October 25, 2026

What Cannot Be Impeded

Sickness is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will. And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself.

Epictetus was born a slave and left permanently lame, later banished from Rome and teaching philosophy in Nicopolis to students who had far more wealth and status than he did. In this passage from the Enchiridion he uses his own crippled leg as the example, showing that a physical defect limits the leg but cannot touch the part of him that chooses, judges, and acts. The Stoics taught that only virtue is good and only vice is bad, which means health, wealth, reputation, and even a working body are merely preferred but indifferent to one's actual character. Nothing external can make a person good or bad, because that verdict is decided entirely by how the will responds to what happens. Practicing this means training yourself, moment to moment, to notice where an obstacle really lands and refusing to let it spread from your circumstances into your character.

A principle of Stoicism: Virtue Is the Only Good →