Origin Early and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts.
Lupe, distress or mental pain at what seems to be a present evil, is one of the four principal pathe, or passions, that Stoic ethics catalogues as irrational, excessive impulses arising from mistaken judgments about what is genuinely good or bad. Stoic doctrine, as reported by secondhand sources such as Diogenes Laertius, holds that grief, envy and pity are species of distress, all resting on the belief that some external circumstance is a genuine evil rather than merely indifferent to virtue.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodEarly and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts. 1 Place of OriginAthens, where Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school around 300 BCE, and later the wider Hellenistic and Roman world. 1 Origin of the NameAncient Greek lupe, pain, grief or distress. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerSystematized within Stoic ethics chiefly by Chrysippus of Soli, the school's third head, whose own treatise on the passions survives only in fragments and later paraphrase; the fourfold scheme is best known today through Diogenes Laertius's later summary. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1 Doctrinal Status DetailReported secondhand by sources such as Diogenes Laertius, Stoic doctrine holds grief, envy and pity to be species of distress, all resting on the belief that some external circumstance is a genuine evil rather than merely indifferent to virtue; freedom from the pathe (apatheia) was the Stoic ethical goal, not the absence of all feeling. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceDistress, or mental pain at what seems to be a present evil; one of the four principal pathe Stoic ethics catalogues as irrational, excessive impulses resting on a mistaken judgment about what is genuinely good or bad. 1 Lupe (Distress)
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Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Opposed By
Originates in Language
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Held Differently
Sloth (Acedia), Vices Evagrius Ponticus, whose diagnosis of the eight afflictive thoughts stands behind the medieval capital sin of sloth or acedia, drew directly on Stoic passion theory in framing distress and listlessness as disorders of judgment; the monastic vice and the Stoic passion are related by that borrowed framework rather than being the same claim.
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Sources
1. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics
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