Epictetus — "Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlli…"
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
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More from Epictetus
"The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter."
"Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get."
"If you want to be a great writer, write great books. If you want to be a great painter, paint great pictures. But if you want to be a great philosopher, be a great human being."
"If you want to be a man of honour, you must be a man of honour. If you want to be a good man, you must be a good man. If you want to be a wise man, you must be a wise man. If you want to be a fool, yo…"
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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.
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