Digressions&Impressions

On the Futility of Philosophy (Seneca Letter 48)

[T]he same thing is advantageous to me which is advantageous to you; for I am not your friend unless whatever is at issue concerning you is my concern also. Friendship produces between us a partnership in all our affairs [Consortium rerum omnium inter nos facit amicitia]. There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common. And no one can live happily [beate] who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility [utilitates]; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself. This [public] society [societas], maintained with scrupulous care, which makes us mingle as men with our fellow-men  [nos homines hominibus miscet] and holds that humankind has certain rights in common [iudicat aliquod esse commune ius generis humani], is also of great help in cherishing the more intimate society [interiorem societatem] which is based on friendship....For he that has much in common with a fellow-man will have all things in common with a friend.

And on this point, my excellent Lucilius, I should like to have those subtle dialecticians of yours advise me how I ought to help a friend, or how a fellow-man, rather than tell me in how many ways the word "friend" is used, and how many meanings the word "man" possesses. Lo, Wisdom and Folly are taking opposite sides....

Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel. Death calls away one man, and poverty chafes another; a third is worried either by his neighbour's wealth or by his own. So-and-so is afraid of bad luck; another desires to get away from his own good fortune. Some are ill-treated by men, others by the gods. Why, then, do you frame for me such games as these? It is no occasion for jest; you are retained as counsel for unhappy mankind. You have promised to help those in peril by sea, those in captivity, the sick and the needy, and those whose heads are under the poised axe. Whither are you straying? What are you doing?

This friend, in whose company you are jesting, is in fear. Help him, and take the noose from about his neck. Men are stretching out imploring hands to you on all sides; lives ruined and in danger of ruin are begging for some assistance; men's hopes, men's resources, depend upon you. They ask that you deliver them from all their restlessness, that you reveal to them, scattered and wandering as they are, the clear light of truth....

I should deem your games of logic to be of some avail in relieving men's burdens, if you could first show me what part of these burdens they will relieve. What among these games of yours banishes appetites [cupiditates]? Or controls it? Would that I could say that they were merely of no profit! They are positively harmful. I can make it perfectly clear to you whenever you wish, that a noble spirit when involved in such subtleties is impaired and weakened. I am ashamed to say what weapons they supply to men who are destined to go to war with fortune, and how poorly they equip them! Is this the path to the greatest good? Is philosophy to proceed by such claptrap and by quibbles which would be a disgrace and a reproach even for expounders of the law? For what else is it that you men are doing, when you deliberately ensnare the person to whom you are putting questions, than making it appear that the man has lost his case on a technical error? But just as the judge can reinstate those who have lost a suit in this way, so philosophy has reinstated these victims of quibbling to their former condition. Why do you men abandon your mighty promises, and, after having assured me in high-sounding language that you will permit the glitter of gold to dazzle my eyesight no more than the gleam of the sword, and that I shall, with mighty steadfastness, spurn both that which all men crave and that which all men fear, why do you descend to the ABC's of scholastic pedants? What is your answer?

this is how we fly to the stars  [sic itur ad astra]

For that is exactly what philosophy promises to me, that I shall be made equal to God. For this I have been summoned, for this purpose have I come. Philosophy, keep your promise!

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, withdraw yourself as far as possible from these exceptions and objections of [false] philosophers. Openness  and simplicity befit true goodness [aperta decent et simplicia bonitatem]. Even if there were many years left to you, you would have had to spend them frugally in order to have enough for the necessary things; but as it is, when your time is so scant, what madness it is to learn superfluous things!---Seneca, Letter 48, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

It is a bit peculiar that Seneca feels the need to repeatedly criticize the (false/sophist) philosopher's tendency to focus on irrelevant puzzles (recall his critique of sophismata in Letter 45.). Luciulius, a rising politician,* does not seem to be the kind to be seduced by these.  The strangeness is partially resolved when we recall that the lure of these puzzles that false philosophy offers is the public advantage they are thought to confer on those skilled at the techniques needed to resolve them; skill at logic chopping is taken to be, perhaps really is, useful in the courtroom and in public life.

To be sure, I doubt Seneca rejects the deployment of careful distinctions because he uses them throughout the letter (true vs false philosophy; public vs private; mere utility vs true interest; luxury items vs necessary items; etc). But the distinctions are not to be developed into intellectual weapons, but are in the service of a proper, more pacific end of philosophy. In the sense that the public understands utility, the aim(s) of true philosophy is futile, yet, simultaneously it is more valuable because it leads to true happiness which is grounded in true friendship and communality of interests. This partnership is not an abnegation of responsibility to mankind because it also involves advancing the common rights of the (future, recall letter 14) public. 

I admit I feel the pull of Seneca's position, not just now that we're isolated, but especially when I am immersed in education. In reflecting on it I also see that if I were to articulate by way of example of what I will call the weaponization of contemporary analytic philosophy, the piece would become self-undermining. It would instantiate polemics. And that makes me notice that, in fact, in this sense Seneca practices the very thing he rejects (even though satire is the weapon of choice). I leave hanging today what to make of Seneca's own hybridity.

To withdraw from false philosophy also requires a particular kind of indifference to its worldly success and (false) glory or the way its professional hierarchy  mimics the olicharchic tendency of outer society. Not, to be sure, indifference to its effects on would-be particular friends; nor neglect of techniques useful in one's philosophical development.

But to feel the pull of Seneca's call requires a turning of one's back on the jockeying for prestige and status; not, of course, in pursuit of humility. For, Seneca is explicit that the aim, one may say the ultimate humanist aim, of true philosophy is to be if not godlike then commensurable to a god [parem deo].

