Abstract

The foundational principle of stoic counsel is the claim that one’s psychological and emotional health need not depend upon anything that does not directly answer to the exertion of one’s will. Whatever the difficulty, whatever the circumstance, the ideally rational agent will concern himself only with that which is entirely a matter of his own choosing, and will remain imperturbable by anything that he cannot directly control through the force of his will alone. The ideally rational agent will, thereby, rid himself of psychological and emotional distress. In this paper, I attempt to elucidate and defend this element of stoic counsel.