Aim at the Right Target
A Stoic Approach to Goals
There is a short quote of Seneca’s that many of us are familiar with, “When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”1 In some modern self-help spaces, that quote is used to set up a discussion on goal setting. Most modern-day goals focus on external outcomes—getting a promotion, a new job, or a new car.
However, Seneca’s Letter 71, On the Supreme Good, establishes the appropriate aim for our goals, asserting that “The Supreme Good is that which is honorable”—that is, what is morally noble and identified with virtue. That is the destination toward which all our objectives should be oriented.
I think it is fair to say that many of us are missing the mark when it comes to orienting our lives in such a way that would be truely a eudaemonic (flourishing) life, one that flows smoothly. Perhaps we are aiming at the wrong target. In modern self-help groups, goal setting is mostly outcome-focused. Whereas Stoic goal-setting is ultimately character-oriented.
As I reflected on my goals, I asked myself a simple question: What is the ultimate purpose of my life? Is it to accumulate wealth, run a department, or be in extraordinary health? Or is it to be a person of noble moral character? What I was searching for was: what is my telos?
The Highest Goal (Telos)
In letter 71. Seneca emphasizes that life descends into confusion when individual decisions are made without reference to life’s ultimate purpose, which he called the ‘Supreme Good’. His point is that particular decisions cannot be rationally ordered until one has determined the end of life as a whole or our telos, the final end toward which a human life should be directed.
Diogenes Laertius attributes the formulation of the Stoic telos to Zeno, writing:
“On which account Zeno was the first writer who in his treatise On the Nature of Man, said that the end was to live according to nature, which is to live according to virtue, for virtue is the goal towards which nature leads us.”2
It follows that in traditional Stoicism, our telos is not simply a personal goal or a desired outcome, but the ultimate end of our lives—the standard by which all other subordinate choices, actions, and purposes are oriented: to live in agreement with nature.
With an understanding of our telos, how do we navigate life keeping that end in mind?
The Stoic Structure of Goals
As pointed out above, there clearly is an essential distinction between our telos and the ordinary goals we pursue in daily life. The telos is the final end of life—that for the sake of which everything else is ultimately chosen.
However, as social beings, we live ordinary lives with ordinary goals. For progressing Stoics, goals are particular objectives toward which we may appropriately direct our efforts: getting a new job, working toward a promotion, earning a passing grade, losing weight, or helping resolve a political problem. Depending on the circumstances, such objectives may have genuine practical value and therefore provide a rational basis for selecting among the indifferents.
As rational and social beings, we will naturally pursue goals. The question is not whether we should have goals, but how we should pursue them.
Once we identify an appropriate objective, we must distinguish between what is up to us (eph’ hēmin) and what is not up to us (ouk eph’ hēmin). We can deliberate carefully, form sound judgments, choose our actions, and apply ourselves diligently. Whether those actions produce the external result we prefer, however, depends upon circumstances that are not entirely ours.
The Stoic structure of goal-setting, then, begins with an awareness of our telos, the ultimate end that gives direction to the whole of life. Within that framework, we recognize the relative value (axia) of particular indifferents and select appropriate objectives on rational grounds. We then direct our attention toward the judgments, choices, and actions that are up to us while accepting that the final outcome is not wholly ours to determine.
This allows us to pursue worthwhile objectives with seriousness and determination without making our flourishing dependent on achieving them. The external goal matters as an appropriately chosen aim; the governing end is to pursue it virtuously.
Outcomes versus Intentions
When we are working through our goals in Stoicism, there is an important distinction between intention and outcome. It is the quality of judgment, assent, intention, and rational choice that helps us progress toward virtue. Our primary concern should be the quality of our intentions and the rationality of our choices, not merely the outcome.
One of the best examples of Stoic goal setting that I came across is Cicero’s archer analogy, which helps explain the distinction between intention and outcome:
“For though if a man were to make it his purpose to take a true aim with a spear or arrow at some mark, his ultimate end, corresponding to the ultimate good as we pronounce it, would be to do all he could to aim straight: the man in this illustration would have to do everything to aim straight, and yet, although he did everything to attain his purpose, his ‘ultimate End,’ so to speak, would be what corresponded to what we call the Chief Good in the conduct of life, whereas the actual hitting of the mark would be in our phrase ‘to be chosen’ but not ‘to be desired.”3
The archer is morally responsible for the quality of the aim and release, but not for everything that happens after the arrow leaves the bow.
This doesn’t mean outcomes do not matter. If outcomes were irrelevant, there would be no reason to select one target over another. For example, a physician genuinely tries to heal his or her patients. A parent genuinely tries to protect his or her child. A businessperson genuinely tries to hit company objectives. The outcome matters as an object of rational selection, but if the patient isn’t healed, the child gets hurt playing outside, or the business fails, it does not determine the moral worth of the agent. That distinction is fundamental.
Final Thought
The world often measures progress by what we accomplish.
Our goals may change, succeed, or fail, but our telos remains the same: to live in agreement with Nature through reason and virtue.
Choose your goals carefully, pursue them earnestly, but never mistake the destination of a particular journey for the purpose of the whole life.
Let virtue remain your compass, and even when circumstances turn against you, you can still be moving in the right direction.
Footnotes
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, trans. Richard M. Gummere (A to Z Classics, n.d.), Letter 71, “On the Supreme Good,” 307.
Diogenes Laertius, A Summary of Stoic Philosophy: Zeno of Citium in Diogenes Laertius Book Seven, trans. C. D. Yonge, ed. Keith Seddon (Keith Seddon, 2000), 7.87.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, trans. H. Rackham, 2nd ed., Loeb Classical Library 40 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 3.22, 241.