Epictetus' conception of God

Epictetus' conception of god is seriously influenced by his predecessor philosophers and philosophy traditions, especially those of Heraclitus and Socrates. Socratic tradition has not separated god from the understanding of man. It has presented god as the most supreme being and also man as an ethical being in respect of his relation to god. The reason has been conceived as a faculty granted to man by god since Heraclitus, a faculty which makes man closer to god and thus deifies him. By virtue of this fact, the man has imagined himself in a privileged position at god and searched the ways of deserving this faculty i.e. his creator god. We can see Epictetus in this tradition as a philosopher who entirely devoted himself to god as a slave, turned his back to all earthly things, indifferent to any pains and lusts, knowing his mortality and always readied for his last day. He founds his own divine living upon many philosophical grounds. His lectures are full of anecdotes which tell about Socrates, Cynics and first era of Stoicism in respect of their unconditional submission to the god. As might be expected, these philosophers seriously influenced the conception of god of Epictetus. In this dissertation, the philosophers from Heraclitus to Epictetus' era have been embraced within the frame of their influence on Epictetus' conception of god in a comparative way. The main goal of this research is to investigate the conception of god of Epictetus comprehensively within the scope of concepts like the existence of god, his relation to the nature and man, destiny, prophecy, death, life after death and so on. Keywords: Epictetus, God, Reason, Nature, Soul, Death, Destiny.