GLI ESERCIZI DELLO STOICISMO ROMANO E GLI YOGASŪTRA DI PATAÑJALI: SAGGIO DI LETTURA COMPARATA

Despite his reservations about the use of comparativsm in philosophy, Pierre Hadot pointed out the existence of similarities between the ideal of the sage in the Greco-Roman world and the Buddhist description of the sage, in relation to the search for a method to escape suffering (souffrance). This article intends to contribute to the comparative reading of ancient systems of exercise by proposing a lexical and methodological comparison between Patañjali’s Yogasūtra and Roman Stoicism. Without being susceptible to reductio ad unum, a common feature of the methods presented here is the search for a radical and pervasive regulation of the psychophysical kinetics of the human being: in this perspective, Patañjali’s method (yoga) – which involves the definitive suppression of mental perturbations (cittavṛttinirodha) – is comparable with the ancient Mediterranean search of a method (τέχνη) for the suppression of the perturbationes (partially related to the Sanskrit word vṛtti) of the animus or ψυχή (partially related to the Sanskrit word citta). Patañjali’s use of the term nirodha, in order to mean the cessation of the perturbationes of citta, recalls the aspiration underlying the privative alpha of the Greek terms ἀπάθεια and ἀταραξία.