The idea
Epictetus was born a slave in the Roman Empire and became one of the most influential Stoic philosophers. His central insight is captured in the opening of the Enchiridion:
"Some things are up to us and some are not up to us."
What is up to us: our judgements, our desires, our actions — the movements of our own mind. What is not: our bodies, our reputation, our property, outcomes in the world. Stoicism teaches that nearly all suffering comes from treating things outside our control as if they were inside it.
The main positions
Classic Stoicism (Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius)
Virtue is the only genuine good. External things — health, wealth, status — are "preferred indifferents": worth pursuing if easy, but not worth distress when lost.
This seems too demanding. It is hard to maintain equanimity about everything outside our control, and some external losses seem genuinely bad rather than just "preferred indifferents".
Modern therapeutic Stoicism
Focus on what you can control as a practical technique for reducing anxiety and improving resilience — without necessarily adopting the full Stoic metaphysics.
Detached from its philosophical basis, this risks becoming a self-help cliché that ignores the genuine importance of some external goods.
Key thinkers
- Epictetus
- Enchiridion and Discourses. A former slave who argued that freedom is always possible through how we respond to circumstances.
- Marcus Aurelius
- Meditations. The philosopher-emperor who practised Stoicism as a daily discipline and wrote for himself, not for publication.
- Seneca
- Letters and essays on Stoic ethics, written for a Roman audience with great rhetorical skill.