Who Was Epictetus?

The truth of the matter is that most philosophers lived in a bubble. They lived a fantasy life. Plato was born to a wealthy family. Seneca was born to a wealthy family. Cato was born to a wealthy family. Schopenhauer had an enormous inheritance. Kierkegaard had an enormous inheritance. Although these philosophers spoke about life, they spoke about struggle, they spoke about freedom, they spoke about truth, it's hard not to notice the class and privilege that colors their view of these very matters, which is what makes the Stoic philosopher Epictetus so interesting. This is not just a man who was born into slavery in the ancient world. He's not even given a name. Epictetus just means acquired one. And that his philosophy would ultimately be about freedom and the triumph of the human spirit is a testament to not just his character, but the truth of the ideas he was writing about. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. Who was this guy, Epictetus? Your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher. And what can he teach us about life? So let's start at the beginning with Epictetus. He's born in 55 AD in Hierapolis, a Greek province of the Roman Empire in what is now modern-day Turkey. And he's subject, as I said, to its brutal laws. And and one of these laws says people who are born into slavery must remain slaves till their 30th birthday. So the the first three decades of his life are spoken for. They are not his own. Now there are many horrible places to be a slave in the Roman Empire. Could have been a gladiator, could have worked in one of the mines, or on various building projects. Epictetus is not condemned to that, but as a young man, he's purchased by a freedman, a former slave himself, who went on to become Nero's secretary and advisor. So Epictetus is a slave, and yet he is rubbing elbows with some of the most rich and powerful people inside Nero's court, including Seneca, who he probably would have seen on many occasions. And it was actually Augustus who passes this law, even though he himself was taught by two Stoic philosophers. So, there's some irony here that these decades of a future Stoic philosopher's life are stolen by a man advised by two great Stoic teachers, Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. It is remarkable that that none of them, and in fact very few of the Greeks or Romans seem to question the fairness or righteousness of this institution of slavery at all. Meanwhile, Epictetus himself has has very little time to ponder the fairness of his fate, right? He's too busy [music] just trying to survive, right? His labor is being stolen. Roman slaves were were vessels to be used up and then discarded. And even by Roman standards, Epictetus' master is cruel and violent and would have been considered depraved. At one point, we don't know the circumstances of why he's torturing Epictetus. He's twisting his leg with all of his might. And and we're told that when when the leg finally snaps, Epictetus doesn't cry, [music] doesn't complain. He makes no sound at all. He just looks his master in the face and say, "Didn't I warn you that would happen?" And and ultimately, Epictetus would walk with a limp for the rest of his life. A lot of the drawings and pictures we have of Epictetus show him with a crutch, but he refuses ultimately to see this as any kind of disability. He would say, [music] "Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the mind." And this is perhaps [music] the inspiration of something else that Epictetus would later say that that Zeus can break our legs, but nothing can take away our power of choice. So, for for Epictetus, the idea is that things are going to happen to us in life. We might be born high or we might be born low. We might undergo injuries or have various physical impediments [music] or impairments. But ultimately, how we choose to see these things, how we choose to see ourselves, is ultimately a power that we always possess. [music] This can only be relinquished. No one can actually take it from us even in the worst and the lowliest of circumstances, it's always ours. This is the core of Stoic philosophy, that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. We control how we play the hand that we've been dealt. In Nero's court in the 1st century AD, Epictetus would have seen all of the opulence and insanity and contradictions of Rome at that time. Nero's court would have been a surreal, deprived place to go to work every day. It tells us this story of of watching a man suck up to Nero's cobbler to find himself in good favor with the emperor. He tells us another story about a man begging for money because he was down to his last million sesterces, which would be millions of dollars [music] in today's dollars. And And the emperor says to him, "Oh my god, how can you bear it?" Right? So these were incredibly privileged, wealthy people, ostensibly the the the freest people in Rome, the people with the most choice. But Epictetus is looking around and going, "I might be freer than these people. I'm actually less enslaved to my urges, to my reputation, to this monstrous person whose favor I need to curry than than some of these senators and generals and merchants are." He sees these candidates