Prohairesis

What is up to us

For Aristotle prohairesis is deliberate choice: desire informed by deliberation, the act in which character shows itself and for which we are praised or blamed. The Stoic Epictetus makes it the center of the moral life — the faculty of choice and assent that no one can compel, the one thing truly “up to us.” External things may be seized, but the prohairesis stays free; to guard it rightly is the whole of virtue.