The Manual Analysis
THE MANUAL
EPICTETUS
The Handbook is a guide to daily life. Epictetus focuses his attention on how to practically apply oneself on a philosophical level. The primary theme in this short work is that one should expect what will happen and wish it to happen so. The other motif that appears is Epictetus' opinion on the judgment of events: What upset people are not things themselves, but their judgments about the things. For example, "death is nothing dreadful or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates (Chapter five of the book). Underlying all of this, however, is the idea that "Some things are up to us and some are not up to us" and we must react and interact with those things accordingly.
Epictetus Saw moral philosophy as having the practical purpose of guiding people towards leading better lives. The aim is to encourage his students to live the philosophic life, whose end was happiness or flourishing, to be secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously and living according to nature. The happiness of those who attain this ideal consists of imperturbability, freedom from passion, good feelings, and an awareness of, and capacity to attain, what counts as living as a rational being should. The key to transforming oneself into a wise person is to learn what is ‘in one’s power’, and this is the correct use of impressions, which in outline involves not judging as good or bad anything that appears to one. For the only thing that is good is acting virtuously (that is, motivated by virtue), and the only thing that is bad is the opposite, acting viciously (that is, motivated by vice). Someone who seeks to make progress as a Stoic understands that their power of rationality is a fragment of God whose material body – a sort of rarefied fiery air – blends with the whole of creation, intelligently forming and directing undifferentiated matter to make the world as we experience it. The task of the Stoic, therefore, is to live
EPICTETUS
The Handbook is a guide to daily life. Epictetus focuses his attention on how to practically apply oneself on a philosophical level. The primary theme in this short work is that one should expect what will happen and wish it to happen so. The other motif that appears is Epictetus' opinion on the judgment of events: What upset people are not things themselves, but their judgments about the things. For example, "death is nothing dreadful or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates (Chapter five of the book). Underlying all of this, however, is the idea that "Some things are up to us and some are not up to us" and we must react and interact with those things accordingly.
Epictetus Saw moral philosophy as having the practical purpose of guiding people towards leading better lives. The aim is to encourage his students to live the philosophic life, whose end was happiness or flourishing, to be secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously and living according to nature. The happiness of those who attain this ideal consists of imperturbability, freedom from passion, good feelings, and an awareness of, and capacity to attain, what counts as living as a rational being should. The key to transforming oneself into a wise person is to learn what is ‘in one’s power’, and this is the correct use of impressions, which in outline involves not judging as good or bad anything that appears to one. For the only thing that is good is acting virtuously (that is, motivated by virtue), and the only thing that is bad is the opposite, acting viciously (that is, motivated by vice). Someone who seeks to make progress as a Stoic understands that their power of rationality is a fragment of God whose material body – a sort of rarefied fiery air – blends with the whole of creation, intelligently forming and directing undifferentiated matter to make the world as we experience it. The task of the Stoic, therefore, is to live