Large numbers of philosophers have preached ideals that do not have anything to do with real life. When I read their works, I can only wonder if they spent one minute reflecting on work, success, prosperity or happiness.
Seneca exemplifies the opposite. He devoted his works to dealing with real-life concerns and supplied useful advice. He didn’t put forward ideals that he would not practise himself, even if he never achieved perfect consistency.
In the essay “On the Happy Life,” Seneca gave us his recipe for thriving in life. He was already sixty-two when he wrote it, and drew lessons from a lifetime experience. His long exile in Corsica had marked his character as much as his later financial success as advisor to Empress Agrippina.
Seneca’s concept of happiness is different from Aristotle’s. I attribute the differences to essential philosophical arguments. It is not that Seneca was unfamiliar with Aristotle (384-322 BC) and the “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Eudemian Ethics.” He did know Aristotle’s formula for happiness, but disagreed with it.
Seneca: Thriving in life vs. setbacks
“Thriving” and “achievement” drive Aristotelian ethics from beginning to end. For Aristotle, human action is teleological. It has happiness as a goal (“telos”), for which health, prosperity, success and popularity constitute stepping stones.
Aristotelian moral values are supposed to help us thrive and advance towards happiness. When we practise virtues such as self-discipline or benevolence, Aristotle argued, we are helping ourselves build a better life.
Seneca did not contest that humans desire happiness, but he found Aristotle’s advice impractical. When we observe reality, Seneca argued, we see that humans are often confronted with setbacks, illness and disappointments.
Thriving is great if we can get it, but it is unlikely that life will allow us to thrive unimpeded. Seneca’s insights are, in this respect, one hundred per cent realistic; they help us advance during bad times, when success and happiness prove elusive.
“On the Happy Life” gives Seneca’s definition of happiness, namely, “living in accordance with nature” or “in accordance with reason.” Seneca employs the terms “nature” and “reason” indistinctly.
Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” recommends virtues that, in the long term, enable individuals to thrive and attain success in life, but does not say much about how to deal with failure or sickness. It assumes that “nature” is favourable to happiness.
In contrast, Seneca considers failure, opposition, errors and sickness as frequent events. When he was in his mid-twenties, he was confronted with a severe respiratory illness. It took him years to heal and, at times, he believed he was about to die.
For this reason, Seneca felt driven to embrace ideas that tell us how to cope with setbacks. He embraced Stoicism precisely because it helps people keep going in the absence of success, wealth, health or popularity.
Seneca: Thriving in life vs. harmony
Will Stoicism help us thrive during hard times? Seneca gave an answer that invalidates the question. Happiness is not about thriving, he wrote, but about “living in harmony.” Philosophy should teach us to lead a good life during good and bad times.
If we narrow down our definition of happiness to “thriving,” we won’t be able to cope with adversity. If our philosophy only works during good times, we’ll drown in misery when the tide turns against us.
Seneca’s philosophical principles go beyond the teachings of Cleanthes (330-230 BC) and Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC), the founders of Stoicism.
In contrast to Zeno’s resignation, Seneca called for adopting countermeasures when feasible. In contrast to Cleanthes’ doom and gloom, Seneca was happy to enjoy earthly pleasures when those became available.
Let us review Seneca’s key principles for “thriving in life” during good and bad times. My explanations are avoiding the word “soul,” which had been overused in nineteenth-century translations of Seneca’s works, but doesn’t fit today’s language usage.
Seneca: Equanimity as top priority
Equanimity is the mark of the philosophically trained. If we are experiencing severe emotional ups and downs, we need to reassess our ideas. Extreme mood changes lead to suffering, and should be addressed by correcting the underlying beliefs.
In the 75th Letter to Lucilius, Seneca categorizes acute mood changes as detrimental. They denote a manifest lack of wisdom that can be remedied through philosophical education and practice.
Seneca views equanimity as a visible sign of rationality and virtue. Serenity doesn’t happen by chance. It’s the result of vast philosophical knowledge, which is applied automatically when adversity strikes.
Serenity is an awesome spectacle to behold; history delivers its most impressive lessons through individuals who stand their ground calmly when things are falling apart. Seneca describes serene people as “examples of perfect moral health,” while he condemns as “fools” those who panic at the slightest difficulty.
Seneca warns us against the prevalence of foolish behaviour in crisis situations. Let us not be deceived by the abundance of emotional overreactions. A ship will sink even faster if all crew members fall prey to panic and do the wrong thing.
Unnecessary mental suffering isn’t justifiable by its societal prevalence. It remains irrational to subscribe to other people’s foolish beliefs even if social conformity may seem, in the short term, an appealing option.
Seneca was correct in predicting that a wrong philosophy is doomed to deliver disastrous results. Sharp mood changes give us a sign that some beliefs are misaligned with reality and need to be corrected. The sooner this is done, the better.
Seneca: Living in accordance with nature
The key to thriving in life is obeying natural law. Seneca had employed the wording “living in accordance with nature” but language usage has evolved to such an extent that prompts me to avoid a literal translation.
I regard the literal translation “in accordance with nature” as no longer accurate because, nowadays, it draws close to terms such as “biological” and “organic.” Those terms do not reflect Seneca’s intent and bring distortions into his philosophy.
For this reason, I prefer the translation “living in accordance with natural law.” It entails moral and legal considerations that go beyond passive adherence to the “biological” and “organic.”
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) turned the concept of natural law into the cornerstone of social harmony. He considered it the basis and precondition for peaceful cooperation at individual, national and international level.
Seneca’s conception of “living in accordance with nature” is difficult to apprehend because it rests on a circular logic. If we obey nature, especially when dealing with other people, are we not shaping nature ourselves? If nature includes our decisions and omissions, how can we tell if they are correct?
Seneca’s logical gap and Hugo Grotius
Grotius regarded natural law as encompassing wild nature and human decisions, but in contrast to Seneca, he gives clear guidelines for conflict situations. The Letters to Lucilius lack a consistent approach for dealing with abuse and exploitation. In Grotius’ works, we find a definite prescription for those cases.
Am I distorting Seneca’s ideas by referring to Grotius? No, because we need to fill the logical gap in Seneca’s prescription for thriving in life. By simply pointing to nature, we leave the questions about harmonious collaboration unanswered.
Seneca’s “On the Happy Life” and “Letters to Lucilius” had subsumed all forms of adversity into an amorphous category of bad things that happen to us. Yet, there are crucial differences between natural disasters and man-made inequities.
Grotius employed the natural-law concept in his books “On the Law of War and Peace” (1625) and “On the Law of Prizes and Booty” (1660), arriving at the conclusion that natural law is the opposite of aggression.
This principle would have been agreeable to Seneca and all other classical proponents of Stoicism, but it is absent in their writings. Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) knew enough to have filled this gap, but instead, he recorded anecdotes of negligible importance.
Like Seneca, Grotius called for “living in accordance with nature,” but added considerations of harmony. His conception of natural law makes Stoicism feasible and sustainable because it fills the logical gap left behind by Seneca and his peers.
Seneca’s works suffer from weak definitions of nature and reason. Sometimes, Seneca calls for doing what’s right without any cost considerations, and other times, he passively accepts injustice.
Grotius made the first serious attempt at filling the logical gap left by the classical Stoics. Seneca’s works sometimes give the impression that injustice is inevitable, and other times, they call for unflinching resolve. I can only thank Grotius for giving us the clue to solve this crucial puzzle.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice, I recommend my book “Rationality is the way of happiness.”
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