The Dichotomy of Control, and What Epictetus Actually Said

The dichotomy of control is the most quoted idea in Stoicism and the one most often flattened on the way out. The flattened version says worry about what you can control and ignore the rest, which is sensible advice and not quite what Epictetus argued.

The difference matters because the flattened version has an obvious hole in it, and the original does not.

What is the dichotomy of control?

It is the opening of the Enchiridion, and in the Elizabeth Carter translation at MIT Classics it reads plainly.

"Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."

Then the consequence, which is the part usually dropped: what is in our control is by nature free and unhindered, and what is not is weak, restrained, and belonging to others. Treat what belongs to others as your own, he says, and you will be obstructed, you will complain, and you will find fault with gods and men.

Did Epictetus call it that?

No. The phrase is a modern label, convenient and slightly misleading. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy sets out his system without using the word control at all, because his own distinction runs between what is internal to the sphere of volition and what is external to it.

Volition here translates prohairesis, his favored term, which refers more often to the capacity for choice than to any particular act of choosing. He argues that this capacity is by nature unimpeded, and that this is why freedom is an inalienable feature of being human.

So the line is not drawn around what you can successfully influence. It is drawn around what you are.

What is on each side of the line?

The list of externals in the Stanford summary is more confronting than the Handbook's, because it is longer. The appearance and comfort of your body. Your possessions. Your relationships with other people. The success or failure of your projects. Your power and reputation in the world.

All of those are described as contingent facts about a person, features of your experience rather than characteristics of the self. On the other side there is one thing: your convictions, attitudes, intentions and actions, which are yours because they are determined solely by your use of impressions.

That is a very small parcel of land and a very large neighboring estate. Epictetus does not soften the proportion.

What about things that are partly in my control?

This is the standard objection and it is a good one against the flattened version. Almost nothing that matters is cleanly in or out. Your health is partly up to you. Your career is heavily influenced by your work and not determined by it. A binary sorting rule seems to fit a world that comes in degrees very badly.

The objection loses its force once you see what is being divided. Epictetus is not asking how much influence you have over an outcome. He is asking whether the thing is yours. Your effort on a project is yours entirely. The project's success is not yours at all, however much your effort affects it.

So the split is not fifty-fifty on a single object. It is a clean separation of two different objects that normally travel together: what you do, and what happens.

Does it mean you should stop caring about outcomes?

No, and Epictetus says so directly. Externals must be used with care, because how we use them is not a matter of indifference. The line he actually draws is that the materials of action are indifferent, but the use we make of them is not.

That is the opposite of detachment. Your career, your money and your relationships are the material. Being indifferent to material is not the same as refusing to work it, and a craftsman who insisted he did not care about his timber would not be demonstrating philosophical detachment.

What the doctrine forbids is treating the outcome as a component of your own worth. You may want it, pursue it and be disappointed by it. You may not be diminished by it.

Why did he think this produces freedom?

Because of what he thinks a person is. On his account the volition is the real self, and it is by nature unimpeded, which means no external force can reach it. Everything an opponent can take from you sits in the other category.

He had unusually direct evidence for this position. He spent part of his life as the property of an administrator in Nero's court, which is a situation in which the distinction between what can be taken and what cannot stops being academic.

The claim is not that captivity is pleasant. It is that there is a category of thing that captivity cannot touch, and that this category is where you actually live. His other lines return to this constantly.

How is this different from the Serenity Prayer?

They land in a similar place from opposite directions, which is why they are so often quoted together. The prayer asks for acceptance of what cannot be changed, courage to change what can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.

That formulation treats the sorting as the hard part, and it is explicitly a request for help with it. Epictetus thinks the sorting is easy, because the rule is fixed and takes about two seconds to apply. What he thinks is hard is the habit of applying it when you would rather not.

Which is a more demanding position, not a gentler one. It removes the excuse that the situation was ambiguous.

How do you actually use it?

As a question asked at the moment something goes wrong, not as a philosophy to hold in general. The Handbook is written as instructions because that is the only form in which it does anything.

1. Name the thing that is bothering you as specifically as you can.
2. Ask whether it is your action or its result. Effort is yours. Outcome is not.
3. If it is the result, ask what part of your own conduct is actually available to change.
4. Do that part. Let the result be a result.
5. If you are still disturbed, the disturbance is now a judgment you are making, which is back inside the first category.

The last step is the one that makes it a closed system. There is no position from which you can be a victim of your own reaction, because your reaction is the one thing the doctrine says is yours.

Where does it sit in the rest of Stoicism?

At the entrance. It is the first thing in the Handbook because nothing else in the system works until the division is in place: the account of the passions, the treatment of death, the definition of virtue, all of them assume it.

It also has a direct descendant in modern therapy, since the claim that distress comes from judgment rather than from events is the structural premise of cognitive behavioral therapy. That link, and what else the ancient system contained, is covered in what Stoicism actually teaches.

And if you want the version that fits on a wall, it is the eight words the Handbook opens with. The pieces built on it are in the Stoic wall art collection, and the four virtues are what the rule is in service of.