Enchiridion
Encheiridion
Freedom and peace of mind come entirely from correctly distinguishing what is within our power, our own judgments and choices, from what is not, everything else including our body, reputation, and circumstances, and directing all effort only toward the former.
- the dichotomy of control
- freedom through correct judgment, not circumstance
- life as a role to be played well
- Epictetus's own experience of slavery and freedom
- influence extending to modern cognitive therapy
Compiled by Epictetus's student Arrian from lecture notes as a condensed handbook of the fuller Discourses, the Enchiridion opens with the single distinction Epictetus treats as the foundation of all ethics: some things are up to us, our opinions, desires, and actions, and some things are not, our body, property, reputation, and external events. Epictetus, who had himself been enslaved before gaining his freedom and founding a philosophical school at Nicopolis, teaches a practical discipline of reframing every disturbing event as either within one's control, and therefore to be acted on, or outside it, and therefore to be accepted, famously comparing life to a play in which one's job is to act the assigned role well rather than to choose it.
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