Member-only story
The Most Disturbing Epictetus Quote I’ve Ever Read
An unsettling truth that will stay with you forever.
One word: reasonable. It’s how we convince ourselves of what’s worth doing and what not. If you really want something, you’ll justify it in your mind before taking action. The opposite is true. If you don’t want to do something, you’ll come up with plenty of reasons why it shouldn’t be done. Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus made a scary and unsettling observation about our thought process. In his book Discourses, he wrote:
“To hang yourself is not intolerable. When, then, you have the opinion that it is rational, you go and hang yourself. In short, if we observe, we shall find that the animal man is pained by nothing so much as by that which is irrational; and, on the contrary, attracted to nothing so much as to that which is rational. But the rational and the irrational appear such in a different way to different persons, just as the good and the bad, the profitable and the unprofitable. For this reason, particularly, we need discipline, in order to learn how to adapt the preconception of the rational and the irrational to the several things conformably to nature.”
I read it and sighed.
I know.
