Simple Stoic Advice
Mentors and Sages
Mentors and Sages
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.48:
Quote
“When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.”
Advice
The Stoic Sage is one who is the epitome of wisdom. The Sage was never a real individual, but rather, an idea that the Stoics strove for.
The Stoics often discuss the need to find mentors who we can model ourselves after for certain ways of living. Socrates, who inspired Zeno of Citium to start the philosophy of Stoicism, was held as the wisest of all. Many of the early and even late Stoics in Greece and Roman viewed Socrates as the epitome of wisdom.
No Stoic, however, was held as a Stoic Sage except for Cato the Younger, whom Seneca himself viewed as the ultimate Stoic. Cato had held fast to his principles throughout his entire life, culminating in Cato taking his own life rather than a pardon under Julius Caesar.
Cato is supposed to have said to his own son, “I, who have been brought up in freedom, with the right of free speech, cannot in my old age change and learn slavery instead.” According to Plutarch, upon Caesar hearing the news of Cato taking his own life, he is said to have uttered, “O Cato, I begrudge you your death; for you begrudged me the sparing of your life.”
Asking ourselves what our mentor or the Stoic Sage would do provides us an opportunity for reflection of our actions, our goals for life, and provides us the ability to imagine having this individual look upon our actions and provide feedback, even if they are not actually there.
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