Principle Over Impulse: Acting by What You Value, Not by What You Feel

The third discipline

Epictetus organized Stoic practice into three areas, which Pierre Hadot called the three disciplines. The first, desire, concerns what we want and fear. The second, assent, concerns what we accept as true. The third, action, concerns what we do. It is the discipline that connects philosophy to everyday life most directly, because it governs how we treat people and how we spend our days.

The other two disciplines prepare the ground. If you want only what is up to you, you are not dragged around by cravings. If you test impressions before accepting them, you are not pushed by false alarms. What remains is the question of what to do. The discipline of action answers it.

Impulse is not the enemy

The word “impulse” in modern English suggests something to be resisted, a sudden urge to buy, eat or say something we will regret. The Stoic word horme is broader. It means any movement of the mind toward action. When you decide to get up and make tea, that is an impulse. When you choose to help a stranger who has dropped their bag, that too is an impulse.

In rational beings, the Stoics said, an impulse is the result of assent to an impression that something should be done. So impulses are not good or bad in themselves. They are as good as the judgment behind them. An impulse to help someone, based on the sound judgment that justice requires it, is exactly what the Stoics wanted. An impulse to send an angry message, based on the false judgment that you have been grievously wronged, is not.

This is why “principle over impulse” does not mean suppressing what you feel like doing. It means making sure that what you do follows from what you have judged worth doing, rather than from whatever appearance is loudest at the moment. Often the two coincide. When they do not, principle should win.

What the discipline of action asks

From the Discourses and from Marcus Aurelius, the discipline of action has four main features.

It is just. Justice was, for the Stoics, the virtue that governs our relations with others. Acting well means giving each person what is due, keeping promises, telling the truth and not taking advantage.

It is for the common good. The Stoics believed that humans are made for cooperation. Marcus Aurelius returns to this again and again: we were made for one another, like feet, hands or eyelids. An action that benefits you at others’ expense is not a Stoic action, however rational it looks.

It fits your roles. Your duties depend on your relations. A father owes his children care, a citizen owes the city service, a friend owes honesty. We look at this in Epictetus on roles and duties.

It is done with reservation. Act fully, but add “if nothing prevents it”. This is the reserve clause, which we cover in the reserve clause.

Appropriate actions

The Stoics had a technical term for actions that fit your nature and situation: kathekon, often translated as “appropriate action” or “duty”. Taking care of your health, looking after your family, doing your job, honoring your parents: these are appropriate actions for most people most of the time. They can be justified by reasonable arguments.

When an appropriate action is done from a fully virtuous disposition, with perfect understanding, the Stoics called it a katorthoma, a “right action”. The difference is not in what is done but in how and why. Two people may both return a lost wallet. One does it because he fears being caught. The other does it because it is just. The act is the same. Only the second is fully good.

This matters for practice because it puts the focus on reasons, not only on behavior. Principle over impulse is about acting for the right reasons, consistently, until the right reasons become your habit.

Morning: the work of a human being

The most famous passage on the discipline of action is the opening of Book 5 of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. In George Long’s translation, it begins: “In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being.” He goes on to ask whether he was made to lie in the bedclothes and keep warm, and answers that plants, birds, ants and bees all do their part in the order of the world, and he should do his.

The passage is often used as motivational material for early risers, which misses its tone. It is the note of a tired man, emperor of Rome, who did not feel like getting up and talked himself into it with an argument about his own nature. That is principle over impulse at its most ordinary. We look at it closely in Marcus Aurelius on getting out of bed.

Discipline is not toughness

Modern Stoicism has acquired an image of hardness: cold showers, early alarms, no complaints, push through. Some of this has roots in Stoic practice; Seneca recommended periods of voluntary hardship, which we discuss in voluntary discomfort. But the Stoics would not have recognized discipline as an end in itself.

The point of the discipline of action is consistency between what you value and what you do. A person who rises at five, trains hard, never complains and treats people badly is not disciplined in the Stoic sense. A person who keeps an ordinary routine, keeps promises, does honest work and treats people fairly is. More in Stoic discipline is not toughness.

Impulse control today

Modern psychology studies impulse control mostly in the narrow sense: resisting immediate temptations for later rewards. The research is more complicated than the popular version, as we discuss in impulse control without the willpower myths. Two findings are especially relevant to the Stoic approach. First, people who seem to have great self control often rely less on willpower in the moment and more on habits and environments that avoid the temptation altogether. Second, deciding in advance what you will do in a given situation, “if X happens, I will do Y”, tends to work better than relying on resolve when the moment comes.

Both findings fit the Stoic picture. The Stoics did not expect constant heroic effort. They expected training, through which right action becomes habitual and the impulse itself changes.

How to practice it

• Decide in the calm what you will do in the storm. Before situations you know are difficult, settle what you will do. Write it down if it helps.
• Ask the role question. When unsure, ask what your role requires: as a parent, a colleague, a friend, a neighbor.
• Act, then reserve. Commit fully, and add mentally “if nothing prevents it”. If something does, adjust without drama.
• Review conduct, not outcomes. At the end of the day, ask whether you acted as you meant to act, not whether things went your way.
• Keep it ordinary. Most of the discipline of action is small: answering the email honestly, keeping the appointment, doing the dull part of the job well.