Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 264 and also 240. See book II chapter VIII ↩

This seems to be a proverb. If I am eaten, let me be eaten by the nobler animal. ↩

A conjunctive or complex (συμπεπλεγμένον) axiom or lemma. Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights xvi 8) gives an example: “Publius Scipio, the son of Paulus, was both twice consul and triumphed, and exercised the censorship and was the colleague of Lucius Mummius in his censorship.” Gellius adds, “in every conjunctive if there is one falsehood, though the other parts are true, the whole is said to be false,” For the whole is proposed as true: therefore if one part is false, the whole is not true. The disjunctive (διεζευγμένον) is of this kind: “pleasure is either bad or good, or neither good nor bad.” ↩

We often say a man learns a particular thing: and there are men who profess to teach certain things, such as a language, or an art; and they mean by teaching that the taught shall learn; and learning means that they shall be able to do what they learn. He who teaches an art professes that the scholar shall be able to practice the art, the art of making shoes for example, or other useful things. There are men who profess to teach religion, and morality, and virtue generally. These men may tell us what they conceive to be religion, and morality, and virtue; and those who are said to be taught may know what their teachers have told them. But the learning of religion, and of morality and of virtue, mean that the learner will do the acts of religion and of morality and of virtue; which is a very different thing from knowing what the acts of religion, of morality, and of virtue are. The teacher’s teaching is in fact only made efficient by his example, by his doing that which he teaches ↩

“He is not a Stoic philosopher, who can only explain in a subtle and proper manner the Stoic principles: for the same person can explain the principles of Epicurus, of course for the purpose of refuting them, and perhaps he can explain them better than Epicurus himself. Consequently he might be at the same time a Stoic and an Epicurean; which is absurd.” —⁠Johann Schweighäuser. He means that the mere knowledge of Stoic opinions does not make a man a Stoic, or any other philosopher. A man must according to Stoic principles practice them in order to be a Stoic philosopher. So if we say that a man is a religious man, he must do the acts which his religion teaches; for it is by his acts only that we can know him to be a religious man. What he says and professes may be false; and no man knows except himself whether his words and professions are true. The uniformity, regularity, and consistency of his acts are evidence which cannot be mistaken. ↩

It has been suggested that Epictetus confounded under the name of Jews those who were Jews and those who were Christians. We know that some Jews became Christians. But see Johann Schweighäuser’s note 1 and note 7. ↩

It is possible, as I have said, that by Jews Epictetus means Christians, for Christians and Jews are evidently confounded by some writers, as the first Christians were of the Jewish nation. In book IV chapter VII, Epictetus gives the name of Galilaeans to the Jews. The term Galilaeans points to the country of the great teacher. Paul says (Romans 2:28), “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly⁠—but he is a Jew which is one inwardly,” etc. His remarks (2:17⁠–⁠29) on the man “who is called a Jew, and rests in the law and makes his boast of God” may be compared with what Epictetus says of a man who is called a philosopher, and does not practice that which he professes. ↩

See book II chapter XXIV at 26; Iliad, vii 264, etc.; Juvenal, Satires xv 65,

Nec hunc lapidem, quales et Turnus et Ajax
Vel quo Tydides percussit pondere coxam
Aeneae.

—⁠John Upton

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Cicero (De Finibus iv 10); Seneca (Epistles 95). ↩

See book I chapter IX. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations vi 44: “But my nature is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”

I have here translated προβάτων by “domestic animals;” I suppose that the bovine species, and sheep and goats are meant. ↩

This may appear extravagant; but it is possible to explain it, and even to assent to it. If a man believes that all is wisely arranged in the course of human events, he would not even try to resist that which he knows it is appointed for him to suffer: he would submit and he would endure. If Epictetus means that the man would actively promote the end or purpose which he foreknew, in order that his acts may be consistent with what he foreknows and with his duty, perhaps the philosopher’s saying is too hard to deal with; and as it rests on an impossible assumption of foreknowledge, we may be here wiser than the philosophers, if we say no more about it. Compare Seneca, De Providentia chapter 5. ↩

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations vi 42: “We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do.” ↩

A lettuce is an example of the