I was suffering too grievously to think of the danger, since a sluggish seasickness which brought no relief was racking me, the sort that upsets the liver without clearing it. Therefore I laid down the law to my pilot, forcing him to make for the shore, willy-nilly. When we drew near, I did not wait for things to be done in accordance with Vergil's orders, until
Prow faced seawards
or
Anchor plunged from bow;
I remembered my craftsmanship [artificii] as an elderly [vetus] devotee of frozen water, and, clad as I was in my cloak, let myself down into the sea, just as a cold-water bather should. Whaat do you think I suffered [Quae putas me passum], scrambling over the rocks, searching out the path, or making one for myself? I understood that sailors have no reason to fear the land [Intellexi non immerito nautis terram timeri]. It is hard to believe what I endured when I could not endure myself; you may be sure that the reason why Ulysses was shipwrecked on every possible occasion was not so much because the sea-god was angry with him from his birth; he was seasick [nausiator erat].--Seneca, Letter 53, Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with modest modifications)
It seems likely that this letter was written during the last two or three years of Seneca's life, around AD 63, so, to be on the conservative side, when he was nearly sixty. I am just close enough in age to feel some himpathy for his scrambling over rocks in his cloak, while not obtuse to the comic nature of the scene. One can imagine the local villagers telling each other stories down the generations -- too bad there were no spyglasses or iphones to capture it -- about the fabulously wealthy, once powerful courtier and philosopher, famous for preaching "the incredible force of philosophy is to counter all the forces of chance" [Incredibilis philosophiae vis est ad omnem fortuitam vim retundendam], going onshore in panic and unsteadily.
Not unlike Aristophanes' hiccup, Seneca, who chooses to share the story so he is clearly not obtuse to the comedy of it all, realizes that our physical infirmity can undermine our dignity. Not to mention that Seneca may have originated the tradition of taking a new year's day dip in the sea.
I do not mean to suggest here we're just in the realm of comedy. Seneca's impious naturalization of Odysseus's journey is not an isolated feature in the letter. For in context, the force of philosophy, especially in the hands of the wise [sapiens], is compared favorably to that of God (singular). The beneficial effects of wisdom are our own achievements, whereas God is, we might say, beneficiary of natural luck.
Before I get to the main point of the letter, I have to admit that the unsteadiness he describes at sea, hit a bit home this week. On Wednesday I taught my first in-person class -- fittingly on Book 1 of the Republic -- in over 17 months. I had divided the three hour seminar into three, giving myself and the students a break every 45-50 minutes. In line of the advise of the occupational physician, my department had lowered my work-load by cutting the student numbers in half. They also tasked the teacher of the other half to be my back-up, in case I could not make it to class. (For my covid diaries, see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, and here).
The seminar starts at 5pm, and after lunch I developed an awful headache just as I was finishing up my hand-out. I usually just improvise my seminars, letting the conversation take us where chance directs (with a few sights I tend to wish to visit along the way.) But I had decided on the hand-out to take some of the cognitive load off my brain during the seminar. So, as I lay in bed, I contemplated initiating the back-up plan. Luckily, the painkillers worked and by three, I decided to bike the work. There I scouted the room, and even looked for a place outside in the heat. It was an evening for Plato under a tree, but sadly I could not find a quiet enough spot.
The students all arrived masked, and they turned out to be excellent. I was reminded again that even with inexperienced students in an introductory course, a seminar-style discussion is a site for mutual learning. A student's question led me to see that Polemarchus' attitude toward inviting Socrates anticipates Thrasymachus' understanding of justice.
Unfortunately, in the second hour, just after I had gone through the course requirements, I felt my head go light (as if my sugar had dropped), and my legs went unsteady. In a moment of self-aggrandizing pity, I thought of the magicians that died on stage. Then I remembered Seneca's unsteady legs, and was comforted. Luckily, in my course plan, this was just the moment I had settled on a group assignment without my participation. So after quickly instructing and dividing them, I left the class room to get some fresh air and (against all my principles which forbid coffee after 5pm) an espresso. By the time I eased back into the class-room, I noticed I had not been missed and my head had settled.
