The Stoic paradox

At the heart of the Stoic story as it is expressed in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus there is thus a profound tension, dialectic, or, perhaps, paradox. To learn what we are and how to become what we are—rational mortals—we must be inducted into the Stoic way of being. Reason is not what we think for ourselves but a specifically traditioned communal craft. And yet to learn the Stoic craft of reason is to go into ourselves, to become solitary, self-sufficient fortresses of right judgment. There remain other Stoics—and there is the need to teach and be apprenticed—but exactly to the extent that we succeed in the Stoic life, even other Stoics are finally removed from us by the same life that initially drew us together in the common task of learning how to love wisdom.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 215