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Socratic Wisdom and the Freedom of Self-Sufficiency
Like the Stoics and other Socratics, Kant identifies the ideal of virtue with the sage (der Weise) (MS 6: 383; CPR A569/B597).1 This is unsurprising when we consider that Kant equates wisdom (Weisheit) not with intelligence or prudence, but rather with the ability to make morality one's end: the consciousness of duty as the incentive of one's action is the 'principle of wisdom' that makes a person a 'practical philosopher' ( MS 6: 375n; cf. 405, 441). Hence Kant equates the 'doctrine of wisdom' with the proper content of moral philosophy itself (5: 163) and the requirements of duty with the 'rules of wisdom' (Toward Perpetual Peace 8: 370).2 Kant might seem to depart from this Socratic ideal of wisdom by endorsing the Christian ideal of holiness. Indeed, Kant identifies the proper ethical ideal not with the Stoic sage, but rather with the sage of the Gospel, that is, Christ.3 But Kant also tells us that the ideals of wisdom and holiness are 'identical objectively and in their ground' ( KpV 5: 11n). The ideal of holiness differs from that of wisdom merely insofar as it 'deprives the human being of confidence that he can be fully adequate to it, at least in this life' (KpV 5: 127n; cf. Moralphilosophie Collins, 27: 251-2).
Kant's debt to the Socratic ideal of the sage is especially clear in his remark about wisdom in the Metaphysics of Morals:
Only in its possession is a person free, healthy, rich, a king, etc., and capable of suffering loss neither by chance nor fate, since he is in possession of himself, and the virtuous person cannot lose his virtue. (MS 6: 405)
Kant does not elaborate on this remark, but he clearly means to invoke some familiar ethical ideals associated with the sage of the Socratic tradition.4 Indeed, all of the characteristics of the sage that Kant mentions here have ancient precedents.5 In this tradition, what the ordinary person thinks is valuable in wealth, power, etc. is found, in reality, only in the life of the sage. Even bodily health and integrity are not truly valuable,...