Seneca

(3 B.C.E - 65 C.E.)

 

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, was born at Cordoba, Spain into a provincial middle class family of pronounced intellectual learnings. His father was an accomplished rhetorician, and Seneca’s education at Rome naturally included a thorough grounding in rhetoric. He was, however, equally attracted to philosophy and received instruction from several masters who professed various forms of the currently popular Stoic eclecticism. In the course of a normal political career his distinction as an advocate incurred the displeasure of Emperor Caligula, and he was all but condemned in 39 C.E.

We are told only that his ill health saved him. In 41 C.E. he was banished to Corsica by Claudius on a charge of adultery with the Emperor’s niece, an exile he seems to have born with little fortitude. Recalled to Rome in 49 C.E. to become tutor to the young Nero, he was from his pupils accession in 54 to 62 C.E. one of the Emperor’s two chief advisors. Then, feeling his power slipping away, he retired from public life. In 65 C.E. he was accused of participation in a conspiracy to depose Nero and, on the imperial command, embraced the suicide which his philosophy permitted him as a final release from the ills of this world. Personally acquainted with the extremes of failure and success in public life, Seneca was well qualified to discuss the moral problems which confronted the Roman ruling classes.

Seneca’s works include the twelve Moral Essays of widely differing lengths expounding various aspects of ethical theory or giving advice on particular moral problems (written between 37 and 65 C.E.). The 124 Moral Letters, a kind of correspondence course in right thinking and acting addressed to a novice in Stoicism, were written towards the end of his life. Roughly contemporaneous with the Letters is the "Physical Problems," which deals with Stoic explanations of natural phenomena and is often heavily laced with moral reflections. There are also nine tragedies, poetic dramas based loosely on Greek models; these powerful studies of emotional stress are intended to be read, not performed. The Apocolocyntosis is a brutal satire on the deification of the emperor Claudius. Several philosophical works, both physical and ethical are lost or fragmentary. All his speeches have perished. Seneca’s style, noted for its rhetorical finish, epigrammatic brevity, and mordant wit, occasionally carries these characteristics to excess but is neither as overpowering nor as tedious as its severer critics suggest.

Philosophy

Seneca was, in general, a faithful adherent of Stoicism, but he more than once asserts his right to adopt any views of previous philosophers that seem correct to him. He frequently quotes Epicurus with approval, and he is even able to suggest that the apparently contradictory aims of opposing schools may, in the end, come to the same thing, thus exemplifying the eclectic and synthesizing spirit of the philosophy of the period. He also draws heavily on the popular ethical preaching of the Cynics. It is often difficult to distinguish this element from his orthodox Stoicism because of the community of ideas between them, but Seneca probably owes to the Cynics the urgent, evangelizing tone which characterizes his work.

His main philosophical aim was to lead men toward virtue, to convey to them the knowledge of the nature of the world and their place in it which would enable them to conduct their lives in accordance with the will of God. Logic and physics have their place, but only to provide a foundation. They must not usurp the place of ethics, which is the true end of philosophy. "There is no philosophy without goodness, and no goodness without philosophy." This emphasis on ethics at the expense of logical studies and physical theories, which formed such an important part of early Stoic teaching, was no major innovation, since they had always effectively subordinate to ethics.

Wisdom is the key to goodness. The truly wise man, with his understanding of the universe, will value only that which is in itself truly valuable, namely virtue, He will realize that all the external goods and ills of this world are transitory. They cannot detract from a man’s true worth, which is within him. Only when he loses this can he truly be said to have been harmed. To achieve this state of self-sufficiency, we must rid ourselves of our emotions, which are essentially mistaken judgments of the value to be attached to externals and are constant incitements to vice. In this elimination of emotions the will plays a vital part. Wisdom and goodness demand a conscious harmonization of our own wills with the divine will of the universe. Once this is achieved, we will always choose what is right and reject what is wrong, thus producing actions which are not only right in themselves but which are also chosen for the right motives, a vital feature of true moral action. The man who achieves this state will be a truly godlike creature, utterly immune to the blows of Fortune.

There is nothing either original or striking in this. It is standard Stoic doctrine, some of it, indeed, going back before the earliest Stoics to Socrates. What is striking is the power with which the message is expounded. Seneca’s primary aim is to persuade us to act and think rightly, not to prove that certain ethical propositions are true. To achieve this, he depicts with extreme vividness the benefits of virtue and the disadvantages of vice. He is at his best when enlarging upon the disastrous effects of the emotions. Pain, pleasure, fear, desire - all are equally to be avoided. He examines with almost clinical precision the vicious effect of the passions on men and then proceeds to explain how they may be brought under control and finally conquered, illustrating his argument with a wealth of examples, cautionary or encouraging.

This method obviously does not lend itself to the exposition of an all-embracing and coherent philosophical system. Indeed, lack of consistency and logical development, both between different works and within the same work, have long been major criticisms of Seneca. This cannot be denied, but it can be explained. Seneca was a practical moral teacher, a kind of spiritual guide or father confessor to his friends. In a favorite metaphor, he was a "physician" of the soul. Thus, he concentrates on particular moral or psychological problems (he would not have distinguished between them) and provides particular answers to suit both the problem and the person who raises it. The stance taken and the arguments produced vary according to the stage in the Stoic faith which his questioner has reached. This practical aim is brought out in his emphasis on the value of moral "progress." This was an early modification in Stoic teaching which Seneca eagerly adopted. While not deserting the fundamental and austere concept of the true "Sage," it recognized the importance and relative moral worth of determined effort to attain that ideal, thus bridging the abyss between the perfect "Sage" and the great mass of "fools," a compromise vital to Seneca’s practical aims.

Seneca has nothing to offer the philosopher who studies the structure of language or intellectual processes, but the acuteness of his psychological insights and the sanity of his particular moral advice make him of the greatest interest to those concerned with human heart and its strivings after virtue.

James R. G. Wright in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy