What Is Apatheia in Stoicism?

Question

What is apatheia, and why has the word — often mistranslated as "apathy" — become the most misunderstood concept in Stoicism? The answer is that apatheia names the goal of the Stoic therapy of the emotions: not the absence of feeling, but the freedom from the destructive passions that arise from false judgments.

Quick Answer

Apatheia is the Stoic state of being without the passions (a-pathos, without passion). The Stoics defined the passions as excessive impulses — emotions like distress, fear, desire, and pleasure — that arise when we judge that something good or evil is present or impending. Since only virtue is good and only vice is evil, these judgments are always mistaken: the things we fear and desire are indifferents, not goods and evils. The wise person, who has corrected these judgments, no longer experiences the passions: they are in a state of apatheia. This is not the absence of emotion: the Stoics held that the sage experiences the "good passions" (eupatheiai) — joy (chara), wish (boulēsis), and caution (eulabeia) — which are the rational emotions appropriate to a correct understanding of what is good.

Historical Wisdom

The theory of the passions was one of the most developed parts of the Stoic system. Chrysippus, the systematizer of the school, wrote a treatise On the Passions in which he analyzed the four passions and their species with extraordinary precision — the treatise is preserved in long extracts by Galen, who quotes it in order to refute it. The Roman Stoics made the therapy of the passions the center of their practical philosophy: Cicero's Tusculan Disputations presents the Stoic account of the emotions as the medicine of the soul; Seneca wrote a whole treatise On Anger as a case study in the therapy; and Epictetus organized his teaching around the discipline of desire and aversion, which is the practice of apatheia.

Philosophical Perspectives

The Stoic theory of the passions rests on the doctrine that emotions are judgments. The passions are not irrational forces that invade the soul from outside; they are the soul's own acts of judgment, in which it assents to an impression that something is good or evil. Distress is the judgment that something evil is present; fear is the judgment that something evil is imminent; desire is the judgment that something good is absent; pleasure is the judgment that something good is present. Because these judgments are about indifferents — things that are neither good nor evil — they are always mistaken, and they are "excessive" impulses: they go beyond what reason would sanction, because they treat indifferents as if they were goods.

Apatheia is the state of the person who has corrected these judgments. The wise person still has impressions — they still feel the cold, see the danger, notice the pleasure — but they do not assent to the impressions as if they revealed goods and evils. The discipline of assent is the training of this capacity: to withhold assent from the impression that "this is terrible" or "I must have this," and to see things as they are: as indifferents, materials for the exercise of virtue.

The famous distinction is between apatheia and indifference. Apathy in the modern sense — the absence of all feeling, the coldness of the person who does not care — is not the Stoic ideal. The Stoic sage cares deeply: they love their family, serve their community, and feel joy in what is good. What they have given up is not feeling but the passions — the feelings that arise from false judgments. This is why the Stoics posited the eupatheiai, the good passions: joy at the good, wish for the good, caution toward the evil. The wise person is not emotionless; they are free from the emotions that enslave.

Lessons From Thinkers

From Chrysippus: the passions are judgments, and therefore they can be corrected — the therapy of the emotions is the correction of belief. From Seneca: the passions are best treated early — "the first impulse is not the passion; the passion is the assent" — and the practice is to interrupt the assent. From Epictetus: the discipline of desire and aversion is the daily practice of apatheia — "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will be serene." From Marcus Aurelius: the goal is not the absence of feeling but the absence of disturbance — "Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside."

Practical Application

The doctrine of apatheia has direct practical application. In the face of fear, it reminds us that fear is a judgment — the judgment that something evil is imminent — and that the judgment can be examined and withdrawn. In the face of anger, it reminds us that the passion is our own act, and that the gap between impression and assent is where freedom lives. In the face of grief, it distinguishes between the pain of loss (which is natural and human) and the judgment that the loss is an evil that destroys us (which is the passion). The Stoic practice is the daily training of the disciplines: to see impressions for what they are, to withhold assent from the false judgments of the passions, and to cultivate the good passions — joy, wish, and caution — that belong to the rational life.

Quotes

The Stoic definition of the passions is transmitted by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations: "The passions are disturbances of the soul arising from a false opinion about what is good and evil." Epictetus states the practice in the Enchiridion: "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but want them to happen as they do happen." And Marcus Aurelius states the goal in the Meditations: "You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

Related Questions

• What Is Stoicism? — the system in which apatheia is the goal.
• What Are Stoic Indifferents? — the doctrine that grounds the correction of the passions.
• What Is the Stoic Dichotomy of Control? — the discipline that produces apatheia.
• How to Practice Stoicism — the practices that train the disciplines.