Achieving moral excellence is achieving moral autonomy, stages 5 and 6 on Kohlberg's scale.
Greco-Roman Stoicism, greatly influenced by the West's discovery of Buddhism, preached moral excellence and, therefore, autonomy. This meant that those seeking such excellence no longer depended on conventions or legal codifications that, as casuistry, designated good and evil.
The moral man—Stoicism was strongly masculine—assumes the revelation of social virtue in his soul. As a scholar, a magistrate, a politician, and even a soldier, the moral man of Stoicism gratifies himself in his own conscience by choosing good over evil, rejecting any other distraction of the spirit. When he reaches this state, Epictetus considers him "a philosopher" ("we, the philosophers") and takes as his model figures of the past such as Socrates and Diogenes.
It is possible that Chinese Confucianism had a similar conception of virtue.
Christianity, a mass religion, prevailed over Roman Stoicism. There were no more philosophers (it would take more than a thousand years for the West to have such men again, in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment), and in the pursuit of virtue (moral autonomy), a curious duality emerged: unlike the Stoic "philosophers," those who achieve moral excellence (the "saints")... far from being destined to govern society, find themselves outside of it.
It is true that Socrates and Diogenes themselves are portrayed almost as wandering vagabonds (as the sadhu-renouncers)... but they had much to say to rulers about how to pursue the common good. Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca will govern themselves.
Christian virtue is apolitical. And that is why its ideal is that the man or woman who achieves moral excellence preaches not so much good governance but interpersonal moral virtue such as charity or the "state of Grace," in thought, word, and deed. The French writer Ernest Renan (a scholar who was an atheist and former Catholic priest) wrote that Christianity preached "pure religion."
Two thousand years later, after the failure of socialism, there is an opportunity for a moral evolution based, once again, on psychological principles of autonomy.
Christianity's dualism (a sinful secular society and an apolitical community of saints that maintains the flame of moral autonomy) signals today the possibility of merging saintliness and secularity (something impossible two thousand years ago, due to the preeminence of the supernatural).
The equivalent of Stoicism (an elite of philosophers within society itself) has the advantage of being more conventional and acceptable to the intellectual elites for whom it was always intended; with socialism having failed, apolitical altruism is the only option for today's philosopher.
But "secularized" Christianity likely has more options as an alternative than a new Stoicism, because epistemologically altruism cannot be conceived without charity.
We would have a conception of nonpolitical social change based on civic responsibility, equivalent to paying taxes but of higher impact.
And maybe we could also have a conception of nonpolitical social change based on the psychological transformation of interpersonal relationships in the direction of empathy and benevolence.
