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Essential Stoic Concepts: Indifferents (Episode 136)
936 Plays6 months ago
In this episode, Michael presents the Stoic idea of "indifferents." It’s one of the key ideas behind Stoicism, one’s that often misunderstood but necessary to know in order to understand Stoicism.
(02:52) The 3 Value Categories
(06:22) Defining Good
(15:32) Defining Indifferents
(37:32) Total Indifferents
(39:06) How To Live With Indifferents
(51:22) Summary
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoa Conversations
00:00:00
Speaker
So doing the same thing as everybody else, just doing it in the right way for the right reason. And so in that way, indifference are a really, really important part of how you live. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Tremblay.
Understanding Indifference in Stoicism
00:00:15
Speaker
And today, we're going to be talking about indifference, a central concept in stoicism. I think it's one of the fundamental concepts that relates to the stoic ideas of virtue and happiness. So it's really a central one. And Michael put together a a structure for this conversation that we're going to go through. So I think after this conversation, you should have a
00:00:39
Speaker
strong ah grounding or at least moderately good understanding i should of what what indifference are and ah answers to some common questions, confusions that people have about the concept. Yeah, we're we're aiming for moderately moderately good here. that's what we're going That's what we're going for. Yeah, I wanted to talk about indifference because two reasons I mean if most people listening to this are probably familiar with this but this is the idea of instosism there's things that are good and bad that's just your character everything else or almost everything else as we'll see is an indifferent those are the things that aren't
00:01:20
Speaker
good and bad, but they're, they're neither good or bad. They're indifferent. And so that's most things, right? That's going to be health, pleasure, pain, but your reputation, your wealth, your social relationships. Those are all going to be in the category of indifference. So these things make up the bulk of your life. Understanding how to navigate them. Well, makes up the most of what we do. Most of what we do on a day to day is make decisions about indifference, about which ones we should pursue, which ones aren't worth pursuing, which we should give up, why and how.
The Stoic Value System: Good, Bad, and Indifference
00:01:53
Speaker
So it that's the that's like probably 80% of our decisions are based around that. The other thing though is that good character comes in making these decisions around indifference. So the Stoics will say, you know, virtue and vice, that's good and bad, that's what matters, your character, but what is your character but just, you know, choosing to help your friend instead of betraying them to make more money.
00:02:16
Speaker
you know choosing choosing to be just in how you distribute ah wealth or you know your possessions, choosing to be kind to another person, which is how you take up your time, even though it you know it's not the most fun thing to do maybe. So we we we show our virtue, we show our good character and how we make use of indifference. So both confusing, but then also this this core idea. So I thought it would be fun to talk about. Anything else you want to add before we jump into it? No, I think it's ah that's a solid intro. Let's jump into it. Cool. So the way I wanted to frame it, first I want to talk about the Stoics three value categories. So when we talk about indifference, they it's a really confusing thing if you don't situate in the way that the Stoics thought about value. Because
00:03:07
Speaker
What we're going to call indifference, or what the Stoics are going to call indifference, most people are going to think of as being good or bad. But the Stoics talked about value in a different very different way. They talked about good and bad in a very different way. So we've got to clarify that. So I would say the Stoics had three types of of value. First, there was good and bad. That's the kind of highest, most intense type of value. Then next, there are indifference. And then there's this third category, which I might call something like total indifference. And those are things. So indifference, they can be preferable. You can sometimes, there's there's a reason to to prefer one over the other. And there's a reason to pursue ice cream over a punch in the face unless you have a different reason. But then there's this third category, total indifference, things that don't make any any difference at all.
00:03:54
Speaker
and so Let's start i want to start with just with good and bad. so No indifference or good and bad. This is the most extreme value category. and These things have i' say four key features that define what are good and bad. so First, good and bad things have a necessary value. And here's a quote by Sextus Empiricus. He says, the Stoics define the good as follows. Good is benefit or not other than benefit. So the the argument here is that the Stoics make is that if you're going to call something good, a good thing always benefits.
00:04:32
Speaker
And ah the contrary thing the contrary statement, a bad thing always harms. So when we look at when we talk about good and bad things, these things are necessarily a good thing is necessarily beneficial, it's necessarily good, and a bad thing is necessarily harmful, it's necessarily bad. And so because of this, good things are things you should always choose. They're things you should always want. And bad things are the things that you should always try to avoid. You don't need other information. You don't need more context. You don't need to do a utilitarian calculus. Good things are well are always good for you. Bad things are always bad for you. So that's that idea of necessary value. One way to think about it is the Stoics are looking to define what's fundamental about the good and the bad. They're not looking for
00:05:25
Speaker
a heuristic or a rule of thumb. many of so they can They criticized many of their contemporaries because their rival schools had accounts of the good that were things like the good is what is pleasurable, where often pleasure aligns with good action, but it doesn't seem like every pleasurable thing, ah every pleasurable experience is good. you know Pleasure that is ah had for people who experience pleasure at the suffering of others or something like this. like There's nothing good in that pleasure. So the Stoics are going to cross that off the list of possibly good things. They're trying to look for what's fundamentally good. you know It's the ultimate thing
00:06:14
Speaker
that one should be pursuing that is unconditionally good. ah They're not looking for rules of thumb or anything of that sort. Yeah, I think it's a really good way of putting it. So you can kind of start with the idea of like, it's a very philosophical way to start. Okay, we're sitting alone in a room. There's nothing around us. None of us have ever lived or experienced anything. If we were going to define good, how would we define it? Well, we will let's define it as the thing that can, you know, something that can never harm you, right? Something that always benefits you.
