Reference
Glossary
Short, plain-English definitions of the Stoic terms you'll run into most often. As individual concept pages are published, these terms will link out to the fuller explanation.
A
- Apatheia
- Freedom from destructive passions, meaning irrational and excessive emotional reactions driven by faulty judgments, not an absence of all feeling. Often confused with the modern English word "apathy."
- Assent
- The mind's act of accepting an impression as true or endorsing a judgment about it, rather than merely receiving the impression itself. The Stoics held that assent, not the impression, is what's genuinely up to us.
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D
- Dichotomy of Control
- The foundational distinction, most associated with Epictetus, between what is "up to us" (our own judgments, intentions, and actions) and what is not (external events, other people, and outcomes).
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E
- Eudaimonia
- Often translated "happiness," but closer to "flourishing." For the Stoics, eudaimonia is a state of living in agreement with reason and virtue, not a feeling of pleasure or contentment.
F
- Fate
- The Stoic view that the universe unfolds according to a rational, causal order, held alongside the view that human judgment and choice remain genuinely up to the individual within that order.
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I
- Impressions
- The initial, involuntary mental representations of an event or thing, formed before any judgment is made about it. What you do with an impression (see Assent) is what's within your control; the impression's arrival is not.
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L
- Logos
- Reason, or the rational structure the Stoics believed runs through the entire universe. To "live according to nature" is to live in agreement with the Logos.
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N
- Nature
- "Living according to nature," a central Stoic ethical formula, refers both to the physical universe and to its underlying rational order, not to nature in the sense of wilderness or the outdoors.
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O
- Oikeiosis
- The process by which a person's sense of what is genuinely their own concern naturally widens: from self-preservation as an infant, to family and community, and eventually, in the Stoic ideal, to all of humanity.
P
- Preferred Indifferents
- Things such as health, wealth, and reputation, which the Stoics considered neither good nor bad in themselves, but naturally worth a mild preference over their opposites when a choice is otherwise open.
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- Prohairesis
- A term especially associated with Epictetus, roughly "moral character" or "the faculty of choice": the part of a person that judges, chooses, and acts, and the one thing genuinely within their own power.
V
- Virtue
- For the Stoics, the only true good, and identical with a well-reasoned, excellent character. Conventionally divided into four cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.
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