Skip to content

Question

Should a Stoic care about outcomes they cannot control?

Epictetus's answer: care about how you act, not about whether you succeed, and see why that is not the same as indifference.

Updated

The short answer

Yes, but only in a specific sense: a Stoic gives full skill and effort to outcomes while refusing to call the outcome itself good or bad. Epictetus compares this to playing catch well: you care intensely about the throw and the catch, but you do not treat the ball as good or bad in itself. Effort belongs to you and should be careful. The result belongs to fortune and should not be the seat of your good.

Key points

  • Epictetus distinguishes the material of an action, which is indifferent, from the use of it, which is not indifferent.
  • Care and effort go into what is up to you, your judgment and choice, not into securing a particular external result.
  • Carelessness is not Stoic wisdom, Epictetus calls it a failure of the will and against nature.
  • The ball game image shows skill applied fully to throwing and catching while the ball itself is never judged good or bad.
  • Handbook 8 extends the same point to acceptance after the fact: wish things to happen as they do, rather than demanding your preferred result.

The longer answer

Epictetus does not tell you to stop caring how things turn out. He tells you to care in a specific way: skillfully, without staking your good on the result. The image he uses is a game of catch. A skilled ball player gives real attention and effort to throwing and catching well, but does not treat the ball itself as good or bad (Discourses II 5). The ball is the outcome. The skill is yours.

This matters because the popular version of Stoicism people reject, and rightly reject, is a kind of shrug: nothing external matters, so why bother trying. That is not what Epictetus says. He is explicit that materials, the things you work with in life, are indifferent, but the use of them is not indifferent (Discourses II 5). Sloppy effort is itself a failure of the will, and the will is the one thing that is fully yours. So carelessness is not Stoic detachment. It is a vice.

The dichotomy of control, what is up to us and what is not, is often read as a formula for staying calm no matter what happens. That reading is not wrong, but it skips the deeper claim. Epictetus is making a claim about where value lives. Externals are not in my power: will is in my power, he says, and then adds the instruction that follows from it: seek the good and the bad only within, in the things which are my own (Discourses II 5). An outcome, a job offer, a diagnosis, another person's opinion of you, is not where good or bad lives. Your judgment, effort and choice are.

This is why Epictetus can say in the same breath that you should act with firmness and freedom from disturbance because the material is indifferent, and also act carefully because the use of it is not indifferent (Discourses II 5). Both halves are required. Drop the first half and you get an anxious person who ties their peace of mind to things they cannot secure. Drop the second half and you get a person who no longer really tries, mistaking passivity for wisdom. Epictetus rejects both. When someone points out that certain things are indifferent, he warns, do not become negligent, and when someone urges care about such things, do not become awestruck by mere externals (Discourses II 6). The line to walk is narrow: full effort, no attachment to the result.

Handbook 8 gives the same idea from the other direction: don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well (Handbook 8). That is not resignation before you have acted. It comes after. You still choose your throw. You do not get to choose whether it is caught.

What changes if you take this seriously is where you locate your effort and your self-assessment. You stop grading your day by whether the presentation was approved, whether the friend responded well, whether the surgery worked, and start grading it by whether you prepared well, spoke honestly, and did what your role called for. The outcome still gets your full attention and skill while it is in front of you. It stops being where you look for your worth once it has left your hands.

A concrete way to apply this: before an outcome-dependent moment, name in advance what is actually up to you in it, the preparation, the honesty, the effort, and hold yourself to that measure afterward regardless of how things land. Then ask, not whether it worked, but whether you played the ball well.

Primary passages

distinguish and separate things, and say, Externals are not in my power: will is in my power. Where shall I seek the good and the bad? Within, in the things which are my own. But in what does not belong to you call nothing either good or bad, or profit or damage or any thing of the kind.

Epictetus, Discourses II 5 Read in context

The core division: outcomes are not where good or bad live, your own judgment and choice are.

we should act carefully because the use is not indifferent, and we should also act with firmness and freedom from perturbations because the material is indifferent.

Epictetus, Discourses II 5 Read in context

Epictetus refuses both carelessness and anxious attachment. Effort and calm are meant to coexist.

This is just what you will see those doing who play at ball skilfully. No one cares about the ball as being good or bad, but about throwing and catching it. In this therefore is the skill, in this the art, the quickness, the judgment

Epictetus, Discourses II 5 Read in context

The ball game image: full skill in the throw, no verdict of good or bad placed on the catch.

Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

Epictetus, Handbook 8 Read in context

The Handbook's compact version of the same instruction, aimed at what comes after you have acted.

When any man then tells you that these things also are indifferent, do not become negligent; and when a man invites you to be careful (about such things), do not become abject and struck with admiration of material things.

Epictetus, Discourses II 6 Read in context

Epictetus explicitly guards against the misreading that indifference licenses carelessness.

Important distinctions

Caring about outcomes versus judging outcomes

Epictetus does not ask you to stop caring how a throw lands in the sense of paying attention and trying to succeed. He asks you to stop judging the landing itself as good or bad. Attention and skill go toward the outcome. The verdict of good or bad stays fixed on your own use of judgment and will.

Indifferent versus worthless

Calling externals indifferent does not mean they do not matter at all. Epictetus treats materials as indifferent to your good, not as unworthy of careful handling. A skilled ball player still tries to catch the ball well, even though the ball is not where goodness lives.

Objections and replies

This looks like it lets people stop trying

If the outcome is not good or bad, why bother trying hard to achieve it. Someone could use the dichotomy of control as an excuse for half effort, since the result does not count toward their good anyway.

Reply

Epictetus rules this out directly. He warns against becoming negligent once you learn that outcomes are indifferent, and he treats careless use of things as a failure of the will itself, which is against nature (Discourses II 5, II 6). The doctrine demands more skill and attention to outcomes, not less, precisely because your effort is where your character shows.

In practice, people are devastated by outcomes anyway

Telling yourself that only your will is good or bad does not obviously stop the pain of a failed surgery, a rejected proposal, or a job lost. The theory may be coherent, but it can feel disconnected from how outcomes actually affect us.

Reply

Epictetus is not promising the absence of feeling, and Stoic writers elsewhere allow for first movements of distress that are not fully up to us. What the doctrine offers is a place to stand afterward: your assessment of yourself does not have to collapse with the outcome, because it was never supposed to rest there in the first place. That takes practice, and Epictetus treats it as a skill, like catching a ball well, not as something available instantly.

Practice this in Stoa

Guided courses in the Stoa app that put this into daily practice.

Related questions

Podcast discussions

Concepts

  • Indifferents: what is neither good nor bad Learn why the Stoics called wealth, health, and even death indifferent, and why that word does not mean unimportant.
  • The dichotomy of control You will learn why Epictetus draws a hard line between what is up to us and what is not, and why that line is about identity and value, not stress management.

Philosophers

  • Epictetus Epictetus argues that freedom does not come from your circumstances but from correctly sorting what is up to you from what is not.

Works

  • Handbook by Epictetus A short, blunt manual for telling what is up to you from what is not, and building your life on the first.

Sources

  1. Epictetus, Discourses II Primary text, Stoa library
  2. Epictetus, Handbook Primary text, Stoa library