00:06:45
Speaker
ah let's call that the good. And that's what the that's what the Stoics say. And then as you said, they disqualify things that, you know, most people call things good that tend to benefit you. Pleasure tends to be good for you. Money tends to be good for you. Wealth tends to be good for you. And the Stoics are going to say, no, no, these are we're not going to call these good things unless they're always beneficial. um So they kind of start with that reasoning, as you said, that kind of foundation foundation to define the good. The other thing about the way the Stoics think about good and bad is they think about good and bad as being necessarily motivating. And what I mean by that is that if you think something is good, you will try to pursue it. You cannot help but pursue it.
00:07:27
Speaker
it is a um It is a psychological fact of the way that we're built. You can also use this in reverse, right? If you if you if you aren't afraid of something, then you don't think it's bad. If you aren't pursuing something, then you don't actually think it's good. You can say you think it's good. You can talk to your friends about how you know you think it's a good thing. But if you're not actually pursuing it, your body is kind of betraying how you really think. Your feelings are showing what you really think about the matter. And there's a quote here by Epictetus. One thing that we received, we received, you know, are some ah email from a listener talking about how they would like us to source our quotes more so they could follow along or pause and listen. So that's something I'm going to be trying to do more of.
00:08:13
Speaker
Especially, especially when we get to ah Epictetus Seneca and Marcus radius that's something that I'll try to do more because I think those are ones that are a bit easier to follow along a bit easier to get to the source of. So here's a quote here from Epictetus. This is his discourses. Book three, chapter three, lines two to four. Epictetus says, just as it is every soul's nature to assent to the true, descent from the false, and suspend judgment in reference to the non-evident, so it is our nature to be moved towards the good and feel aversion from the bad. Once the good appears, it immediately moves the soul towards itself, while the bad repels the soul from itself.
00:08:56
Speaker
A soul will never refuse a clear impression of the good. So that's, that's just what I was saying straight from the source. You can't, your soul, your mind, your feelings, however you want to think about it, you will be pulled towards what you think is good. Um, that's something about it. So if you, if you don't desire it, basically you don't think it's good. If you're not afraid of it, if you're not averse to it, you don't think it's bad. So that's that second feature necessarily beneficial and harmful was number one.
The Role of Virtue and Character in Stoicism
00:09:26
Speaker
Number two, necessarily motivating.
00:09:29
Speaker
right yeah yeah is that That motivation maps onto the Stoics view that's often called intellectualism. you know This idea that if you have knowledge about what is good, then you will pursue it. If you have if you know that a given thing is evil, then you will avoid it just because of that knowledge, that state of mind. And that off also explains why it's so important to think well for the Stoics, because if one thinks well and sees things as they are, then we then one will be motivated to live well, to pursue the good and avoid what's bad.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah. So like in other words, if you're, if what you value is all messed up, your feelings are going to be all messed up for you. Think about what's good and bad is, is, is broken, distorted, incorrect, misguided, then you'll have broken, distorted, misguided feelings, uh, motivations, desires. So there's that, that really strong connection. Absolutely. The, the third feature of the good and the bad is that they're very few in number. So typically, even I do this, I kind of casually talk on the on this podcast about virtue and vice as being the only things that are good or bad, character being the only thing that's good or bad. This is not technically true, um or at least there's some evidence that it's not technically true. Tobias lists true friendship as something the Stoics say can only benefit.
00:11:07
Speaker
and thus is a good, but you know the caveat there being that true friendship is something that only the sage can experience, only the already virtuous person can access. But the point is, look, if you if you define things as things that can only benefit you and or only ever harm you, there's never a case where this is a bad thing. There's never a case where you shouldn't choose this and you won't choose it. um then you end up with a very, very small list of things, you know, virtue vice and maybe friendship with another person. Maybe you add once you're already a good person yourself. So your friendship is like a pure one, ah maybe one or two other things, but it's a very, very small list.
00:11:50
Speaker
Eros, we had that episode on ah love a while back. And love between sages might be another example. And God may be another example of something that's good but isn't strictly speaking, virtue or vice. But I think that one that yeah there's more to say there with ah with those answers, I think. But at the very at the very least, so very very few very few in number. Yeah. The point of the point is, is like, well, we literally, like, you know, we've said maybe five things and that might be it in the, in the entire universe. So it's like, it's, it's not a lot. Um, and then the last thing is that they're, they're equal in value. Uh, so anything good is equally good. Anything bad is equally bad. There's not that this is kind of good, but this is very good.
00:12:34
Speaker
You know, um friendship is kind of good, but virtue is more good. No, there's no discussion like this in Stoicism because it it not only do things necessarily benefit, but they necessarily benefit the same amount, I suppose. So there's no, there's no kind of a gradiation there. um This is a quote by a Diogenes Lyertius. I'll be quoting a lot from from his book seven, he's on the Stoics. Adogenes is this, maybe this kind of historian of all these different ancient Greek philosophers. So we go back to him a lot for evidence on what the Stoics thought.
