Most people have spent a lifetime being told that "good choices" are the ones that lead to preferred outcomes, or are the ones that feel good, or are the ones we personally judge to be good relative to our culture, upbringing, and circumstances.

Make a choice that makes you rich? Good choice. One that makes you poor? Bad choice.

Make a choice that feels good? Good choice. Feels bad? Bad choice.

Make a choice you believe is good? Good choice. Believe is bad? Bad choice.

Those are, roughly, a utilitarian's, a hedonist's, and a Relativist's way of judging choices, and most of us are bought into a personalised amalgamation of these, hook, line, and sinker 🎣

Because all three let us off the hook. Each one hands the job of judging our choices to something other than our own rational faculty. They enable us to be irresolute and cowardly.

Outcomes give us external data to point to ("look, it worked"). Feelings give us cover ("I followed my heart"). And Relativism excuses us from accountability to almost anything (ethically speaking, I mean; the law keeps its own books).

Not one of these ever require us to trust our own judgment, because something else does the standing-behind for us.

But all Stoics agree that a choice is judged by the reasoning behind it and absolutely nothing else. And it’s a particular kind of reasoning, tied to the very order of the Cosmos (yes, that big!). Was it just? Was it appropriate? Was it made honestly, with the whole considered? Was it made in alignment with our roles?

When we judge ourselves this way, we throw away our crutches and say: this is my standard, this is my choice, irrespective of what comes. When the outcome goes badly, there's no data to hide behind, no feeling to blame, no Relativist excuse on offer. Instead, all we can say is, "I reasoned well, and the result doesn't change that."

I can hear the objection forming: isn't this just Relativism with extra steps? If the judge is my own reasoning, then the standard is whatever I think it is, and we're back where we started.

No. Under Relativism, you cannot be wrong. Your view is the standard, so meeting it is automatic. With Stoicism, on the other hand, you can be wrong, and you frequently are. Your reasoning is the instrument you measure with, while the standard is what you measure against, and the Stoics held that standard to be reason itself, the same rational order that structures the Cosmos.

Epictetus makes exactly this point (Discourses 2.11): we don't settle disagreements about weight by asking how heavy the sack feels to each of us. We invented scales. Philosophy, he says, is the work of examining and correcting our standards of judgment.

Or think of arithmetic. When you add a column of figures you are "just reasoning" too, but nobody calls maths a matter of opinion. Your working answers to something outside your working, which is why you can get a sum wrong sincerely. Stoic ethics makes the same claim about justice and appropriateness: sincerity is not success. A Relativist is finished reasoning when they feel settled. A Stoic's reasoning stays answerable (to the facts of the case, to their roles, to correction by people reasoning better than they currently do).

Think of the courage that requires. Think of the extra deliberation work it requires. Think how not optimised or productivity-friendly that is. Think of how against the grain of modernity that is. And how many years do you think it takes to get there, and when did you last make a choice you could defend on the reasoning alone?

That’s not rhetorical, I want you to leave a comment below.