Il saggio stoico tra paradosso e parenesi

The Stoic Wise between Paradox and Parenesis · I will try to outline the Stoic topos of the wise and its apparents contradictions, but also to delineate the pedagogical aims the Stoics tried to reach by describing a human type apparently so alien to common people's mind-set. The Stoic sophos embodies the realization of the best known cornerstones of Stoic ethics and is therefore described as such a model of perfection that seems implausible to propose as a realistic practical goal. My hypothesis is that the Stoa makes the wise the extreme case of perfected humanity from which almost all human beings (including Stoic philosophers) remain very far, to underline this last point exactly. The widespread distance of humanity from perfection actually corroborates the idea of the substantial equality of men, all imperfect but also all participating in the same order of reality made up of men and gods.