Proairesis — variously transliterated as prohairesis — occupies a peculiar and contested position in the depth-psychology corpus, appearing primarily within the history of ancient moral psychology rather than within clinical or analytic literature proper. The corpus reveals a marked asymmetry: the term receives sustained technical analysis in Inwood's study of early Stoic ethics and in Sorabji's broad comparative treatment of emotion and will, while Dihle's work on the theory of will situates proairesis within the longer genealogy of volitional concepts spanning Greek, Jewish, and Christian thought. For the early Stoics, as Inwood shows, prohairesis was consciously downgraded — reduced to a preliminary or preparatory choice positioned before the more significant hairesis — in a deliberate effort to displace Aristotle's framework, in which deliberate choice (proairesis) served as the very hallmark of moral agency. The irony documented by Inwood is that this suppression failed spectacularly: Epictetus rehabilitated the term as the sovereign faculty of the rational self, and through him it entered the broader philosophical lexicon. Sorabji traces proairesis into Plotinian and Christian territory, where Gregory of Nyssa treats it as the vehicle of the soul's self-determination and autexousion. Dihle, by contrast, reads the entire proairesis tradition as evidence that Greek thought never achieved a genuine concept of will separate from cognition — a diagnostic claim with far-reaching implications for depth psychology's own account of volition, motivation, and moral responsibility.
In the library
11 substantive passages
The downgrading of prohairesis was another part of this general programme; in view of the popularity of the term in later philosophical jargon and even in the works of a Stoic like Epictetus, it can only be said that in this case the attempt was a dismal failure.
Inwood argues that the early Stoics deliberately marginalized prohairesis in order to subordinate Aristotle's framework, but this strategy failed as the term was powerfully revived, above all in Epictetus.
Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
prohairesis is a choice (hairesis) before a choice; boulêsis is a rational [i.e correct] orexis; thelêsis is a voluntary boulêsis.
Inwood reproduces the Stoic technical taxonomy of practical impulse from Arius Didymus, in which prohairesis is defined as a prior or preparatory choice, marking its subordinate role in early Stoic psychology.
Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
Although proairesis (deliberate choice) appears to be voluntary, then, it is not the same thing. The voluntary extends further. For both children and animals share in the voluntary, but not in deliberate choice.
Sorabji, explicating Aristotle, establishes that proairesis as deliberate choice is narrower than the voluntary, confining rational moral agency to adult humans while leaving animals within the sphere of the voluntary though not of proairesis.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
virtue is voluntary (hekousion), and connects this with the self-determination (autexousion) of the human will (proairesis) or soul, and with the soul being steered by its own willing (thelēmata).
Sorabji shows how Gregory of Nyssa appropriates proairesis as the term for the soul's autonomous self-determination, fusing it with Christian concepts of voluntary virtue and the will's freedom from external mastery.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Clement of Alexandria, too, follows the philosophical tradition in attributing free decision on which moral responsibility rests to man's intellectual perception and judgement (npoaipeaiq) which leads to the view that human action is the consequence of cognition.
Dihle argues that even in Christian appropriation, proairesis remains anchored to intellectual judgement rather than constituting a genuine act of will separate from reason, demonstrating the limits of the Greek volitional framework.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
choice was a special way of pursuing indifferents which converted mere selection into a morally correct pursuit of the good... Hairesis is free of the restrictions imposed on boulêsis by its use in the theory of pathê and eupatheiai.
Inwood clarifies the functional distinctions among related volitional terms in Stoic ethics, situating hairesis — the genus of which prohairesis is a species — within the broader system of orexis and moral action.
Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
Dihle's index entry for proairesis and its adjectival form documents the term's recurrence across discussions of Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Christian moral psychology in his monograph.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
The Greeks had no word of this kind in their language to denote will or intention as such.
Dihle's foundational claim — that classical Greek lacked a proper will-concept — contextualizes proairesis as the closest available approximation, yet one that remained cognitively rather than volitionally defined.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
a non-sage's desire will be called a boulēsis or voluntas only in a looser sense.
Sorabji's discussion of boulêsis and voluntas as imperfect volitional concepts for non-sages forms the background against which the scope and limitations of proairesis as moral choice are to be understood.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
Seek it there, wretch, where your work lies. And where is your work? In desire and in aversion, that you may not be disappointed in your desire, and that you may not fall into that which you would avoid.
Epictetus implicitly invokes the domain of proairesis — governing desire, aversion, assent, and impulse — as the proper locus of philosophical progress, without deploying the term explicitly in this passage.
It is used very infrequently, and one doubts whether its sense is the technical one given here or the general philosophical sense largely shaped by Aristotelian use of the word.
Inwood's bibliographic note casts doubt on whether prohairesis in some Stoic texts carries its full technical meaning or functions merely in the broader Aristotelian sense inherited by later philosophical vocabulary.
Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985aside