Preferred Indifferents
This week you're learning about "Preferred Indifferents," the Stoic concept known in Greek as "proēgmena" (roughly: things that are preferred, or that have a kind of natural priority). The idea is that things like wealth, health, and reputation are not good or bad in themselves; they are "indifferent" to your moral character. But they are not all equal either: some of them, the preferred ones, are worth choosing when you can, because they fit with natural human life. Learning this distinction changes how you relate to money and possessions: you can want them sensibly, without needing them desperately.
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 itself. The Stoics divided everything in life into three categories: genuinely good things (the virtues, like courage and wisdom), genuinely bad things (their opposites), and everything else, which they called 'indifferent.' But within that third category, they made a crucial further cut. Some indifferent things, like health, wealth, and strength, are worth choosing and pursuing; they called these 'preferred indifferents' (proēgmena in Greek, meaning things that have a kind of natural priority or standing). Others, like disease and poverty, are worth avoiding; they called these 'rejected indifferents.' Neither group, though, can make you a good or bad person; that job belongs to virtue alone. So today's passage is essentially the Stoic map of value: it shows you that wanting wealth is not foolish or corrupt, as long as you understand exactly what kind of thing wealth is.
Go deeper
When you think about the role money plays in your life right now, where does it sit on the Stoic map: do you treat it as something genuinely good (something that defines whether you're doing well as a person), or as something preferred but not essential to your character?
Practice
Draw Your Own Map of Value
On paper or in a notes app, draw three columns: 'Genuinely Good,' 'Preferred Indifferent,' and 'Rejected Indifferent.' Spend five minutes placing ten things from your current life into whichever column fits. Notice which column gets the most entries, and notice if anything surprised you about where it landed.