Roles, Relationships, and Partialism in Epictetus’s Ethical Thought

Abstract This paper explores a partialist strand in Epictetus’s ethical thought. Epictetus repeatedly refers to the specific roles we have to play in our lives. Some of these roles are defined by certain social relationships in which we are involved: we are children of somebody, sometimes siblings, sometimes someone’s parents or someone’s spouses. All these roles, or so Epictetus argues, define the actions appropriate for someone occupying these specific roles. This means again that there are actions appropriate towards parents, which are different from actions appropriate towards siblings or towards strangers. It is appropriate, then, not to treat everybody alike, but to display a special concern for the well-being of those close to us.