Terms
Prohairesis: the Faculty of Choice
The governing faculty by which a person judges, assents, refuses, and chooses.
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Stoic Terms
Plain-language explanations of recurring Stoic terms and distinctions.
Built from public-domain primary texts. No modern author or book is used as an authority.
Terms
Impression
The first appearance presented to the mind before a person adds assent and judgment.
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Assent
The act of accepting an impression as true, urgent, or commanding.
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Virtue
Excellence of character expressed through wise, just, courageous, and measured action.
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Indifferents
Things that may be preferred or dispreferred without becoming the measure of a good character.
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The Reserve Clause
An intention held firmly while acknowledging that completion depends on more than choice alone.
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Premeditation of Difficulties
A sober rehearsal of likely friction used to prepare character, not to predict disaster.
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Memento Mori
The remembrance of mortality used to restore urgency and proportion to the present.
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Oikeiosis and Human Concern
The widening recognition of what belongs to our care, from self-preservation toward fellowship.
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Logos, Reason, and Nature
Reason as the ordering capacity through which conduct can accord with the whole.
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Apatheia
Freedom from being ruled by destructive passion, not the absence of ordinary feeling.
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Eudaimonia and Living Well
A flourishing life measured by the use of character rather than by an uninterrupted pleasant state.
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