I close with one thought. The wish to become godlike is not intended, I think, to escape from humanity. Because the aim of being godlike is a form of excellence, bonitatem, one instantiates with others, and for others. And, as I share in the longing I discern in Seneca's letter, I wish to reach out to my true friends and whisper, I cherish your company.

 

 

 

Seneca on Slavery, and Political Fortune (Letter 47)

Fortune has the same claim on [licere] slaves and free men alike... Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same seed, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies! [ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!] It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave. As a result of the massacres in Marius's day, many a man of distinguished birth, who was taking the first steps toward senatorial rank by service in the army, was humbled by fortune, one becoming a shepherd, another a caretaker of a country cottage...I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties. [Non ministeriis illos aestimabo sed moribus: sibi quisque dat mores, ministeria casus assignat.]...Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. [Ostende quis non sit: alius libidini servit, alius avaritiae, alius ambitioni, <omnes spei>, omnes timori.]-Seneca, Letter 47, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

To simplify, we can identify two distinct ways of thinking about slavery in Plato and Aristotle. First, in Aristotle, what we may call authentic slavery maps onto an innate hierarchy of human beings. This kind of view was trotted out in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and, drawing on new iterations in Hume and Montesquieu, still popular in the eighteenth century United Kingdom.

Second, Iin Plato (who, of course, was no stranger to views on natural hierarchy), slavery is a kind of retributive punishment for defeat in aggressive war. And one finds a similar, but more Lockean version of the argument, in  the quite egalitarian and even severe critics of slavery like Cugoano. Having said that, Plato's Socrates (see here and here) clearly circumscribes slavery for those who are from the stock of would-be-permanent-enemies and tries to rule it out among the (Greek)  would-be-permanent-friends. Would be permanent friends are not rooted in human nature, but in the more conventional barriers that separate peoples.*

Third, Seneca (recall Letter 44), embraces natural equality (in the sense of the methodological analytic egalitarian (MAE)), and clearly thinks there is no moral justification for slavery. But strikingly that does not lead him to abolition. It may be worth reflecting on why this is so.

The answer resides in disordered politics. Now, Seneca is explicit that politics is governed by fortune, which can strike anytime. And, in particular, anyone can be subjugated by it. Now, looking at today's headlines one need not be reminded of natural misfortune. But Senecal is treating natural and political misfortune on par; and in political struggle force is decisive. In one sense force does not respect morality. But in another sense it is also a great equalizer--all of us can be subject to it. So, force is the cause or mechanism by which fortune elevates or diminishes each of us. (Seneca even speaks of the wheel of fortune in his play Agamemnon.)

I use 'disordered' because in this very letter (47), Seneca also produces an image of ordered politics. This is possible, when force has settled the balance of power. Then power is channeled to structure order. This image is the patriarchal household (familiares and its father). This order is clearly intimate and habitual, but also hierarchical because in addition to a father it has servants/slaves. And, in fact, Letter 47, which is among the first 50 or so letters, quite lengthy, contains a mini treatise on household management, the art of orderly political leadership [for, "a household was a miniature commonwealth"] -- when the question of force is temporarily settled among moral equals who have been turned into political unequals. 

Because today's post is not on the art of statecraft, I ignore Seneca's teachings. But crucially even this mini-treatise, understands itself as idealized. It explicitly compares itself to the representation of the ancestral, patriarchal family life on the (dated) stage (mimis).+ And, even in this representation, the ordered hierarchy can -- not unlike in carnaval -- be overturned: "They allowed the slaves to attain honours in the household and to pronounce judgment." 

So, Seneca can't see a path toward abolition of slavery because he does not see a path toward the elimination of force as the ultimate decider in political life. And, so, political inequality -- and thereby a variety of servitudes -- is inevitable.

Seneca's Letter 46: On Living in an Age of Lies

1. I received the book of yours which you promised me. I opened it hastily with the idea of glancing over it at leisure; for I meant only to taste the volume. But by its own charm the book coaxed me into traversing it more at length. You may understand from this fact how eloquent it was; for it seemed to be written in the smooth style, and yet did not resemble your handiwork or mine, but at first sight might have been ascribed to Titus Livius or to Epicurus. Moreover, I was so impressed and carried along by its charm that I finished it without any postponement. The sunlight called to me, hunger warned, and clouds were lowering; but I absorbed the book from beginning to end.

2. I was not merely pleased; I rejoiced. So full of wit and spirit it was! I should have added "what force [quid impetus!]," had the book contained moments of repose, or had it risen to energy only at intervals. But I found that there was no burst of force, but an even flow, a style that was vigorous and chaste. Nevertheless I noticed from time to time your sweetness, and here and there that mildness of yours. Your style is lofty and noble; I want you to keep to this manner and this direction. Your subject also contributed something; for this reason you should choose productive topics, which will lay hold of the mind and arouse it.

3. I shall discuss the book more fully after a second perusal; meantime, my judgment is somewhat unsettled, just as if I had heard it read aloud, and had not read it myself. You must allow me to examine it also. You need not be afraid; you shall hear the truth. Lucky fellow, to offer a man no opportunity to tell you lies at such long range! Unless perhaps, even now, when excuses for lying are taken away, custom serves as an excuse for our telling each other lies!--Letter 46, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

We learn in the first sentence of this letter that Lucilius is not merely aspiring to wisdom, but also an author. It invites us, thus, to reflect on the transaction between Seneca and Lucilius, and the interest of the latter in Seneca.

In this brief letter, Seneca seems to distinguish among three kinds of reading-styles: (i) tasting a book, which is brief and impressionistic; (ii) immersive reading, which is hurried yet thorough; and (iii) regurgitative reading, which involves re-reading a book. (Seneca compares (ii) with hearing a text.) To over-read a bit: according to Seneca only regurgitative reading -- this reminded me of Nietzsche -- can generate a truth, or at least a truth that can be heard (verum audies).

