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Single Idea 22238

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / d. Health ]

Full Idea

For the Stoics bodily health belongs in the 'indifferent [adiaphoron]' category: it does not matter if one is healthy. And yet, they created a subcategory of the 'preferable indifferent [adiaphoron proegmenon]', under which health falls.

Gist of Idea

Stoics said health is an 'indifferent', but they still considered it preferable

Source

report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Peter E. Pormann - Medical Conceptions of Health pre-Renaissance p.45

Book Ref

Adamson,Peter: 'Health: a history', ed/tr. Adamson,Peter [OUP 2019], p.45


A Reaction

You have to be pretty tough to consider ill-health as an indifferent. The only good may be virtue, but the platonic tradition says virtue is a sort of mental health.


The 11 ideas with the same theme [successful functioning of an organ or creature]:

Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius]
Wisdom creates a healthy passion-free soul [Democritus]
Goodness is mental health, badness is mental sickness [Plato]
Excess and deficiency are bad for virtue, just as they are for bodily health [Aristotle]
Disreputable pleasures are only pleasant to persons with diseased perception [Aristotle]
Everything seeks, not a single good, but its own separate good [Aristotle]
Good breeding in men means having a good character [Democritus (attr)]
Stoics said health is an 'indifferent', but they still considered it preferable [Stoic school, by Pormann]
The health of the soul is a good blend of beliefs [Stoic school, by Stobaeus]
Humans acquired the concept of virtue from an analogy with bodily health and strength [Seneca, by Allen]
The Greeks had a single word meaning both 'beautiful' and 'good' [Pormann]