The Stoic doctrine of preferred indifferents is one of the most frequently misunderstood ideas in the tradition and one of the most important for understanding what Stoicism actually recommends about how to live. It is the philosophical position that makes Stoicism something other than a counsel of pure withdrawal from the world — the position that explains how a philosophy that calls virtue the only genuine good can also account for the obvious fact that health is better than illness, that financial security is better than poverty, and that friendship is better than isolation.
The doctrine begins with a distinction. The Stoics divided all things into three categories: goods, bads, and indifferents. Genuine goods are the four virtues — wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance — and the states of character that express them. Genuine bads are the corresponding vices. Everything else — health, wealth, reputation, pleasure, pain, life, death — falls into the category of indifferents: things that do not, in themselves, contribute to or detract from genuine flourishing.
Within the category of indifferents, the Stoics made a further distinction. Some indifferents are preferred — worth pursuing when available, all else being equal, because they tend to support the conditions in which virtue can be practiced. Others are dispreferred — worth avoiding when possible, because they tend to make the practice of virtue more difficult. A small number are genuinely neutral, without even this relative value.
Health is a preferred indifferent. Wealth is a preferred indifferent. A good reputation, physical comfort, the continued presence of people you love — all preferred indifferents. Illness, poverty, physical pain, social isolation — all dispreferred indifferents. None of them, preferred or dispreferred, constitutes genuine good or genuine harm to the person who experiences them.
The Greek Terms
The Greek term for indifferents is adiaphora — things that do not make a difference to the fundamental question of how well you are living. The term for preferred indifferents is proēgmena — things that are selected or chosen, things that have a kind of rational priority among the indifferents without being genuinely good.
The Stoics were precise about this distinction in a way that their critics — ancient and modern — have not always been. The proēgmena are not goods. They do not contribute unconditionally to flourishing. They are selected in the way a doctor selects the healthier patient when triaging, or in the way a navigator selects the better route when both routes reach the same destination. The selection is rational without implying that what is selected is genuinely valuable in the deepest sense.
Cicero, who engages with this doctrine in On Ends, uses the analogy of an archer. The archer's goal is to hit the target. Everything the archer does — selecting the right arrow, adjusting the bow, accounting for the wind — is in service of that goal. But the archer's excellence, his genuine achievement, lies in the quality of his preparation and execution, not in whether the arrow hits. The hitting is preferred. It is not the point.
Why the Stoics Held This Position
The doctrine of preferred indifferents is not arbitrary. It follows from the foundational Stoic claim that virtue is the only unconditional good, combined with the obvious observation that some external circumstances support the practice of virtue and others make it more difficult.
The argument for the unconditional good is this: for something to be genuinely good, it must be good in every circumstance, for every person, without exception. Wealth fails this test. Wealth is good when used wisely and badly when used poorly. It is good for the person of sound character and dangerous for the person without it. It is not, therefore, unconditionally good. The same applies to health, reputation, pleasure, and every other external circumstance. None of them is reliably good.
Virtue, by contrast, is always good. Courage is good regardless of whether it succeeds. Justice is good regardless of whether it is rewarded. Wisdom is good regardless of the circumstances in which it is applied. Only virtue passes the test of unconditional goodness.
But the Stoics were not willing to say that health and illness are genuinely equivalent, that wealth and poverty are genuinely the same, that life and death are identical from a philosophical standpoint. Their experience of the world told them otherwise, and their account of human nature — as rational creatures with natural inclinations toward self-preservation, toward health, toward social connection — required some acknowledgment that these inclinations are not irrational.
The doctrine of preferred indifferents is the resolution: health is worth pursuing, illness worth avoiding, without either constituting genuine good or genuine harm. You pursue health through what is within your control while accepting that the outcome is not fully yours to determine. You pursue it as a preferred indifferent, not as a genuine good.
The Practical Implications
The practical difference between treating health as a genuine good and treating it as a preferred indifferent is significant and worth spelling out.
A person who treats health as a genuine good — as something that matters unconditionally to their wellbeing — will experience illness as a genuine harm, will be devastated by serious illness, will find it difficult to maintain equanimity when their health fails. They have located part of their wellbeing in something outside their control, which means their wellbeing is perpetually at the mercy of circumstances they cannot govern.
A person who treats health as a preferred indifferent pursues it with full rational effort — they take care of their body, they seek medical attention when needed, they do everything within their power to maintain and recover health — while accepting that the outcome of those efforts is not fully theirs to determine. They prefer health to illness without depending on health for their sense of okayness. When illness comes anyway — as it comes to everyone eventually — they can maintain equanimity because their wellbeing was never fully staked on the outcome.
This is not the same as not caring. The Stoics cared about preferred indifferents. Marcus Aurelius cared about governing the empire well. Epictetus cared about his students. Seneca cared about his friendships, his writing, his reputation as a philosopher. The caring is rational and appropriate. What is not appropriate — and what the doctrine of preferred indifferents is designed to prevent — is the kind of caring that stakes your wellbeing on outcomes you cannot fully control.
Common Objections
The objection from ordinary experience. The most common objection to the doctrine of preferred indifferents is that it flies in the face of ordinary experience. When someone we love dies, we experience it as a genuine harm, not as a dispreferred indifferent that has no bearing on our flourishing. When we lose our financial security, it feels genuinely bad, not merely unfortunate.
The Stoic response is that ordinary experience is not a reliable guide to what is genuinely good and bad. Our ordinary responses to events are shaped by false beliefs about what matters — beliefs that we have absorbed from our culture, our upbringing, and our unreflective emotional life. The point of Stoic philosophy is precisely to examine and correct those beliefs rather than to take them as authoritative.
This does not mean the Stoics were cold or indifferent to loss. Marcus Aurelius was deeply affected by the deaths of people he loved. Seneca wrote consolations to people in grief that take the pain of loss entirely seriously. The claim is not that loss does not hurt. It is that the hurt is produced by a judgment — the judgment that something genuinely good has been taken — and that the judgment, carefully examined, does not hold up.
The objection from motivation. If preferred indifferents are not genuine goods, why pursue them at all? What is the rational basis for preferring health to illness if neither constitutes genuine good or harm?
The Stoic answer draws on the account of human nature. Human beings have natural inclinations — toward self-preservation, toward health, toward social connection, toward the continued life of those they love. These inclinations are rational expressions of human nature, and acting on them is part of living according to nature, which is the Stoic account of the good life. The natural inclination toward health gives a rational basis for pursuing it that does not require treating health as a genuine good.
The objection from Stoic practice. If preferred indifferents are genuinely indifferent — if they make no difference to genuine flourishing — why do the Stoics devote so much attention to the conditions under which they should be pursued and the ways in which they can go wrong?
The Stoic answer is that the doctrine is more subtle than the objection assumes. Preferred indifferents are not irrelevant to flourishing. They are the material in which virtue is practiced. Health gives you more opportunities to practice the virtues than illness does, in general. Wealth gives you more opportunities to practice justice and generosity than poverty does, in general. The preferred indifferents matter not because they constitute flourishing but because they provide the conditions in which flourishing is more easily pursued.
Preferred Indifferents and the Dichotomy of Control
The doctrine of preferred indifferents is the complement to the dichotomy of control, and the two ideas are best understood together.
The dichotomy of control establishes that some things are within our power and some things are not. Our judgments, desires, aversions, and chosen responses are within our power. Outcomes, external circumstances, and the behavior of other people are not.
Preferred indifferents are precisely those things that lie outside our full control but are still worth pursuing through what is within our control. Health is a preferred indifferent — worth pursuing through diet, exercise, and medical care (all within our control) while accepting that the outcome of those efforts (not fully within our control) may not match what we intended.
The two doctrines together produce the Stoic orientation toward external goods: pursue them fully through what is genuinely yours, hold them without dependence, and accept the outcome without the kind of distress that treating them as genuine goods would produce.
Primary Sources
- Cicero. On Ends (De Finibus), Books 3–4. Trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library. The most systematic ancient account of the preferred indifferents doctrine.
- Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book 7. Trans. R.D. Hicks. Available via Perseus Digital Library.
- Epictetus. Discourses. Trans. Robin Hard. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Trans. Gregory Hays. Modern Library, 2002.
Further Reading
- Long, A.A. Hellenistic Philosophy. University of California Press, 1986.
- Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Inwood, Brad. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Long, A.A. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford University Press, 2002.