00:13:09
Speaker
Andogeny says, the Stoics hold that all goods are equal and that every good is choice worthy in the highest degree and does not admit of relaxation or intensification. That's just a fancy way of saying that you can't have a 2 out of 10 good and an 8 out of 10 good. Everything is a 10 out of 10 good and you can't have an 11 out of 10 good. They're all 10 out of 10. So there's no hierarchy of goods. If it's good, it's they're all the same. So but's taking those together, necessary value, all goods must benefit you and that all bads must harm you. Necessarily motivating, yeah all goods must must be, you must pursue them if you if you recognize them to be good and all bads, you must avoid them if you recognize them to be bad. There's very few good things and bad things in the world so and all good things and bad things are equally good or bad. That's that that's how they think about that.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, nice. um And I think making, to add a little more detail to that last one, this idea that all good things are equally good, I suppose, to the Stoics would say, you're either exhibiting virtue or not. You're either acting with vice or not, and you don't need to go into details about or rank off different ways of acting with virtue. Instead, you know one one is simply called to you know be virtuous in a given situation. And and and that's it.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it, right? Like a a perfect ah perfect action is perfect, even if it's just, you know, helping one person or it's your Marcus Aurelius and you're helping the entire empire. um ah A perfect action is a perfect action. You know, the Stoics love these metaphors about like, you know, a straight line is straight. And then if it's crooked, it's it's equally crooked no matter how crooked and it's equally straight, no matter how straight. You can't get straighter than straight. Right. um And so that that idea of, and you think of that about friendship, right? Like a a perfect friendship. It's not like, well, you know, my friend is funnier than yours or, you know, we've known each other longer. It's like, you know, I don't know. There's still a perfect friendship is a perfect friendship. um There's no kind of gradation or change there. Yep. Yep.
00:15:32
Speaker
Cool. So that's good and bad. I mean, so about, you know, 15 minutes into the episode, just talking about good and bad, but that context is really, really important. to well Okay. So that's such a few list of things. What do we do with all the other things we like in life? What do we call all these other things? Um, and that's where indifference come in. That's where. we The Stoics want to maintain this idea that there's only a couple things that are really good and bad, but explain, I think, the common sense idea that if you walk down the street and you were to say, you know, nothing is good and bad except virtue and character, people would say, you're you're crazy. like
00:16:10
Speaker
they you know they I think about the Epictetus line where he he he gets so annoyed with skeptics for for saying you know they can't tell the truth of the matter. And he goes, well, if I threw this you know hot water in your face, you'd duck, right? And I think that people would say almost the same thing to the stoics here. They'd say, well, you know you say nothing's good or bad by character, but I'm sure like if I slapped you, you'd be like, ow, that hurts. And so how can you what do you do with pain? What do you do with pleasure? but How do you describe these things? um You wouldn't want your your family to get sick. What do you do with this? so
00:16:41
Speaker
Indifference is how we make sense. The Stoics make sense of all these other things in life that we spend our time fighting over, pursuing, avoiding, and things like this. So so that's the second bucket. And most things in life, I think, are going to fall into the second bucket. um This is what the Stoics call indifference. As we said, this is adiaphora. um And so diaphora is just difference. So adiaphora is just the things that don't make a difference. So it's it's a very literal translation to indifference. um
00:17:12
Speaker
One thing I think that's an an important distinction is that an indifference doesn't mean we should be indifferent towards it. I'll get into that, but it it just doesn't mean they're the kinds of things that we shouldn't care about. It means it doesn't make a difference towards happiness or ah not being happy, which is to say that if you already have the good, no number of indifference can can make you unhappy. And if you're not happy, no number of indifference can make you happy. So it doesn't make a difference to good and bad is what the Stoics mean by that.
Contextual Decision-Making and Indifference
00:17:51
Speaker
So I'm going to do the same thing I did before, which is the key characteristics of the indifference, the same way I talked about the key characteristics of what's good and bad. Um, so the key characteristic, number one, I would say is that, well, good and bad are always good or always bad. Indifference are those things which are disposed to a certain value. So I would say disposed towards being preferable or not preferable, dis-preferred, but what should be chosen can and will differ depending on the context. Um, so I'll do, I'll provide another quote here by Dajnes Lyertius, uh, book seven.
00:18:32
Speaker
lines 101 to 103. So this is this is Diogenes overview of the Stoics on indifference says the Stoics say that some existing things are good others bad and others are neither of these. Everything which neither does benefit nor harms is neither these namely neither neither good nor bad. For instance, life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, noble birth, and their opposites. So these are the list of indifference. Their opposites, death, disease, pain, ugliness, et cetera.
00:19:07
Speaker
For these things are not good, but indifference of the species preferred, the the the the good ones we talked about earlier. For just as heating, not chilling, is the peculiar characteristic of what is hot, so too benefiting, not harming, is the peculiar characteristic of what is good. But wealth and health no more do benefit than they harm. Therefore wealth and health are not something good. And I think what Dajanese is saying here, just to cut that quote off in the in the middle, it's not that they don't, it's not that they don't do benefit any more than they harm, it's that they they don't necessarily benefit. They can sometimes be harmful. And Dajanese goes on, furthermore, they say that, that which can be used well and badly is not something good, but wealth and health can be used well or badly. Therefore, wealth and health are not something good.
