La "prière" d'Epictète et de Marc Aurèle

The "prayer" of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse under which conditions and to what extend prayers are acceptable in stoic training. First, we try to show that the Stoics radically transform the use of the prayer: men will address a prayer to god in order to adapt their own desires to god’s design. In this sense, we can consider the Stoic prayer as a form of ‘anti-prayer’. However, the Stoic prayer cannot be considered as a simple rhetorical strategy. In fact, the prayers give stoic training a religious dimension: it expresses a kind of philosophical spirituality, different from the ancient ritual religion.