Epictetus on the Climate Crisis

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Stoics are rightfully viewed as the Graeco-Roman technologists of the self par excellence. It is less well known that they were keen students of the natural world and lovers of science. If the ancient Stoics were faced with the unfolding catastrophe of the anthropogenic climate crisis, I don’t think their response would differ much from what they wrote millennia ago. Not about the climate crisis, of course, but about living well in the face of ever-present possibilities for chaos large and small that life presents.

After all, they were not writing from places of high tower privilege or “the good old times.” They wrote during times of war, social chaos, and brutal political oppression. Epictetus, who I want to discuss here, was physically disabled and born a slave. Does Stoic philosophy have anything to say to help steel ourselves in the face of our apocalyptic century?

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Epictetus

Epictetus, born in 55 CE, was a freed slave who taught in Rome before being banished by the emperor Domitian in the year 89 CE along with all other philosophers. He went to Greece and continued to teach there, along the way adopting an orphaned child. Realizing the…