00:20:00
Speaker
And so this is the argument for indifference. As we said before, they're neither good nor bad. Some are some are preferred, some are dispreferred, preferred as the things health, wealth, ah you know pleasure, strength, and dispreferred are their opposites. But we can't call them good and bad because of the reasons we talked about it earlier about what good and bad are. They don't necessarily benefit and they can be used badly is another argument that we didn't talk on before. But ah good and good things can't be used poorly, but preferred indifference can be used poorly. Just like, just preferred indifference can be used well. So that was a lot. So anything to add or thoughts on that passage? it's a clear it's ah It is a clear explanation from Diogenes' layer shifts, but there's still a lot there. So we we should get to our that this next point, and then and then I think that will ah open things up for our other analogies or examples and so on.
00:20:56
Speaker
So, yeah, so we've talked about per preferred and dispreferred indifference. That's something Diogenes mentions through he says for these things, when he talks about life, health, pleasure, these things are not good, but indifference of the species preferred. Well, what does that mean? Right? We're talking about things that aren't good or bad. What does that mean to prefer something? Well, we prefer indifference that naturally, uh, I, I use the word benefit, but I think I should be careful. I guess naturally promote our nature. Naturally, the help us or are worth being selected, unless we have a reason not to. So something is preferred. If all else things being equal, you would tend to want to select it. ah
00:21:39
Speaker
I have a quote from Epictetus, but let me just explain that in further detail. so you know Health is preferred because all things being equal, I should choose health. I shouldn't just go and you know leave my apartment now, run into the middle of the street and get hit by a car. If I have no reason to, I should preserve my body. I should be healthy. That fits with my nature as an animal, my nature as a pro-social animal. So does having good reputation. So does having friends. So does having enough enough wealth to do the things I want to do. These are all things that I should prefer and select unless I'm given a reason not to. But you can, and that's where we come back to that definition of good that I think is really helpful. We can never be ah given a reason not to select the good.
00:22:24
Speaker
Good is always good. Virtue is always virtue. It's always the best thing. But we can be given reasons not to select health or pleasure or strength. We can sometimes think, well, it's better for me to give these things up. um And so here's a line from Epictetus. This is Discourses Book 2, Chapter 6, Line 9. ah What I put to you says, therefore Chrysippus was right to say, as long as the future is uncertain to me, I always hold those things which are better adapted to obtaining the things in accordance with nature. So that's what he says, better adapted to obtain the things in accordance with nature. For God himself has made me disposed to select these. But if I actually knew that I was fated now to be ill, I would even have an impulse to be ill.
00:23:12
Speaker
For my foot too, if it had intelligence, would have an impulse to get muddy. And so this is this idea that there are gonna be some cases, in this case, he uses this idea of fate. Do everything you can to stay to stay healthy. But when you notice that, you know, in this case, now you're you're ill, it's your time it's your time two to either to die or even just like, you know, you have ah you have a cold and you gotta get over your cold, you have the flu and you have to get over your flu. At that moment, stop fighting against it.
00:23:43
Speaker
at that moment just kind of accept it or even even you know will it to be the case. And that's that's a moment where we should almost select these things. um Illness is a hard example, but you know if you think of something like reputation, don't go around insulting people. Don't go around getting a bad name for yourself. But if standing up for if if telling the truth or standing up to a bully is gonna get you a bad reputation Well, then yeah, you should do that and you should get the bad reputation You should give up that preferred indifferent. You should select the dispreferred indifferent of a bad reputation ah be Because that's what it takes to have good character and so that's that's that's the that's the idea I think of preferred and dispreferred Mm-hmm
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because I think on one hand, the Stoics have the a very clear rule set. they They give to practitioners about what to do. you know Always do what's virtuous, avoid what's vicious. Always be the virtuous person, of avoid being the vicious one. And that never changes. And that way, it's a very clear philosophy ah that provides a structure to life. But then once you introduce, ask that question, you know how does one be virtuous? This whole world opens up where the Stoics don't prescribe ah as you know a simple, hard, and fast rule. like Never do such and such. Always do such and such. At least not very many of those rules.
00:25:16
Speaker
for living well. Instead, there that's where they might turn more to rules of thumb or heuristics, like the thought that you know what many of these things are preferable in difference. That means you have some reason to pursue them in most circumstances, but you're always weighing between many different factors and in making a given decision. So there's not there aren't going to be, say, as many hard and fast rules or unbreakable rules in stoicism as there might be in other life philosophies.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah. I think you're the nail on the head. It's very clear where it's clear, and it's pretty ambiguous where it's ambiguous. I think the reason they don't... I mean, Epictetus talks about this. We talked about this a lot in our discussion on role ethics. I think the reason why they don't prescribe things is they're aware of things being culturally relative.
Stoic Ethics: Flexibility, Relativity, and Rational Living
00:26:14
Speaker
A lot of this stoic idea is this idea of being cosmopolitan, which is being, you know, your polis, your city is the is the universe. Your identity is as as a rational animal. And there are certain things that a rational animal is disposed towards. Health.
00:26:31
Speaker
ah good reputation, you know good social standing, strength. ah and but But the actual content of how those ah how those come to be are going to be culturally specific. And then on top of that, um so you can't yeah you can't say things like, you know exercise this many times a day, or you know when you go to dinner parties, wear this and say this. You can't say these things because reputation is going to be culturally specific. ah you know What it means to be strong is going to be culturally specific.
