Self-Mastery And Slavery Within The Self

When I first read the topic for this month’s edition, without even thinking about it, a phrase bubbled up in my mind: “no slaves, no masters.” I’m not sure precisely how that line of inference occurred, or what original source in my years of reading I’d gleaned that from, letting it sit dusty and unused in my own version of what Descartes long ago called the “storehouse” (in Latin, thesaurus) of his mind.

Variations on that motto show up in literature I’m pretty sure I haven’t read, but I do recall seeing Abraham Lincoln’s quip: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” He felt that both roles were contrary to something else he held to be of great value, a functioning democracy.

In the cases of ancient Stoics, it is clear that while they don’t reject slavery as a feature of the culture and civilization they inhabit, they definitely consider it bad for a person to be a slave not in the legal sense but in a deeper, more fundamental way.

Epictetus, who experienced the condition of slavery firsthand, points out that we can allow ourselves to become slaves to all sorts of people or things who don’t literally own our bodies or labour, but who make their claims on our very souls, our motivational structures, our ruling part. Reinterpreting slavery in this metaphysical and moral manner, wouldn’t it make sense that, without attempting to impose mastery over other people, we should strive to become the opposite of slaves, that is, masters ruling over our own selves?

It all depends on how this self-mastery is to be understood, and it strikes me that there are several wrongheaded ways of conceiving this ideal, generally involving mistaken assumptions, that we ought to be wary of. Perhaps even the notion of being “master”, even if just over ourselves, isn’t quite what we ought to value, desire, or prioritize. After all, the opposite of the slave isn’t truly the master, who is more accurately called the correlative. It’s the free person.

The Stoics use the terms “free” (eleutheros in Greek, liber in Latin) and “freedom” (eleutheria, libertas) a lot. One of the promised outcomes of putting one’s study of Stoic philosophy into practice is precisely that, freedom. Consider the other good states that ancient Stoics mention often. These include self-sufficiency (autarkeia) , not being troubled (ataraxia), not experiencing problematic emotions (apatheia) , even just not being hindered or compelled by others or circumstances.

These are central aspects of eudaimonia, happiness or flourishing, as are arguably the robustly articulated virtues, brought under four cardinal headings of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage, and made more concrete through the numerous subordinate virtues they reference.

Is mastery over oneself a part of that robust characterization of the end of the “art of living”? One could argue that we should read that notion into classic Stoic conceptions. You’d have to do so because it’s not mentioned anywhere near as much as those others. The closest analogue to it would be enkrateia, the virtue of “self- control” subordinate to the cardinal virtue of temperance. Strictly speaking, master is despotēs in Greek, the very term we get “despotism” from. I think perhaps that sense is lingering within the many contemporary pseudo-stoic celebrations of “self-mastery.”

What is the “self” that we’re supposed to impose and exercise mastery over? Another lower part or a whole panoply of parts of ourself, perhaps? And who or what is the master in that case? The ruling part? The faculty of choice? (Both of those are us, and for Epictetus they’re arguably the same).

As with many critics of classical Stoicism, Nietzsche’s complaints seem off base with respect to genuine Stoicism. But perhaps his characterizations in Beyond Good And Evil do apply well to a number of contemporary advocates of Stoicism as self-mastery. He says “you are able to tyrannize over yourselves” (1.9) and that “Stoicism is self-tyranny” Between despotēs (master) and tyrannos (tyrant), there’s not a lot of distance.

If we do wish to retain a model of mastery and slavery applied to the self and its parts, I’d suggest we look to Cicero and Seneca who argue for humane treatment of slaves (in On Duties 1.13, and Letter 47), and aim not at despotically mastering the lower, subordinate, unruly parts of ourselves, but reintegrating them into an analogical household, concord, even friendship within the complicated human beings that we are.

This piece first appeared in the June 2026 issue of the online magazine The Stoic. If this piece has you now interested in Stoicism, and you would like to know what to read next, this might be helpful for you.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, the co-founder of The Stoic Heart®, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.