Neither good nor evil: the indifferent
On the axis: The meaning of suffering · the ordeal and our judgment
Perhaps it is not things that trouble us, but our judgments about them: suffering would not decide our happiness, only the steadfastness with which we endure it would. Wisdom, or denial of a very real evil?
Justification
Hardship has the value of training: difficulties are the opponents sends us to reveal and strengthen our character, as for the athlete. Suffering, rightly used, is fruitful.
It is difficulties that show what men are.Discourses, I.24
Discourses, I.24 (How to struggle against difficulties) · Discourses, I.6
Justification
Hardship is neither to be fled nor wept over: the soul turns into material for virtue what claimed to thwart it, and the impediment to action becomes the action itself. The stance sits between Stoic , which counts pain as nothing, and the active fecundity of adversity, which makes it the occasion of progress.
What stands in the way of action advances action. What blocks the road becomes the road.Meditations, V, 20
Meditations, IV, 1 · Meditations, V, 20
Justification
To the problem of the suffering of the just (why does let misfortune strike good people?), Seneca answers by denying the premise: what looks like an evil is none, for virtue is proved and forged only under trial, like the soldier at drill or the pilot in the storm. Adversity then ceases to be something to endure and becomes something to desire: the god does not spare those he loves but tests them, and the good man must wrestle misfortune as an athlete wrestles a worthy opponent. Suffering is neither absurd nor redemptive in itself: it is the occasion without which greatness of soul would lie unused.
Misfortune is virtue's opportunity.On Providence, IV
On Providence, II-IV (adversity as the exercise of virtue)
Anchors: Epictetus · Marcus Aurelius · Seneca