Not up to us:The Handbook part 1

The handbook of Epictetus is a very interesting text. It is very different from some of the text that I have read, just because it has a philosophical basis.

In the introduction to the handbook, the translator tries to explain some of the doctrines mentioned in this book, considering their importance. The introduction talks a lot about cosmic patterns and the importance of the universe in humans and what they accomplish. In a quote within the introduction I found the following, “…required a completely detailed knowledge of all aspects of the cosmic pattern… that the universe is a perfectly organized whole.”(Introduction 4) It is very interesting to see how in ancient Greece, people had this very developed ideas about the universe and how it is essential to be able to understand the organization of the world and humanity. In Slaughter House- Five, Billy meets other species from the planet of Trafalmadore and he learns that for them time doesn’t exist. The universe and the cosmos are infinite and the aliens were right when they said this is the book.

Later on in the introduction, I also found a segment that mentioned the following, “Epictetus himself was a slave during the earlier part of his life.”(8) This made me realize that he talks so much about not harming the servants probably because he identifies himself with them. This also related to Vonnegut, in the sense that he was a prisoner of war, and he wrote Slaughter House-Five, so he could use Billy Pilgrim as a figure of what he was and how hw felt during that time of war.

In the Handbook of Epictetus itself, this philosopher speaks about slavery and the consequences of living up to the things that are not to up to us as human beings. He says that “the things that re not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered or not our own.”(1) What he is trying to say here is that slaves, who are really not you own because they are also human beings, are not up to our decision to be treated that way by ourselves. He says that if you do this you will be miserable. This is clearly a way of criticizing society for the discrimination made over him. Because this was written so long ago, I would dare to say that Epictetus was one of the first people to revolt against indifference and injustice, by putting out into the public in literature. For me, he resembles to Martin Luther King who fought for the rights of the African-American communities in the USA.

Finally I found the following citation, “Whoever wants to be free, therefore, let him not want or avoid anything that is up to others. Otherwise, he will necessarily be a slave.”(14) In this fragment of the 14 part of the Handbook he uses blame, to express that slavery exists because the judgment of the people about what is right, is actually wrong. They are wrong because they don’t follow the nature of the universe and they don’t let it be, as they should. This relates itself a little to Gulliver’s Travels, in a way because the two different species, horses and humans, depending on their judgment had the others as slaves, when really neither of them were supposed to be servants. They were supposed to be following the natural ways of the world, which would be living together all in harmony as animals that they are. Gulliver had his own judgment and it was very different from the one hi sown species had, but it was still wrong because he was not considering what the balance of the cosmos, as Epictetus would say, would want.