Contempt for Praise and Blame
This week you're learning about "Contempt for Praise and Blame," the Stoic practice of refusing to let reputation, approval, or insult determine your inner state. The idea rests on a distinction the Stoics called the "three classes of things": some things are genuinely good (virtue and everything that flows from it), some are genuinely bad (vice), and everything else, including reputation, praise, and the sting of blame, is "indifferent" (in Greek, adiaphora, meaning things that do not, by themselves, make you better or worse as a person). Once you see clearly that praise and blame belong to that third, indifferent category, the power of both compliments and insults begins to dissolve, and you are left standing on steadier ground.
Passage
Opponents speak thus: “You say, do you, that no good can be made up of things that are distinct? Yet this renown, of which you speak, is simply the favourable opinion of good men. For just as reputation does not consist of one person’s remarks, and as ill repute does not consist of one person’s disapproval, so renown does not mean that we have merely pleased one good person. In order to constitute renown, the agreement of many distinguished and praiseworthy men is necessary. But this results from the decision of a number—in other words, of persons who are distinct. Therefore, it is not a good.
— Seneca, Letters 102.8
Reflection
Seneca is responding here to a philosophical argument that 'renown' might qualify as a true good because it comes from the agreement of many wise people. His answer is elegant: even if a thousand good people praise you, that praise is still composed of distinct individual opinions, opinions that sit outside you, that you did not produce, and that can be withdrawn. It is not a good; it is a collection of indifferents. This matters for handling insults because the same logic applies in reverse: blame from many voices, even from people whose character you respect, is still a collection of external opinions. Contempt for praise and blame is not selective. If you grant renown the power to build you up, you cannot deny blame the power to knock you down. The two always travel together.
Go deeper
Is there a form of praise or validation, perhaps from a group, a community, or a professional circle, that you have been treating as a reliable measure of your worth, and what would it take to hold that differently?
Practice
The Symmetry Test
Write down one type of praise that genuinely lifts you (a kind review, approval from a mentor, public recognition). Then write the exact mirror image: the corresponding criticism from the same source. Ask yourself: if I accept the praise as meaningful, am I also accepting that the criticism would be equally meaningful? Sit with the symmetry for five minutes.