for office working themselves to the bone. He saw the grift and the graft. He sees the spectacles that had to be on. He saw the chain, the ladder of ambition that these people [music] were trying to climb. And in that way, the the rich in Rome were not that different than rich people today. Just despite their wealth, despite their ambition, [music] despite their power, there was still someone or something above them that they wanted, right? And in that way, they were impoverished. In that way, they were not powerful. In that way, they were desperate. And in that way, they were beggars, essentially. And so, Seneca in that same court is in many ways less free than Epictetus is. In fact, at one point, Seneca tries to quit working for Nero, and Nero says, "I'm sorry, that's just not how this works." When Seneca writes that freedom is the prize that we're working for, not being a slave to anything, not to compulsion or to chance events, he must have been indicting himself. And certainly, Epictetus would not have looked at him the same way that maybe we look at him all these centuries later, degrading himself in Nero's service, desperate to be in the mix, complicit in Nero's crimes, worried about Nero's whim. And so, we have to understand and and [music] Epictetus teaches us this, that that freedom is more than just a legal status. It's a state of mind. It's a way of living. It's an understanding of our place in the world. What we know from Epictetus's writings and teachings is that he was horrified by what he saw in the palaces and imperial offices in Rome. And that he resolved to live differently both while he was a slave and later when he was free. And realizing that then that your legal status, your position in the hierarchy is is much less important than your sort of inner state of mind, your view of the world, gives us Epictetus's famous line that no man is a slave who is free in his will. Sometime around the year 78 AD, Musonius [music] Rufus, a man known as the Roman Socrates, returns from exile. [music] He's a famous Stoic philosopher. It's probably around this time that Epictetus begins to study under him. We don't know if he sneaks off [music] to attend the lectures. We don't know if he secures permission. We don't even know if he's free yet. But we know that he is desperate [music] to learn and we know that he learns under Musonius Rufus. And and Musonius Rufus is interesting because >> [music] >> not only is he teaching a slave or a former slave like Epictetus, but he also talks about how women should be taught philosophy. He He says that it really doesn't matter who you are, where you were born, virtue is virtue, freedom [music] is freedom. And in this way, he he clearly sees something in Epictetus and agrees [music] to teach him. But that isn't to say that Musonius Rufus is an easy teacher. But Epictetus is driven. He is not going to be stopped. He's not going to let external obstacles get in the way. He's not going [music] to get discouraged. And he wasn't going to be intimidated by Musonius Rufus, either, who we're told was a notoriously difficult teacher who demanded silence [music] from his students, who didn't enjoy praise, didn't give much praise, either. Musonius supposedly says that that the words of a good teacher will penetrate the very soul and intellect of the hearer. And at some level, that's obviously what happens with Epictetus. [music] Uh he just falls in love with what Musonius Rufus has to say. Even though [music] it was harsh and unrelenting. We're told that Epictetus makes a mistake on a paper or something and Musonius Rufus, you know, >> [music] >> begins to criticize him for it. And and when Epictetus tries to make an excuse, he says, "It's not like I set fire to the Capitol or something. It's just a mistake." Musonius Rufus says, "No, in this case, it's as if you did." And the point was he demands the best. He doesn't accept excuses. [music] He doesn't let students puff themselves up or brag, either. I think ultimately Musonius Rufus would have recognized a bit of a kindred [music] spirit in Epictetus. Although Musonius Rufus was not a slave, he'd been [music] exiled multiple times. He'd experienced difficulty. He'd experienced hardship. And unlike, you know, the the sons and daughters of of rich Romans, Epictetus [music] had also been through those things. And he clearly wanted to learn. [music] And he clearly took this seriously. Both men had experienced some of the worst things that human beings could do to each other. And [music] instead of being bitter by this, instead of losing their sense of agency over their lives about this, that these events pushed them, propelled them to love learning, to love knowledge. Epictetus in this way reminds me of of someone like Frederick Douglass, who teaches himself to read even though, you know, he's threatened with beatings, it's technically illegal for him to do this. He escapes from slavery at great personal [music] risk to himself, and then educates himself painstakingly until he becomes one of the smartest and most incisive writers and thinkers in all of the United States, equal not just to to to great teachers and other intellectuals, but to some of the most powerful people in the country. Just as Frederick Douglass becomes friends and >> [music] >> and an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, ultimately Epictetus becomes an advisor to the Emperor Hadrian, and then later is the primary philosophical influence on Marcus Aurelius. There's a famous [music] story about Frederick Douglass that I think embodies how Epictetus came to look at the world. Frederick Douglass was traveling, and someone came and told him >> [music] >> that, you know, he would have to to head to the back of the train. One of his friends was outraged about, you know, thinking that that he would be degraded in this manner by having to submit to segregation. And Frederick Douglass looked at this, you know, racist conductor and says, "You cannot degrade Frederick Douglass." He says, "You know, my soul is impossible to degrade. I'm not being degraded by this treatment. The people inflicting it upon me are." [music] And 2,000 years earlier, Epictetus had talked about how when we are offended, when we feel harmed, we are complicit in being provoked, in taking the [music] offense, in giving this person power over us. Epictetus would talk about how when we look outside for approval or validation, we have compromised our integrity. He talks about [music] how if you gave your physical body over to someone, if someone was was telling you it was physically accosting you, you would obviously not consent. [music] And yet, we allow people to get inside our heads. We allow things to make us feel inferior. [music] We allow things to make us feel harmed and and degraded, even though that's not possible without our involvement, without us assenting, to use the Stoic word, to this version of event. We just did this long road trip recently, and trying to prevent my kids' brains rotting in the car, we listened to two audiobooks from 11 [music] Reader, including The Odyssey, cuz my kids love The Odyssey. The cool thing about 11 Reader is it's not just audiobooks, not just like their professionally produced stuff, but you can take any text and get professional-grade audio read back to you. It turns PDFs, it turns docs, it turns webpages, it turns articles into something you actually want to listen to. It's as far from Siri or Alexa as you can get. You can start for free with 10 hours of content every month, or you can go ultra, and you get unlimited uploads, plus [music] 20 hours of premium audiobooks. No credits to manage, there's no commitment. You can switch titles at any time. You can head over to the link, we've got it in the description here to sign up. You can use code [music] book lover to get your first month for $1 or you can get 10 bucks off an annual subscription from 11 reader. So at at some point in his 30s, [music] we don't know exactly when or where or how Epictetus is free. While his previous life had been very circumscribed, he now becomes like the rest of us [music] in that he is presented with choice. Like what would he do for a living? Where would he live? How would he [music] use his freedom? What would he do with his life? And Epictetus chooses to dedicate himself fully to [music] philosophy. Many of the other Stoics were senators or generals or politicians or merchants. They they had full-time [music] jobs that were influenced by their philosophical pursuit. But Epictetus >> [music] >> chooses, I guess what we would today call the the academic route or the teaching [music] route. And very quickly he gains a large following. He clearly picks up from Musonius Rufus the ins and [music] outs of education and becomes one of the most sought-after teachers [music] for elite Roman families who want their kids [music] to be taught Stoic philosophy. He he dedicates himself fully to philosophy. [music] He has a great line about how if we as individuals apply ourselves to philosophy as as zealously as the ambitious people in Rome applied themselves [music] to their career interests, if if we were as committed to learning and studying [music] and self-improvement as much as these people were to getting ahead, what could we accomplish? And riffing on Socrates, Epictetus would say, you know, some people try to improve their farms or breed their animals. He says, I delight in my own [music] improvement day to day. And ultimately in in 93 AD when Domitian bans [music] all philosophers from Rome and Epictetus is driven into exile. He sets up shop in Nicopolis in Greece and [music] and even though this is far away from Rome, people are sending their kids all the way there >> [music] >> to be educated by him. It It's not just children sent by their parents that make this journey. Ultimately, [music] Hadrian, the emperor of Rome himself, makes the journey to sit at the feet of Epictetus and learn. And it it It's a remarkable journey that a man who was enslaved by and and worked [music] in the court of one emperor is within just a few short years the instructor [music] of another emperor. And yes, Hadrian is the most powerful man in the world, but if he is coming to sit and listen to Epictetus [music] lecture, makes you ask like who is actually the more powerful one? Who is actually the real ruler here? Ultimately, Epictetus's teachings are [music] influenced by his unique life experiences, as is true for the best teachers. [music] His fundamental contribution to Stoic