00:27:03
Speaker
um So you're almost left with these like general these general principles of what constitutes a good life. And then there's this overruling principle of like, oh, and by the way, if any of these come into conflict ah with good character, always pick good character. um if any of these if any of these you know if you if the If the way to be more virtuous is to actually choose to be weak and hated, well, then be weak and hated. so it's like this um So it leaves a lot of work for you in terms of interpreting in your particular situation.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that's just really realistic. I think something that a lot of people are looking for in a philosophy of life is that it ah provides guidance. And socialism does, it says, you know, be be virtuous, live according to nature. But um in a sense, it's sort of like ah a game or many competition where you know if you're playing a given game, you know what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to win. But most games are don't have a certain rule set that you can always follow to win. It's going to depend on who your opponents are, who you are, what ah the circumstances of the given game are going to be. And you often need to figure out what those are going to be, what your moves are going to be for yourself and philosophies or people trying to sell you on how to play a given game, promoting a so ah simple
00:28:29
Speaker
Uh, absolute rules are often also sort of missing the boat, even if they're providing that, that guidance, a lot of people are seeking. Yeah. I mean, well I think this, I don't want to get bogged down in the skill metaphor because I find it so interesting. I could spend time there, but I think that's a great example of like, I think good teaching. You know, when I teach it martial arts or I teach a skill, it's this idea of, it's these heuristics, right? It's like when in doubt, get back to good positioning. When in doubt, you know, keep your hands up and protect your head. And that's like kind of the way I feel like indifference are. It's like when in doubt, choose the preferred ones, but don't be afraid to break these rules if you have a good reason to. And you have to kind of develop the skill by practicing and being intentional with how you live to perceive when it's time to break those rules or not.
00:29:17
Speaker
Um, and this, I think brings us well to the next part. So I'm trying to make this contrast with, with good and bad, right? So good and bad. So, um, you know, if good and bad was necessarily beneficial or harmful in difference are typically. you know, worth selecting. Typically the kinds of things that, you know, are in accordance with nature unless you give a reason otherwise, so it's softer. The other idea is that if good and bad are necessarily motivating, indifference or not. So that means that they're not necessarily preferred or not necessarily desirable and dispreferred or not necessarily ah to be avoided. Sometimes you actively want these things, right? Like and if you end up in a weird situation where
00:30:04
Speaker
I like the reputation example, right? It's like you want to, if you're around a bunch of terrible people, you actively want to be disliked and you should start pursuing to be disliked because something's gone wrong if you're respected and well, sit and you know, treated well. So in some cases, you actually desire the dis-preferred and different, not just accept it. Like Epictetus was talking about, well, if I notice i I'm ill, I'll be okay with that. Like you might actually pursue it and be like, i want to be you know i I want to be the least popular person in this room because I disagree with the characters of the people in this room. So there's not this necessarily motivating aspect. Either of these, it depends on how you think about it.
00:30:44
Speaker
It depends on how you you you can decide to value a just preferred indifferent and you could decide to want to avoid a preferred indifferent. Can't do that with good and bad. you Your brain necessarily wants what's good and necessarily avoids what's bad. yeah The next connection, so if good and bad is very few in number, well then indifference are very high in number. um Diogenes provides a list, life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, noble birth, and then all of its opposites. So I would say that that most things, most external things people value would fall into this category. Caleb, you and I were we're debating a bit before we started the episode, which is like, well,
00:31:32
Speaker
you know Would something like a fancy car, would that count as an indifferent or does an indifferent have to connect? with our human nature in some way that a car doesn't. But I think a car is a tool. At the very least, it is it is a culturally connected, and we agreed on this, it's it's culturally connected to these ideas of reputation, wealth, beauty, and what comes with that is is a connection to something like a pleasure. ah so so Yeah, it might depend on the car. Some might be dis-preferred.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it right. That's a good point. um i'm I'm imagining a fancy one. But yeah, some of them would be connected the opposite, right? But i think I think there's a question there of, you know, do the Stoics literally just think of the indifference as things that would be preferred or dispreferred in a cultural vacuum, like health, wealth, strength, But I think functionally and practically almost everything connects so closely with these that I'm that i'm comfortable calling um almost everything an indifferent in terms of, you know, what you wear is indifferent in the sense that it's communicating something about, it's connecting to your reputation.
00:32:48
Speaker
You might get joy in it and in in ah you might get pleasure at how you look. It connects with this idea of beauty. so almost Almost everything in life is falling into this second category, I guess is the point I'm making. Even if they're kind of sub, theyre i guess know they're connected they're they're they're connecting up to these higher level categories if you if you abstract out. Yeah. Another point is that they're not all external in the sense that they're outside of, they're not all outside of the mind. Some things like pleasure or sensation, simple feelings, those sorts of things aren't different as well, even if they are mental.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great distinction. Yeah, I think pleasure and pain are really, really interesting things to think about here in terms of being the kind of things that are generally preferable, but not always, and internal, but not virtue, not character. Pleasure and pain, you'll tend to feel more pleasure doing good things as a good person, but pleasure and pain themselves are internal states that are indifferent.
00:33:58
Speaker
And then the the last difference between good and bad and indifference, I said that good and bad were the same in value. They didn't allow um any sort of gradiation. They're not on any sort of spectrum. um But indifference are not equal in value. So unlike things like good and bad, which are binary, there are different degrees of indifference. um Some are more neutral, I would say, and some are more like some are closer to being in the ah neither good nor bad. Some are almost always good. So that they they can differ in terms of how often they'll switch categories, I guess I would say.
