Posts Tagged ‘Epictetus’

We Are Not Brutes

Aristotle defined man as “rational animal.” The point of contrast is with irrational animals, or brutes, which, according to the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “make use of appearances” but do not “understand the use of appearances.”[1] Or to put it another way, God has created man with a particular nature, one that includes rational faculties that give us the ability to wonder about the universe and to ask the persistent questions: what is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Does God exist? Is there objective value? And so on.