HKB
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Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · slavery and bondage · not valuing the body · freedom of will · fate, destiny, and necessity · diogenes and liberty
Usually: argument (1) · curiosity (1) · detachment (1)
“Diogenes was free. How was he free? Not because he was born of free parents, but because he was himself free, because he had cast off all the handles of slavery, and it was not possible for any man to approach him, nor had any man the means of laying hold of him to enslave him.” Epictetus (translated by George Long), A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with th · observation
Epictetus argues that freedom depends not on birth but on having a mind free of slavery’s “handles,” like Diogenes, who rejects valuing his body, friendships, and offices as truly his own.
necessary to me? Do not attach yourself to them and they will not be necessary; do not say to yourself that they are necessary, and then they are not necessary. You then, a man may say, are you free? I wish, by the gods, and pray to be free; but I am not yet able to face my masters, I still value my poor body, I value greatly the preservation of it entire, though I do not possess it entire. But I can point out to yo…