Preferred Indifferents
This week you are learning about "Preferred Indifferents," the Stoic term for things like money, health, reputation, and beauty. The Greek phrase is "ta proegmena adiaphora" (roughly: the things that are "preferred" among the "indifferents"), and understanding it changes how you relate to almost everything the world says you should chase. The Stoics insisted that only virtue is truly good, yet they were not monks who ignored practical life; they said these external things have real, natural value and it is perfectly reasonable to pursue them, so long as you never mistake them for the source of your happiness.
Passage
Again, of things indifferent, they call some preferred (προηγμένα), and others rejected (ἀποπροηγμένα). Those are preferred, which have some proper value (ἀξίαν), and those are rejected, which have no value at all (ἀπαξίαν ἔχοντα). And by the term proper value, they mean that quality of things, which causes them to concur in producing a well-regulated life; and in this sense, every good has a proper value. Again, they say that a thing has value, when in some point of view, it has a sort of intermediate power of aiding us to live conformably to nature; and under this class, we may range riches or good health, if they give any assistance to natural life. Again, value is predicated of the price which one gives for the attainment of an object, which some one, who has experience of the object sought, fixes as its fair price; as if we were to say, for instance, that as some wheat was to be exchanged for barley, with a mule thrown in to make up the difference. Those goods then are preferred, which have a value, as in the case of the mental goods, ability, skill, improvement, and the like; and in the case of the corporeal goods, life, health, strength, a good constitution, soundness, beauty; and in the case of external goods, riches, glory, nobility of birth, and the like. Rejected things are, in the case of qualities of the mind, stupidity, unskilfulness, and the like; in the case of circumstances affecting the body, death, disease, weakness, a bad constitution, mutilation, disgrace, and the like; in the case of external circumstances, poverty, want of reputation, ignoble birth, and the like. But those qualities and circumstances which are indifferent, are neither preferred nor rejected. Again, of things preferred, some are preferred for their own sakes, some for the sake of other things, and some partly for their own sakes and partly for that of other things. Those which are preferred for their own sakes, are ability, improvement, and the like; those which are preferred for the sake of other things, are wealth, nobility of birth, and the like; those which are preferred partly for their own sake, and partly for that of something else, are strength, vigour of the senses, universal soundness, and the like; for they are preferred, for their own sakes, inasmuch as they are in accordance with nature; and for the sake of something else, inasmuch as they are productive of no small number of advantages; and the same is the case in the inverse ratio, with those things which are rejected.
— Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Zeno 61
Reflection
Today you meet the concept by name. The Stoics divided everything in the world into three buckets: goods (virtues), evils (vices), and indifferents (everything else). But within that third bucket they made a crucial further cut. Some indifferents are 'preferred' (proegmena in Greek, meaning something like 'led forward' or 'promoted'): health over sickness, wealth over poverty, strength over weakness. Others are 'rejected' (apoproegmena): their opposites. Neither group is truly good or evil, but preferred indifferents have what the Stoics called axia, a Greek word meaning natural worth or appropriate value. Think of axia as a fair market price for something, the value a knowledgeable person would assign it, separate from any moral weight. This passage, drawn from Diogenes Laërtius' account of Zeno's teachings, lays out the full taxonomy so you have a map for the whole week.
Go deeper
Looking at the list in this passage (health, wealth, skill, beauty, nobility of birth), which preferred indifferent do you currently treat as if it were a genuine good, meaning you believe your happiness depends on having it?
Practice
The Three-Bucket Sort
Take a piece of paper and draw three columns: Goods, Evils, Indifferents. Spend five minutes listing the things you pursued or avoided today. Then, for each item in the Indifferents column, mark a P (preferred) or R (rejected) next to it. The goal is not to judge yourself; it is simply to see your day through this new lens.