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Question

What does Marcus Aurelius say is truly indifferent versus in our power?

Marcus Aurelius draws the line between what your mind does and what merely happens to you, and only the first counts as truly yours.

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The short answer

Marcus Aurelius holds that only the mind's present act of judgment is truly in your power, and everything else, including your own past and future mental activity, is indifferent. The body cannot even tell differences among things, so all things are indifferent to it. Externals like life, death, honor, dishonor, pain and pleasure fall equally on good and bad people alike, so they cannot be what makes anyone's character better or worse.

Key points

  • Marcus splits himself into a little body and an understanding, and locates power only in the understanding's own activity.
  • Anything that is not the present work of the mind's own activity, including the mind's own past and future activities, counts as indifferent.
  • Externals such as life, death, honor, dishonor, pain and pleasure happen equally to good and bad people, so they cannot make anyone better or worse.
  • Because the universe's providence does not let good and evil fall at random, these equally distributed things must be neither good nor evil.
  • The practical shift is to judge only the present act of understanding, not outcomes, and not even your own earlier or later mental states.

The longer answer

Marcus draws the line inside himself, not between himself and the world. In Meditations 6.32 he writes: "I consist of a little body and a soul." The body, he says, cannot even perceive differences, so all things are indifferent to it. But to the understanding, "those things only are indifferent, which are not the works of its own activity." Whatever the mind itself does is in its power. And even here he narrows the claim further: only what the mind does now, in the present, is truly in its power. Past and future activities of the mind are, for the present moment, also indifferent (Meditations 6.32).

This is a stricter claim than most people expect. The common reading of Stoic indifference treats it as a rough sorting of life into two piles: externals like health, money and reputation on one side, and your choices on the other. That is not wrong, but Marcus pushes past it. He is not just saying external things do not matter as much as your character. He is saying that even your own mind's past judgments and future intentions, once they are not the present act of judging, fall into the same category as the little body's sensations. They are not currently the work of your faculty of choice, so they are not currently yours to claim as good or bad. Only the live act of understanding, happening right now, is in your power.

Elsewhere Marcus gives the reason this matters. In a passage on the same theme he lists death, life, honor, dishonor, pain and pleasure, and observes that these "equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse" (Meditations 2.11). If something falls on the good and the wicked without distinction, it cannot be the thing that makes a life good or bad, because then providence would have let good and evil land at random. Since Marcus holds that the nature of the universe does not overlook this or lack the skill to prevent it, he concludes that these things are neither good nor evil. That is the ethical stakes: indifference is not indifference to consequences, it is a claim about what can and cannot make you a better or worse person.

Notice what changes if you take this seriously. You stop asking whether an outcome, an injury, a promotion, a diagnosis, was good or bad for you, because none of these can touch your character. You start asking only whether your present judgment about it is sound. The question moves from what happened to me to what am I doing with my mind right now. That is a demanding shift because it means you cannot rest on your past good judgments either. Yesterday's wisdom is, on this passage, already indifferent. Only the work your understanding is doing this moment counts.

The concrete practice this suggests is simple to state and hard to sustain: when something happens, whether it is a small annoyance or a serious loss, ask what your mind is doing with it right now, not what it did with something like it before and not what you plan to do about it later. Bring the question back to the present act of judgment, because that is the only place, according to Marcus, where anything is actually in your power.

Primary passages

I consist of a little body and a soul. Now to this little body all things are indifferent, for it is not able to perceive differences. But to the understanding those things only are indifferent, which are not the works of its own activity. But whatever things are the works of its own activity, all these are in its power.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.32 Read in context

Marcus locates the whole doctrine of indifference and power inside the soul's own activity, not in the external world.

And of these however only those which are done with reference to the present; for as to the future and the past activities of the mind, even these are for the present indifferent.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.32 Read in context

He narrows the claim further: even your own mind's past and future judgments are, right now, indifferent. Only the present act is in your power.

But death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11 Read in context

The reasoning behind indifference: what falls equally on the good and the bad cannot be what makes a life good or bad.

Important distinctions

Indifferent to externals versus indifferent to your own past judgments

Most readers stop at the idea that externals like wealth and reputation are indifferent while your choices are not. Marcus goes further in Meditations 6.32: even your own mind's past and future activity is, in the present, indifferent. Only the live act of judging right now is in your power. This is a narrower and stricter claim than the usual dichotomy of control.

Indifferent does not mean unimportant

Calling something indifferent is not saying it does not matter at all. Preferred indifferents like health are still worth pursuing sensibly. The claim in Meditations 2.11 is narrower: these things cannot make you a better or worse person, because they land on good and bad people alike.

Objections and replies

If even my own past judgments are indifferent, what is left to build character on

If yesterday's wisdom does not count as currently in my power, it can sound like character has no continuity, only a series of disconnected present moments.

Reply

Marcus is not denying that past judgments shaped who you are now. He is making a sharper point about where power actually lies at any given instant: only the present act of understanding is something you are doing right now. Character is built through a long series of such present acts, even though no single past act remains active.

Saying pain and dishonor are neither good nor evil feels dismissive of real suffering

Telling someone that pain, dishonor and even death make no one better or worse can sound like it minimizes what they cost a person.

Reply

Marcus's argument in Meditations 2.11 is not that these things feel the same to everyone, but that they fall on good and bad people without distinction, so they cannot be the measure of a good or bad life. The measure is what your understanding does with them, not whether you are spared them.

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Related questions

Podcast discussions

Concepts

  • Indifferents: what is neither good nor bad Learn why the Stoics called wealth, health, and even death indifferent, and why that word does not mean unimportant.
  • The dichotomy of control You will learn why Epictetus draws a hard line between what is up to us and what is not, and why that line is about identity and value, not stress management.

Works

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius A Roman emperor's private notebook of Stoic exercises shows what it looks like to practice philosophy under real pressure, not just write about it.

Sources

  1. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Primary text, Stoa library