The last sentence of the epistle alerts us to the larger socio-political context of the exchange. Seneca implies that they live in a duplicitous public culture where the habit of lying is deeply entrenched.* Whether Seneca thinks this is merely a function of Nero's particular rule or the collapse of the republic or politics as such is left obscure. 

Strikingly, Seneca explicitly presents himself as a regurgitative reader who will articulate truth, eventually. But the implicature is, I think, that to hear the truths he will say certain virtues (of the would be audience) must be present: patience, a willingness to re-read and examine carefully, and a certain free-spiritedness [freely reinterpreting, Non est quod verearis]. That is to say, in a letter to a proud author, Seneca is telling us how to be an attentive reader of (his) works. 

Seneca has already made clear that he is writing for posterity (recall Letter 21; Letter 29). But not the first time I note that the beneficiaries of his writings are supposed to be alert to the fact that he expects us to understand that his writings conceal his message from some certain kinds of readers. I mention this not to remind the reader of Seneca's interest in the art of esotericism. Rather, and in particular, he invites us to reflect on how our culture and, thus, our habitual dispositions distort our receptivity toward truth.  

 

Against digressions, gurus, and puzzles (Seneca, Letter 45)

1. You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight. He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not travelling; it is mere tramping....

3. Your desire, however, that I should dispatch to you my own writings does not make me think myself learned, any more than a request for my picture would flatter my beauty. I know that it is due to your indulgence (indulgentiae). rather than to your judgment. And even if it is the result of judgment, it was indulgence that forced the judgment upon you. 4. But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth, and were seeking it obstinately, too. For I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own. For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought. They might perhaps have discovered the essentials, had they not sought the superfluous also. 5. They lost much time in quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose. We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then try to untie them...

10. Why do you bore me with that which you yourself call the "liar" fallacy, about which so many books have been written? Come now, suppose that my whole life is a lie; prove that to be wrong and, if you are sharp enough, bring that back to the truth. At present it holds things to be essential of which the greater part is superfluous. And even that which is not superfluous is of no significance in respect to its power of making one fortunate and blessed. For if a thing be necessary, it does not follow that it is a good. Else we degrade the meaning of "good," if we apply that name to bread and barley-porridge and other commodities without which we cannot live. 11. The good must in every case be necessary; but that which is necessary is not in every case a good, since certain very paltry things are indeed necessary. No one is to such an extent ignorant of the noble meaning of the word "good," as to debase it to the level of these humdrum utilities.--Seneca Letter 45, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

In this letter, Seneca attacks (i) wide learning; (ii) (purportedly) philosophical gurus (including himself); (iii) and the scholarly focus ("many books" tantum librorum ) on (purportedly) philosophical puzzles (sophismata) At first, the criticisms seem divergent; for example, the motive to wide learning is pleasure in variety ("varia delectat") rather than truth-seeking. The desire for a guru shows lack of judgment and emanates from indulgence (indulgentiae) or soft-mindedness. It's a bit less clear what on Seneca's view drives interest in the liar paradox,* although he finds it a bore.  He treats solving the liar and such puzzles as exercises without purpose, that is, the needless (supervacua). 

Now, compared to the official self-understanding of analytic philosophy, Seneca's rejection of philosophical puzzle-solving, which he treats as sophistic, stands out. He claims "knowing them is of no aid" (nec scientem iuvant). This is, in part, because he thinks that at bottom sophismata are about words and ambiguity that arise within verbal disputes, but do not provide knowledge of important things (res).

To be in the grip of a philosophical puzzle is likened to being fascinated by a juggler's cups and balls trick (praestigiatorum acetabula et calculi). Generating and executing such tricks involve genuine skill. And when one encounters them on the street one can be truly in the grip of them. Seneca does not see much point to dissolving (dissolvimus) puzzles. So, not unlike, say, later Hume, Nietzsche, or Wittgenstein, Seneca thinks that a certain kind of anti-philosophy is to be spell-bound, and pleasantly so, by a kind of illusion. 

Strikingly, Seneca  goes on to claim that "the good must in every case be necessary; but that which is necessary is not in every case a good." So, it's not that Seneca rejects mastery of what we may call philosophical technique. The drawing of distinctions and knowledge of modality are important. Seneca does not explain how one can gain mastery of these without (occasional) exercise in sophismata. And, in fact, at the end of this letter, Seneca grants that this argument against those that aim mastery of puzzle solving is as of yet incomplete. 

But it's not so difficult to discern the underlying thought. If we look at Seneca's rejection of (i-iii), it's clear that they involve a collection of intellectual vices that are succumbed to. Seneca insists that the harms they generate are "infinite." They have in common that they postpone true living (non enim vivunt sed victuri sunt: omnia differunt.)

So, to sum up, lots of activities that are highly valued by students of philosophy, even professional philosophers, to this day are not mere (ahh) digressions. They are distractions (recall letter 41) from the path of (what Seneca calls) toward salvation. On the one side we have insignificant, trivial activities that conjointly generate huge harms and, on the other side, we have a path toward the most valuable good. Seneca does not ask us (Pascal-like) to wager, for that would imply a true choice. 

