Miranda rights, Epictetus

Most of us have heard: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”In this case I will like to tell Epictetus that his teachings can be used against him. If judgment is what determines things, can things determine judgment? If we recall the past section of Epictetus we can propose a contradictory version of his teachings. Epictetus affirms that “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgment about the things” (5) If that is true it would be acceptable to say he contradicts himself. He states that “An uneducated person accuses others when he is doing badly; a partly educated person accuses himself, an educated person accuses neither someone else nor himself.”(5) If we consider that education is a privilege for few, an advantage for some and deprived for many, we can state an inverse adaptation of Epictetus Handbook. According to him, we should face adversity (it is our destiny), with fair judgment because “you are an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be…” (17) In this case destiny for the uneducated was already set, which means that their situation affects their judgment. His extended metaphor of the banquet explains that one must fit the situation properly and logically. If things haven’t happened do no try to hurry them, if they already happened let them go away, and if they didn’t happen do not think of them. If we attach to this philosophy we can assume that we have to be ready to face destiny, in order to live correctly. This means that situations are factors that will affect our judgment, because one can not evaluate “things” without their existence. Consequently showing that the quality of events affect our opinion in contrast to Epictetus’s idea.