On Withdrawing from Life (Covid Diaries): Seneca Letter 55

3. As my habit is, I began to look about for something there that might be of service to me, when my eyes fell upon the villa which had once belonged to Vatia. So this was the place where that famous praetorian millionaire passed his old age! He was famed for nothing else than his life of leisure, and he was regarded as lucky only for that reason. For whenever men were ruined by their friendship with Asinius Gallus whenever others were ruined by their hatred of Sejanus, and later by their intimacy with him, – for it was no more dangerous to have offended him than to have loved him, – people used to cry out: "O Vatia, you alone know how to live!" 4. But what he knew was how to hide, not how to live; and it makes a great deal of difference whether your life be one of leisure or one of idleness. So I never drove past his country-place during Vatia's lifetime without saying to myself: "Here lies Vatia!"

But, my dear Lucilius, philosophy is a thing of holiness, something to be worshipped, so much so that the very counterfeit pleases. For the mass of mankind consider that a person is at leisure who has withdrawn from society, is free from care, self-sufficient, and lives for himself; but these privileges can be the reward only of the wise man. Does he who is a victim of anxiety know how to live for himself? What? Does he even know (and that is of first importance) how to live at all? 

...

8. The place where one lives, however, can contribute little towards tranquillity; it is the mind which must make everything agreeable to itself. I have seen men despondent in a gay and lovely villa, and I have seen them to all appearance full of business in the midst of a solitude. For this reason you should not refuse to believe that your life is well-placed merely because you are not now in Campania. But why are you not there? Just let your thoughts travel, even to this place. 9. You may hold converse with your friends when they are absent, and indeed as often as you wish and for as long as you wish. For we enjoy this, the greatest of pleasures, all the more when we are absent from one another. For the presence of friends makes us fastidious; and because we can at any time talk or sit together, when once we have parted we give not a thought to those whom we have just beheld. 10. And we ought to bear the absence of friends cheerfully, just because everyone is bound to be often absent from his friends even when they are present. Include among such cases, in the first place, the nights spent apart, then the different engagements which each of two friends has, then the private studies of each and their excursions into the country, and you will see that foreign travel does not rob us of much. 11. A friend should be retained in the spirit; such a friend can never be absent. He can see every day whomsoever he desires to see.

I would therefore have you share your studies with me, your meals, and your walks. We should be living within too narrow limits if anything were barred to our thoughts. I see you, my dear Lucilius, and at this very moment I hear you; I am with you to such an extent that I hesitate whether I should not begin to write you notes instead of letters.--Seneca, Letter 55. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with minor changes)

The political undertones of this letter are not hard to spot. An active life means a political life. And a political life means danger to oneself and one's friends in an age of empire with its arbitrary, paranoid power and quick changes of fortune. Asinius Gallus died alone, hungry in a cell. And so it seems wise to withdraw into a life of leisure [otio] and house-building when one has the wealth to do so. (Perhaps one could buy a football team, too.) The many will consider you fortunate [felix] if you make into old age. But Seneca is clear: hiding is not living. In fact, if understand Seneca correctly, the mere fact of such withdrawal, from fear of entanglement in political intrigue, is evidence of one's anxiety; and being anxious means one is is not flourishing. 

Seneca starts the letter by calling attention to his physical frailty and to his own decadent wealth (his 'exercise' is to be carried about in the fresh air by his servants). Even so, he reminds Lucilius that even in his weakened state he uses the occasion to be instructed by what he encounters as he apparently has habituated himself to do (treating what is good for him -- quod mihi posset bono esse -- as a starting point for reflection). So rather than enjoying natural beauty or beautiful sights, he reflects on other people's choices and how he can benefit from them (including architectural tips). Interestingly enough, the benefit can be something to avoid.

