Eupatheia

Eupatheia (εὐπάθεια) names the Stoic sage’s rational counter-movement to pathos. Chrysippus recognized three: khara (joy), eulabeia (caution), and boulēsis (wish), plus their subspecies (Sorabji 2000, par. 68). Where pathē are mistaken assents to impressions of good or evil in indifferents, eupatheiai are the rationally justified analogues — the sage’s feeling without error.

The concept rescues Stoic apatheia from the caricature of numbness. The sage is not affectless; the sage is free only from the pathē as Chrysippus defined them. A sage still feels — rationally. The distinction matters philologically and psychologically: apatheia is the negation of a technical term, not of feeling as such.

Christian writers diverged on eupatheia. Clement of Alexandria, in his most extreme formulation, claimed the perfected human shed even the eupatheiai, including khara and eulabeia — a position Sorabji reads as stricter than any Stoic (Sorabji 2000, par. 136). plotinus kept the category: mystical experience, for him, is a eupatheia, and Proclus and Damascius would extend the term to intellectual pleasure (Sorabji 2000, par. 71). The Platonic anchor is Phaedrus 247d.

Relationships

• apatheia
• pathos
• plotinus
• plato-phaedrus

Primary sources

• Emotion and Peace of Mind (Sorabji 2000)
• Stoicism and Emotion (Graver 2007)