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
But it seems that all goods are equal, and that every good is to be desired in the highest degree, and that it admits of no relaxation, and of no extension. Moreover, they divide all existing things into good, bad, and indifferent. The good are the virtues, prudence, justice, manly courage, temperance, and the rest of the like qualities. The bad are the contraries, folly, injustice, and the like. Those are indifferent which are neither beneficial nor injurious, such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, riches, a good reputation, nobility of birth; and their contraries, death, disease, labour, disgrace, weakness, poverty, a bad reputation, baseness of birth, and the like; as Hecaton lays it down in the seventh book of his treatise on the Chief Good; and he is followed by Apollodorus, in his Ethics, and by Chrysippus. For they affirm that those things are not good but indifferent, though perhaps a little more near to one species than to the other. For, as it is the property of the hot to warm and not to chill one, so it is the property of the good to benefit and not to injure one. Now, wealth and good health cannot be said to benefit any more than to injure any one: therefore, neither wealth nor good health are goods. Again, they say that that thing is not good which it is possible to use both well and ill. But it is possible to make either a good or a bad use of wealth, or of health; therefore, wealth and good health are not goods. Posidonius, however, affirms that these things do come under the head of goods. But Hecaton, in the nineteenth book of his treatise on Goods, and Chrysippus, in his treatises on Pleasure, both deny that pleasure is a good. For they say that there are disgraceful pleasures, and that nothing disgraceful is good. And that to benefit a person is to move him or to keep him according to virtue, but to injure him is to move him or to keep him according to vice. They also assert, that things indifferent are so spoken of in a twofold manner; firstly, those things are called so, which have no influence in producing either happiness or unhappiness; such for instance, as riches, glory, health, strength, and the like; for it is possible for a man to be happy without any of these things; and also, it is upon the character of the use that is made of them, that happiness or unhappiness depends. In another sense, those things are called indifferent, which do not excite any inclination or aversion, as for instance, the fact of a man’s having an odd or an even number of hairs on his head, or his putting out or drawing back his finger; for it is not in this sense that the things previously mentioned are called indifferent, for they do excite inclination or aversion. On which account some of them are chosen, though there is equal reason for preferring or shunning all the others.
— Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Zeno 60
Reflection
Diogenes Laertius gives us the full Stoic school position today, including a crucial refinement: preferred indifferents do excite inclination and aversion, unlike truly neutral things such as whether you have an odd or even number of hairs. Reputation, good or bad, pulls at you. The Stoics are not pretending otherwise. What they are saying is that the pull is not the same as moral weight. You can prefer a good reputation the way you prefer warmth to cold, without treating it as something that defines your character. This is why genuine contempt for praise and blame requires more than willpower; it requires a deep-seated understanding that the thing pulling at you is not the same thing as the thing that matters. Insults sting because they mimic the structure of a real moral verdict. Part of your practice is learning to hear the sting without accepting the verdict.
Go deeper
When an insult or criticism stings you, what specific verdict about your character does it seem to deliver, and how would you respond to that same verdict if it came from your own honest self-examination rather than from another person?
Practice
Sting versus Verdict
Recall one insult or critical remark that has stung you recently. Write it down plainly. Then write two things separately: first, the physical or emotional sting it caused (the pull, the heat, the tightening), and second, the moral verdict it seemed to carry about who you are. Notice that these are two different things. The sting is real and indifferent. The verdict is only yours to assess.