Epictetus Tells Us What Stoicism Is: The Omission in Sellars v0.2
Epictetus Tells Us What Stoicism Is: The Omission in Sellars v0.2
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
Sellars’s claims are cited to “What Was Stoicism?” (Antigone, 3 June 2026). Epictetus is cited from W. A. Oldfather’s Loeb translation by book, chapter and section. The argument is Dave Kelly’s. Nothing here is attributed to Grant C. Sterling.
John Sellars asks what Stoicism was and holds that no set of key ideas can easily be identified. He says the Roman Stoics presuppose the system without setting it out, and that Marcus is not the place to learn it. He never says that of Epictetus. This document argues that Epictetus does tell us what Stoicism is: he states its central claims, makes practice their end, and asks to be shown a Stoic by how a man fares.
Key
- H: John Sellars’s claims, from “What Was Stoicism?”
- E: Epictetus’s words in Oldfather’s translation, as supplied by Dave Kelly from his copy.
- Df: a definition.
- D: a claim derived in this document. The lines in parentheses are what it rests on.
- O: an observation, marked as not traced to a cited passage.
Definitions
Df1. A set of key ideas: the claims a body of thought holds as central, together with what they serve. Without them it would be some other thing.
Df2. To presuppose a claim is to rely on it without stating it. To set out a claim is to state it plainly as one’s teaching.
Df3. Moral purpose: Oldfather’s rendering of Epictetus’s prohairesis (E4, E6a).
Df4. Under our control / not under our control: as E1 divides them.
Df5. “Stoic,” two senses: (a) Sellars’s historical sense, a member of the group, first those who met at the Stoa and later readers of Stoic books (H4); (b) Epictetus’s test, one who is happy though sick, in danger, dying, exiled or in disrepute (E7).
Df6. Governing claims: claims that order the rest by saying what is the end and what is not.
The Beginning
H1. No set of key Stoic ideas can easily be identified. (Sellars)
H2. Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus presuppose Stoic ideas without fully setting them out. (Sellars)
H3. No one can learn Stoic ethics from Marcus. He is not the place to go to learn about Stoicism, and the same could be said for Seneca. Epictetus is not named. (Sellars)
H4. After the first century BC, a Stoic was roughly someone who had read Stoic books and liked them. (Sellars)
E1. “Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing.” (Enchiridion 1.1)
E2. “As was fitting, therefore, the gods have put under our control only the most excellent faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely, the power to make correct use of external impressions, but all the others they have not put under our control.” (Discourses 1.1.7)
E3. “It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about these things.” (Enchiridion 5)
E4. “The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose. What, then, are the external things? They are materials for the moral purpose, in dealing with which it will find its own proper good or evil.” (Discourses 1.29.1–2)
E5. “There are three fields of study in which the man who is going to be good and excellent must first have been trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions, that he may never fail to get what he desires, nor fall into what he avoids; the second with cases of choice and of refusal, and, in general, with duty, that he may act in an orderly fashion, upon good reasons, and not carelessly; the third with the avoidance of error and rashness in judgement, and, in general, about cases of assent.” (Discourses 3.2.1–2)
E6a. “Where, then, is progress? If any man among you, withdrawing from external things, has turned his attention to the question of his own moral purpose, cultivating and perfecting it so as to make it finally harmonious with nature, … this is the man who in all truth is making progress, and the man who has not travelled at random is this one.” (Discourses 1.4.18–21; the middle of the passage is left out where the ellipsis stands)
E6b. “But if he has striven merely to attain the state which he finds in his books and works only at that, and has made that the goal of his travels, I bid him go home at once and not neglect his concerns there, since the goal to which he has travelled is nothing.” (Discourses 1.4.22)
E6c. “What, then, does Chrysippus furnish us? ‘That you may know,’ he says, ‘that these things are not false from which serenity arises and tranquillity comes to us, take my books and you shall know how conformable and harmonious with nature are the things which render me tranquil.’” (Discourses 1.4.28–29)
E7. “Show me a man who though sick is happy, though in danger is happy, though dying is happy, though condemned to exile is happy, though in disrepute is happy. Show him! By the gods, I would fain see a Stoic!” (Discourses 2.19.24)
Part One — He States the Core
D1. E1 to E5 state what is under our control, where good and evil lie, what disturbs men, and what the training is. That is a set of key ideas (Df1), stated as his teaching and not presupposed (Df2). (E1–E5)
D2. So H2 does not hold of Epictetus for the ethics. He sets out what he teaches. (D1, H2)
Part Two — He Makes Practice the End
D3. The end is practice on one’s moral purpose, put into action each day. (E6a)
D4. The state found in books is not the goal. (E6b)
D5. Chrysippus is cited as offering his books to show that the things which bring tranquillity are in harmony with nature. (E6c)
D6. So Epictetus orders the parts. Practice on moral purpose is the end, and the books are not. To say what is the end and what is not is to give the governing claims (Df6). That says what the thing is, not just what its parts are. (D3, D4, D5)
Part Three — He Asks to Be Shown a Stoic
D7. Epictetus’s test for a Stoic is a man who is happy in sickness, danger, dying, exile and disrepute (Df5b). (E7)
D8. That test follows from E4: if good and evil lie in moral purpose and externals are only its materials, a man’s happiness need not wait on the externals. (E4, E7)
D9. By that test, reading Stoic books and liking them is not what makes a Stoic, and the state found in books is not the goal (E6b). Epictetus’s test is not the sense, Df5(a), that H4 gives the word. (D7, E6b, H4)
D10. So Sellars’s question has an answer from inside the tradition, from a Stoic teacher writing in the imperial period Sellars calls a textual community. (D1, D6, D7)
Part Four — The Omission
D11. If Epictetus states, orders and defines the core, then a set of key Stoic ideas can be identified in at least one surviving Stoic. (D1, D6, D7)
D12. That contradicts H1 as Sellars applies it to the surviving sources. (D11, H1)
D13. Leaving Epictetus out of H3 is therefore not a minor gap. He is the counterexample to Sellars’s first idea. (D12, H3)
The Limit
O1. Observation, marked: Epictetus’s surviving teaching does not itself set out the school’s full logic, physics and theory of appropriate actions. This is not traced to any passage cited here.
D14. So what he tells us is what Stoicism is in its governing claims and its order, not every doctrine the school held. That is the question Sellars asks. (D6, O1)
What This Document Does Not Claim
- That Epictetus’s teaching matches Chrysippus’s in every point. No historical finding is made.
- That Sellars denies Epictetus teaches. He omits him from H3. The inference from the omission is Dave Kelly’s.
- Whether Epictetus means E6c sincerely or ironically. D5 reports only what the sentence says.
- E6a is quoted with its middle left out. The full passage is in Oldfather.
Sources
- Epictetus, Discourses, Books I and II (1925) and III and IV with the Encheiridion (1928), trans. W. A. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann.
- John Sellars, “What Was Stoicism?”, Antigone, 3 June 2026.
Version Note
v0.2 supersedes v0.1. Every Epictetus passage is now quoted from Oldfather’s Loeb translation with its section number, in place of v0.1’s paraphrases. A Key and Definitions are added. Discourses 1.17 and the line “many call themselves Stoics, and few are” are withdrawn as unsupported by the passages quoted. Part Two and Part Three are rewritten to rest on what the quoted text says, and an observation is marked as O1.
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
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