Letter to Menoeceus (Epicurus) & The Enchirdion (Epictetus)
Letter to Menoeceus
“For no man can ever find the time unsuitable or too late to study the health of his soul.” “For there can be nothing terrible in living for man who rightly comprehends that there is nothing terrible in ceasing to live.”
The Enchirdion (Epictetus)
“The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others.” “Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose.”
Importance: The purpose of these two text could be to teach people the path to lead a happy and peaceful life, free of unnecessary woes. Keeping in mind that these texts were written during a politically and economically stable period, where people had time to experiment and schools were being established (as we discussed in the lecture), the possible audience of these texts could be scholars and students.
The common theme of these two texts are the body and death, but their approach to this context is different. Epicurean philosophy believes that the soul is similar to the body and dies after we cease to live; whereas Stoicism believes that the soul is different from the body and its performance shouldn’t be hindered because of an injury to the body. Epicurus emphasizes that our soul dies too when we cease to live, hence we need not worry about afterlife so we don’t have to worry about it while we are alive; he also encourages his readers to conquer the fear of death to lead a happy life. Whereas, Epictetus focuses more on the elements we can and cannot control; his philosophy is being able to let go of things we cannot control (one of them being death), to lead a happy and quality life. Ref: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/