Glossary
Stoic sage
ὁ σοφός (ho sophos), lat. sapiens
The sage, sophos in Greek and sapiens in Latin, is the person in whom Stoic virtue is complete. The school describes him through claims that sound like paradoxes: only the sage is free, only he is good, nothing that happens can harm him. Seneca defends the last in On the Firmness of the Wise Man (Aubrey Stewart, 1889), whose title states the thesis: that the wise man can receive neither injury nor insult. Chapter VII argues it in three steps. What hurts must be stronger than what is hurt; wickedness is not stronger than virtue; therefore the wise man cannot be hurt.
The same chapter answers the objection that such a man is nowhere to be found. Seneca replies that the Stoics do not invent him as an unreal glory of the human race; he may be uncommon and appear only at long intervals, and Cato perhaps surpassed the model. The sage is a standard by which progress is measured, not someone the reader has met. Epictetus says the same at the close of the Enchiridion, in Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 translation: Socrates became perfect by attending to nothing but reason, and one who is not yet a Socrates ought to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates.
The sage is not without feeling. In Letter 9, Seneca sets the Stoic position against the school of Stilbo: in Richard Gummere’s 1917 translation, our ideal wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them, while theirs does not even feel them. He is sufficient unto himself for a happy existence, not for mere existence. The happy life the texts describe, eudaimonia, is the sage’s life; everyone else is at best on the road towards it.
In the texts
Seneca · On the Firmness of the Wise Man, VII
Now wickedness is not stronger than virtue; therefore the wise man cannot be hurt.
Seneca · Letter 9, §3
There is this difference between ourselves and the other school: our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them; their wise man does not even feel them.
Epictetus · Enchiridion, L
And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought however to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates.
What the term does not mean
- The sage is not an unfeeling man. Letter 9 draws the line: he feels his troubles and overcomes them; the wise man who does not feel them at all belongs to another school.
- The sage is not a self-portrait of any Stoic author. In On a Happy Life, XVII, Seneca says he is not a wise man, and Epictetus sets up Socrates, not himself, as the model; the school admits the figure is rare.
- Unhurt does not mean untouched. On the Firmness of the Wise Man, X, grants that bodily pain, the loss of friends and children and the ruin of his country strike the wise man, though they do not shake his principles.
Related terms
- Eudaimonia — εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia)
- Apatheia — ἀπάθεια (apatheia)
- Prohairesis — προαίρεσις (prohairesis)
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference — the work and its locator, the author too wherever the room allows — in the app and in its widgets, on the Home Screen and the Lock Screen.