The concept of ‘what is up to us’ — rendered in Greek as eph’ hēmin — stands as one of the foundational distinctions in ancient practical philosophy and continues to resonate, sometimes implicitly, throughout the depth-psychological and wisdom traditions gathered in this corpus. Its locus classicus is Stoic ethics, where Epictetus articulates with characteristic precision the division between those things lying within our sovereign power (judgment, impulse, desire, aversion) and those that do not (body, reputation, external circumstance). John of Damascus inherits and theologizes this partition, mapping it onto a Christian framework of deliberate action and moral accountability. What the depth-psychological tradition adds is an unsettling complication: the psyche contains forces — compulsive desire, samskara, shadow, trauma — that blur the boundary between voluntary and involuntary. Easwaran, reading the Bhagavad Gita, treats the disciplining of will as a spiritual project precisely because so much of what we imagine to be within our power has been colonized by automatism. Masters and Ogden, from somatic and trauma-informed perspectives, press further: responsibility cannot be conflated with blame when neurobiological and developmental constraints shape what is actually available to agency. The term thus marks a fault-line between freedom and determinism, between moral seriousness and compassionate realism, that the entire corpus negotiates.
Of events, some are in our hands, others are not. Those then are in our hands which we are free to do or not to do at our will, that is all actions that are done voluntarily
John of Damascus provides the most explicit theological formulation of the eph’ hēmin distinction, grounding voluntary action in the capacity for deliberation over equally available alternatives.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
Did you hear this when you were with the philosophers? did you learn this? do you not know that human life is a warfare? that one man must keep watch, another must go out as a spy, and a third must fight?
Epictetus insists that misfortune arising from external conditions — fever, robbers, tyrants — falls outside what is up to us, and that complaining about such conditions betrays philosophical ignorance.
, Discourses, 108thesis
philosophers admonish us not to be satisfied with learning only, but also to add study, and then practice. For we have long been accustomed to do contrary things, and we put in practice opinions which are contrary to true opinions.
Epictetus argues that what is up to us — the exercise of right opinion — must be actively cultivated through practice, since habitual contrary action erodes the very faculty of self-governance.
, Discourses, 108supporting
he who knows not who he is, and for what purpose he exists, and what is this world, and with whom he is associated, and what things are the good and the bad… will neither desire according to nature nor turn away nor move towards
Epictetus establishes self-knowledge as the necessary precondition for exercising what is up to us; ignorance of one’s own nature renders voluntary action effectively impossible.
, Discourses, 108supporting
You carry him within yourself, and you perceive not that you are polluting him by impure thoughts and dirty deeds.
Epictetus locates the divine within the self and holds us fully responsible for what we do with what is up to us — inner thought and deed — framing moral failure as self-desecration.
, Discourses, 108supporting
The notion of taking responsibility is not as simple as it may sound… she was just blaming herself for it, losing all compassion for herself in the process.
Masters problematizes naive assertions of total self-causation, demonstrating that conflating ‘what is up to us’ with blame can produce devastating shame rather than genuine agency.
, Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality Disconnects Us From, 2012thesis
if this is the only one we know we get; if choices are possible, and matter, then when do we plan to grow up, to take final responsibility for our lives?
Hollis frames mortality itself as the condition that makes choice — and therefore what is up to us — meaningful, positioning radical self-responsibility as the mark of psychological maturity.
, Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path, 2001supporting
if you let compulsive desires or self-will grow stronger, they can break away from the will and pull out ahead, leaving the will to trail along feebly like a shadow.
Easwaran describes how compulsive desire can usurp the domain of what is up to us, rendering the will increasingly nominal and underscoring the urgency of disciplined practice.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
we don’t have to look to presidents or prime ministers to solve these problems… If, in my own life, I can withdraw support from everything that violates the unity of life, I have reduced evil by one measure.
Easwaran translates the Stoic-Gita principle of self-governance into a social ethic: the sphere of what is up to us, properly exercised, constitutes the most reliable lever for collective change.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
If there comes a force upon you and stops your progress, abandon it and be easy, and make a virtue of necessity. Remember that you undertook the business upon the condition of its being feasible.
Hadot’s Marcus Aurelius exemplifies the Stoic practice of reserving effort for what is up to us while releasing attachment to outcomes determined by external necessity.
, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 1998supporting
Because Ann, like many of us, often felt that she had little control over how she felt, a benefit of this awareness was realizing that she could often transform feeling anxious into feeling calm by simply hugging herself.
Ogden demonstrates how somatic therapy progressively expands the practical domain of what is up to us by restoring bodily self-regulation capacities previously foreclosed by trauma.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Arjuna’s will is undivided now, which means that it is one with the divine will; victory is only a matter of time.
Easwaran suggests that the highest realization of what is up to us occurs when individual will aligns with divine will, transforming personal agency into a vehicle of larger purpose.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside
a non-sage’s desire will be called a boulēsis or voluntas only in a looser sense. The Stoics: Interrogation Of Appearances Versus Posidonius’ Will-Power
Sorabji traces the Stoic conceptual genealogy of will, noting that for non-sages the voluntary character of desire — and therefore the scope of what is up to them — is attenuated.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside