Good and Bad
For in every area of study, we’re seeking to learn how a good and virtuous person may discover the path that he should follow in life and the way in which he should conduct himself.
— Epictetus, Discourses 1.7.2
People today use the word good in several different ways. For example, we could have a “good” day, meaning a pleasurable one, or, alternatively, we could tell someone we feel “good” when what we mean is we feel okay. A car can be “good,” and we can tell our dog that he is a “good boy,” but do we mean the same thing in all these cases? Clearly, we do not. We might consider a car to be “good” because it successfully gets us from point A to point B without any issues, while we may refer to our dog as “good” because our pet cheers us up when we’re feeling low or helps us feel needed and loved.
Words can, and often do, change in meaning over time. In the nineteenth century, for example, the word cool nearly always meant “cold.” In the twenty-first century, however, cool almost always means something like “all right,” “great,” or “interesting.” Likewise, the word good, when used in a purely Stoic context, means something different than when it is used in a non-Stoic context.
In Stoicism, the word good refers to only one thing: Virtue. For the Stoics, Virtue is the only good. To be virtuous — to possess Virtue — is to have cultivated a perfect moral character, one that is just, temperate, wise, and courageous (more on this in chapter 7).
To be clear, in Stoicism, Virtue isn’t a good; it isn’t the greatest good; it is the only good. This means that even something as seemingly positive as world peace isn’t “good” in the Stoic sense of the word.
In Stoicism, there is also only one bad: Vice. To be vicious is to have an immoral character, one that is unjust, cowardly, ignorant, and lacking in self-control (e.g., greedy or prone to rage).
Again, to be clear, in Stoicism, Vice isn’t a sort of bad; it isn’t the worst kind of bad; it is the only bad. This means that even something like slavery isn’t “bad” in the Stoic sense of the word.
Now, having just read the previous sentence, you may be tempted to abandon all interest in Stoicism entirely — but hold on a moment! We promise your aversion is misplaced.
Remember, the Stoic understanding of good and bad is not the same as our contemporary understanding of these words. When the Stoics say, “Virtue is the only good,” they aren’t saying that world peace doesn’t matter or that it is unworthy of pursuing. Instead, they are highlighting that world peace, in and of itself, isn’t always something positive.
Imagine, for example, if we defined world peace as “the absence of war.” The absence of war could, arguably, be achieved by installing a global dictator who, through coercion and fear, created a world that didn’t know war. In this case, the Stoics would argue that it could well be within our responsibility to bring war against that dictator — thus destroying “world peace” — as this is what the virtuous person would, and therefore must, do in such a situation.
Likewise, when the Stoics say, “Vice is the only bad,” they aren’t saying, for example, that slavery doesn’t matter or that we shouldn’t work toward abolishing it. However, it may well be that acquiring slaves is the right thing to do under certain circumstances (albeit very few). One such example would be the choice to participate in the legal process of manumission. Manumission is the acquiring of slaves for the express purpose of freeing them. Manumission was practiced in ancient Greece and Rome and is still practiced today. Surely no good person would refuse to purchase a slave in order to free that slave from bondage simply because they felt uncomfortable about being a so-called slave master during the time it takes them to sign the release papers to free said slave.
This sort of reasoning is why Stoics do not declare moral absolutes. Context matters, and no one rule (or set of rules) can ensure that the right thing is done in every circumstance. That said, turning a blind eye to slavery, or working against world peace, would very likely, at least in most contexts, say something terrible about our character. And if the Stoics are adamant about anything, they are adamant that possessing a terrible (vicious) character is bad.
Stoicism is a virtue-centric philosophy, and Stoics believe that the purpose of a human’s life is to achieve a state of eudaimonia (a life worthy of being lived). The only way a person can do this is by developing a good (virtuous) character. The person who possesses such a character never acts badly (immorally). In fact, they are said to be incapable of doing so. If everyone were to achieve a virtuous character, there would be world peace. There would be no slavery.
To the Stoics, there is nothing better, nor more important, than Virtue and the development of a virtuous character (and nothing more terrible than Vice, that is, the possession of a vicious character).
In Stoicism, everything that isn’t either Virtue (good) or Vice (bad/evil) is an “indifferent” (this includes world peace, slavery, and everything in between these two extreme examples).
The Stoic understanding of the word indifferent is what we explore next, because it also does not mean what you may think it does. As we navigate the forthcoming chapter, it is important to keep the following in your mind: while Stoics identify Virtue as the only good, and Vice as the only bad, this does not mean that they think these two things are the only things that matter.
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
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