 

On the Philosophical Attack on Heritable Intellectual Rank

If there is any good in philosophy, it is this, – that it never looks into pedigrees. All men, if traced back to their original source, spring from the gods....[a] noble mind is free to all men; according to this test, we may all gain distinction. Philosophy neither rejects nor selects anyone; its light shines for all. Socrates was no aristocrat. Cleanthes worked at a well and served as a hired man watering a garden. Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made him one. Why then should you despair of becoming able to rank with men like these? They are all your ancestors, if you conduct yourself in a manner worthy of them; and you will do so if you convince yourself at the outset that no man outdoes you in real nobility. We have all had the same number of forefathers; there is no man whose first beginning does not transcend memory. Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors." The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then who is well-born? He who is by nature well fitted for virtue. That is the one point to be considered; otherwise, if you hark back to antiquity, every one traces back to a date before which there is nothing. From the earliest beginnings of the universe to the present time, we have been led forward out of origins that were alternately illustrious and ignoble. A hall full of smoke-begrimed busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been.

Suppose, then, that you were not a Roman knight, but a freedman, you might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?" you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend. --Seneca, Letter 44 Translated by Richard Mott Gummere.

In Morgenröte, Nietzsche treats the invention of Darwinism as the undoing of heritable grandeur, "This however has now become a forbidden path for the ape stands at its entrance and likewise other fearsome animals grinning knowingly as if to say: no further this way!" But as Seneca reminds us, one does not need Darwinsim to make the argument. There are five  key features of Seneca's argument: first, the argument relies on a distinction between what we may call history and pre-history (or the unreliable past). If you think this distinction is too anachronistic, recall this post, prompted by Adrienne Mayor, on the  nature of deep time in Ancient Greek thought. Because of the existence of pre-history, the origin and hence purity of no lineage is secure. This, second, relies on the idea that a noble-making character of the lineage is essential to the lineage and gets handed down through the lineage. The existence of pre-history makes all lineages epistemically suspect hostage to fortune.* In addition, third, and this is more of an empirical claim, what we know of human nature, all lineages will contain the ignoble. Fourth, he relies on the idea, one we have seen him develop through all the Letters, that there is no property right in the truly noble. While his sages have a certain amount of individuality -- given their differing circumstances -- the noble, which instantiates the infinite, lacks individuality (recall letter 3).

Finally, and fifth, he relies on the idea that superior qualities can be caused by a chain of inferior qualities. This point is notable because it goes against the idea -- familiar to modern readers from Descartes's Meditations (but often associated with a species of Platonism) -- that what is more perfect — that is, contains in itself more reality — cannot arise from what is less perfect. But Seneca clearly thinks this would involve one in a kind of genetic fallacy (You should look, not to the source from which these things come, but to the goal towards which they tend.). While the past is full of excellent exemplars, natural genealogy has no special status 

Seneca here anticipates the Hobbesian and Smithian idea that one is not a philosopher by nature, but that one is made into a philosopher. From this vantage point all are noble [omnes...hoc sumus nobiles] or at least capable of attaining it.+ (This is a core commitment of what I call methodological analytic egalitarianism) Now, as David Levy and Sandra Peart always insist to me, that a Stoic is in some sense a radical egalitarian is no surprise (given the known radical strain of early Stoicism--I warmly recommend René Brouwer's book). But Seneca insists that the point can also be found in Plato. This is a bit more surprising because while Plato is not Aristotle (think natural slaves/rulers), Plato tends to be associated with the idea that there is a hierarchy of human types (and  philosophers can be bred accordingly). Sometimes Plato presents  as thinking that natural hierarchy can be irrelevant politically or morally (see this post for some of these claims). This got me curious about the passage quoted by Seneca. (A helpful note by the translator directed me to the Theatetus): 

Hence it is, my friend, such a man, both in private, when he meets with individuals, and in public, as I said in the beginning, [174c] when he is obliged to speak in court or elsewhere about the things at his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing-stock not only to Thracian girls but to the multitude in general, for he [like Thales] falls into pits and all sorts of perplexities through inexperience, and his awkwardness is terrible, making him seem a fool; for when it comes to abusing people he has no personal abuse to offer against anyone, because he knows no evil of any man, never having cared for such things; so his perplexity makes him appear ridiculous; and as to laudatory speeches [174d] and the boastings of others, it becomes manifest that he is laughing at them—not pretending to laugh, but really laughing—and so he is thought to be a fool. When he hears a panegyric of a despot or a king he fancies he is listening to the praises of some herdsman—a swineherd, a shepherd, or a neatherd, for instance—who gets much milk from his beasts; but he thinks that the ruler tends and milks a more perverse and treacherous creature than the herdsmen, and that he must grow coarse and uncivilized, [174e] no less than they, for he has no leisure and lives surrounded by a wall, as the herdsmen live in their mountain pens. And when he hears that someone is amazingly rich, because he owns ten thousand acres of land or more, to him, accustomed as he is to think of the whole earth, this seems very little. And when people sing the praises of lineage and say someone is of noble birth, because he can show seven wealthy ancestors, he thinks that such praises betray an altogether dull and narrow vision on the part of those who utter them; because of lack of education they cannot keep their eyes fixed upon the whole and are unable to calculate that every man has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks. And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him; he laughs at them because they cannot free their silly minds of vanity by calculating that [175b] Amphitryon's twenty-fifth ancestor was such as fortune happened to make him, and the fiftieth for that matter. In all these cases the philosopher is derided by the common herd, partly because he seems to be contemptuous, partly because he is ignorant of common things and is always in perplexity. Plato Theaetetus translated by Harold N. Fowler. C 

Regular readers know I have a minor obsession about the representation of Thales at the origin of philosophy (recall here; here; here; here); even in scholarship, and also here). And so re-reading this familiar passage -- which so clearly articulates the tense relationship between philosophy and ordinary opinion/commitments [i call that the Socratic Problem; see here]-- in light of Seneca came as a shock to me. For, indeed, Socrates here ruthlessly attacks the idea of nobility by birth as alien to a truly philosophical mind.+ And Socrates' argument anticipates Seneca's in claiming that all lineages are impure: the products of mixture and extremely long chains themselves the product of fortune.*

Seneca, of course, invokes Socrates and Cleanthes as intellectual exemplars. And he implies that Socrates supports his argument that it is constitutive of philosophy to reject inherited social distinctions, including ones based on ethnicity, as relevant to evaluations of philosophical distinction.** I am inclined to think Seneca is right here. And so while there are original sins in the Platonic tradition of philosophy -- its hostility toward rustic wisdom is one --, its known origins (see what I did there?) also point the way toward some noble commitments. 

