Member-only story
Featured
The highest good of them all — Part II
From wisdom to virtue and good judgment
While Socrates in the Euthydemus established wisdom as the governing principle that transforms neutral externals into genuine goods or evils (as we’ve seen in Part I), the later Stoic tradition would both honor and refine this insight in ways that prove even more practically applicable to the challenges of daily life. The intellectual foundation laid by Socratic wisdom — that knowledge of the good must encompass both theoretical understanding and practical application — becomes in the hands of Seneca and Epictetus a more actionable and psychologically sophisticated framework for human flourishing.
Seneca, writing in his 71st letter to Lucilius some four centuries after Plato’s dialogue, shifts the emphasis from wisdom per se to virtue (virtus) as the highest good, focusing on how philosophical understanding must manifest in concrete moral excellence and resilient character. Epictetus, meanwhile, opens the Enchiridion with what might be seen as the most psychologically penetrating formulation of all: that our highest good lies not in wisdom or virtue abstractly conceived, but in the disciplined exercise of judgment (prohairesis) that distinguishes between what is “up to us” and what is not.
