Epictetus: The Enchiridion or Stoic Handbook - A Modern Rendering with Interpretations (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798188200695)

Nothing can touch you unless you let it.

That is the most dangerous idea ever written down - and the man who wrote it was born a slave, crippled by his master, exiled by Rome. His name was Epictetus, and his short handbook, the Enchiridion, has been the entry point to Stoicism for nineteen centuries.

The trouble is, almost every edition is unreadable - archaic, stiff, and never telling you what any of it actually means.

Two things make this book different.

The text is clean and modern - three classic translations (Oldfather, Long, Higginson) read line against line and resolved into one clear rendering. No fog. No academic hedging.

And after every one of the fifty-three chapters comes a short interpretation - in the tradition of The 48 Laws of Power. Not a summary. The logic exposed, the application made concrete: what the chapter says, why it works, and what to do with it before the day is over. This is what no free edition gives you - and the reason to own this one.

What you'll learn:

• How to stop wagering your happiness on things you don't control
• How to take an insult without flinching
• How to want what actually happens - so nothing can disappoint you
• The one discovery behind both Stoicism and modern cognitive therapy: it is never the event that breaks you, but your judgment of it - and your judgment belongs entirely to you

Two thousand years ago, a slave figured out how to be freer than his masters - and this is the manual he left behind.

Rendered and interpreted by Robert Whitfield.