From the book
Stobaeus, Volume II
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordReservation qualifies desire, impulse and initiative, explaining the virtuous person’s stance toward possible obstacles rather than promising unconditional power over circumstances or success in external outcomes.
- In StobaeusThe brief claim links qualified undertaking with opposition not arriving unforeseen; it gives no quoted formula stating exactly how a reservation is to be expressed.
- In this editionKeep reservation and explain its qualifying force without inserting a familiar formula absent from this excerpt; the claim concerns how an agent undertakes action and meets opposition.
- A place to readChapter 7 · Excerpt 11s · Passage 5 Read the undertaking with reservation beside the denial that opposition arrives unforeseen; both qualifications explain the striking opening assertion about nothing happening contrary to desire.
- English renderings
- reservation; qualification of an impulse
Meaning
Hupexairesis marks a qualification under which the virtuous person acts. It explains how the report can deny frustrated desire without claiming that external obstacles never occur.
Use in the book
The Stoic passage says that nothing happens to the virtuous person contrary to desire, impulse or initiative because he does all such things with reservation and no opposition arrives unforeseen. The point is the qualified stance of the agent, not magical control of circumstances. The account’s preceding distinctions among moral good, selective value and external outcomes help preserve this difference. No formula spelling out the reservation is supplied in the excerpt, and the lexicon does not insert one as if quoted from it.
Both explanatory clauses should carry their full weight. The claim about nothing happening contrary to desire might otherwise look like a promise that events obey the agent. Its because clause redirects attention to the manner in which desire, impulse and initiative are exercised. Preparedness for opposition is then added, not the disappearance of opposition. The paragraph supplies neither an exact reservation formula nor a catalogue of obstacles. Its contribution is a qualification of undertaking; a fuller practical prescription would require evidence beyond this brief excerpt.
“none of the things that oppose him comes upon him unforeseen” (Chapter 7 · Excerpt 11s · Passage 5).
Places to read
- Chapter 7 · Excerpt 11s · Passage 52Qualified impulse explains the wise person’s relation to obstacles.
Translation in this edition
“With reservation” should remain a qualification, not become “without hesitation.”
ὑπεξαιρέσεως
Attested. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 11s · Passage 5; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 115.
ἐπιβολὴν γίνεσθαί τι περὶ τὸν σπουδαῖον, διὰ τὸ μεθ’ ὑπεξαιρέσεως πάντα ποιεῖν τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ μηδὲν αὐτῷ τῶν ἐναντιουμένων ἀπρόληπτον
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume II, printed p. 115. The dictionary form is inferred from the transmitted genitive ὑπεξαιρέσεως.