Edina Pepic Philosophy of the Human Person 10-20-14 Epictetus Ethical Theory Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher who had a very interesting outlook about life; he believed he could show you how to live the perfect life although it would not be easy it would be worth it. A stoic is someone that believes in accepting things they are not in control of and things that they are in control of. Epictetus’s theory about living the perfect life begins with learning how to believe in acceptance, when one learns how to accept things they will never be disappointed, mad, angry, sad, or result in doing something bad that is in their control. Epictetus believes that people should slowly begin this process of teaching themselves how to accept …show more content…
A lot of this begins with control; there are many things that are in our control for example ones opinions, desires, reactions, and temper. However there are things that are not in our control like what happens to our body, belongings, reputation, and location. If society as a whole is able to change their view on life and not care what other people think of them or what they think of themselves and learn to accept fate then they will find true happiness and peace. You cannot control what other people say, do, or what they think about you, this is why Epictetus says that people should not stress over things out of their control. Epictetus believes that there are three different types of classes of people; the first type is an uneducated person that is someone who blames others for their problems. The second type is a partially educated person that blames him or herself, and the last class is a fully educated person that blames no one. An example of a person that is fully educated in Epictetus’s opinion would be himself because he has self-control, has no expectations of people, and accepts …show more content…
The way to fix this by changing your judgment and realizing the picture frame breaking is not in your control. An example showing how Epictetus followed his philosophy is that he was a slave and instead of being sad or angry all the time that he had no freedom he decided to accept that he was a slave, which was something out of his control. When his master would beat him Epictetus would not cry, yell, or beg, he would be calm because this was his reality. He knew that if he spent time upset and full of anger it would get him nowhere and he would still be a slave, nothing would change from anger. Epictetus’s destiny was to be a slave for a period in his life and he accepted that, this is why he had no worries hanging over his head. Epictetus did not have any expectations in life and believed that no one should ever have expectations because when one has expectations it is rare that they ever come out the way one imagines. If people learned to have no expectations they would never be let down or disappointed about something happening differently than they wanted and this would result in people being