philosophy is to say, "Look, there are some things that are in our control and some things that are not in our control, and our chief task in [music] life is to know what these things are and to dedicate ourselves and our effort and our energies and our judgments towards the [music] things that are in our control." We also get, in one of his more [music] famous metaphors, a glimpse at how he must have tried to see the difficult situations [music] he'd been subjected to. He says, "Every situation has two handles." Right, one of those handles is weak, one of [music] those handles is strong. One looks at what we're able to do because of this, one looks at what we can't [music] do because of this. One looks at how we've been harmed and wronged by this situation, the other looks at what's possible because of this situation. One [music] takes it personally, the other looks at it objectively, right? The reality is there I think there handles to every situation, but what Epictetus is saying is that we have a choice about which handle we grab. [music] We have a choice about how we view this. We have a choice about the story we tell ourselves about [music] this situation. So, Epictetus chooses not to see himself as powerless even as he is accepting [music] that he has no power over so many things, right? He is choosing to to see himself as free even inside slavery. He is choosing to see that his physical impairments don't [music] impinge on his emotional strength and freedom. He decides that it's possible to be happy and fulfilled and decent [music] and good and serene and peaceful and powerful even in the midst of difficulty and adversity and uncertainty and pain and suffering. He says ultimately that, you know, it's not things that [music] upset us. It's our opinion about things. That events are objective. They simply are and then [music] we decide what they mean to us. And I think [music] ultimately what Epictetus was trying to teach his students and all of the people who have been influenced [music] by him in the centuries since is that you don't control the hand that you were dealt. You don't control when you were born. You don't control who you were born to. You don't control if you were tall or short, if you were rich or poor. >> [music] >> You don't control if you live in a golden age or a nightmarish moment of turmoil and disruption, right? You don't control the hand you were dealt. You control how you play the hand you were dealt. He says that life is like [music] a play and we're all assigned a role by the author, by the playwright. And our job, he says, is to [music] play that role with brilliance. Play it well, right? To be the best actor [music] in the role we have been assigned. And I I I it's fair to say he did this magnificently. Epictetus doesn't write anything down, but thankfully [music] one of his students, Arrian, who's an advisor and administrator in >> [music] >> Hadrian's court, writes these lectures down. And that survives to us. Somehow, a copy of these [music] notes makes their way to Marcus Aurelius, almost certainly through his philosophy teacher Rusticus. And so, once [music] again, Epictetus is now the primary philosophical influence on the most powerful >> [music] >> person in the world. But his influence and his insights don't stop there. In 1962, [music] a fighter pilot named James Stockdale is sent to get a graduate degree at Stanford by the US Navy. And he happens to be walking through the philosophy department, and he meets a guy named Philip [music] Rhinelander, who's the head of the philosophy department at Stanford. He becomes his philosophy teacher in the way that Epictetus was taught by Musonius Rufus. And [music] on their last day together, as Stockdale is about to head back to active [music] duty, as the war in Vietnam is starting to gear up, Rhinelander gives him a copy of Epictetus. And it's this that acts as the primary philosophical influence [music] on Stockdale's life. He says, "As I read Epictetus, at first I couldn't see what this guy had [music] had anything to say about his life, right? His modern life. He's flying a jet faster than the speed of sound in this country thousands of years >> [music] >> after Epictetus. What do I hold in common with a first-century Stoic?" But he comes to realize that that Epictetus as [music] a person with firsthand experience of what he said was the the buzzsaw of life, had had put down a set of teachings, a way of thinking, a way of living by which a man could live with himself [music] and resist being ground down. And Stockdale's mind drifts [music] to Epictetus as he's shot down. He's parachuting down into what he knows will be at best imprisonment and torture [music] and and quite possibly death. He says to himself, "Well, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus." And it's Epictetus, this idea of "They can throw you in chains, they can isolate [music] you, they can torture you, they can break your legs" as Epictetus had known and Stockdale would would would soon [music] know, "but they can't take away your freedom of choice. They can't actually affect your character. They can't [music] make you into someone you don't want to be." That's the choice that at the end you ultimately possess. And it's Epictetus [music] who inspires Stockdale, gives him solace and counsel [music] over the next several years of torture and imprisonment and isolation [music] and pain and in some cases near death. And that's what Epictetus is and has always been. It's who he was in the ancient world and it's who he is today. One of my favorite stories about Epictetus is [music] is the story about Epictetus being robbed. Somebody breaks into his house and steals from his shrine to the gods and and an [music] iron lamp. And this was a prized possession of Epictetus and the thief takes [music] it. He had every reason to be upset. He could have felt violated. He could have been angry. But checking in with himself, trying to to connect this real world experience with [music] his philosophical teachings, he goes, "Look, this is on me. Why did I have something that I was afraid of losing?" And he says, [music] "Tomorrow I will go and buy an earthenware lamp." He wanted to keep his life simple. He wanted to keep himself free. He wanted to like those Buddhist monks that would say, "This cup is already [music] broken, right? My lamp is already stolen. It was on me for putting myself in this position." And so >> [music] >> we can see Epictetus as as living a hard, I don't want to say solitary life because he does adopt a child and seemed to have friends and connections, [music] but he did try to live frugally and cleanly and try not to [music] have things that people could take from him, which ultimately leads to one of his most provocative and powerful [music] teachings that landed heavy enough on Marcus Aurelius that he wrote it down in [music] his work Meditations. Epictetus talked about how when you tucked your children in at night, you should say to yourself, "They might not make it into the morning." [music] That this is the Stoic practice of memento mori, understanding that we don't possess, Epictetus said, even [music] our most precious possessions, even the people who are most precious to us. And Marcus [music] Aurelius, who would bury more than half of his children, doesn't treat this as an idle exercise. He says, "Yes, >> [music] >> the world is uncertain. The world is cruel. Loss is real. Death stalks all of us." Now, does Was Marcus Aurelius doing this so he didn't feel love and affection for his children? No, I think it's the opposite. He's trying to be present. He's trying to be connected. He's trying to not rush through bedtime, >> [music] >> which is, I think, the important thing we have to realize about Epictetus. Accepting our powerlessness, accepting [music] the ephemerality of life, ex- accepting the fragility of things. [music] It wasn't about making closing us off. In a way, it was about opening us up. Wasn't [music] about detaching, it was about making us present. It was about making us cherish the things that we have. [music] It was about making us understand not the power we don't have, but the power we do have. It was about making us understand, ultimately, that we don't control most of what's happening in the play of life, but we do control how we show up and play our role, and that we have to play it to the best of our ability and do the most with it. And if we can, [music] who knows? Maybe we can create something as memorable and as powerful an example of human perseverance and strength [music] as Epictetus did, which is why we are still talking about this Roman slave 2,000 years later. Most people come to stoicism [music] through Marcus Aurelius. And this makes sense. He was the most powerful person in the world. He's one of the most famous people who ever lived. But how did Marcus Aurelius [music] come to stoicism? Who was your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher? It's this guy named Epictetus. And it's remarkable [music] because Epictetus was born an enslaved person in what is now modern-day Turkey. So [music] how does Epictetus, whose name literally means acquired one, come to be the primary philosophical influence >> [music] >> on the emperor of Rome? Well, that's what we're going to try to figure out together this month at Daily Stoic. Calling it Epictetus month. Who he was, [music] how he lived, what he taught, what we need to take from his philosophy in order [music] to be better in whatever profession or station in life we inhabit. One of the things that Marcus Aurelius' [music] philosophy teacher Rustic has told him when he handed him Epictetus, was you can't just be satisfied with getting the gist of this. You have [music] to really understand it. And to help you do that, we created this guide, this course, this challenge all built around Epictetus' [music] wisdom. We're going to be reading Discourses and Enchiridion, studying his life, studying his influences, studying the people who he influenced, [music] and how they put Epictetus' teachings into practice. Whether you're new to stoicism, whether [music] you've read Marcus Aurelius a dozen times, even if you've read Epictetus a dozen times, there's going to be so much in this course. I'd love to have you join us. You can sign up below, and if you sign up in time, you can join me and all the other Daily Stoic participants. [music] We're going to be discussing Epictetus live as part of this course. >> [music] >> I hope to see you there.