The Wisdom of Judgment | Episode 356

In his Handbook, Epictetus offers a profound insight into human suffering

“What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things. For example, death is nothing dreadful or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates. But instead, the judgment about death—that it is dreadful—that is what is dreadful. So when we are thwarted or upset or distressed, let us never blame someone else but rather ourselves. That is, our own judgments. An uneducated person accuses others when he is doing badly. A partly educated person accuses himself. An educated person accuses neither someone else nor himself.”

At first glance, this passage seems paradoxical. If Stoicism emphasizes personal responsibility and the dichotomy of control—the idea that some things are within our power while others are not—then wouldn’t an educated person, at the height of wisdom, still recognize their own role in their suffering? Why does the progression move from blaming others, to blaming oneself, to blaming no one at all? To understand this, we need to break down Epictetus’ argument step by step.

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