Discourses and Selected Writings Read Free Page B

change the order of the world, and to accustom myself to believe that nothing is entirely in our power except our own thoughts… Here, I think, is the secret of those ancient philosophers who were able to free themselves from the tyranny of fortune, or, despite suffering and poverty, to rival the gods in happiness. 5
    Clearly Epictetus remained one of the ancient sages whom an educated person could be expected to know well, as it was assumed there was still much of truth in him.
    We conclude by jumping ahead to the present, noting his surprising importance in the history of psychotherapy. Psychologist Albert Ellis has acknowledged Epictetus as one of the chief inspirations behind the development of Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), arguably the foremost modality in counselling today. As a college freshman in an informal study group devoted to reading and commenting on major philosophers, Ellis was struck by Epictetus’ insistence that ‘It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them’ (Enchiridion 5). Ellis openly credits Epictetus for supplying his guiding principle that our emotional responses to upsetting actions – not the actions themselves – are what create anxiety and depression; and that (a point basic to Stoic psychology in general) our emotional responses are products of our judgements – are in fact (irrational) judgements tout court: ‘Much of what we call emotion is nothing more nor less than a certain kind – a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind – of thought. What we call feelings almost always have a pronounced evaluating or appraisal element.’ 6 Ellis points out that irrational beliefs often appear in the way people talk to themselves. Compare Epictetus at IV 4, 26-27:
    Someone says, I don’t like leisure, it’s boring; I don’t like crowds, they’re a nuisance. But if events ordain that you spend time eitheralone or with just a few other people, look upon it as tranquillity and play along with it for the duration. Talk to yourself, train your thoughts and shape your preconceptions.
    The more one reads in the literature of self-help, therapy, recovery and so forth, the more apparent it becomes how much is owed to this regularly rediscovered author, whose ideas have proven useful in disciplines such as applied psychology that in his own day had hardly made a start.

NOTES
    1. Tacitus, Annals VI 22.
    2. Al-Kindi, ‘Encyclopaedic Scholar of the Baghdad “House of Wisdom”’. http://www.muslimheritage.com/day_life/default.cfm?ArticleID=691&Oldpage=1 . Accessed 4 September 2007.
    3. Blaise Pascal, ‘Discussion with Monsieur de Sacy’, in Pensees and Other Writings, trans. H. Levi (Oxford, 1995), pp. 182-92, at p. 187.
    4. René Descartes, ‘Rules for the Direction of the Mind’, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols., trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, vol. 3 including Anthony Kenny (Cambridge, 1988), vol. 1, p. 10.
    5. René Descartes, ‘Discourse on Method’, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, ed. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, 1931), pp. 80-130, at pp. 96-7.
    6. Albert Ellis, ‘Early Theories and Practices of Rational-Emotive Behavior Theory and How They Have Been Augmented and Revised During the Last Three Decades’, Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, vol. 21, nos. 3-4 (December 2003), pp. 219-43, at p. 232.

Further Reading
    Interest in Epictetus is currently experiencing one of its periodic upsurges, and some works of secondary literature deserve notice in this connection. Pride of place belongs to the comprehensive study by A. A. Long, a leading scholar of later ancient philosophy: Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford, 2002). Long is also co-editor, with D. Sedley, of the standard sourcebook for Stoicism and the other philosophical schools that post-date Aristotle: The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987).
    Readers of the