 

On Gossip, Celebrity, and Transparency.

1. Do you ask how the news reached me, and who informed me, that you were entertaining this idea, of which you had said nothing to a single soul? It was that most knowing of persons, – rumor [rumor]. "What," you say, "am I such a great personage that I can stir up rumor?" Now there is no reason why you should measure yourself according to this part of the world; have regard only to the place where you are dwelling. 2. Any point which rises above adjacent points is great, at the spot where it rises. For greatness is not absolute; comparison increases it or lessens it. A ship which looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean. A rudder which is large for one vessel, is small for another.

3. So you in your province are really of importance, though you scorn yourself. Men are asking what you do, how you dine, and how you sleep, and they find out, too; hence there is all the more reason for your living circumspectly. Do not, however, deem yourself truly happy until you find that you can live before men's eyes, until your walls protect but do not hide you; although we are apt to believe that these walls surround us, not to enable us to live more safely, but that we may sin more secretly. 4. I shall mention a fact by which you may weigh the worth of a man's character: you will scarcely find anyone who can live with his door wide open. It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors; we live in such a fashion that being suddenly disclosed to view is equivalent to being caught in the act. What profits it, however, to hide ourselves away, and to avoid the eyes and ears of men? 5. A good conscience welcomes the crowd, but a bad conscience, even in solitude, is disturbed and troubled. If your deeds are honourable, let everybody know them; if base, what matters it that no one knows them, as long as you yourself know them? How wretched you are if you despise such a witness!--Letter 43, Seneca Translated by Richard Mott Gummere  [with modest changes]

Letter 43 is a mere 217 words in Latin. Not unlike Socrates, Seneca presents himself interested in rumor surrounding his (would be) pupils. He doesn't use 'fama' here, which he did back in letter 13, but rumor which is etymologically related to shouting/noise even (politically) the voice of (to use a Hobbesianism) the multitude. (Whereas fama, from which our fame is derived, is connected to speaking/talking.)

Because Seneca tends (e.g.,  Letter 32)  to be dismissive in his Letters about that what is esteemed by the crowd (market-place, etc.), often going so far as to advocate (inner) exile or withdrawal from it, it is surprising that here he recommends what we would call, transparency; the crowd can be summoned by a good conscience [Bona conscientia turbam advocat]. More subtly, the desire for (what we would call) privacy is presented as itself a sign of bad conscience.

One way to make sense of Seneca's claim here is that if you are going to attract notice (because locally you stick out), then you should live the kind of live that can withstand mass scrutiny. This is what contemporary friends (e.g., Piketty) of transparency tell us, too.* 

But the situation is more tricky for three reasons. First, Seneca is sometimes explicit that the crowd's judgment is corrupted in an imperfect society  (e.g., Letter 7). Second, this is subtly recognized in the Letter, because he introduces his measure [inspired by aestimes] in terms of a kind of cost-benefit analysis; if you are the kind of person who will attract notice, and who who wishes to benefit/profit  [prodest] from the crowd, then you should live the kind of live that can withstand mass scrutiny.  This may be thought sensible (what we may call) second-best advice that is compatible with the thought that you should live the kind of life that will make you entirely invisible to the crowd. Lucilius, by contrast, is pursuing political advancement.** 

Now, one need not be Adam Smith to note (recall) that the "disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."+ The reason I mention it here -- and this is my third reason -- is that it is by no means obvious the crowd will always admire the virtuous (politician, celebrity, etc.). 

Perhaps, because the crowd is by definition an inconstant and imperfect judge, Seneca's advice to those that wish to benefit from public attention should be taken as a maxim that makes life better worth living even when the public thinks otherwise.

On Rare Phoenixes in Philosophy (Seneca, Socrates, and Spinoza)

For one of the first class ["good men" [vir bonus]]] perhaps springs into existence, like the phoenix, only once in five hundred years. And it is not surprising, either, that greatness develops only at long intervals; Fortune often brings into being commonplace powers, which are born to please the crowd [turbam]; but she holds up for our approval that which is extraordinary by the very fact that she makes it rare. [eximia vero ipsa raritate commendat]

2. This man, however, of whom you spoke, is still far from the state which he professes to have reached. And if he knew what it meant to be "a good man," he would not yet believe himself such; perhaps he would even despair of his ability to become good. "But," you say, "he thinks ill of evil men." Well, so do evil men themselves; and there is no worse penalty for vice than the fact that it is dissatisfied with itself and all its fellows. 3. "But he hates those who make an ungoverned use of great power suddenly acquired." I retort that he will do the same thing as soon as he acquires the same powers. Seneca, Letter 42. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor changes)

The truly good are so rare we may as well call them flukes of nature. Allowing that Socrates associates philosophers with those of the first class, Socrates also seems to have thought that absent breeding, this the case (see the αὐτόματοι  Republic 520b). But Seneca seems more adamant about the cyclical rarity of then. I mention Socrates because Seneca may well be tempt the reader to think he is slyly comparing himself to Socrates; he was, after all, born about 480 years after Socrates. 

