This book can be found for free online at: https://archive.org/details/9780140449464/mode/1up
I thought it would a good idea to make our next one free. It's absolutely not because I'm using these book club events to force myself to read all the books I've been putting off reading....
Epictetus is one of the most influential stoics - along with Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. I've heard a few "influencer" types spread a kind of 'sigma grindset' (if you don't know what that means, consider yourself lucky) message that they are claiming is rooted in stoicism, but I wholly reject it as a true representation of the philosophy.
No, the stoicism that I am familiar with is about keeping your 'virtue' above all else. Money and power (and success with women) are "preferred indifferents" - nice to have, but ultimately outside your control and not at all worth sacrificing your virtue to attain.
The stoicism that I am familiar with is not suppressing or hiding emotion - it’s about acknowledging them, reflecting on what causes them, and redirecting them for our own good. It tells us not to react to our first "impressions" - we should always be striving to respond with reason. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, logotherapy, and rational emotive behavior therapy is based on this stoic teaching.
So, let us go back to one of the original sources with Epictetus - the man who Marcus Aurelius references extensively in his Meditations - and find out what it really means to be a Stoic.
