Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

The Art of Living

The Three Disciplines of Epictetus

Massimo Pigliucci looks at the core principles for a Stoic life.

Practical philosophy is a combination of theory and practice. Practice without theory is blind, but theory without practice is sterile. Stoicism offers one of the best examples of integrating the two aspects. But like other philosophies (such as Buddhism) Stoicism comes in different flavors. As a particularly well understood and useful example, let’s examine the version of Stoicism that comes to us from the late first century teacher Epictetus of Hierapolis (which is modern day Pamukkale in Turkey).

…