Much of the letter repeats Seneca's lessons about how a high price in the marketplace, and mass approval, are worthless or  involve commodities and states of affairs that make us worse off. A key new claim (also with a Socratic provenance) is that bad people actually (secretly) have, despite appearances to the contrary, a low estimate of themselves [At male existimat de malis.]* The etymology of existimat ( ex- +‎ aestimō) reminds us that esteem and estimate (in the sense of judging) are very closely tied together. 

It is not entirely clear if Seneca thinks low self-esteem is a cause of their bad behavior or if this is, due to the workings of conscience (as Butler and Adam Smith would argue), the effect of bad behavior, or  (more likely) both. But the striking fact is that the interaction of low self-esteem with bad behavior creates a miserable psychic condition in virtue of succeeding at one's projects.** 

I have always have found the underlying psychological idea plausible enough, despite the suspicion this is the kind of thing we powerless may invent to haunt the powerful. What makes Senca's claim plausible is that his lines may well be autobiographical (he was insanely rich and not free of misdeeds). Yet, sometimes one encounters the obscenely rich and wicked who seem to lack all sense of shame. 

Be that as it may, on this view to do bad is to get caught in a vicious cycle of self-contempt. In the ledger Seneca likes to invoke, one is, were double-entry book-keeping already invented, then in the loss column.

It turns out that in this sense -- of psychic health or proper positive self-estimation -- only a fraction [quoto cuique] -- are not in the loss column. By the structure of his letter, Seneca tempts us to see in these self-contained few with nothing lost [nihil perdidit] the rare exemplars that arise every half-millennia or so. The role of these exemplar(s) is to help structure the emendation or spiritual exercises he offers, but it is de facto unattainable. 

Since I have been brief, let me add one further thought. Another way to understand the the nature of the phoenix image is in terms of the periodic rebirth of philosophy. This is in some sense the eternal recurrence of the same. Although we can expect differences because while the identity of the phoenix remains the same, the context in which she grows does not.

With that in mind, I looked anew at the last line(s) of Spinoza's Ethics: But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. [Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt]. This evoke Seneca with one notable difference. Spinoza leaves no doubt that despite the difficulty, one can with a proper regimen turn oneself into one of the (mentally) blessed. And if you fail, try again and harder.

On the God Within (Seneca, Spinoza, and the Bible/Vergil)

[I]t is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol's ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. 2. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God helps him to rise? He it is that gives noble and upright counsel. In each good man

A god doth dwell, but what god know we not [quis deus incertum est] habitat deus].--Seneca, Letter 41. Translated by Richard Mott Gummere

To achieve a sound mind [ad bonam mentem] prayer [optare could also be mere wishing] won't do; there are not just opportunity costs involved, but our attention is misdirected outward. For, Seneca, as is familiar by now, self-cultivation is, simultaneously, a withdrawal from the world of the crowd and popular approval. He comes very close to suggesting here that public displays of religion is a participation in the worship of false idols (such as characterize the market-place, the political crowds, and the amphitheater).

Part of self-cultivation is the development of what we may call conscience, the observer and custodian [observator et custos] of the good and bad we perform. Interestingly Seneca presents the operation of conscience as a reciprocal, relationship between the agent and this hidden faculty. When we nurture conscience, we are, in turn, nurtured by it. This form of boot-strapping is the path toward overcoming the rule of chance [recall, inter alia, also letter 39 here], and to participate (as we have seen) in a life rule by necessity (recall the start of the Letters) and, thereby, become godlike (recall this post on self-reliance in letter 31). A good person is precisely the one that has justly come to rely on conscience.*

I don't mean to ignore how the people that exemplify such self-controlled god-likeness, exemplify a species of (almost Nietzschean) magnanimity, laughing at our fears and at our prayers and willing them over and over again, (Vis isto divina descendit; animum excellentem, moderatum, omnia tamquam minora transeuntem, quidquid timemus optamusque ridentem, caelestis potentia agitat.)

Now, Gummere helpfully notes that the last line of the quoted passage is itself a quote from Vergil's Aenid 8.352. Seneca here proves true to his principle that the origin of a truth is less important than the fact that (recall) there is no exclusive property right in wisdom and that it can be made available to all of mankind. Even so it is notable that he quotes a poet here and not (as he had done before) a member of a competing philosophical school. (In the previous letter (40), he made a similar point with Homer.)

There is a lot to be said about the context of 8.352 and how it relates to the political self-conception of Rome and its founding. But, at this point, and in virtue of a recent lecture by Steven Nadler that I attended, I am reminded of the epigram to Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise (hereafter TTP): Per hoc cognoscimus quod in Deo manemus,/et Deus manet in nobis/quod de Spiritu suo dedit nobis (1 John 4:13; in the King James, Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.) What's clever about this is that the first two parts of the verse, just express the Spinozism of the Ethics (we are in God and he in us). Later, in chapter 14 of the TTP, when he comments on the very verse, Spinoza explains that to have possession of the (holy) spirit just means exhibiting faith in works, that is obedience to God, that is showing one's charity (or 'lovingkindness' in Curley's translation).+

Now, Spinoza and Seneca agree that a holy spirit dwells within us and that being attentive to it guides our good behavior. They also agree on a structural feature: that to behave in accord with it, is to be guided by (an eternal property, that is,) reason, that is, necessity, that is, (one's second) nature. And that to do so is the path of salvation (see the rest of letter 41). I don't mean to suggest that they agree, exactly, on the contents of conscience or what the holy spirit demands from us. That's for another time.

