In Cicero’s On Moral Ends, Cato the Younger – a Roman senator who fought the rise of Julius Caesar – argues that once we understand the nature of wisdom or virtue we will realize their importance and value, and pursue them for their own sakes, above all else. That is what it means to become a Stoic sage. The sage is a fully rational agent, one who can only act with virtue and reason. All of her or his actions are “right actions”. (For more on this, see John Sellars’ book, Hellenistic Philosophy.)

To go even further, ancient Stoics believed that the sage alone had fully realized his or her power of choice and found real virtue. In this way of thinking, having complete virtue meant experiencing happiness and freedom. That meant that the sage was virtuous and free, no matter the circumstance, while everyone else suffered from vice and mental bondage.

It’s a stark side of ancient Stoicism, even if its goal was quite noble. It makes me think of Epictetus’ words when he imagines a conversation between himself and a tyrannical power, as he continues to assert his will and power of choice even in bondage:

“I will put you in chains.” Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower. “I will throw you into prison.” My poor body, you mean. “I will cut your head off.” When, then, have I told you that my head alone cannot be cut off? These are the things which philosophers should meditate on... – Epictetus, Discourses, Book 1

Epictetus’ words seem to be those of the sage – a person who has found freedom from pain and distress that regular humans could only imagine.

The ideal and the reality

Let’s be real for a moment. Does this sound like something any typical human could accomplish? No, not really. And in fact, the ancients often cited just two people as fitting into this Stoic sage category: Socrates and Cato.

Does that mean if we can’t be Socrates or Cato – both of whom sacrificed their lives to their principles – we should not even try to live according to Stoic ideals? Should we even attempt to become virtuous, knowing that ancient Stoic thinking divided the world into just two categories: The virtuous (sages) and the vicious (everyone else, literally all of humanity except for a tiny handful of sages)?

A stage in-between?

Before we start to label things so harshly, we should turn to another approach, one that British classicist and scholar Liz Gloyn has shared in Classically Inclined, her blog. Gloyn points out that aside from sages, there exists another category in ancient thinking about Stoic practice: Proficiens, or “disciple.” She writes:

The sage, being perfectly in control of their rational facilities, will always make the right decision and thus is morally perfect. However, the Stoics were realistic – the sage is also as rare as a phoenix (Alexander, De Fato 196.24–197.3, Long and Sedley 61N). They recognised that the likelihood of someone reaching sagehood was vanishingly small… The Stoics thus labelled the rest of us who are trying to live our lives according to the principles of Stoicism as proficientes, best translated as ‘tryers’ or ‘disciples’. The proficiens hasn’t got to grips with mastering their own reason yet, but they’re trying. They seek to clear their minds of anything that might draw them away from reason and clear it of irrational beliefs, but they’re still prone to making mistakes. The reassuring thing about this statement is that Seneca is quite clear that even the sage has to have gone through this process of making mistakes and getting it wrong in order to achieve sagehood; as he says in On Clemency 1.6.4, even if someone has reached the position of sagehood and is so secure that nothing can unbalance him, he has only got there through making mistakes*.

This is a remarkable distinction, and that the description is found in Seneca is also quite telling. As I’ve written before, I have been inspired by Seneca’s formulation of all humans as “tryers” of a sort, all just fellow patients in the same hospital, with no doctor in sight (in Letter 27 to Lucilius).

Trying to improve yourself This concept has kept me trying to improve myself and to share with others my challenges in this lifelong journey towards virtue, because we’re all aiming to do better, to be better. And now I see: that makes us all proficientes, people traveling together on the road to sagehood. We may never reach it, but it’s worth the journey.

*https://lizgloyn.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/thedifference- between-the-stoic-sage-and-the-stoic-disciple/

Meredith Kunz is author of The Stoic Mom Substack and Blog https://thestoicmom.substack.com.
Website: www.thestoicmom.com. On Twitter @thestoicwoman

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