Stoicism ·
‘Not Events, but Judgments’: Epictetus on Why Things Disturb Us
A single sentence that became the operating premise of cognitive behavioural therapy.
The Stoic Claim
Stoicism posits that events are external to us, but our judgments about them are internal. Only these judgments are truly within our control.
A Direct Line to Therapy
Albert Ellis, a pioneer of cognitive behavioral therapy, even named one of his books after this very idea, calling Epictetus the original cognitive therapist.
A Demanding Consolation
This Stoic doctrine offers no false comfort. Instead, it tells you that you cannot change what happened, only what you choose to make of it.
Analysis
Ancient Greek thought, profoundly articulated by philosophers like Epictetus, drew a crucial line between the world's objective realities and our subjective experience of them. On one side stand *pragmata* (πράγματα), the external events and circumstances that simply occur: a job loss, an illness, a critical remark. Epictetus never denied that these 'bad things' happen, acknowledging them as unavoidable facets of existence. However, he insisted that the suffering we endure does not stem directly from these events themselves, but rather from our *dogmata* (δόγματα) – our internal judgments, interpretations, and the stories we tell ourselves about those events. It is not the situation that distresses us, but our belief that the situation is terrible, unfair, or unbearable. This means our distress is not an inherent property of the external world, but a construct of our own minds, making our inner narrative the true arbiter of our peace or our torment.
https://quotedmind.com/article/epictetus-not-events-but-judgments