Rather, I want to close with a final observation prompted by one of the most striking passages in the TTP (from Chapter 5):

So the narratives contained in the Old and New Testaments are better than the other, secular narratives, and among the [Scriptural narratives], some are better than others, in proportion as the opinions which follow from them are salutary. Hence if someone has read the stories of Holy Scripture, and has had faith in it in every respect, and has nevertheless not attended to the lesson Scrip­ture intends to teach with those stories, nor improved his life, it is just the same as if he had read the Koran, or the dramas of the Poets, or even the ordinary Chronicles, with the same attention as the multitude commonly give to these things. On the other hand, as we have said, someone who is com­pletely unfamiliar with these stories, and nevertheless has salutary opinions and a true manner of living, is absolutely blessed and really has the Spirit of Christ in him.**

There is a lot to say about this passage (recall), but the key point is that one has the Spirit of Christ if one exhibits the right kind of behavior and that one does not need exposure to Scripture nor philosophy to attain it. More subtly, and controversially, perhaps, any text, if read attentively, can be made to yield the salutary opinions needed to instruct others -- as Seneca instructs Lucillius -- in the art of living...if, and perhaps only if, one has a well-prepared mind, as Seneca shows with his use of Vergil.

 

On unadorned and plain Truth

3. Therefore, mark my words; that forceful manner of speech, rapid and copious, is more suited to a mountebank than to a man who is discussing and teaching an important and serious subject. But I object just as strongly that he should drip out his words as that he should go at top speed; he should neither keep the ear on the stretch, nor deafen it. For that poverty-stricken and thin-spun style also makes the audience less attentive because they are weary of its stammering slowness; nevertheless, the word which has been long awaited sinks in more easily than the word which flits past us on the wing. Finally, people speak of "handing down" precepts to their pupils; but one is not "handing down" that which eludes the grasp. 4. Besides, speech that deals with the truth should be unadorned and plain. This popular style has nothing to do with the truth; its aim is to impress the common herd, to ravish heedless ears by its speed; it does not offer itself for discussion, but snatches itself away from discussion. But how can that speech govern others which cannot itself be governed? May I not also remark that all speech which is employed for the purpose of healing our minds, ought to sink into us? Remedies do not avail unless they remain in the system.--Seneca, Letter 40. translated by Richard Mott Gummere

In an unusually long letter, Seneca appears to be conveying a relatively simple claim: true (philosophical speech) should be "unadorned and plain" [quae veritati operam dat oratio incomposita esse debet et simplex.] He contrasts such speech with speech intended for the market place aimed at ordinary folk (who, it is thought, are impressed by verbal pyrotechnics and, as he makes clear later in the letter, respect different national styles). The contrast is not absolute because Seneca thinks the unadorned and plain speech is also apt for ordinary rhetoric iff the point is to convince the multitude of the truth! But he clearly thinks that's not generally the aim.

That true speech should be unadorned and plain/simple is, of course, a recurring trope in ages that reject scholasticism and rhetorical flourishes. (It is unusual to see its elitism acknowledged.) The aim of philosophical speech for Seneca is (a) not merely to convey the truth, but in so doing (b) heal minds, that is, to be part of a philosophical emendation; and (c) by taking hold of their minds to govern others [rapere...regere]. Somewhat confusingly, at first, for us, who are used to thinking that the patient's autonomy is central, Seneca treats true speech of the philosophical healer/magister as a locus for self-governance.

Thus, even true speech is a means of control of another. This point is made explicit, somewhat rarely, when we say of a demonstration or inference that it compels assent; at such points disagreement, however voluntary, is often thought to be irrational. If you accept the premises, then you must accept the conclusions, etc. To make others accept premises is, thus, a means of control. To be made to accept true premises and a conclusion is, thus, a rational form, perhaps, of subordination,.

So, on Seneca's conception, a healthy mind, one receptive toward the truth, is in some sense under the control of, let's say, the party of truth. I put it this way because for Seneca (recall and here), (i) truths belong to all of mankind, and (ii) one is -- this clearly inspired/anticipated Spinoza -- least individual (and most eternal) when one's mind is filled with truths/apt remedies.

There is a further feature of true philosophical speech that Seneca notes by way of a negative contrast (near the end of the letter). In the more spectacular and pyrotechnic style one must ignore the sense of shame that accompanies it and this can only be done by not listening to oneself speak. One would wish to criticize oneself if one would give oneself the opportunity.

Seneca suggests that being exposed regularly to one's own rhetorical fluff undermines this sense of shame in oneself. I am not entirely sure if Seneca thinks the poison is that one regularly hears oneself say silly stuff or that one regularly ends up suppressing the need for self-criticism in oneself (or both). Either way, Seneca clearly thinks that while a lack of shame facilitates one's complicity in spreading nonsense, it is the manifestation of a self-inflicted malady.*

It would be an anachronistic, of course, to treat Seneca as an anticipation of the now not uncommon thought that certain forms of public nonsense are instances/expressions of  lack of mental health. I think the anachronism is only partially true here. Not because the concept mental health is absent in him, but because what Seneca would take to be a disposition or expression of a healthy and shame-sensitive mind is almost certainly not the statistical norm of health maintained by our clinicians.

Here I stop; for once briefer than Seneca. 

On (Seneca on) Being Slaves to Pleasures and Insatiable desire

I shall indeed arrange for you, in careful order and narrow compass, the notes which you request. But consider whether you may not get more help from the customary method than from that which is now commonly called a "breviary," though in the good old days, when real Latin was spoken, it was called a "summary." The former is more necessary to one who is learning a subject, the latter to one who knows it. For the one teaches, the other stirs the memory. But I shall give you abundant opportunity for both. A man like you should not ask me for this authority or that; he who furnishes a voucher for his statements argues himself unknown. I shall therefore write exactly what you wish, but I shall do it in my own way; until then, you have many authors whose works will presumably keep your ideas sufficiently in order. Pick up the list of the philosophers; that very act will compel you to wake up, when you see how many men have been working for your benefit. You will desire eagerly to be one of them yourself, for this is the most excellent quality that the noble soul has within itself, that it can be roused to honourable things.

