The Fourfold Root of Stoic Virtue
The Foundation For A New Stoicism
“When someone consulted Epictetus about how he could persuade his brother to stop being ill-disposed towards him, he said: Philosophy doesn’t promise to secure any external good for man, since it would then be embarking on something that lies outside its proper subject matter. For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, and bronze that of the sculptor, the art of living has each individual’s own life as its material.”
Epictetus, Discourses, 1.15
Ancient Stoicism makes a stark distinction between the sage and the non-sage. The sage possesses an abundance of wisdom sufficient to give them the self-coherence that mirrors the self-coherence of the cosmos — the whole of nature. According to ancient Stoic doctrine, sages are equal to gods if they achieve this level of mastery over the self.
The approach to wisdom, then, isn’t quantitative. There are no degrees of “wise”. There is no quantity of “wise” that fills our minds in greater or lesser amounts as water fills a jar. There is wise and there is not-wise.
This is a crucial aspect of Stoic philosophy since it determines the thematic of the Stoic’s practice. Sages are rare — perhaps impossible — and so sagehood serves more as a guiding star than an attainable goal to Stoics.
