Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Epictetus was a slave who became free and taught people how to stay calm. His little book gives short rules for life. The rules all say one thing: you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you answer it. If you learn that one skill, nobody can really hurt your peace. People have kept this tiny book in their pockets for almost two thousand years.
Epictetus started life as a slave in Rome, owned by one of Nero's officials, and lame from an injury his master gave him. After he was freed he taught philosophy, was banished by an emperor, and ended his days running a small school in Greece. His student Arrian took notes of his talks, and the Enchiridion is the pocket summary of those notes.
The whole book turns on one cut: some things are up to us (our judgments, desires, and responses) and some are not (our bodies, property, reputations, and everything other people do). Misery, Epictetus says, comes from treating the second list as if it were the first. Freedom comes from guarding the first list fiercely and letting the second go.
Read it slowly, a few sections a day, and argue with it. Some sections will feel like they were written about your week. Marcus Aurelius read Epictetus, prisoners of war in the twentieth century carried him, and the handbook still fits in a pocket, which is where it was always meant to live.
Epictetus was a Roman slave who won his freedom and became the ancient world's most practical teacher of Stoicism. The Enchiridion, the little handbook his student Arrian made from his talks, fits his whole philosophy into fifty-two short rules: some things are up to us, most things are not, and peace of mind lives in knowing the difference. Soldiers, emperors, and prisoners have carried it for nineteen centuries.
The first chapter
There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.
Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm.
Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of that by which alone happiness and freedom are procured.
Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, “You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing.” And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Author died c. 135 AD. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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