"Remove Desire Entirely": What Epictetus Actually Meant

You read that line in the Discourses and your mind goes straight to cravings. Appetites. The stuff you are ashamed of. But that is not what Epictetus meant, and the real meaning is more useful than any advice about willpower.

In this episode I break down the Greek word orexis, explain why it has nothing to do with food or your phone, and walk through the three levels most people get stuck on: the demand, the indifference, and the preference with reservation. Only one of them is Stoicism.

I also share a personal story about driving to pick up my son on a difficult morning, and how I caught myself staking my whole peace on outcomes I could not control. It ends with one question to ask yourself the next time a plan falls through.

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Transcript

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In the stoic vault, we are just about to start doing 12 weeks focusing on ataraxia, tranquility, freedom from suffering. And for week one, we're focusing on the dichotomy of control, and specifically awareness of the dichotomy of control. The dichotomy of control is an essential first step when it comes to developing ataraxia, without which it's going to be very difficult to do so. Part of this week's practice, among other things, is to read the first five chapters, typically one per day of the Enchiridian. And so I do the practices along with everyone else in the community, and I read a line in the Enchiridian early on, and Epictetus says, for the present, remove desire entirely. It was really nice to reread that because it struck me as being quite unusual. What does he mean to remove desire? It's not like someone can just come up to you and say, Hey, do me a favor, can you just remove desire for a while? It doesn't quite make sense to our modern mind, at least in the way we use desire, and that's what I want to spend today talking about. What does he mean exactly? In Epictetus' teachings, there are three disciplines the discipline of assent, the discipline of action, and the discipline of desire. I've been reading Stoicism for years. I teach this stuff, I practice this stuff, and as I said, when I first read this line my reaction was hang on a second, let me double click on that. What does he mean? If you're anything like me, when you hear remove desire, your brain goes straight to one place. You think it means stop craving things or curb your appetites. Think of all the stuff you're ashamed of, whether it's scrolling or eating badly or consuming unhealthy media, and just stop doing it. That's typically what we think about when we think of the phrase remove desire. And to be honest, if that's what Epictetus actually meant, it would be pretty bad advice because you can't just turn off wanting things, can you? That's not how the mind works. And that's not how any of this stuff works. But the good news is that's not what he meant. The word Epictetus uses in the original translation is a Rexis. It's a technical stoic term, and it means something very specific. It means the soul reaching toward a particular outcome, reaching toward it with the expectation of getting it. So it's the reaching. Picture a soul in your body at this force field, yearning, reaching out towards an outcome, expecting to receive it. That's what he means by desire here. And this is the opposite of echelesis, aversion. That's the soul recoiling from something with the expectation of avoiding it. So when Apictitas says remove desire, he's not talking about cravings. He's not talking about food, sex, your phone. He's talking about the habit of staking your peace on getting particular outcomes. And that's what aurexis is. It's when your mind reaches out towards something and says, I need this thing to happen in order to be okay. You see this show up a lot in children. They want to get their own way, and if they don't, they tantrum. But we all have little toddlers inside of us. This is Orexis in action. Let's try and make this more concrete because this changed how I practice stoicism. I was driving to pick up my son the other morning. It's a bit of a crazy rush. I want to get him into breakfast club. I don't want to be late, he's tired, he's just got dressed. Sometimes things go super smoothly and sometimes they don't. On this occasion it was a bit stressful the day before, and I noticed while I was driving, I had this clenched feeling in my chest. I was running through different scenarios. What if he resists going to school? What if there's some sort of drama? What if there's some kind of drama? What if something unexpected happens? And underneath all of that, all of these scenarios, I had a desire. Wasn't a craving. This was a desire in the stoic technical sense, an orexis, and it sounded like this. I need this morning to go smoothly. I need my son to go to school without a fight. And I need my co-parent to be cooperative. I need it to work. Now here's the thing, every one of those outcomes, his mood, her mood, whether he ended up going to school, whether the morning went smooth, how much sleep he had, every single one of those things was outside of my control, externals, and they belong in the not up to me column. But I attached my inner stability to them. I was saying without realizing it, if these things happen, I'll be okay. If they don't happen, I won't be okay. And that's the desire Epictetus wants you to remove. So how do you actually do this? Well, there are three levels. Most people are stuck on the first without realizing the third even exists. Level one is the demand. That's what I was doing in the car. He must go to school. The morning must be smooth. If it isn't, this is a disaster. That's a Rexis at full power. Desire fused to an outcome that I can't control. And Epictetus would say that is the root of every disturbance you've ever felt. Every single one. When you demand something that isn't up to you and reality doesn't deliver, you suffer every single time. Not because reality is cruel or evil or you're a victim, but because you made a contract reality never signed. Level two is what most people think stoicism means indifference. I don't care whether he goes to school or not. I don't care whether the morning is good or bad. And that is actually completely wrong. No stoic father would say that. A lot of people get this mixed up with the dichotomy of control. They think it's an invitation not to care. It doesn't mean that at all. The Stoics called things like education and health progmina, preferred indifference. Things worth pursuing, absolutely. Things you're supposed to pursue, natural to pursue. You don't stop caring. And level three is what Epictetus is actually teaching here. Preference with small print, preference with reservation. I'd like my son to go to school. I'll do everything I can to make that happen, but if it doesn't work out, I'll deal with it. I still care, I still try, but my inner state isn't a hostage to reality. I'm not enslaved to the outcome. Can you see the difference between those three? Level one is demand, level two is indifference, and level three is preference with reservation. The demand feels like tension, like you're gripping something, bracing. Indifference is sort of like checking out is numbness. Most people bounce between the demand and the numbness and think those are the only two options. The preference feels lighter, it feels open. You'd like this, you'll work toward it, but you're not clenched around it. The unclenching, that is what Epictetus means by remove desire. And there's a reason Epictetus tells his students to do this first, before the other two disciplines. It's in the discourses 3.2. He basically says, look, you're not ready to desire correctly yet. Desiring only virtue and nothing else, that's reserved for the sage. That's the finish line. You're nowhere near it, and neither am I, by the way. But what you can do right now today is to stop reaching for things that aren't up to you, and being wrecked when you don't get them. That's the beginner's work. And it's harder than it sounds, because often we don't even realize when we're doing it. The arexis runs in the background like a program you forgot was open. So here's what I want you to try today, at some point. Something won't go the way you want it to. Someone will be late, a plan will fall through, your kid won't cooperate, your partner will say something, the train will be cancelled, whatever, whatever, something will happen. And when that something happens, before you react, notice what's underneath the frustration. Not the event, the expectation, the demand. And ask yourself, am I carrying a demand right now or a preference? The demand sounds like this. This shouldn't be happening. The preference sounds like this. I wish this were different, but I can work with it. Same situation, same person, completely different experience inside. And that's the line, that's what Epictetus meant, not stop wanting things, not become a robot, not give up your appetites. Stop stacking your peace on outcomes you were never able to guarantee. Keep the effort, you keep the engagement, you keep the care, but you drop the grip, you drop the attachment. High engagement, low attachment. I'm still practicing this. I drove to pick up my son that morning, and I was clenched the whole way there. I knew the theory, I teach the theory, and I was still doing it. But I caught it, which is the whole game. You catch it, you release it, you refocus on what you can actually do, and then tomorrow you catch it again. That's not failure, that's stoic practice. Thanks for listening, and if you want to go deeper with this kind of work, the Stoic Vault gives you a new practice every week, and a community doing this alongside you. You can find it at stoicvault.com. Hope to see you inside.