The Enchiridion by Epictetus • Hacker News Board

Re: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

#41

Post by dkarl » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #37

dkarl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the west, we've had a long, deep split between what ordinary people rely on (religion and self-help) and respectable academic philosophy. Philosophy rooted in religion has a strict requirement to scale down to serve masses of people. Philosophy rooted in academia has a strict requirement to scale up to allow practitioners to flex their elite skills and show that they are worthy of scarce academic positions. Academ…

That's a pretty weak take. The difference between philosophy texts on ethics and the better self-help texts are just the difference between pulp fiction and classic novels. Time needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this is worth analyzing". That said, there's a lot of self-help that isn't philosophical (or, more exactly, don't attempt to defend the philosophy that they present the conclusions of).…

> Time needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this is worth analyzing".

I think that's exactly the problem: the assumption that philosophers should assume, by default, that self-help is unworthy of their time, and only pay attention to the rare cases that happen to have philosophical merit.

They could take a more active interest to questions such as, how can philosophy improve self-help literature? What kinds of ideas should ordinary people with low to average education consume? The wide array of values, goals, and philosophical approaches would make it a contentious and lively conversation.

But philosophers tend to vacate the field and leave it to mercenaries, culture warriors, and amateurs. When they do speak about it, it tends to be in symposiums or on podcasts aimed at college-educated people with a special interest in philosophy. That's as far down as they're willing to dumb it.

Re: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

#42

Post by OkayPhysicist » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #41

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty weak take. The difference between philosophy texts on ethics and the better self-help texts are just the difference between pulp fiction and classic novels. Time needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this is worth analyzing". That said, there's a lot of self-help that isn't philosophical (or, more exactly, don't attempt to defend the philosophy that they present the conclusions of).…

> Time needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this is worth analyzing". I think that's exactly the problem: the assumption that philosophers should assume, by default, that self-help is unworthy of their time, and only pay attention to the rare cases that happen to have philosophical merit. They could take a more active interest to questions such as, how can philosophy improve self-help literature?…

Philosophers don't "vacate the field". Many, maybe even most ethics texts are directly applicable to one's life. It comes with the territory of a field based around asking "What ought one do?".

They do tend to enjoy less market success than the less rigorous slop, but that's a symptom of a much broader problem in the world: Someone dedicated to doing something well is at a disadvantage versus someone dedicated to winning. It's the whole "anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job" Douglas Adams quote, it's why it's still not the year of Linux desktop despite having offered the superior OS for years, it's why IKEA has practically killed the market for quality furniture, and it's why damn near every corporation you can name is lead by some ghoulish psychopath. In most competitions, you can simply get a lot more mileage out of optimizing for the competition than you can squeeze out of the underlying skill. So the dude optimizing for selling books is going to knock the socks off the one trying to rigorously convey a robust ethical framework.

If you can fix that basic flaw in society, I think we should probably start with the more pressing matters than who's selling more self-help books.

Re: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

#43

Post by dkarl » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #42

dkarl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Time needs to pass before anybody is willing to go "actually, this is worth analyzing". I think that's exactly the problem: the assumption that philosophers should assume, by default, that self-help is unworthy of their time, and only pay attention to the rare cases that happen to have philosophical merit. They could take a more active interest to questions such as, how can philosophy improve self-help literature?…

Philosophers don't "vacate the field". Many, maybe even most ethics texts are directly applicable to one's life. It comes with the territory of a field based around asking "What ought one do?". They do tend to enjoy less market success than the less rigorous slop, but that's a symptom of a much broader problem in the world: Someone dedicated to doing something well is at a disadvantage versus someone dedicated to win…

To me that sounds like philosophers not being willing to lower themselves to meet people where they are.

There are plenty of professionals who don't let arbitrary standards of rigor get in the way of communicating with people. For medicine, there's an entire subspecialty of public health professionals who specialize in crafting communication for broad audiences. They don't target only the people who are capable of processing communications of a certain rigor, and they don't retire their specialty because advertisers will always have the upper hand.

Not to mention that many fields are taught as school subjects, so they have to be presented to literal children. Of course the school curricula of history, literature, and science are taught with naivete and lacunae that would be travesties if judged by professional standards, but historians aren't calling for teachers to stop teaching a dumbed down version history to children. They accept the necessity of it and debate how best to do it.

Re: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

#44

Post by tasuki » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

0xmattf wrote: post #32

Archelaos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice. I missed that, because I expected that "Compare Translations" would highlight differences and thus did not check it out.

For sure. I found it by mistake. I was just trying to get to the homepage by clicking the menu icon.

Oops. Any idea how to make the UX better?

Re: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

#45

Post by 0xmattf » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #44

0xmattf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I found it by mistake. I was just trying to get to the homepage by clicking the menu icon.

Oops. Any idea how to make the UX better?

No worries! For UX, I would personally add the Greek text by default, and remove the hamburger icon from "Compare Translations". I don't know, my brain is trained to see that icon strictly as a site navigation item.

If you wanted to, perhaps at the top of the page, you can add tags for the translations.

But after figuring out what everything is doing, it's a super nice project; I like it, no need to change anything (above are just suggestions). Thank you for putting it together!