You Are an Appearance

Scholar, 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0).

A message arrives: “Can we talk?” A thought says at once: they are angry. It comes with no gap between the words and the verdict. KTT counts it as a thought, noticed or not, even when it shows up as a drop in the stomach. Epictetus, a Stoic teacher of the first and second centuries, gave his students a short sentence to say to a thought like this one. The sources read for this article are translations of the Handbook, and none of them tested what the sentence does in a person.

The sentence

In the first chapter of the Handbook, in George Long’s public-domain translation, Epictetus tells his students to practice saying to every harsh appearance: “You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be.” Elizabeth Carter’s older translation has “You are but an appearance.” The Greek word for what appears can also be rendered as impression. A translator’s note says appearances are called harsh when they overexcite and run against reason.

The test that follows

The sentence is only the first step. Epictetus then asks for the appearance to be examined by the rules the student already holds. The chief rule is a question: does it concern what is in a person’s power, or what is not? If it concerns what is not, the student should be ready to say that it is nothing to him.

Why the thought is not the event

In chapter five, Epictetus puts the same idea in a general form. People are disturbed not by what happens but by their opinions about what happens. He gives death as the example: death is not terrible, or Socrates would have found it so. The terrible thing is the opinion that death is terrible. He adds that when someone insults a person, it is the person’s opinion of the insult that irritates.

In the message example, the event is four words. “They are angry” is the opinion added to them.

What is not known

Whether saying the sentence to a thought changes the thought, or the feeling that comes with it, is not known. None of the sources tested it.

Whether the first thought about the message was an opinion or an automatic reaction is also open. The text treats it as an appearance that can be examined, and it does not describe where the appearance comes from.

How the students of Epictetus used the sentence is not known either. The text is advice, and it does not report their experience.