Selection

Use in the book

Things between virtue and vice are indifferent with respect to happiness, but not necessarily with respect to selection and rejection. They can possess selective value or disvalue. Diogenes formulates the end through reasoning well in selecting and rejecting things according to nature; Antipater similarly emphasizes sustained selection rather than an unconditional guarantee of obtaining the preferred object. The later Peripatetic account also uses selection, but grants natural objects a different status. Shared vocabulary does not make the schools’ evaluations identical.

The paragraph resolves an apparent tension created by the word indifferent. It explicitly restricts that description to the former of two senses discussed just before it; it then denies indifference in another respect. Consequently, the same object can lack the ethical contribution assigned to virtue while still warranting discriminating treatment. The paired expressions value for selection and disvalue for rejection describe this second relation. Reading only the first or only the last part would lose the intended combination of practical differentiation and a strict account of happiness.

“but not with regard to selection and rejection” (Chapter 7 · Excerpt 7 · Passage 3).

Places to read

1. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 7 · Passage 32Indifference does not exclude differences relevant to selection.
2. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 6a · Passage 22Diogenes connects the end with reasoning well in selection.
3. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 13 · Passage 92The Peripatetic account derives appropriate actions from selection.

Translation in this edition

“Selection” helps preserve its distinction from αἵρεσις and προαίρεσις, rendered with forms of choice.

ἐκλογὴν

Attested. Chapter 7 · Excerpt 7 · Passage 3; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 79.

κατὰ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς αἱρέσεως ταύτης, οὐ μὴν πρὸς ἐκλογὴν καὶ ἀπεκλογήν· δι’ ὃ καὶ τὰ μὲν ἀξίαν ἐκλεκτικὴν ἔχειν, τὰ δ’