Epictetus — "Good and evil, in his view, come only from those things that progress from our w…"
Good and evil, in his view, come only from those things that progress from our will.
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More from Epictetus
"Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that are not within our control."
"Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.…"
"If a man has a bad smell, he knows it not, but his neighbor knows it. So too with our faults."
"Imagine a dog tied to a cart. If the dog wants to follow, it follows, adding its own will to the inevitable. But if the dog refuses to follow, it will be dragged along anyway."
"What does not transmit light creates darkness."
About Epictetus (c. 50-135 CE)
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave whose Discourses (recorded by his student Arrian) shaped Marcus Aurelius and the modern Stoic revival. Closely associated with Seneca (earlier Roman Stoic) and Marcus Aurelius (his student-by-text on the imperial throne). For an intellectual contrast, see Epicurus, Greek philosopher of pleasure-as-tranquility — the Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years — Epicurean materialist hedonism is the precise alternative the Stoic discipline-of-acceptance was built against.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epictetus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002); Pierre Hadot (Collège de France) — Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995); Anthony R. Birley (Manchester, Roman historian) — Marcus Aurelius (1987) — the standard biography of Epictetus's most famous student. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epictetus.