Before I get to the emotional core of this digression, I do want to address one potential worry. One may think that Seneca isn't really learning from Vatia's choices; that the encounter with the (lovely) remnants of his villa is just an occasion to pontificate on his pre-existing views. That cannot be ruled out, of course. But I think we can read Seneca as suggesting something different. That Vatia was admired by the many and treated as kind of wise is clearly for Seneca a clue that he was not living well. (Recall that Seneca has many grounds to discount the applause of the marketplace.) And this is what prompts him to recognize that anxious withdrawal is by definition incapable of securing flourishing.

As it happens, I have had to withdraw from all social life not just because of  the pandemic, but as regular readers know from my 'covid diaries' also because I am trying to manage my 'long haul' symptoms. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here;  here;  here; here;  here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). At the moment I suffer no major symptoms, unless I engage in (even minimal) social activities (or find myself in an environment with background noise or which requires any kind of cognitive multitasking). I swim daily, and suffer no pains. But as Grotius put it, "amongst the Things peculiar to Man, is his Desire of Society, that is, a certain Inclination to live with those of his own Kind." And while like many of my professional brethren I flourish in long hours of solitude reading and writing about philosophy, I also used enjoy the company of others (not the least my family).

And so now I am often mentally conversing with absent friends (alongside real email and whatsapp correspondences). Some of them have, much to my mortification, taken to including me in their bcc's. I am mortified that I will betray their secret by accidentally pressing replay all. This shows that some of my intellectual friendships are still too caught up in professional worlds of zero-sum advancement and angling for prestige and/or jobs. (We can't all have Seneca's independent sources of wealth.) But I have been really astonished by how many people have taken the time to share with me they sympathy and converse about shared sources of interest.

Of course, there is an ambiguity. A natural way to translate 'Amicus animo possidendus est' is 'a friend must possess courage [or spiritedness]." And given that Seneca has repeatedly suggested that such animo/spiritedness is worth cultivating, one can see how he might be suggesting  However, Gummere, taking his from immediate context, suggest (as noted above) 'A friend should be retained in the spirit.' And, if we follow Gummere's translation the sentence becomes a kind of allegory for the whole Letters and a plausible motto for any amicable correspondence. And clearly in context Seneca is suggesting that the best or least most pleasing friendships are constituted by physically absent friends [see: Magis hac voluptate, quae maxima est, fruimur dum absumus]. 

And it is not hard to see what Seneca has in mind. Such absent friends became like a Smithian impartial spectator, and correct our selfishness and self-absorption, and prompt in us useful reflections on our encounters with the world (recall the earlier passage in the letter). Our imaginary friends become prompts for philosophy (in the sense of permanent self-improvement). And I recognize the experience of imagining what a philosophical friend would say and thereby improve an argument or exegesis. (Some of you are in my mind as I write these paragraphs.)

I have to admit that my philosophical education is from Seneca's vantage point unfinished. I prefer real conversation to the imaginary one. And one of my great regrets is that I cannot point to a literary example of the joy of philosophical comradery in action, of the long hours trying to figure out an argument or position from many different angles in a non-competitive spirit of the moment where who we are is subsumed by a common pursuit  that does not efface our individual personalities but transforms them into a spoke of a turning wheel that is gaining speed. And, of course, this means that sometimes the conversation, as it were, derails.

Yet, as I noted, there is a chilling political undercurrent to the letter. Even without our knowledge of Seneca's end, it is dangerous to be friends with him who orbited imperial power so closely. I don't want to suggest that Seneca is warning Lucilius to back off (it probably is too late for that, anyway), because that would make the whole letter kind of self-undermining. But I do heis suggesting that the kind of intimacy he is proposing requires courage. And this courage is not just the vulnerability of intimacy -- although it is that, too --, but because there is also a genuine risk in philosophizing together. This risk is partially political, but also metaphysical; one might lose one's own sense of self or individuality once one starts inhabiting one's social life in imaginary conversations with others. It is no surprise that hearing imaginary voices and talking out loud to invisible strangers are often taken as signs of madness. And those of us most used to solitude learn quickly enough that it's best to guard what one says.