Choice / Rational Decision
Not desire, not opinion, but the deliberate choosing of what lies in our power — the hinge on which praise, blame, and the self itself turn.
When Aristotle asked what makes an act truly ours, he pointed to prohairesis: not a passing wish or a snap impulse, but a choice arrived at by reasoning about means within our power. Because such choices reveal our character, they are the proper ground of praise and blame. Centuries later the Stoic Epictetus seized the word and made it the whole self — the faculty of moral purpose that no tyrant, illness, or accident can touch, the one thing that is genuinely "up to us."
A note on "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19): readers steeped in Stoicism sometimes seize on this verse as an early statement of prohairesis — the inner faculty of rational choice. The words seem to place a sovereign power of decision in the human being, and so they are read as if Moses were describing the same autonomous will the Stoics prized.
But in its own setting the verse is doing something different. It is the climax of a covenant ceremony. Moses has laid out blessings for obedience and curses for rebellion (Deuteronomy 28–30), and "choose life" is the summons that follows: a call to cling to the LORD, "to love the LORD your God, to obey His voice, and to hold fast to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days" (Deuteronomy 30:20). The choice here is concrete and relational — turn toward God and the covenant, or turn away — not an inward analysis of which faculties lie within one's control. Its frame is loyalty under blessing and curse, life lived before God, not a theory of the self.
Prohairesis, by contrast, is a piece of philosophical psychology. For the Stoics — above all Epictetus — it names the rational faculty of deliberate moral choice, the one thing that is wholly "up to us," untouchable by fortune, by other people, even by the body. Around this faculty the Stoics build their whole moral self: externals are indifferent, and the will alone is the sphere of genuine freedom and the seat of virtue. The difference is real. Deuteronomy urges you to choose a particular thing, the covenant with God; the Stoics theorize the chooser, isolating the will as the autonomous, sole-in-our-power locus of the moral life.
So the two ideas are genuinely distinct: a covenantal summons to choose fidelity to God is not the same as the Stoic faculty of rational choice held up as the one thing fully in our power. A developed vocabulary of will and faculty entered Jewish thought only later, with the Hellenistic encounter and then the medieval philosophers, who worked largely through the Arabic Aristotelian tradition. This is why "choose life" is kept apart from prohairesis: read forward into the Stoic doctrine, it is made to say more, and other, than it says in its own voice.
How it traveled
- RhetoricChalcis · -335explains
- Eudemian EthicsChalcis · -322explains
- Nicomachean EthicsChalcis · -322explains
- DiscoursesNicopolis · 108explains
- The HandbookNicopolis · 135explains
- FragmentsNicopolis · 135explains
- Ad Se IpsumVindobona (Vienna) · 170explains
- Noctes AtticaeRome · 180explains
- Guide for the PerplexedCairo · 1190parallel
- Ohr HashemBarcelona · 1399critique
Key passages(20)
Ralbag on Torah · Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) · 1325 CE
התועלת הששי הוא בדעות. והוא להודיע שמה שיעשהו האדם אפשר שיהיה הוא זולת מה שתהיה בו הידיעה ממנו השם יתע' כמו שזכרנו במה שקדם. ובזה יתקיים טבע האפשר ולזה היה עניין הנסיון. ולזה גם כן אמר לאברהם כי עתה י
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Ohr Hashem · Chasdai Crescas (Or Hashem) · 1399 CE
והנה יתבאר זה ג"כ אם מצד העיון ואם מצד התורה אם מצד' העיון יראה מפנים מהם כי למה שהתבאר בחכמה הטבעית שכל הדברים הנופלים תחת ההויה וההפסד יקדם בהכרח ד' סבות למציאותם והיה שבמציאות הסבות ימצאו המסובבים
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Ohr Hashem · Chasdai Crescas (Or Hashem) · 1399 CE
והוא איך יסכים היושר האלהי בגמול ועונש עם החיוב. ואם היה שיסכים מה ההפרש בין החיוב אשר בבחינת הסבות בזולת הרגש אונס והכרח ובין החיוב אשר בהרגש אונס והכרח. וזה שכבר יחשב שאם מעשה המצות והעברות הם סבות
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Ohr Hashem · Chasdai Crescas (Or Hashem) · 1399 CE
בבחירה לפי שכבר קדם לנו שמיסודות הדת הוא הבחירה ושתהיה רשות כל אדם נתונה לן למה שלא תפול שם המצוה למוכרח ואנוס לפעול דבר מוגבל. אבל צריך שיהיה מונח לרצונו הפשוט לכל אחד מהצדדין ואז תהיה הצואה לו ראויי
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But with some things not only their existence or non-existence is possible, but also for human beings to deliberate about them; and these are all the things that it rests with us to do or not to do. H
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If, then, nobody chooses without first preparing, and deliberating as to the comparative merits of the alternatives, and a man deliberates as to those among the means to the End capable of existing or
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But we will speak about this in our examination of justice. As to purposive choice, it is clear that it is not absolutely identical with wish nor with opinion, but is opinion plus appetition when thes
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Now it is evident that it is not appetition; for in that case it would be either wish or desire or passion, since nobody wants to get a thing without having experienced one of those feelings. Now even
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For no one purposively chooses any End, but the means to his End—I mean for instance no one chooses to be healthy, but to take a walk or sit down for the sake of being healthy, no one chooses to be we
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Perhaps we may define it as voluntary action preceded by deliberation, since choice involves reasoning and some process of thought. Indeed previous deliberation seems to be implied by the very term pr
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As then the object of choice is something within our power which after deliberation we desire, Choice will be a deliberate desire of things in our power; for we first deliberate, then select, and fina
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Now the cause of action (the efficient, not the final cause) is choice, and the cause of choice is desire and reasoning directed to some end. Hence choice necessarily involves both intellect or though
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Of the things which are in our power, and not in our power. OF all the faculties (except that which I shall soon mention), you will find not one which is capable of contemplating itself, and, conseque
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On constancy (or firmness). THE being (nature) of the Good is a certain Will; the being of the Bad is a certain kind of Will. What then are externals? Materials for the Will, about which the will bein
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To or against those who obstinately persist in what they have determined. WHEN some persons have heard these words, that a man ought to be constant (firm), and that [the will is naturally free and not
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On the power of speaking. EVERY man will read a book with more pleasure or even with more ease, if it is written in fairer characters. Therefore every man will also listen more readily to what is spok
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Against those who on account of sickness go away home. I AM sick here, said one of the pupils, and I wish to return home.—At home, I suppose, you were free from sickness. Do you not consider whether y
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About freedom. HE is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action (ὁρμαί) are not impeded, whose desires attain t
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What things we ought to despise, and what things we ought to value. THE difficulties of all men are about external things, their helplessness is about externals. What shall I do, how will it be, how w
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Against the quarrelsome and ferocious. THE wise and good man neither himself fights with any person, nor does he allow another, so far as he can prevent it. And an example of this as well as of all ot
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