Evil is the opposite of TERMthe good: what harms and cannot be put to good use. The only genuine evil is vice (TERMκακία) and what partakes in it: folly, intemperance, injustice, cowardice. Sickness, death, disgrace — these are not evils but "indifferents" (often "dispreferred," ἀποπροηγμένον). Evil, like good, is localised exclusively in the ruling part: only acts of one's own assent (συγκατάθεσις) can make a person bad.

SVF III 74–77; DL VII 94–101; Stob. Ecl. II 57–58 W; LS 60. In Marcus: Med. 2.1; 2.11; 4.8; 06-33 (what is according to nature is not κακόν); 06-41 (imagined "evil" and "good" outside our choice breed enmity with gods and men); 07-26 (what the wrongdoer took for κακόν when he did wrong); 08-01 (evil — only what makes a person the opposite of just, temperate, brave, free); 08-14 (doctrines about ἀγαθά/κακά explain a man's acts); 08-20 (the ball's fall, the burst bubble — no κακόν to the thing itself); 08-28 (pain — a κακόν to body or soul? the soul may refuse to call it evil); 08-56 (a neighbour's κακία is not my κακόν); 08-58 (one bereft of sensation will feel no κακόν); 09-04 (the unjust makes himself a κακόν — ἑαυτὸν κακὸν ποιῶν); 09-16 (the κακόν of a rational being is in ἐνέργεια, activity, not in what is undergone); 09-17 (the fall of a thrown stone is no κακόν to it; the external is indifferent); 09-21 (death is οὐδὲν κακόν: only the pause of the functions, like every earlier change); 09-38 (εἰ μὲν ἥμαρτεν, ἐκεῖ τὸ κακόν — the evil lies with the one who erred, not with the one wronged); 09-42 (τὸ κακόν σου καὶ τὸ βλαβερόν has its whole ὑπόστασις in the ruling part — and nowhere else).

In 02-01 evil is characterised as αἰσχρόν — shameful. This pair ἀγαθόν/καλόν — κακόν/αἰσχρόν goes back to Socrates (see Plat. Gorg. 474c–475e) and becomes a technical argument in the Stoics: since evil is only what is shameful (i.e. morally bad), it cannot be imposed by another person, and so wrongdoers remain the victims of their own TERMignorance.