Quotation
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“When something delights you, or is useful, or is deeply loved, remind yourself of what kind of thing it is.”
Epictetus · Stoicism · Ancient · c. 108 CE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is an exercise at the moment of delight: name the kind of thing you love, so that its fragility is part of the loving rather than a surprise that destroys you. A competing reading says the exercise cools love in advance and asks people to rehearse loss instead of being present. The chapter is Enchiridion 3, and the examples rise from a jug to a person. It is training of desire, paired with the ban on saying 'I have lost it'.
Did Epictetus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A short English of the opening move of Enchiridion 3, in the tradition of W. A. Oldfather's Loeb. Arrian wrote the Handbook from Epictetus's teaching.
Where it comes from
Enchiridion 3
Approximate date: c. 108 CE.
How to use it
You kiss a child goodnight, or you are pleased with a new phone, and the exercise is to add, quietly, what kind of thing this is: a person who will not always be here, an object that cracks. He wants that said at the moment of delight, not as a speech to the child. Used as a way to hold people at a distance, it has left the point, and the point is to love without the false clause 'and this cannot change'.
A mindset reading
The habit is to attach the nature of a thing to the pleasure, instead of protecting the pleasure by forgetting the nature. Ask what kind of thing it is while it still delights you. The reminder is not a cancellation of the love, and it is a refusal to love a fantasy of permanence.
Understand the philosophy
Epictetus is answering the shock that comes when a loved thing does what things of that kind do. The key instruction is to remind yourself at the start, beginning with the smallest matters. A jug is for holding and for breaking. A mortal is for loving and for dying, and the exercise is Stoic premeditation, meant to keep desire inside what is true, and it is severe when the example becomes a person, and he does not soften it.
- mind
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is an exercise at the moment of delight: name the kind of thing you love, so that its fragility is part of the loving rather than a surprise that destroys you. A competing reading says the exercise cools love in advance and asks people to rehearse loss instead of being present. The chapter is Enchiridion 3, and the examples rise from a jug to a person. It is training of desire, paired with the ban on saying 'I have lost it'.
Did Epictetus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A short English of the opening move of Enchiridion 3, in the tradition of W. A. Oldfather's Loeb. Arrian wrote the Handbook from Epictetus's teaching.
Which work is it in?
Enchiridion 3 Approximate date: c. 108 CE.