When Smart People Need Each Other — Letters from a Stoic

Can a wise man help another wise man? The question seems like a paradox, if wisdom is complete, what can be added? Letter 109 answers: completion is not the same as stagnation. Good men are mutually helpful not because either one is lacking, but because wisdom, like any high-level skill, needs to be kept in active practice.

Wrestlers sharpen one another; musicians sharpen one another; the same is true of the wise. A wise man can quicken another's impulses, point out opportunities for honourable action, share discoveries, open up new lines of inquiry. The letter is also a mirror of what bad men do for each other: they debase and inflame, praise each other's vices, compound each other's faults. Each kind of association amplifies what is already there.

The final section imagines a student pushing back against the abstract difficulties of philosophy: forget the complications, he says, teach me now what I need to know. Make me unterrified when swords are at my throat and fire is around me. Make me despise pleasure and glory.

The technical subtleties can come later. First teach me to live.