What Epictetus Meant by Power

Epictetus was born a slave. His name itself is Greek for acquired — he was someone else's property before he was a person. He was lamed, possibly tortured, by his owner; freed; became one of the most influential teachers of philosophy in the Roman Empire. None of his own writing survives. Everything we have is from a student, Arrian, who transcribed his lectures.

His central doctrine is the dichotomy of control. Some things are in our power, others are not. In our power: our opinions, our pursuits, our desires, our aversions — in short, our voluntary actions. Not in our power: our bodies, our possessions, our reputations, our offices — in short, everything that involves the wills of others or the resistance of the world. This sounds simple. It is the most misunderstood doctrine in popular Stoicism.

The common reading takes the dichotomy as a recipe for resignation. You cannot control the world, so accept it. Do not get attached. Do not strive too hard. This reading produces the bumper-sticker Stoic — calm, withdrawn, untouched by events. It is almost the opposite of what Epictetus taught.

The actual lesson is closer to a redistribution of intensity. The things outside our control deserve, at most, our considered preference. Yes, we would rather be well than sick, rather respected than slandered. But intensity, real intensity, the kind that organizes a life, belongs only to the things we actually control. And those things — our response, our attention, our choices — deserve everything. The Stoic is not a man who cares about nothing. He is a man who cares with appropriate force about the only things that respond to caring.

This is why Epictetus, in lecture, could be fierce. A student would complain that someone had insulted him. Epictetus would respond: the insult is not the harm; your judgment of the insult is the harm. You hold the lever. Use it. A student would mourn a lost election or a dead friend. Epictetus would not minimize the loss. He would ask: what is in your power now? And then: use it.

The doctrine is psychologically demanding because it strips away the favorite comforts of the helpless mind. It is comforting to believe that if only the world were different, we would be different. Epictetus refuses this comfort. The world will be what it will. You are responsible — entirely, terribly, freely — for what you do with it.

Modern psychology has a partial analog in the concept of locus of control. People with an internal locus of control tend, on average, to recover from setbacks faster, to act on opportunities more readily, to report higher subjective well-being. The research is messy and the construct is approximate, but the direction is clear. People who feel responsible for their responses do better than people who feel buffeted by their circumstances.

Athletes and elite performers in many fields converge on something very close to the Epictetan position, often without ever having read him. The locker-room talk before a championship game is essentially: you do not control the calls, you do not control the bounces, you do not control the opponent — you control the next play. That is it. Focus there.

The doctrine is not a balm. It does not promise that life will become easier if you follow it. What it offers is something more austere and more useful: that the only freedom anyone has ever had is the freedom that lives in the gap between what happens and how you respond. That gap is small. Everything that matters happens in it.