Stoicism and Apathy-Critical Thinking Sectets

Stoics and people who are apathetic both tend to react to negative events in a way that seems uncaring. Apathetic people do so because they do not care, whereas Stoics do so because allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by negative emotions would not improve the situation. Stoics will avoid passion in favor of reason, whereas someone who is apathetic simply is not passionate.

In the rest of the article, we are going to try to understand this seemingly subtle difference. We will do this first by learning very briefly about what stoicism and apathy are and then by looking specifically at how they differ, why they differ, and how we may encounter these differences in our day-to-day life.

Contents

1 What Is Stoicism?

2 What Is Apathy?

3 How Are Stoicism and Apathy Different?

What Is Stoicism?

Stoicism started as a philosophical school in Ancient Greece. The Stoics’ philosophy covered many parts of life, but the element that has translated most strongly into contemporary Stoicism is the stance on passion.

The Stoics believed that passion should be set aside in favor of reason. By taking this approach, the Stoics would not allow themselves to experience undue negative emotions over events outside of their control.

This has led to the school’s name entering the English language, where it is usually defined as indifference to any sorts of feelings. These types of definitions are what lead many to confuse Stoicism with apathy.

What Is Apathy?

Apathy is the state of not feeling anything – whether it is good or bad – toward something. Someone who is apathetic may find themselves not feeling anything toward anything in their life.

How Are Stoicism and Apathy Different?

The above definition of apathy seems to line up with Merriam-Webster’s definition of Stoicism too, but they are very different when you get into the details.

Stoicism, as we have learned, covers a broad range of topics, whereas apathy addresses only one. This is the biggest difference between them, but what about where they overlap? Even though there are similarities between Stoicism and apathy, they actually differ even in areas where people think they should be the same.

Let’s examine the differences between Stoicism and apathy’s stances on emotions and responses to external events.

Motivation

A person who is apathetic does not have the motivation to do anything about the thing they are apathetic about. If the person is just generally apathetic, they do not have the motivation to do much of anything.

A Stoic will only take this same position for a matter that they cannot change.

In other words, where an apathetic person will not be motivated to do a given thing just because they are apathetic, a Stoic would not do something because they have reasoned that it would not serve a purpose.

This can manifest practically in many ways in modern life. Let’s look at careers as an example.

Someone who is apathetic may not make any sort of effort at work because they do not really care about how they are perceived, whether they may work their way up to a promotion, or whether they lose their job. In more extreme cases of apathy, the person may not work at all.

A Stoic will have the motivation to work, but they will respond to events based on reason rather than passion.

For example, both a Stoic and an apathetic person will not have a strong emotional response to being fired, but in the Stoic’s case, it is because they know that they cannot change the outcome nor gain anything by experiencing negative emotions.

Love

In this context, we use the term “love” as the famous Roman Emperor and Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, did in his writings. He described a good Stoic as being “free of passion and yet full of love.”

This explains one very important distinction between Stoicism and apathy, which is that positive emotions are not shunned by the Stoics as negative emotions are. For a person who is experiencing apathy, their reaction to negative events and positive events is usually the same – which is no reaction.

Stoicism does not mean that the person is either incapable of feeling emotions or they choose not to. A Stoic is not against nor immune from emotion as a whole. Instead, they do not want emotion overriding reason.

The most outwardly obvious way in which Stoics practice this is to not react with negative emotion when bad things that cannot be corrected happen. In this specific scenario, an apathetic person would react in the exact same way, but for very different reasons.

More importantly, this similarity does not carry over to most other types of events, especially positive ones. In fact, it is often said that Stoicism intends to maximize the practitioner’s positive emotions.

Action

The combination of a Stoic’s motivation where appropriate and acceptance of positive emotions and events creates the most obvious difference between them and someone who is apathetic – their actions.

An apathetic person will do a minimal number of activities where they do not want to, like with work, for example. A Stoic, on the other hand, will not take actions that will not be beneficial to them, but they will still do everything else than an ordinary person would.

Final Thoughts

Trying to wrap your head around the difference between Stoicism and apathy for the first time can be deceptively challenging. Although they are not the same, they can be easily confused due to how people from both camps may react the same way to certain situations.

We have learned that a Stoic will react with reason instead of passion, and this often means not allowing themselves to outwardly express negative emotions. The rationale for this is that there is no benefit to doing so, only potential harm.

An apathetic person will not show these negative emotions either, but it is because they do not care rather than because there is a reason not to. Although there may be any reason for the apathy in the first place, the lack of reactions is not reasoned and the same for all things the person is apathetic about.