One of the foundations of his teaching is that man should make
a
clear distinction between the feasible and the unfeasible. To the realm of
the feasible he considers our feelings, emotions and opinions about the things
we go through. To the realm of the unfeasible are the things we go through
themselves: changes in material prosperity and honour, health and disease, life
and death. Epictetus states that whoever masters the feasible, will be
equanimous towards the unfeasible and therefore he will be happy.
While writing this, it struck me that postmodern man has an
almost opposite view on the feasibility of things. He considers his possession,
his health and his personal safety as belonging to the realm of the feasible,
whereas he keeps shouting, in this age of endless self-expression, he can’t do
anything about his feelings, emotions and opinions. By sticking to this inverted
view on the feasibility of things, postmodern man actually follows the perfect
recipe for unhappiness as we can see from the full therapist waiting rooms.
Epictetus considers possession, fame, health and
safety (the unfeasible) as belonging to the authority of the gods. He
recommends people to become philosopher, to accept the godly decisions and to
believe they happen for the greater good. As such, we should remain respectful
towards our gods, we
should neither be upset from injury nor from insults against us, we should
neither engage in gossip nor in judgement.
(Surprisingly, we should not even engage in praise
towards third parties according to Epictetus – I still need to think why not.)
The Enchiridion is really another Swiss army knife for a Good Life and I intend to keep it in my travel bag for interrupted reading in public places. This theme is also related to Hartmut Rosa’s book about unavailability.
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