Concept
Apatheia
Overview
In Stoic philosophy, apatheia (Ancient Greek: ἀπάθεια; from a- 'without' and pathos 'suffering, passion') refers to a state of mind in which one is not disturbed by the passions. It might better be translated by the word equanimity than the word indifference. The meaning of the word apatheia is quite different from that of the modern English apathy, which has a distinctly negative connotation that includes feelings of inertness, indifference, and impassiveness. According to the Stoics, apatheia was the quality that characterized the sage.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Indeed, as the ancient oracle declares, temperance and fortitude, prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that the soul not purified lies in Tartarus, immersed in filth. Since the impure is, from his depravity, the friend of filth, as swine, from their sordid body, delight in mire alone. For what else is true temperance than…
Plotinus, An Essay on the Beautiful, from the Greek of Plotinus
States what Apatheia is; the author is tied to Apatheia in the knowledge graph.
Cruelty of disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment disproportioned to the provocation; the love of domineering over others; the desire to engross more than one's share of advantages (the [Greek: pleonexia] of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of…
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
States what Apatheia is.
Well then, since of desires and pleasures there are some which are in kind honourable and good (because things pleasant are divisible, as we said before, into such as are naturally objects of choice, such as are naturally objects of avoidance, and such as are in themselves indifferent, money, gain, honour, victory, for instance); in respect of all such and those that are indifferent, men are blamed not merely[11]…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
The author is tied to Apatheia in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Apatheia
Related ideas
- Epicurus
- Agape
- Eudaimonia
- Stoicism
- Passions (philosophy)
- Mental state
- Neoplatonism
- Ataraxia
- Early Christianity
- Golden mean (philosophy)
- Aristotle
- Plotinus
- Epicureanism
- Virtue
- Eastern Orthodox theology
- Seneca the Younger
- Asceticism
- Equanimity
Place in the tradition
Part of Ancient Greek philosophy.