00:34:40
Speaker
you know, you could say a dispreferred and different, they differ in intensity and that some of them like death, you're going to select in very few instances where some of them like maybe a bad reputation, you're going to select in many, you're going to select a bad reputation in many more instances than you're going to select death and illness, right? Um, you might select, uh, poverty and more instances in many more instances, again, than something like death and illness. So I think they, they, they differ in that.
00:35:10
Speaker
and And then, so so that I think is a different in and different in intensity. And then obviously in the particular instances, the particular and different you're acting upon can connect with that category more or less strongly, right? So you can have something that is a small insult to your reputation and then you can have in a moment that's a great insult to your reputation. You could lose a little bit of money or you could lose all your money. You gain a little bit of money, a little you could you could have a paper cut and you could have a terrible you know amputation level of pain. So they they allow for both. I think the categories
00:35:47
Speaker
vary in terms of how preferred or dispreferred they are and then I think the instances in which you encounter them have more or less intensity and I think those are the two ways in that in which they differ which again we were saying good and bad doesn't you know if you're doing a virtuous action it doesn't matter if you're literally let's folks we get made fun of for this it doesn't matter if you're literally walking across the street virtuously you know you're a sage just taking a step with the right amount of courage and temperance That is just as virtuous as the sage saving someone's life. They they the stoics they got made fun of, but they're really adamant about this this no ah degrees. That's not the case in indifference. There's a ton of different degrees and intensities here. Right. And that's what makes enables people to decide between them, is that they have different levels of degree and indifference themselves might be weighed in a different fashion. you know Just as you say, finances versus life.
00:36:43
Speaker
ah you know reputation versus pleasure and so on. yeah they have They often the love and bang up against each other. and and that and i often frame the i mean I was framing this conversation a lot about virtue. ah You raised a good point because it's framing a lot about virtue versus, well, sometimes you know you'll accept reputation if it means doing like doing the right thing, you'll accept a bad reputation. But sometimes you're just weighing different indifference against each other, as you said. right sometimes um you know it's going to be <unk>s you You might take a difficult manual job, and it's going to be bad for your health, but it's going to make you a lot of money. And there, you're making some sort of exchange. I don't think it really has anything to do about virtue at that point. You're making an exchange between indifference. And that's ah that's a kind of an interesting question, an interesting calculus about how about how to live.
Indifference, Ethical Decisions, and Personal Emotions
00:37:33
Speaker
The final category I think was worth raising, just just out of interest, because not everything the Stoics cared about. um there's There's what's good and bad, that's the first category. Second category was indifference. um And then the third category I would say, are are or what I called total indifference. And this is a third category that often gets neglected. um So not everything is an indifferent in the preferred or dispreferred in sense. Some things have no ethical value. um I call these total indifference. ah So here's an here's an example from Diogenes, the Ertius again, he says,
00:38:11
Speaker
Indifferent is used in two different senses, unconditionally of things which contribute neither to happiness or unhappiness, um though those are our disparate and preferred indifference we just talked about. In another sense, those things are called indifferent which active ah which activate neither impulse nor repulsion, as in the case of having an odd or even number of hairs on one's head or stretching or contracting a finger. Um, I don't know if that has much to do with how we live, but it's just that point of, you know, we don't call everything preferred or dispreferred. Uh, whether or not you sit where you're sitting or over a couple inches to the left, whether or not you curl your finger, whether there's an even or odd number of stars in the sky, some things just don't have ethical value. Some things you just shouldn't read into. They don't have anything to do with how you live or what a good life means. And I think that's, that's a nice, that's we can put some things aside. Yeah. Yeah. That's just not a reminder. Some things don't matter at all.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, which I guess is an idea of focusing our attention on the things that do. Yeah. um Cool. So that that's part number one. I wanted to talk about those categories of value. Now, the next thing I wanted to talk about is, you know, why do these matter for how we live? What do what do indifference have to do with a good life? Um, the first reason indifference matters because some are preferred and so and others are not full stop. Even as a stoic, it's okay to prefer pleasure and health and sickness and pain. We sometimes get, I think in the stoic mindset of all virtue and vice is the only good and bad. It doesn't matter what happens to me. It doesn't matter. Uh, you know, now nothing matters except those things. It's like, no, these things, some things are preferable and it's okay to prefer them. It's okay to want pleasure. You know, it's okay to want.
00:39:54
Speaker
Um, nice things. It's okay to want to look good, to have friends, to be well liked. Um. it's okay to It's okay to want to avoid the other things. And like it's just giving people permission, you're not not a stoic if you have preferences, right? You're totally allowed to have preferences and still be a stoic. um The stoic line here, the the idea is that they just don't affect your chance at happiness and a good life. You can still have a good life even if you're really unlucky with indifference. So yeah the stoics totally accept that there's luck in terms of indifference.
00:40:31
Speaker
There's totally, you know, some people get bad, a bad, indifferent experience when they don't deserve it. And some people get a good and different experience. They're born into a wealth and success or some, some people get a good experience and they don't deserve it. Um, that's fine that you would prefer one over the other, but it doesn't, it doesn't harm or impact your chances of good life. That's what it doesn't make a difference for. That's what it's indifferent towards, so but still totally fine to have preferences. Right. Yeah, absolutely. In Episode 78, I had a chat with Chris Gill, the philosopher and really academic ah legend who's responsible for bringing ah Stoicism, the study of Stoicism back into academic philosophy, ah he along with a few other central figures.
