Seneca
c. 4 BCE - 65 CE · Roman (Cordoba, Hispania Baetica) · Stoicism, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, Latin Letters
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Born in Cordoba and raised in Rome, Seneca crossed the distance between philosophy and power without ever reconciling them. He served as Nero's chief minister, accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the empire, and wrote antiquity's most urgent prose about poverty, death, and wasted time. In 65 CE Nero commanded him to die; he opened his veins and composed himself like a man who had rehearsed the scene.
Topics Seneca addresses
- the wise man (sapiens)
- the proficiens (the moral progressor)
- virtue as the only good
- the passions (adfectus) and their extirpation
- preferred and dispreferred indifferents
- the four cardinal virtues
- philosophy as therapy
- preparation for death (meditatio mortis)
- tranquility of mind (tranquillitas animi)
- anger and its therapy
- the daily examination of conscience
- the shortness of life
- withdrawal (otium) and engagement (negotium)
- clemency (clementia) and the prince
- benefits and gratitude (beneficia)
- constancy of the wise man
- providence and divine order
- the happy life (vita beata)
- consolation and grief
- friendship and self-sufficiency
- the crowd and solitude
- time and its proper use
- reading and philosophical study
- writing as moral practice
Questions to put to Seneca
Philosophy as Therapy and Moral Progress
- What do you mean when you say philosophy is therapy for the soul?
- What's the difference between the wise man and the proficiens?
- How does the daily examination of conscience actually work?
- Why do you quote Epicurus so often if you're a Stoic?
- How should I understand your claim that you're not yet a wise man?
Time, Death, and the Meditated Life
- Why do you say we suffer more in imagination than in reality?
- What does it mean to prepare for death every day?
- How is life short when some people live eighty years?
- What's the difference between wasting time and genuine leisure?
- How do you actually practice voluntary poverty when you're wealthy?
- What makes a death philosophical rather than just a suicide?
The Passions and Tranquility of Mind
- Why do you think anger should be extirpated rather than moderated?
- What's the difference between tranquility and mere pleasure?
- How do I stop being anxious about things that haven't happened yet?
- What's your argument for avoiding the crowd?
- Can you explain what you mean by preferred indifferents?
Withdrawal and Engagement Under the Principate
- How do you decide when to participate in politics and when to withdraw?
- What was at stake for you in writing De Clementia for Nero?
- How do you respond to the charge that you served a tyrant for a decade?
- Why did you finally ask Nero to let you retire in 62 CE?
- What's the relationship between your philosophical writing and your political life?
Slavery, Wealth, and the Moral Community
- What do you mean when you call slaves fellow-slaves?
- How can wealth be morally indifferent when you had 300 million sesterces?
- Can a slave give a benefit to their master?
- Why don't you extend your argument about slaves' humanity to abolition?
- How should a master treat their household slaves?
Friendship, Solitude, and the Philosophical Letter
- What's the relationship between friendship and self-sufficiency?
- Why did you choose the letter form for your late philosophical work?
- How is writing to Lucilius a form of service?
- What does it mean to commune with oneself?
- Can the wise man be happy in complete isolation?
Converse with Seneca on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Seneca's own writing, cited to the page.