Epictetus Quote on Suffering: The Judgment Is Up to You

Quote

"It is not the things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them: death is nothing terrible — else it would have appeared so to Socrates — but the judgment that death is terrible is the terrible thing." — Epictetus, Enchiridion, Chapter 5 (c. 125 CE)

Author

Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) was a Stoic philosopher born a slave, freed in adulthood, and the teacher of the most influential Stoic school of his age at Nicopolis. His teaching was recorded by his pupil Arrian in the Discourses and distilled into the Enchiridion.

Source

The quotation is from Chapter 5 of the Enchiridion. The English translation follows N.P. White's Hackett edition (1983). The passage is the most famous statement of the Stoic doctrine of judgment.

Context

The passage belongs to the Stoic therapy of the emotions, and it is the foundation of the therapy. The Stoics held that the passions — fear, desire, distress — arise not from the things themselves but from the judgments we make about them: the judgment that something is terrible, that something is missing, that something is evil. The judgment is in our power, and the therapy is the correction of the judgment. The example of Socrates is the proof: death, which seems terrible to most people, did not appear so to Socrates — the same event, different judgments, different experiences. The disturbance is not in the event but in the judgment, and the judgment is up to us.

Meaning

The quotation states the Stoic theory of suffering in its most famous form. "It is not the things themselves that disturb us" — the first claim: the event is neutral; the disturbance is not in the thing but in the response. "But our judgments about them" — the second claim: the disturbance is the judgment — the evaluation that the thing is terrible, evil, or missing. "Death is nothing terrible — else it would have appeared so to Socrates" — the proof: the same event appears differently to different judges, and the difference is the judgment, not the event. "But the judgment that death is terrible is the terrible thing" — the conclusion: the enemy is not the thing but the judgment, and the judgment is in our power. The quotation is the foundation of the Stoic therapy of suffering, and it is the ancestor of the modern cognitive therapies, which rest on the same insight: the disturbance comes from the thought, and the thought can be examined and corrected.

Related Wisdom

The quotation belongs to the Stoic therapy of the emotions and the discipline of assent. Its doctrine that disturbance comes from judgment grounds the practice of the dichotomy of control and the therapy of suffering in the Stoic wisdom tradition. The passage is the most quoted of all Stoic sayings, and it remains the foundation of the modern Stoic approach to the difficulties of life.