Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

170 JOSEPH TORCHIA
When circumstances permit, we choose these particular
things instead of those, for instance health instead of disease, life
instead of death, wealth instead of poverty. 9
But the very fact that value is always contingent upon shifting
circumstances is demonstrative of its relativity. For this reason,
human happiness can never be based exclusively upon such
adiaphora, regardless of their preferability. Rather, the rational
being must cultivate a broader vision of the concrete situation in
which the moral judgment is made. In the final analysis, longrange
happiness might well demand a willingness to forfeit such
“preferables” as wealth, bodily comfort, or even health.
It must be remembered that what the Stoics designated as
“indifferent” were those things outside the control of reason and
its capacity to move the will. 10 Because the proverbial sage can
reject what most people would consider preferable (if not genuine
goods) in everyday life, he is able to ground his happiness
exclusively upon what is virtuous (and by implication, wholly
consistent with the dictates of reason). Such equanimity reveals
that condition of apatheia whereby reason remains constantly
removed from the passions, from evil things, from the adiaphora,
and indeed, from anything which detracts from our nature as
rational moral agents. 11
For the Stoics, apatheia provides nothing less than the sine
qua non of the virtuous life. In this respect, however, the crucial
consideration is not necessarily the forfeiture of such externals
for its own sake, but rather, the ability to relinquish our dependence
upon them for our happiness. From a practical moral
standpoint, only those who are able to detach themselves in this
manner are capable of making rationally sound judgments
regarding what is right or wrong. But an important corollary
attaches to the Stoic understanding of virtue as a harmony of
reason with nature: if reason is in accordance with nature, then
9 STOBAEUS 2,83,10-84,2.
10 EPICTETUS, Discourses I,30; Manual 50.
11 MARCIA L. COLISH, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early
Middle Ages, Volume I (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 44.