[HN Gopher] The Enchiridion by Epictetus
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The Enchiridion by Epictetus
Author : atropoles
Score : 90 points
Date : 2026-01-23 18:07 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gutenberg.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gutenberg.org)
| 0xmattf wrote:
| Absolutely love this book. The discourses are great reads as
| well.
|
| It's wild how the human psyche barely changed since the time of
| Epictetus.
|
| P.S. If you're a follower of Stoicism, I've been working on a
| community platform/forum: https://stoacentral.com (there's still
| a lot of work to be done, but I've been pushing along).
| Archelaos wrote:
| The Perseus Project has a more advanced presentation of the text
| (including the Teubner edtion), for those interested:
| https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0557....
| bm3719 wrote:
| Was in one of those chain book stores recently and decided to
| stop by the philosophy section. It was tiny, only taking up part
| of a single shelf in a huge store. I was surprised to find about
| half of the titles were on Stoicism and closely-related topics.
| There were many pop-psych texts about applying Stoicism to modern
| life. I guess it's been having a moment? Interestingly, it was
| right next to the massive self-help section.
|
| I have a notion that both the ancient West and East experienced a
| chance to align with systems of thought that reject desire,
| either in part or whole. In the East, that was more successful
| and stuck around longer. Unfortunately for us, it remained a
| fringe notion (think how we would react to a modern Diogenes).
| However, we never completely forgot, flirting with similar ideas
| from the direction of Christian piety, the synthesis of Eastern
| thought that occurred in the counter-culture era, and the
| psychoanalytic frameworks of Lacan, Deleuze+Guattari, and others.
| Now that our desires are being exploited against us by the tech
| that mediates our very existence, it makes sense we would seek
| defense mechanisms. There's trillions of dollars of economic
| force out there creating, curating, and capturing desire. It's
| probably worth stepping back and asking how being embedded in
| that structure is actually affecting us and the degree it's
| aligned with our innate interests.
| V__ wrote:
| Ryan Holiday has really popularized Stoicism in the last
| decade.
| dkarl wrote:
| In the west, we've had a long, deep split between what ordinary
| people rely on (religion and self-help) and respectable
| academic philosophy. Philosophy rooted in religion has a strict
| requirement to scale down to serve masses of people. Philosophy
| rooted in academia has a strict requirement to scale up to
| allow practitioners to flex their elite skills and show that
| they are worthy of scarce academic positions. Academic
| philosophers pay lip service to the idea that philosophy can
| and should be for everyone, but in practice, they shy away from
| anything that could compromise their primary pursuit of a
| career and academic prestige.
|
| As a result, they mostly respond to efforts to reach a lay
| audience by distancing and criticizing. They are really harsh
| on the compromises inherent in meeting lay audiences where they
| are.
| IrishTechie wrote:
| That seems like a rather cynical take. I think you're
| conflating philosophy as guidance for how to live (stoicism
| etc) and philosophy as more of a science to explore
| unanswered questions, which are naturally going to have very
| different practitioners and audiences?
| dkarl wrote:
| The latter can be applicable to the former. Traditionally
| the connection was acknowledged, with Socrates the
| prototype of the philosopher who believed that happiness,
| ethical living, and philosophy were inextricably linked.
| Obviously philosophy has come a long way since Socrates,
| but academic philosophers continue to give lip service to
| the idea that philosophy can be valuable in everyday
| living, if not in ethics then in processing information,
| critiquing arguments, and understanding the origins and
| limitations of ideas.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I think we've known since the time of Socrates that the
| practice of philosophy is not the practice of happy
| living. Philosophers tend to be miserable. Socrates
| himself chose to drink poison over moving to a different
| city. I think most philosophies, despite their myriad
| differences, agree that what people tend to want is not
| what philosophy will give them. Maybe some of the answers
| philosophy yields can be applied to increase happiness,
| but philosophy in practice tends to produce questions.
| dkarl wrote:
| Most philosophers would not agree that yielding questions
| instead of answers makes philosophy unhelpful, nor that
| the happiest life is necessarily the one in which pain is
| most successfully avoided.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That's a pretty weak take. The difference between philosophy
| texts on ethics and the better self-help texts are just the
| difference between pulp fiction and classic novels. Time
| needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this
| is worth analyzing". That said, there's a lot of self-help
| that _isn 't_ philosophical (or, more exactly, don't attempt
| to defend the philosophy that they present the conclusions
| of).
|
| Consider the difference between. "Thou shalt not kill, thou
| shalt not commit adultry" and "you shouldn't kill or sleep
| with your neighbor's wife because both actions cause more
| harm than they provide benefit, which ought be our goal
| because the conclusions of such a cost/benefit analysis
| closely align to most people's natural sense of right and
| wrong". The former is a statement of morals. If you include
| the "...because God said so, and God is always right", then
| it becomes an ethical argument, like the second. The key is
| arguing the _why_ down to axioms, and defending those axioms
| as superior to other axioms.
