epictetish
Explanation
The Joke
The comic opens with a caption: "I wish all educational texts were written like Epictetus wrote." It then shows a person reading a textbook that combines Epictetus's famously abrasive, confrontational rhetorical style with a calculus problem. The text reads: "What hapless wretch? Do you suppose the integral of sqrt(x^2+x) dx = (x^2+x)^(1/2)? And when you eat, do you carry the food to your mouth or to your eyes, slave!"
Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, was known for his "Discourses" (recorded by his student Arrian), in which he frequently berated his students with cutting insults and rhetorical questions designed to shame them into self-improvement. The comic imagines what would happen if that same aggressive, insulting pedagogical style were applied to a dry math textbook -- the student would be personally attacked for getting an integral wrong.
The Humor
The comedy comes from the absurd mismatch between the subject matter (routine calculus) and the delivery (ancient philosophical invective). Epictetus's style of calling people "wretch" and "slave" while interrogating their life choices works in the context of moral philosophy, where he is trying to shake people out of complacency. Applied to integration by substitution, it becomes hilariously disproportionate. The joke also resonates with anyone who has struggled through dry, impersonal textbooks and wished they had more personality -- though perhaps not quite this much personality.
References
Epictetus (c. 50-135 AD) was a Stoic philosopher who was born into slavery and later freed. His teachings survive primarily through the "Discourses" and the "Enchiridion," both recorded by his student Arrian. He was known for his blunt, often insulting rhetorical style, frequently addressing his students as wretches or slaves to provoke self-examination. The title "Epictetish" is a portmanteau of "Epictetus" and the suffix "-ish," suggesting the style is inspired by, but not quite, Epictetus.