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
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
Yesterday you learned that preferred indifferents have natural worth. Today's passage from Diogenes Laërtius sharpens a critical edge: that natural worth is not moral goodness. The Stoics use a precise test here. A true good always benefits you; it cannot harm you. But wealth and health can be used well or badly, so they fail the test. Notice the second, equally important point: indifferents are not all the same kind of neutral. Having an odd number of hairs on your head is indifferent in a flat, motivationally inert way; you feel nothing about it either way. Wealth is indifferent in a different sense: it genuinely attracts you, and that pull is natural and fine, as long as you remember that the pull is toward something preferable, not toward something necessary for happiness.
Go deeper
Think of a time when pursuing a preferred indifferent (money, status, health) produced an outcome that was actually bad for you: what does that experience tell you about whether it was ever a genuine good?
Practice
The Benefit Test
Pick one thing you are currently working hard to get or keep. Ask yourself honestly: could having this thing ever harm me or someone I care about? Sit with that question for five minutes without rushing to defend the thing. Write one sentence about what the test reveals.