EPICTETUS

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics. He is remembered for the religious tone of his teachings, which commended him to numerous early Christian thinkers.His original name is not known; epiktētos is the Greek word meaning “acquired.” As a boy he was a slave but managed to attend lectures by the Stoic Musonius Rufus. He later became a freedman and lived his life lame and in ill health.As far as is known, Epictetus wrote nothing. His teachings were transmitted by Arrian, his pupil, in two works: Discourses, of which four books are extant; and the Encheiridion, or Manual, a condensed aphoristic version of the main doctrines. 

Primarily interested in ethics, Epictetus described philosophy as learning “how it is possible to employ desire and aversion without hindrance.” True education, he believed, consists in recognizing that there is only one thing that belongs to an individual fully— his will, or purpose. God, acting as a good king and father, has given each being a will that cannot be compelled or thwarted by anything external. 

Humans are not responsible for the ideas that present themselves to their consciousness, though they are wholly responsible for the way in which they use them.“Two maxims,” Epictetus said, “we must ever bear in mind—that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence.” Man must, that is, believe there is a God whose thought directs the universe.