00:41:21
Speaker
um And he gives this example from, I believe it comes from Cicero, about a Roman statesman who's considering taking up an office and leaving his family behind. And there's that stoic view that leaving his his leaving his family behind would be a matter, a sense of indifference. yeah He can do that and still live a good life. But if that's the decision he decides to take, there's still a loss there. There's still something that it would still make sense to miss them ah and experience that as a kind of loss of value as something one cares about. So it's not called to be a statue. Make the virtuous choice and that then forget about
00:42:10
Speaker
ah you know everything that pulled them, all the indifference that pulled them against making that choice or whatever it was, whatever they left behind, whatever they forsake. it But i thought I thought that was a nice example. And so you know just that this reminder that yes you can still care about indifference even if ah they don't you know ultimately make the difference between whether you live a happy life or not, whether you live a good life or not.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the... I mean, I think that's an important story. Cause I mean, I know, I know I fall into this trap again. We just, we just don't give ourselves permission as stoic sometimes to feel that loss or so or, or, you know, when practicing stoicism to accept them, this, this is, uh, this is not, we get caught in the English language sometime. Literally this is not preferable, but like, yeah, this is unfortunate. This is not what I would have preferred to have happened. This is not what I would have wanted.
00:43:14
Speaker
It doesn't mean, as you said, my chance of a good life is gone, but but there is a loss there to acknowledge. And sometimes the reverse, right? There is an excitement, there is a happiness when things go well, or a kind of I don't know, kind of a joy ah when things go well, and that's okay too. um Just those aren't going to hit the highs or lows of virtue or vice, but there is that kind of middle area to play within that's totally reasonable. The second way that indifference matter is that they are the material ah by which we demonstrate our good character. So the first way they matter is they just they just do. They just have value and it matters whether or not we we get what we want in terms of pleasure, health, reputation, wealth.
00:43:55
Speaker
ah But that that that kind of how in terms of how much they matter there, it's always subservient to the good and the bad. Those are the big are the big boys, the big categories for stoic value, virtue and vice, good and bad. But even when it comes to virtue and vice, good and bad, we demonstrate those by how we navigate indifference. We show our virtue. We are virtuous by how well we make decisions involving indifference. We don't do that in a vacuum. So here's a quote from Sextus Empiricus and against the professors ah about this topic. And he says, the virtuous man's proper function is not to look after his parents and honor them in other respects, but to do this on the basis of prudence, prudence being the stoic virtue. For just as the care of health is common to the doctor and the layman, but caring for health in the medical way is peculiar to the expert,
00:44:52
Speaker
So too honoring of parents is common to the virtuous and not virtuous man, but to do this on the basis of prudence is peculiar to the wise man." So basically saying, you know, the goal the goal of a stoic life, the goal of a virtuous life is to do the things a non-virtuous person does, but to just do them excellently. Right? To do them properly. It's not to go and live in a cave and isolate yourself and ah remove yourself from the world. It is to take care of your parents with prudence. Right? It is to be a good friend. It is to work a job with courage. It is to do these do these things you're already doing in the in the perfect way, in the proper way.
00:45:36
Speaker
And I think that's a good reminder, not like you have, I have navigating difference than I have virtue. Virtue is just navigating those indifference perfectly for the right reasons in the right way at the right time. Right. Well, I just think this is a central point, a really fundamental point to bring up because sometimes people ask questions like, you know, should I, ah ah what a common a question I heard once answering a talk given by a ah modern stoic is, should I tell people around me to wear masks during COVID or not? Or should I let it go? And so and someone suggested, well, it's just external to you whether or not someone wears a mask. It's an indifference. So you can you can let it go, which in some sense is correct. Of course, it's external to you. But then the next question is, how how should you respond
00:46:27
Speaker
And merely just saying that it's an indifferent doesn't ah explain ah doesn't mean that one shouldn't do anything with it. Just as we mentioned, it doesn't mean that one shouldn't care about it. The main question is, okay, now how are you going to respond to it? What are you going to do? ah What choices are you going to make with respect to it? And purely pointing out that something's external doesn't answer that question.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, you don't want to let it go. You want to recognize, I mean, the stoic idea is that you would recognize that your happiness does not depend upon it, but your happiness depends on responding to it correctly. It doesn't depend on the behavior of the other person, but it depends on responding to it with virtue, right? It's the, I mean, just as you said. So I think that idea of like, yeah, I see that sometimes on on message boards, too, stoic message boards. It's like, the you know hey, this person did this thing to me. And somebody's like, well, why do you care? It's external to you. And it's like, well, that's not really that's not really the point, is it? You're not really you don' really giving stoicism a fair shake by just telling them to forget about it. Or someone will post. And then somebody will respond something mean. And then someone will say, well, don't say that mean thing to me. And they go, well, why do you care about their comment? Their comment was external to you. This is this just seems like nihilism or something, which is not what the Stoics are after, right? It's not, well, what do you care if your parents do you care if your parents aren't taking care of? That's external to you. It's like, no, you take care of your parents well. That's what virtue is about, right?
