Day 13 of 30 — 30 Days of Stoicism series
The Stoics had a concept they called the Sage: the perfectly virtuous person, fully in accordance with reason, immune to passion, unshakeable in judgement, incapable of error.
They also admitted, freely, that the Sage was essentially theoretical.
Chrysippus, one of the earliest and most systematic Stoic philosophers, reportedly said a Sage might appear once every few centuries, if that.
Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be one.
Epictetus never claimed to be one.
The Sage functioned as a compass bearing, not a description of an achievable human state.
That distinction matters.
Most ethical systems offer either an unattainable ideal, sainthood, enlightenment, perfect virtue, or a sliding scale that adjusts the standard to what feels reachable.
The Stoics held the ideal firm and focused on the direction of movement rather than the destination.
You’re not trying to become the Sage.
You’re trying to move toward the Sage.
The gap is permanent.
The movement is what matters.
Marcus Aurelius used the Sage as a practical question.
Facing a difficult decision involving other people, he would ask himself: given what I know about virtue, justice, wisdom, and courage, what does the best version of this decision look like?
Not what the perfect philosopher would do.
Not what the theory says.
The best version, from here.
He didn’t always live up to the answer.
The Meditations is a record of someone asking that question daily and frequently falling short.
The asking was the practice.
The gap between ideal and actual was the training ground.
For vegans, the Sage concept does something easy to miss.
Veganism is an ethical position built around an ideal: a world in which animals are not exploited for human use.
That ideal is, at present, nowhere near realised.
The food system is what it is.
The legal protections are what they are.
The cultural norms are what they are.
No individual vegan, however consistent, fully escapes the systems they live within.
Animal products turn up in unexpected places: medications, supply chains, the infrastructure of daily life.
The purist response to this is despair or denial: if you can’t live perfectly, either stop trying or pretend you’re doing better than you are.
The Stoic response holds the ideal as the ideal, treats your movement toward it as what you control, and treats the gap between where you are and where the ideal is as something that doesn’t invalidate the direction.
This is what makes the Sage useful as a practical concept rather than a crushing standard.
The ask isn’t perfect consistency, eliminating every trace of animal exploitation from your life.
The ask is to keep asking the question: what would the best version of this decision look like?
Then to move toward that answer, imperfectly, persistently, without claiming to have arrived.
Epictetus returned often to a related framing: progress shows up in how you behave, particularly when it’s difficult, not in how well you can quote Chrysippus or Zeno.
The Sage is the direction.
The daily practice is the movement.
The gap is where the actual work happens.
The Sage also corrects a failure mode common in ethical communities, including vegan ones.
Setting the standard so high that only a few people can claim to meet it.
Then using that standard to evaluate others’ credentials rather than your own progress.
The person who says “you’re not really vegan if you take that medication” isn’t reasoning from the Sage concept.
They’re policing the boundary instead of moving toward the ideal.
The Sage doesn’t care about credentials.
The Sage cares about direction.
The question is always first-person: am I moving toward the best version of this decision, regardless of whether anyone else is moving fast enough?
Practice for today
Describe your own version of the Sage, the ideal person you’re trying to move toward.
Not achievements, not credentials.
Character.
What does that person look like in a difficult conversation?
Under pressure?
When no one is watching?
Then name one specific gap between that description and how you behaved this week.
That gap is your actual practice.
Cameron Blewett has been vegan for thirty years. He spent over a decade living by Stoic principles before he found out that’s what they were called.
He writes about food safety, vegan ethics, and the overlap between Stoic philosophy and plant-based living, work that doesn’t fit the modern secular Stoic mould, and isn’t trying to.
Based in Melbourne, Australia, he also writes at CameronBlewett.blog, greybeardedvegan.blog and foodsafety.ist.