"Think on death." ['Meditare mortem'] In saying this, [Epicurus] bids us to meditate on freedom [meditari libertatem]. He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery; he is above any power [supra omnem potentiam est], or, at any rate, he is beyond it. What terrors have prisons and bonds and bars for him? His way out is clear. There is only one chain which binds us to life, and that is the love of life [amor vitae]. The chain may not be cast off, but it may be rubbed away, so that, when it is timely [ut si quando res exiget] nothing may retard or hinder us from being ready to do at once that which at some time we are bound to do.--Seneca, Letter 26.
Nietzsche famously castigates Platonism (the whole of Western philosophy) as a life-denying philosophy. At first sight Seneca's mortal meditations confirm the charge: we should meditate on death in order to overcome the love life. Yet, the point of thinking about death is to overcome the ways in which the love of life enslave us and thereby secure true liberty. For, by implication, Seneca holds that when we often assume we are free, we are really in the grip of some attachment, which we are unwilling to lose, and which constrains our actions.
The passage helps explain the fact that while Stoicism could have an apathetic or quietist consequence, it also "had," as Adam Smith noted, "very great influence upon the character and conduct of its followers," and "that though it might sometimes incite them to unnecessary violence, its general tendency was to animate them to actions of the most heroic magnanimity and most extensive benevolence." (Smith fails to note the significance of freedom, although elsewhere in the section he does connect the Stoics to liberty.)
Contemporary, scholarly readers may see in this passage an affirmation of republicanism (a Ciceronian version of which has been revived). But it is by no means always obvious that Seneca is a republican, and, in context, Seneca seems not to be focused on a particular political order (although, of course, he was intimately familiar with the institution of slavery); but, rather, on a certain comportment to life (or death). In fact, the letter as a whole tries analyze how much of Seneca's present character is a consequence of wisdom (that is prior emendation) and how much of it is a consequence of his old age.
So, here it is not entirely clear what Seneca means by freedom. In fact, I doubt that Seneca insists on acting without constraints at all.* For, in the previous Letter 25 (which I commented on obliquely last time) had discussed what we would call ethics by the introduction of an impartial spectator device. In fact, any spectator will do:
There is no real doubt that it is good for one to have appointed a guardian over oneself, and to have someone whom you may look up to, someone whom you may regard as a witness of your thoughts. It is, indeed, nobler by far to live as you would live under the eyes of some good man, always at your side; but nevertheless I am content if you only act, in whatever you do, as you would act if anyone at all were looking on [ut sic facias quaecumque facies tamquam spectet aliquis:].--Letter 25
It is quite notable here, that for Seneca the spectator within need not be Cato or Scipio but can be anyone. Seneca is willing to embrace such egalitarian spectatorship because he thinks that "solitude prompts us to all kinds of evil" [omnia nobis mala solitudo persuadet.] (Letter 25) What makes me shudder is that today so many political crimes are executed in front of the camera, even demand its presence.
Be that as it may, I was suddenly reminded of the Stoic echoes in Janis Joplin's version of Me and Bobby McGee (written by Kris Kristofferson, who performs it with Joan Baez here):
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