00:48:06
Speaker
Um, or maybe, and but again, it's not about these necessarily rules. Maybe you don't because of a specific circumstance where, you know, they don't deserve it or it's not the right thing, but it's, it's, it's, how do I do this? How do I do this? Well, is always the question, right?
Demonstrating Virtue Through Everyday Actions
00:48:19
Speaker
How do I do it with virtues? And so you know the metaphor I think of here is the skilled athlete or the artist and their tool. you know So ah ah ah a painter is ah is ah is an amazing painter, I suppose, even if you don't give them a brush, it's something you could say of them. But they they really show off their skill when they have material. They really... they they're really in the they
00:48:44
Speaker
blossom when you give them a brush and you give them paint. Same thing with a soccer player. You give them a soccer ball. You give them a field. They can really show off what they're made of. um Indifference are those materials. Indifference are those tools. theyre They're what you work from um to show off your virtue. not i i was I'm not saying that in kind of like a reputation way, like look how great I am kind of way, but just in terms of um There's something excellent about virtue and action, and and you do that by by using indifference well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and in a way, they're they're unavoidable, right? Just what it is to be human is to make decisions about your impressions of indifference.
00:49:29
Speaker
It's to you know make make those choices between pleasure, or pain, relationships, reputation. And for the Stoics, you know developing courage, justice, discipline, and wisdom through everyday decisions um and circumstances. I do, I do like the line that the, you know, the stoic is just an ordinary person who does the ordinary and and extraordinary fashion. Yeah. Where did you, where did you get that from? I got it from Leonidas Constanticos, who I don't always cite because I feel like I'm going to mispronounce his name every time, butcher his name every time I do it. But I got that from my conversation with him and that was from episode 64. Uh, I had a discussion with him.
Summary and Closing Remarks
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, great. And I think that that's, sometimes sometimes that quote resonates with me, sometimes it doesn't. But I think in this moment, it really resonates with just this idea of when you become a When you become virtuous, when you pursue good and bad, it's not rising above, it's not transcending, it's not lifting into a different plane. It is you know doing the things you do now, maybe a bit differently, maybe with a bit different people or a bit different reason for them, but living a normal human life really, really well, really, really well.
00:50:57
Speaker
and And showing off your character as you do it. And I think that's really, uh, yeah, it's a beautiful idea and it really shows why indifference matter. And they're not like, they're not second fiddle to character. They're, um, I mean, they're there as I, I try to make the metaphor of their, you know, the, the, the tool, they're the thing that allows you to pursue, develop, and then show showcase your character that you're working on. So taking that all together. That's just just in a quick summary to to to pull it all together. You've got good and bad and then you've got indifference. Good and bad, very few of them, virtual advice, maybe a couple other examples. They're always good or always bad. They're always motivating.
00:51:41
Speaker
there' There's never a context in which you wouldn't choose them or prefer something else because they don't have any degrees. If it's good, it's good. And and another part of that is I guess they can't really conflict, right? There would never be a ah need to choose between different goods because there's never a conflict between them. Indifference are the things, pretty much everything else that has value, right? Besides the things that are perfectly indifferent, indifference is everything else that has value. Of those, some are preferred, which just means we're kind of naturally disposed towards selecting them, natural, literally in the in the literal sense of natural, right? Like we're animals, ah we need we need to eat. um We're social animals, so we we want company, we want a good reputation, um we want a nice place to sleep, things like this.
00:52:29
Speaker
And they're they they have this kind of disposition, but it's not necessary. So you always need to pick in the circumstance, you know, well, I know this this is preferred, but is it the right thing for me to go for? um You're also able to, they're ah they ah can also compete against each other. Sometimes you choose between health and money. Sometimes you choose between reputation and, you know, I don't know, reputation in your life, if you run away and you do something cowardly, right? Like you you make these kinds of trade-offs between these all the time. and
00:53:00
Speaker
i would say the But that the and the important thing to take away, though, is that that idea of indifferent doesn't mean you should be indifferent towards them. It just means that it doesn't matter the combination of indifference you end up finding. If you have good character, you'll be happy. And if you have bad character, you'll be unhappy, even if you're the richest, most popular person in the world. And you'll be happy ah even if you're the poorest, most unpopular person in the world. They don't make a difference to that final calculation of happiness in a good life. but
00:53:31
Speaker
But it's okay to have preferences as a stoic. It's okay to want things to go a certain way and to be disappointed when they don't, as long as it's within reason and as long as it's as you it's appropriate to the amount of value these things actually have. You don't start thinking they're good or bad or necessary to be happy. and Being good having good character doesn't come from doing something different or special it just comes from selecting and interacting with indifference in ah The right way for the right reason showing off your character as you do it as that quote from sexist empiricus went you know
00:54:09
Speaker
virtuous man's proper function is to look after his parents on the basis of prudence, to do it for the right reason and show off the right virtue. So doing the same thing as everybody else, just doing it in the right way for the right reason. And so in that way indifference are a really, really important part of how you live. and And hopefully this was helpful for kind of clearing up some of the confusion around them too because we talked about it a bit, but there's some pitfalls of being like, well, why do you even care? You know, why does it matter? You shouldn't care. It's not up to you. And I think people doing that are missing a point about why indifference do matter. Right, right. Absolutely. I think that's well put. Thanks, Michael. Yeah, thanks, Kyle. That was fun.
00:54:49
Speaker
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