From the book
Stobaeus, Volume II
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordChoiceworthy describes what warrants reasonable choice; it differs from the prescribed activity to be chosen and from valuable things selected within the class of indifferents.
- In StobaeusThe Stoic analysis explains several evaluative descriptions through different relations to choice or virtue, and not every clause of that explanation survives without editorial supplementation.
- In this editionKeep choiceworthy separate from to be chosen and to be taken, and retain the visible uncertainty where the account’s explanation is incomplete or supplied.
- A place to readChapter 7 · Excerpt 5i Read the reasons for calling a good choiceworthy, pleasing, approvable and praiseworthy separately; the supplied missing clause limits how completely their definitions can be reconstructed.
- English renderings
- choiceworthy; worthy of choice
Meaning
Hairetos marks what warrants choice. The Stoic exposition distinguishes this adjective from what is to be taken and from what is to be chosen; the English similarities must not collapse their different functions.
Use in the book
A good is choiceworthy insofar as it moves reasonable choice. What is to be taken is associated with reasonable selection among valuable things. The account further distinguishes the good that one may have from the benefit expressed in acting or thinking wisely. In the Peripatetic exposition bodily goods can be choiceworthy for their own sake, a classification that does not follow the strict Stoic division of good and indifferent. The term therefore records both a technical contrast within one account and an expressed difference between accounts.
A sequence of related descriptions is organized by repeated insofar as clauses. Choiceworthiness concerns moving reasonable choice; pleasing concerns entering choice without misgiving; praise is connected with judging something to proceed from virtue. These are related evaluations, but their explanatory roles are not identical. The damaged and supplied wording in the middle prevents a secure complete reconstruction of the parallel series. The entry therefore helps the reader follow the surviving relations without making the attractive English list appear more textually complete or philosophically uniform than it is.
“A good is choiceworthy insofar as it moves reasonable choice” (Chapter 7 · Excerpt 5i).
Places to read
- Chapter 7 · Excerpt 5i2Choiceworthiness is explained through reasonable choice.
- Chapter 7 · Excerpt 5o2Choiceworthy differs from what is to be taken.
- Chapter 7 · Excerpt 6f · Passage 12Choiceworthy differs from what is to be chosen.
- Chapter 7 · Excerpt 13 · Passage 62Natural bodily goods are choiceworthy for themselves in the Peripatetic exposition.
Translation in this edition
Use “choiceworthy,” retaining contrasts with the other verbal adjectives.
αἱρετὸν
Attested. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 5i; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 72.
Καὶ πᾶν μὲν ἀγαθὸν αἱρετὸν εἶναι· ἀρεστὸν γὰρ καὶ δοκιμαστὸν καὶ ἐπαινετὸν ὑπάρχειν· πᾶν
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume II, printed pp. 72, 75, 78, 118. The adjective does not by itself mean that the agent has already performed an act of choosing.