Misunderstanding Stoicism: Problems with Epictetus 

In this letter I want to develop a point that I have made in passing a couple of times recently (here and here). In short, I think that many of the common misunderstandings of Stoicism are due to Epictetus. Now, I know that Massimo and Tony and many others are great admirers of Epictetus, as am I. I don’t think the problem is with Epictetus himself but rather the way in which certain statements of his are taken out of context and used as starting points for presentations of Stoic ideas.

Let’s start with the most famous of these, the so-called ‘dichotomy of control.’ I don’t know for sure when people started calling it this; it’s not a phrase that I think I ever came across in the scholarly literature when I first started studying Stoicism, but it does appear in William Irvine’s 2009 book A Guide to a Good Life and I suspect that Irvine’s book brought it into wider use. I’ve often seen this referred to in popular discussions as a foundational Stoic principle, but that seems to overstate things quite a bit.

In any case, Epictetus says that some things are ‘up to us’ and some things are not ‘up to us’, adding that if we place things in the wrong category or tie our happiness to securing things not ‘up to us’ then we are likely to end up frustrated and disappointed (Handbook 1). People encountering this distinction for the first time often seem to assume that it implies the following things:

• We ought only to care and pay attention to things ‘up to us’;
• We ought to be indifferent to everything not ‘up to us,’ which is to say everything in the outside world.

The second of these seems often to be taken to imply the following: 

• We ought to become cold and indifferent to other people close to us (a view seemingly supported by the notorious ‘a dead child is no different to a broken cup’ passages, Discourses 3.24.84-5; Handbook 3);
• We ought to be indifferent to politics and the wider world, which is out of our control and so ought to be of no concern to us.

I take it that these two statements capture two of the most common criticisms of Stoicism: that Stoics are cold and unfeeling, and that Stoicism leads to political quietism. Unsurprisingly, I think that these criticisms are based on a misunderstanding.

The first thing to say is that Epictetus himself (as we have him, via Arrian) does not say either of these things. He does not explicitly say that one ought to be cold and indifferent to everything that is not ‘up to us.’ What he is saying is that we ought not to think that we can control these things and we ought not to tie our sense of wellbeing and happiness to them, which would make us literal hostages to fortune. Instead, we ought to focus on those things we can change – our own judgements, beliefs, and actions. This focus inwards is, of course, closely tied up with the idea that we ought to try to cultivate the virtues. The goal is to become more just, moderate, and courageous, and I would suggest that these are all ‘outward facing’ virtues that are important precisely because they shape our interactions with other people and the wider world.

Let’s take a common example. Someone who is concerned about climate change might do a whole series of things to reduce their own impact on the environment. They might cut down on their consumption, recycle more, travel less, and encourage others to do the same. Now, that person would be deluded to think that these small individual actions of their own are likely to reverse the climate emergency – that’s something way out of their control. Even if they persuaded everyone in their local community to do the same, globally there would be very little impact. I don’t know the figures, but I suspect that if all negative environmental activity in a small, developed country – say the UK – stopped overnight, the benefits would not make much of a difference to the ongoing negative trajectory on which the world is traveling. After all, the global lockdowns of Covid barely made a difference. Even so, our person still does what he does, not because he thinks his actions will change the world, but because he feels it is the right thing to do; he is attending to what is up to him. Such a person can take some sense of comfort that they are doing their bit, but without beating themselves up over the fact that the wider situation is out of their control. This, I think, is close to what Epictetus has in mind. As he puts it, ‘What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes’ (Discourses 1.1.17).

In one particularly striking passage Epictetus in effect responds to the passivity objection. An interlocutor asks the question whether we ought to be careless with external things, if they are merely ‘indifferents’ and not ‘up to us.’ Epictetus replies to this by saying: ‘Not at all; for that is bad for our faculty of choice, and thus contrary to nature. Rather, they [external things] should be used with care, because their use is not a matter of indifference, but at the same time with composure and calmness of mind, because the material being used is indifferent’ (Discourses 2.5.6-7). In a famous statement Epictetus says that it is not things but our judgements about things that disturb us (Handbook 5); in the light of the passage above we might also say that it is not things that matter but how we use them and how we treat them. It’s not merely about what goes on in our heads (the judgements that might distress us), but about how we act in the world (the care we give to people and things around us).

Elsewhere, Epictetus also challenges the idea that he’s cultivating an attitude of cold indifference towards other people: ‘I’m not saying that you shouldn’t make an effort to stop her from grieving, but that we shouldn’t wish at all costs for things that are not our own’ (Discourses 3.24.22).

I hope I have shown that these common misconceptions that often arise after a first encounter with Epictetus do not fairly reflect his thought. Epictetus is saved. Even so, that does not change the fact that these sorts of misunderstandings repeatedly arise when people are first introduced to Stoicism via potted summaries and sayings taken from him. Perhaps we ought not to begin there; perhaps Epictetus ought to be reserved for a later stage in the process.

I suggest that people encountering Stoicism for the first time would have quite a different first impression if they began not with Epictetus but with Cicero’s book On Duties, much of which he tells us was based on the Stoic Panaetius’s now lost work On Appropriate Actions. There’s no mention of the ‘dichotomy of control’ here. It is a rich and complex – but also accessible – book that has one guiding question: the choice between what is useful or beneficial and what is honourable or virtuous. Should we act in our own self-interest, or should we do the right thing? Cicero argues, in line with Stoic ideas, that the question is itself unhelpful when put in these terms, because acting virtuously is in fact the most beneficial thing we can do, and so there is no real conflict between benefit and virtue.

Cicero illustrates apparent conflicts between what’s beneficial and what’s honourable, as well as conflicts between different honourable actions, and he does so with a wide range of examples from Roman politics and history. The book is all about why we ought to do the right thing in the messy real world in which we find ourselves. No one could accuse it of proposing an attitude of indifference or quietism. If Epictetus is sometimes read as someone primarily concerned with inward-facing psychotherapy, in On Duties Cicero presents Stoicism as resolutely outward-facing and ethical. I think it would be very difficult for those common misconceptions of Stoicism to arise if people were first introduced to the core Stoic themes of On Duties in place of those usually associated with Epictetus. To reiterate, I don’t think there is anything inherently problematic with Epictetus’s version of Stoicism, but I’ve noticed that it is often ideas taken from him that tend to generate unhelpful misconceptions. So, should we save Epictetus only for those who have already started to make progress?

Vale,
John