“Only the wise person is free, and every fool is a slave.”
— Zeno of CitiumStoic doctrine reported in Diogenes Laertius 7.121-122; approximate English rendering, attribution to Zeno uncertain
Commentary
This paradox, that only the wise are free and all others are slaves, is among the best-known Stoic claims about freedom, and it reverses the ordinary sense of political status. Freedom, on this view, is a matter of rational self-government, so that a person of high birth who is ruled by passions is in fact enslaved. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers, show how the doctrine follows from the Stoic account of the passions and of assent, and they note that it was defended as a literal truth rather than as a metaphor. Brad Inwood observes that the doctrine supported a radical egalitarianism, since outward status was irrelevant to inner freedom. Malcolm Schofield argues that the Stoic claim had social implications, in that it validated the moral worth of slaves and of those excluded from civic life, although the Stoics did not systematically oppose slavery as an institution. Julia Annas notes that critics saw the paradox as a rhetorical extravagance, and that the Stoics accepted its apparent strangeness. The English is an approximation, and the Greek should be checked in Diogenes Laertius before quotation.
Commentary
This paradox, that only the wise are free and all others are slaves, is among the best-known Stoic claims about freedom, and it reverses the ordinary sense of political status. Freedom, on this view, is a matter of rational self-government, so that a person of high birth who is ruled by passions is in fact enslaved. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers, show how the doctrine follows from the Stoic account of the passions and of assent, and they note that it was defended as a literal truth rather than as a metaphor. Brad Inwood observes that the doctrine supported a radical egalitarianism, since outward status was irrelevant to inner freedom. Malcolm Schofield argues that the Stoic claim had social implications, in that it validated the moral worth of slaves and of those excluded from civic life, although the Stoics did not systematically oppose slavery as an institution. Julia Annas notes that critics saw the paradox as a rhetorical extravagance, and that the Stoics accepted its apparent strangeness. The English is an approximation, and the Greek should be checked in Diogenes Laertius before quotation.