My occupational physician has kind of settled on trying to convince me not to accept succor from medical science. But not to get too dispirited because while I am clearly not recovered, I am improved relative to some date months ago. More subtly, she tries to remind me that while my symptoms keep recurring -- weird memory loss, random headaches, what I call head-fatigue, lapses in concentration --, my recoveries of each seem fairly rapid.
And indeed, I managed to lead discussion in which we collected and analyzed the findings of the group assignment. Because my students are so splendid, it was easy. But near the end I realized my brain was working at half speed. Good enough for the day. And not for the first time, I am reminded how lucky I am that, despite all the evils of the modern academy, I have landed in such a joy-producing occupation. (Of course, we'll see how many students show up for second class!)
There is a lot of interesting philosophy in letter 53. For example, Seneca insists that sometimes we know when we sleep that we sleep. And that there is an asymmetry in how we experience physical and mental/psychic pains.
But here I want to focus on the main point of the 53rd letter, which is Seneca's insistence that philosophy should be in some sense all-consuming (in context really, all conquering). "philosophy says to all things: "I am not going to receive at this time what was left over to you, but you will have that which I have rejected."" ['Idem philosophia rebus omnibus: non sum hoc tempus acceptura quod vobis superfuerit, sed id vos habebitis quod ipsa reiecero'.] This claim is out of fashion for three reasons.
First, it goes against the popular idea that philosophy is the mother of the sciences, who become mature (or at least adolescents) when they break off from philosophy. Now, we tend to think of philosophy as the diminished remainder, of what is left over, from the more successful, more progressive, and better funded sciences. This is familiar enough from the recurring crises of identity within philosophy which claims for itself (not entirely convincingly) expertise in conceptual analysis in one decade, in inferential practices in another decade, in analyzing arguments in another decade (or two), in modal thinking in another decade, and so on (yes, I plead guilty for having peddled synthetic philosophy).
Second, it goes against the increasingly powerful idea that there should be a work-life balance, or a proper integration of work-life. And this reflects the idea that somehow doing philosophy professionally is in need of containment. And those of us who recognize the mad, publication arms race in the context of limited jobs, may well come to agree that someone should impose limits or we will be all consumed by trying to publish and refereeing the attempts to publish.
Third, the very idea that philosophy is a way of life that can benefit us is taken to be archaic. And in so far as someone should be busy with how to live, and how to ground intellectually our experiments in living, it is thought this is best left to religion (we hasten to add, Eastern or Western) or to popularizing psychologists, who can draw on the best scientific insights. (I would mention our historical rivals, the poets, but our culture has let them wither.)
It is worth noticing that in so far as one accepts the modern intellectual division of labor, in the complex world of our open society (with heavy government involvement), this only makes more urgent that there should be a site of disciplined reflection on how to live collectively and individually. Rather than being embarrassed by wisdom, or relegating it to footnotes, or ceding it completely to mystics, philosophy should be inviting to those that seek paths to wisdom. Luckily the roads to wisdom cannot be patented or be turned into a trade-mark or turned into private property. As Seneca implies throughout the Letters, philosophy is our commons.
The activities that give us joy, community, and energy should not be limited. If we need to be protected against overworking in philosophy, perhaps we should re-organize how we construe the content of our work? Yes, Seneca's unsteady stomach and legs and my headaches are a reminder that there are physical preconditions to joyful activity that may be fragile along multiple dimensions. If you want to preach revolution, you may add the many unnamed slaves in Seneca's entourage, and the precariat at my own university to those material preconditions.
Let me wrap up. As regular readers know, I am myself not convinced that Seneca is right that philosophy can conquer uncertainty. And, Seneca's idea that philosophy should "rule" our lives is easily mocked. Yet, during the months I spent in my sickbed this year, I realized that such mockery is itself a sign that not all is well. That behind the mockery there is no insight, that nothing grows in its meaningless void. Our lives are relatively short, do not delay, "let us, therefore, rouse ourselves, that we may be able to correct our mistakes" and each take our baby-steps in our perhaps occasionally intersecting paths toward wisdom and let these shape our lives.
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