Propatheiai

these involuntary responses are not here attributed to impulses. He calls the ‘blows’: primus ille ictus animi. He stresses that such reactions are passive (patitur magis animus quam facit), compares them again to bodily reactions, and insists repeatedly that they are not the result of assent.

Inwood demonstrates that Seneca’s account of pre-passions as the ‘first blow of the mind’ — involuntary, passive, and prior to assent — exposes a structural instability in Stoic psychological monism.

Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis

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He is in line with Stoicism in saying that pre-passion cannot be avoided and would not be punished by God. Yet he adds a thoroughly Christian idea that some fault (culpa) attaches to it, even though it is not a matter for accusation (crimen).

Sorabji shows how Jerome adapts the Stoic propatheiai into a Christian moral register, asserting that while pre-passions carry no culpable sin, they nonetheless bear a residual fault — a theological inflection absent from the original doctrine.

Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis

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he tries to fill a lacuna in the Stoic list of eupatheiai by inserting a propatheia or pre-passion, namely bites and contractions, to serve as a eupathic counterpart of the emotion of distress. The Stoics had denied there was any such counterpart for the sage to suffer.

Sorabji documents Philo’s creative extension of the propatheia concept, arguing that Philo fills a lacuna in Stoic theory by positing a wise person’s pre-passion — bites and contractions — as an analogue to distress that the original Stoics had explicitly excluded.

Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis

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natural faults of body or mind (naturalia corporis aut animi uitia) are not removed by any amount of wisdom: what is innate and implanted may be mitigated by treatment, but not overcome.

Graver draws on Seneca’s Epistles to show that the involuntary bodily and psychic responses corresponding to the propatheiai persist even in the sage, constituting natural conditions immune to rational correction.

Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007thesis

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amudra used of the quasi-passions by Origen, SVF 3.477. Compare Philo De Animalibus 29 for the ‘unclearness’ of the non-rational mind.

Inwood’s footnote tracks the Greek vocabulary of ‘dim’ or ‘unclear’ quasi-passions in Origen and Philo, situating the propatheiai within the broader comparative problem of sub-rational affective states across Stoic and Platonist traditions.

Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting

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the sort of reaching which is aroused too vigorously and in a manner opposed to reason is called ‘desire’ or ‘unbridled longing,’ and this is what is found in all who are foolish.

Graver’s exposition of Cicero’s Stoic redaction establishes the conceptual contrast between rational volition (boulesis) and the irrational impulse, providing the framework within which the propatheiai mark the threshold between mere affect and full passion.

Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting

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some recent interpreters have preferred to believe that his purpose was merely to review some test cases and provide more thorough explanations of them than Chrysippus had done.

Graver flags the scholarly debate over Posidonius’s intention in examining anomalous emotional responses, including cases that bear on the propatheiai, cautioning against reading him as straightforwardly anti-Chrysippan.

Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007aside

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On eustatheia see Epictetus Diss. 1.29. Also note that Epictetus Diss. 1.4.27 ff. shows the relationship of apatheia to euroia and tēi phusei sumphōnia for Chrysippus.

Inwood briefly notes the terminological relationships between apatheia, eustatheia, and eupatheia in Chrysippus and Epictetus, providing context for situating the propatheiai within the broader Stoic taxonomy of affects.

Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985aside

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