an unfamiliar country with a hidden code. The other is more like an unusually incisive diagnosis of human ills whose long history is obscured somewhat by their current prevalence. Epictetus’s diagnosis feels “modern.”
I admit, though, to being hazy about the proposed remedy. The above quoted passage continues:
Assure yourself of this by expending as much effort on these new ambitions as you did on those illusive goals: work day and night to attain a liberated frame of mind. Instead of a rich old man, cultivate the company of a philosopher, be seen hanging around his door for a change. There’s no shame in the association, and you won’t go away unedified or empty-handed, provided you go with the right attitude. Try at least; there is no shame in making an honest effort.
You can see here the brusque, colloquial style that contributes to the bracing quality I mentioned. Some of the things that aren’t explicitly stated add to the force—like, here, the dismissal, at once casual and emphatic, of the student’s apparent assumption that a rich man should certainly be listened to. But the diagnosis of the problem is more concrete than the description of the recommended treatment. We are to hang out with philosophers? Attain a liberated frame of mind? Maybe it’s not for nothing that Epictetus appears doubtful anyone will succeed. “At least give it a shot,” he says, like a coach exhorting his overmatched team to play hard.
We are to strive to attain a “liberated mind.” Liberated from what? Desire. But that would include the desire to be happy and thrive, which was the purpose of the inquiry. Is the whole endeavor then self-cancelling? It certainly may appear that the ideal of Epictetus is so austere as to be life-denying. Here’s the entirety of Chapter 3 of Enchiridion:
In the case of particular things that delight you, or benefit you, or to which you have grown attached, remind yourself of what they are. Start with things of little value. If it is china you like, for instance, say, ‘I am fond of a piece of china.’ When it breaks, then you won’t be as disconcerted. When giving your wife or child a kiss, repeat to yourself, ‘I am kissing a mortal.’ Then you won’t be so distraught if they are taken from you.
Yikes! Not sure about this continuous spectrum running from broken china to dead children. Seems almost laughable, in a way: your loved ones could think you’re being affectionate when actually you’re just practicing for bereavement. I’ll trade in five pounds of my humanity in order to feel less pain. Deal!
Notwithstanding my reservations, Epictetus is enjoying a vogue. His criticism of the way people live invigorates, and the indistinctness of the cure allows enthusiasts considerable latitude in fashioning an interpretation amenable to themselves. This seems always to have been the case. For example, early fathers of the Christian church detected in Epictetus’s detachment from the world’s “impressions” an endorsement of the monastic ideal—perhaps overlooking that Stoic detachment is aimed toward self-mastery, a concept that doesn’t mix well with, say, Original Sin. More recently (1993), James Stockdale—Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992!—published a book detailing how the Enchiridion had helped him endure seven years of captivity at the Hanoi Hilton, four of them in solitary confinement. YouTube searches like “Stockdale on Epictetus” yield lots of returns, most interesting and some quite affecting. That his philosophy has been a balm to people bearing awful burdens, or extreme states of mind, is undeniable. In this desperate poem, John Berryman writes that Epictetus is “in some ways” his favorite philosopher.
The Discourses of Epictetus also made a deep impression on Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations are another of the principal works of Stoic philosophy, and it’s poignant to reflect that this line of influence runs from a man born a slave in the Empire to one who became its Emperor.