Yes, for being virtuous someone needs a body and a good part of health at least mental health. Maybe the Stoics do‘t like to recognize this 🙃 Like the Epicureans say: …. and it is not possible to lead a prudent, honorable, just life without living a pleasant life…. ( Letter Menoceus) which includes necessary natural desires for Life/ Body
As I think you referenced, the Stoics did have the concept of preferred indifferents, so health would be preferred for them. I think the more radical Cynics are the ones that didn’t believe in the Stoic concept of preferred indifferents.
I do think there can be some reasonable questions about how coherent this is, but I think it can be defensible to an extent. It the only truly important goal in life is virtue, then whether you have health issues or not is irrelevant to that.
I mean even death, the ultimate anti-health, can be what is best for you if you are dying for a good cause, at least on the Stoic view! I get that that’s not the same as pointless suffering (as in illness or chronic health conditions), but I do think it lends some credence to the idea that health issues are not somehow “evil”. (Or another example would be a doctor exposing themselves to sick people in order to save as many as they can - illness is dis-preferred, but not to be avoided at all costs as evil is.)
But as someone relatively young with some chronic health issues that will likely only get worse as I age…it is rough!
(I think some of the tension with Stoicism is that Virtue tends to mean doing good for other people but often that does involve giving them material goods and such which seems to imply that those material goods have inherent value. I mean would a society where everyone was much worse off materially but everyone was kinder and more courageous really be better? I tend to think not.)
This is a important insight. I think one problem, of the modern world, is that we seem to have been largely overtaken by 'positive thinking' and 'prozac leadership'. The main idea being the dogma that thought is the only important thing, and that nothing else exists. Thus if you are suffering it is just your thought - positive thinking becomes a defense mechanism which tends to assert that if people are suffering, then it is their fault and they are clearly not virtuous or strong. They are trash.
If you prepare for a danger like a pandemic or climate change, then you are just making the situation worse, and if you ignore the problem it will go away.
Not realistic perhaps :)
A friend of mine who has just had a week in which they could not move without agony post surgery, had the insight that they had never understood the effects of chronic pain which worsens with movement, on a person's life.
The experience had increased their capacity for compassion. Compassion also means that you may come to recognize others exist, that they are not the same as you, and that we have some kind of responsibility towards others. Selfishness, does not appear to be all there is, which again challenges what appears to be central to a certain type of modern thought.
I think the problem with indifferents vs. virtues/vices may lie in a confusion between "good/bad" and "right/wrong". "Good" can be instrumental (e.g. "This is a good knife") and in this sense the preferred indifferents are undeniably bad, and the dispreferred, bad. It is bad that you get sick. However, it is not _wrong_ that you get sick, as sickness is a necessary part of biological existence. With their usual preference for radical dichotomies, the Stoics then go on to claim that only what is right or wrong (or inherently good or bad, in their terms) is important, and that is where, IMHO, they go wrong.
Holding virtue as the highest good leads to all kinds of absurdities. Yes, virtue is important. But making it the one criterion by which to judge things is just misguided. Feel better, Doug!
I might be wrong, but the Buddhist Metta Bhavana says: May you be well, May you be happy, May you be free from suffering.
No health involved. But I guess to "be well" includes to "be healthy."
Yes, for being virtuous someone needs a body and a good part of health at least mental health. Maybe the Stoics do‘t like to recognize this 🙃 Like the Epicureans say: …. and it is not possible to lead a prudent, honorable, just life without living a pleasant life…. ( Letter Menoceus) which includes necessary natural desires for Life/ Body
As I think you referenced, the Stoics did have the concept of preferred indifferents, so health would be preferred for them. I think the more radical Cynics are the ones that didn’t believe in the Stoic concept of preferred indifferents.
I do think there can be some reasonable questions about how coherent this is, but I think it can be defensible to an extent. It the only truly important goal in life is virtue, then whether you have health issues or not is irrelevant to that.
I mean even death, the ultimate anti-health, can be what is best for you if you are dying for a good cause, at least on the Stoic view! I get that that’s not the same as pointless suffering (as in illness or chronic health conditions), but I do think it lends some credence to the idea that health issues are not somehow “evil”. (Or another example would be a doctor exposing themselves to sick people in order to save as many as they can - illness is dis-preferred, but not to be avoided at all costs as evil is.)
But as someone relatively young with some chronic health issues that will likely only get worse as I age…it is rough!
(I think some of the tension with Stoicism is that Virtue tends to mean doing good for other people but often that does involve giving them material goods and such which seems to imply that those material goods have inherent value. I mean would a society where everyone was much worse off materially but everyone was kinder and more courageous really be better? I tend to think not.)
This is a important insight. I think one problem, of the modern world, is that we seem to have been largely overtaken by 'positive thinking' and 'prozac leadership'. The main idea being the dogma that thought is the only important thing, and that nothing else exists. Thus if you are suffering it is just your thought - positive thinking becomes a defense mechanism which tends to assert that if people are suffering, then it is their fault and they are clearly not virtuous or strong. They are trash.
If you prepare for a danger like a pandemic or climate change, then you are just making the situation worse, and if you ignore the problem it will go away.
Not realistic perhaps :)
A friend of mine who has just had a week in which they could not move without agony post surgery, had the insight that they had never understood the effects of chronic pain which worsens with movement, on a person's life.
The experience had increased their capacity for compassion. Compassion also means that you may come to recognize others exist, that they are not the same as you, and that we have some kind of responsibility towards others. Selfishness, does not appear to be all there is, which again challenges what appears to be central to a certain type of modern thought.
I think the problem with indifferents vs. virtues/vices may lie in a confusion between "good/bad" and "right/wrong". "Good" can be instrumental (e.g. "This is a good knife") and in this sense the preferred indifferents are undeniably bad, and the dispreferred, bad. It is bad that you get sick. However, it is not _wrong_ that you get sick, as sickness is a necessary part of biological existence. With their usual preference for radical dichotomies, the Stoics then go on to claim that only what is right or wrong (or inherently good or bad, in their terms) is important, and that is where, IMHO, they go wrong.
Holding virtue as the highest good leads to all kinds of absurdities. Yes, virtue is important. But making it the one criterion by which to judge things is just misguided. Feel better, Doug!