No man of exalted gifts is pleased with that which is low and mean; the vision of great achievement summons him and uplifts him.  Just as the flame springs straight into the air and cannot be cabined or kept down any more than it can repose in quiet, so our soul is always in motion, and the more ardent it is, the greater its motion and activity. But happy is the man who has given it this impulse toward better things! He will place himself beyond the jurisdiction of chance; he will wisely control prosperity; he will lessen adversity, and will despise what others hold in admiration. It is the quality of a great soul to scorn great things and to prefer that which is ordinary rather than that which is too great. For the one condition is useful and life-giving; but the other does harm just because it is excessive. Similarly, too rich a soil makes the grain fall flat, branches break down under too heavy a load, excessive productiveness does not bring fruit to ripeness. This is the case with the soul also; for it is ruined by uncontrolled prosperity, which is used not only to the detriment of others, but also to the detriment of itself. What enemy was ever so insolent to any opponent as are their pleasures to certain men? The only excuse that we can allow for the incontinence and mad lust of these men is the fact that they suffer the evils which they have inflicted upon others. And they are rightly harassed by this madness, because desire must have unbounded space for its excursions, if it transgresses nature's mean. For this has its bounds, but waywardness and the acts that spring from willful lust are without boundaries. Utility measures our needs; but by what standard can you check the superfluous? It is for this reason that men sink themselves in pleasures, and they cannot do without them when once they have become accustomed to them, and for this reason they are most wretched, because they have reached such a pass that what was once superfluous to them has become indispensable. And so they are the slaves of their pleasures instead of enjoying them; they even love their own ills, – and that is the worst ill of all! Then it is that the height of unhappiness is reached, when men are not only attracted, but even pleased, by shameful things, and when there is no longer any room for a cure, now that those things which once were vices have become habits. --Seneca, Letter 39.

lt's always a surprise to encounter a thought in a figure one canonically or subjectively associates with a later author. For example, Seneca says that "our soul is always in motion" [ita noster animus in motu est,], which I associate with Hobbes's idea that "all mankind [has] a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." (The association is made firmer and clearer by the fact that for Hobbes the soul, and such desire, just is matter in motion.) A thought, in turn,  associate with Nietzsche's will to power (and Spinoza's Conatus doctrine). Obviously, Seneca need not be talking about power, but in context it's clear that Seneca assumes that the vast majority of most of us, ordinarily, constantly strive for pleasures and power (the things admired by the many). We are, in fact, slaves of our pleasures--a phrase that evokes Hume's infamous idea that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, we are slaves to our passions." Of course, Seneca denies Hume's ought, but not the underlying fact.

I am not claiming Hobbes or Hume are indebted to Seneca. They are targeting his philosophy, and so it's no surprise that they enjoy using rhetoric that evokes it. Rather, I am noticing the more quirky fact that certain phrases get connected pedagogically and by way of shared short-hand with certain thinkers even if these phrases may have been articulated first by (equally eloquent) opposite philosophies.  There is a historical irony lurking here because that Seneca's choice phrases became available for such re-use is, in part, due to the fact that his quotes would be passed on the list of philosophers/summaries/breviaries (etc.) circulating in the renaissance and early modern period. 

Be that as it may, one striking claim by Seneca is that a key quality of a magnanimous soul is to despise great things and to prefer that which is ordinary rather than that which is too superfluous [Magni animi est magna contemnere ac mediocria malle quam nimia.] This is rather distinct from Aristotelian μεγαλοψυχία (megalopsychia), which is primarily characterized in terms of a great-souled man's relationship to others (see the Nicomachean Ethics,  1124b). In so far as the desires of the great-souled man are characterized by Aristotle, these are articulated in terms of their uncommonly high honors or achievements (themselves also positional goods). Of course, Aristotle and Seneca agree, in a sense, that ordinarily the non-great-souled are mistaken about what matters, but that's the extent of the agreement.

While in this Letter, Seneca is annoyingly terse about the content of his version of magnanimity, it's crucial that is not subject to the jurisdiction of fortune [ponet se extra ius dicionemque fortunae] It's pretty clear that Seneca means to be suggesting that the magnanimous person embraces the empire of necessity (recall Letter 1 and  Letter 4); but see Letter 13). This is a genuine contrast with Aristotle, where a willingness to face danger in a great cause is especially praiseworthy. In Aristotelian great dangers, there is always an element of chance. 

For both Aristotle and Plato, chance is uniquely democratic (recall this post). And there is indeed no doubt that Seneca rejects the commercial and political market place, which he takes to be ruled by utility and open-ended and so destructive desire. But Rancière correctly reminds us that for Plato philosopher-kings need chance, a providential fate, to become rulers (recall also this post). (See Republic 592; also, perhaps, Laws 708e-709a). And so in rejecting the role of chance, Seneca is de facto also refusing the possibility of direct philosophical rule. The embrace of necessity entails, then, a form of magnanimity that is oriented toward goods that are commonly not taken to be very special.

One may worry here that what Plato relies on is not strictly speaking the Atomist/Epicurean fortune; that the Socratic providential fate is something distinct from that. And that Seneca, as a good Stoic, is willing to embrace some such conception providence.* I can't rule that out here. If one that's that possibility seriously, it would also entail that the kind of rule Seneca is willing to embrace is invisible from the majority mankind.

As should be clear the speculative thought of the past paragraph is not the position I am attributing to Seneca. But it is notable that it coincides with the position of Francis Bacon (where true ruler-ship by would be philosopher-kings is hidden from mankind (New Atlantis)), who was one of the funkier readers of Seneca.