|
| A self-help book like "How to win friends and influence
| people" provides rules to follow, to achieve a desired
| outcome, and attempts to explain why the rules work. It
| doesn't spend much, if any (it's been a while) energy arguing
| why you should want the desired outcome, or if the desired
| outcome is actually a good thing.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Wonderfully put.
| intalentive wrote:
| Strictures which successfully regulated desire crystallized
| over the ages into particular forms of tradition and morality.
| Hence early conservatives like Carlyle and Chesterton were
| anti-capitalist: they saw the economics of desire as a
| corrosive force that would break down and nullify the
| experience of centuries as encoded in customs, tradition and
| other social bonds.
| 20260126032624 wrote:
| Christian thought remains diametrically opposed to Eastern
| philosophies, at least when it comes to religion. Rejecting
| desire in an attempt at eternal life is quite different from
| wanting to escape existence as a whole and return to non-
| existence.
| layer8 wrote:
| Stoicism has had a bit of a revival since the early 2010s:
| https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=stoicism+before:2015
| tasuki wrote:
| I made a website for comparing the translations:
| https://enchiridion.tasuki.org/
| Archelaos wrote:
| Ever considered to add the Greek text?
| 0xmattf wrote:
| It looks like the Greek text is there. You have to click
| "Compare Translations" on the top left -> Top Result.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Very nice. I missed that, because I expected that "Compare
| Translations" would highlight differences and thus did not
| check it out.
| 0xmattf wrote:
| For sure. I found it by mistake. I was just trying to get
| to the homepage by clicking the menu icon.
| layer8 wrote:
| It would be nice to have a gradual highlighting of the
| differences.
| nicwolff wrote:
| Wow, instant bookmark. Thanks!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Standard Ebooks version:
|
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/short-works/geor...
| robin_reala wrote:
| ...also available as Kindle, ePub and Kobo-flavoured ePub as
| part of a longer compilation at
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/short-works/geor...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I am actually exited to read this.
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| I enjoyed this book greatly, I do not enjoy how Stoicism has
| become the basic meaning of philosophy.
|
| Meditations is also a decent read.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I read this in my early 20's and it had such a profound effect on
| me. It's so hard to truly put it all into practice though.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Related: Sorry, but as an AT fan I couldn't resist:
| https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/The_Enchiridion_(book)
| augusteo wrote:
| bm3719's observation about Stoicism as a defense mechanism
| resonates with me. I've found it genuinely useful, not as self-
| help packaged for tech bros, but as practical mental
| infrastructure.
|
| The core idea is simple. You separate what you can control from
| what you can't. Then you stop burning energy on the second
| category. Easier said than done, but the framework helps.
|
| I keep coming back to "How to Think Like a Roman Emperor" as a
| practical companion to the original texts. It's Marcus Aurelius
| filtered through modern psychology, with concrete exercises
| instead of just principles.
|
| The danger is treating Stoicism as emotional suppression. It's
| not. It's about choosing where to direct your attention and
| energy. That's genuinely useful when you're surrounded by systems
| designed to capture both.
| zhouzhao wrote:
| It's choose your battles
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have read this and love it. Besides being good practical
| advice, it's fun to read just how _sassy_ Epictetus could be with
| his students. He doesn 't hesitate to call people fools when they
| deserve it, and it makes him seem a lot more human and relatable
| as a result.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| An "enchiridion" is a manual or primer. Interestingly, in both
| ancient and modern Greek, egkheiridion / egkheiridio also means
| "dagger." Because both a small manual and a dagger were things
| that could fit comfortably _in_ (egkh / en) your _hand_ (kheir
| / kheri).
|
| Not all that relevant to Epictetus, just wanted to add a little
| linguistic note.
| wincy wrote:
| So the more accurate English word for enchiridion in the book
| sense is probably handbook?
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Sure. Though "manual" actually shares the same kind of root
| as well (from Latin "manus" [= hand]).
| wendgeabos wrote:
| manus, mens et. one each.
| pinnochio wrote:
| Interesting. I thought it was a new menu item from Taco Bell.
| quercusa wrote:
| Still thinking about those three black olive slices?
| brumar wrote:
| My favorite book.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Everyone should read this at least once. It's practical,
| grounded, and still relevant.
| rramadass wrote:
| _Epictetus ' Handbook and the Tablet of Cebes: Guides to Stoic
| Living_ by Keith Seddon; has the first detailed modern commentary
| on The Enchiridion in over 1500 years. The book is positioned for
| both the general reader and academics with background notes,
| detailed commentary and explanations.
|
| Every student of Stoic Philosophy should read this -
| https://www.routledge.com/Epictetus-Handbook--and-the-Tablet...
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(page generated 2026-01-28 07:01 UTC)