Another Day, Another Rat Race: Epictetus on Living Better

Forever Under Pressure: The Modern Model of Life

Activity, agency and self-determination are values inherited from the Protestant work ethic. Over time, they became the foundations of capitalism and still rank among the central values of the modern West. Slogans such as “Sky is the limit” and “You are the blacksmith of your own fate” have long served as signposts for the individual in the age of globalisation. The 21st century has elevated a distinctly Nietzschean ideal: an active stance toward life and a belief in shaping events through one’s own will. By contrast, passivity or calm acceptance of fate now appears almost as an anti-value. The cult of success offers the clearest expression of that worldview. We treat failure as an unwanted dimension of human experience.

At the same time, depression, anxiety disorders and burnout have become some of the most widespread diseases of civilisation. External forces clearly contribute to this condition: a deepening economic crisis and an extremely unstable geopolitical situation. Yet much also depends on how we perceive the world around us. Contemporary research suggests that our mental health often suffers because of values we have imposed on ourselves: the pressure to succeed and the demand for constant self-improvement. Is it possible, then, to imagine a positive alternative to the model of life that dominates the West today? The Stoic philosophers suggest that the remedy for our existential suffering may lie in something unexpected: apatheia.

The Unrebellious Human Being: The Stoic Lifestyle According to Epictetus

Stoicism began at the end of the 4th century BCE in the Athenian school of Zeno of Citium. Although people usually associate Stoic ideas with the Greek philosopher, other thinkers of the ancient world developed them further. One of them was Epictetus, mentioned at the beginning of this article. As Adam Sikora notes in From Heraclitus to Husserl, the name of this Roman thinker meant “purchased” or “acquired.” The meaning was not accidental. Epictetus was born a slave and gained his freedom only when he was nearly 40 years old. Today, people do not widely know the details of his biography. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that his life experiences profoundly shaped the final form of his philosophy.

Epictetus argued that every reflection should begin with an awareness of one’s own weakness and helplessness. Human beings, in his view, remain tiny and insignificant parts of the reality around them. Should such awareness lead us to despair or pessimism? Should we, like the mythological Prometheus, rise in open rebellion against the order of things? Should we struggle against the gods in order to transform reality? Quite the opposite. The philosopher insisted that rebellion always brings defeat and suffering. Providence governs the world, and every hardship that befalls a person forms part of a divine plan. In such a vision of reality, rebellion makes no sense. Happiness, Epictetus argued, can be reached only through an attitude known as apatheia.

The Happy Slave and the Unhappy Master

In contemporary psychology, the similar-sounding word apathy carries negative associations. People define it as a state of numbness and emotional indifference. The Stoic philosophers understood it differently. For Epictetus, apatheia meant submitting oneself to the order of the world, mastering one’s passions and directing one’s strength toward virtue. This kind of apatheia contains 2 essential elements. The first is a distinctive form of rationality: living in accordance with one’s own nature, which the philosopher identified with reason. The second is surrender to the course of events without the interference of personal will. Only then can a human being become a moral being and, as a result, a happy one.

For the Stoics, happiness therefore did not depend on objective circumstances such as the balance of one’s bank account or one’s social position. It depended on the individual’s relationship to the surrounding world. Epictetus argued that a slave could be more free and more fulfilled than his master. Slavery, in that sense, is only a condition of the spirit. It belongs to those who cannot awaken within themselves what today we might call the therapeutic state of apatheia.

The Stoic Lifestyle and the Art of Letting Go

In an age obsessed with maximum efficiency, these views may appear utopian and impossible to apply. Yet, if we follow Epictetus, is that impossibility not simply the result of the way we approach reality itself? At the same time, since the late 20th century, interest in Stoic philosophy has clearly grown, especially within the current of modern Stoicism and in psychology. We can also hear echoes of Stoic thinking in the increasingly popular call to let go and to refrain. In recent years, that idea has become a kind of alternative to the late-capitalist cult of productivity. In the promotional materials for Zofia Zaleska’s book Zaniechane, scheduled for publication in May 2025, we read:

In Western culture, activity is valued positively, while powerlessness is identified with illness. People treat those who refuse to act with suspicion. Yet in a world of wars and dramatic inequalities, which is also a world of excess and doubt, the category of refraining becomes inspiring and may serve as guidance. Refraining does not have to mean consent to passivity. It can become a chance to preserve freedom and dignity.

Like refraining, Stoicism does not mean adopting a passive attitude toward life. As Piotr Stankiewicz argues in The Art of Living According to the Stoics, followers of Epictetus are concerned only with one thing: not allowing themselves to be disturbed by events over which they have no control.

Subversive Stoicism

One may doubt whether the concepts of the Stoic philosophers can be transferred to the present day in a literal one-to-one form. Yet they can certainly offer an alternative to the dominant models of life. Turning away from the cult of productivity often meets with understandable resistance, especially from employers. That resistance appears particularly strong in reactions to Generation Z. But does it always arise from genuine concern for employee well-being?

In From Heraclitus to Husserl, Adam Sikora reminds us that in ancient Rome, people saw Stoicism as a threat to the empire. Even today, the stoic lifestyle may appear threatening to the late-capitalist order of the world. Yet would not the adoption of some Stoic attitudes improve our psychological well-being? The question is worth serious consideration. As for revolutions and sudden upheavals, perhaps we should face them with Stoic calm.

Read this article in Polish: Kolejny dzień, kolejny wyścig szczurów. Epiktet uczy, jak żyć lepiej