Bozarth on Epictetus by G. Richard Bozarth The discourses of Epictetus recorded and published by his student Flavius Arrian have a basic message that is insidiously true. That message is that our happiness and tranquility in life are based on our opinions about wealth, poverty, life, death, reputation, insult, freedom, enslavement, political office, exile, love, loneliness. All these things Epictetus called externals because they are beyond our independent power. They are controlled first by a supernatural entity, which gives and takes according to a mysterious plan for us; thus we should accept whatever we gain or lose with pious good cheer. If we care about externals, then we have given other humans power over us for those externals that require other people to obtain or avoid. To not care about them, which is wisdom, is freedom. If a person can go all the way to accepting death cheerfully even if the death is caused by malicious human design, then no one is her master. This freedom is there even if one omits the supernatural entity, as I do. What makes this truth insidious is that if a person really obeys such a program for living, she becomes no good. If she thinks injustice only seems to be evil if an individual has the opinion that injustice is evil, she will surely be indifferent to injustice done by government to citizens. If she thinks poverty only seems to be evil if an individual has the opinion that poverty is evil, she will surely be indifferent to the plight of the poor even if many of the poor are victims of corrupt economic policies that rig the system to ensure that some minorities have no or very little chance to escape poverty. If she thinks slavery only seems to be evil if an individual has the opinion that slavery is evil, she will surely be indifferent tr culture. This is a terrible way to be. This is to be a passive welcome mat for all those who hate civil liberties and wish to be tyrants. All the good done in the world is done by those who care about externals, who are not indifferent to injustice, poverty, slavery, murder, and all the other bad things Epictetus taught his students to cease to care about. No good citizen should be happy when her government is unjust or when her culture has institutions that victimize portions of the population who are despised by a bigoted majority. We have the power to change things for the better. This far nobler truth is one reason why there is a Freethought Movement. All the champions of Freethought who throughout the centuries have worked magnificently to make our culture into one defined by justice and civil liberties were not and are not people who could or can cheerfully or indifferently accept oppressive or repressive or suppressive externals, and they did more good for us all than Epictetus and any student who accepted his teaching ever did. Source: No Time to Wallow in the Mire, c1991, G. Richard Bozarth.