Amongst all Stoic philosophers, Seneca has attained the widest reach and popularity. The reason is not hard to figure out. He simply wrote more and better than all others put together.
Seneca devoted more than two decades of his life to writing. At the beginning, he wrote plays for the theatre, tragedies, that don’t deserve much consideration. They are boring and bloody, as well as unimaginative.
In his forties, Seneca turned to writing essays, but following the literary conventions of this time. He conceived his writings as essays, but composed them in some parts as dialogues, where participants defend different views. He was imitating the pattern Plato had initiated with his philosophy dialogues.
Nonetheless, Seneca’s greatest literary achievement consists of a collection of letters called “Letters to Lucilius,” a friend of his. Seneca was in his fifties and early sixties when he wrote those letters. They sum up the wisdom of a lifetime.
Seneca: Main themes in the Letters from a Stoic
In the Letters to Lucilius (or Letters from a Stoic), Seneca is presenting the principles of Stoicism; he is expanding the ideas of Cleanthes (330-230 BC), Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC) and Chrysippus (279-206 BC), the founders of Stoic philosophy.
Seneca wrote more than one hundred Letters to Lucilius, but they all revolve around two main themes. The Letters are addressing these two themes from different angles:
One, we should not blow our troubles out of proportion. It’s better to keep a cool head in times of adversity, and keep panic at bay. Two, we can improve our own lives, but it takes lots of effort and dedication.
I regard the 63rd Letter to Lucilius as a masterpiece in clarity and conciseness. Seneca accepts that negative emotions such as grief are natural, but at the same time, he encourages readers to keep their emotions in check.
There is nothing to be gained by blowing disappointments, errors and setbacks out of proportion, Seneca explains. Instead of losing ourselves in lamentations, we should aim at keeping calm, that is, at maintaining equanimity.
Seneca’s call for equanimity and balance
Seneca reminds us that Socrates (470-399 BC), before his death, had given exactly that piece of advice to his friends. He had encouraged them to “mourn without grief,” that is, without excessive worry and anxiety.
When we experience a large loss, personal or financial, it is important that we maintain a sense of proportion. We shouldn’t lose sight of the total picture. Instead of crying and lamenting, we should count the assets that remain at our disposal, such as our health, our skills, other family members and friends.
Seneca returns to this idea almost in every Letter to Lucilius but, in the 63rd Letter, he employs one of his best metaphors. If we suffer a large loss, for instance the death of a close friend, Seneca compares it to “losing a limb from our body.”
The pain will be enormous, Seneca acknowledges, but it’s in our interest to “keep the rest of the body healthy.” The fact that we have lost a limb, metaphorically, does not justify the loss of the complete body.
Seneca encourages us to look for ways to keep our emotions in balance and find ways to enjoy life despite the loss we have suffered. He also encourages us to invest ourselves in love relationships and friendships even if, sooner or later, we may lose that particular person.
Stoicism teaches us to accept inevitable losses without rage and defeatism. Problems are a fact of life, but we cannot avoid them all. We should steer away from them as much as possible, but everybody gets his fair share of hassles in life.
Seneca recommends moderation and reason as a formula for equanimity. “Life is like a sea voyage,” Seneca explains. It is a ship we need to board to get to our destination, knowing that the trip might expose us to storms and other forms of weather inclemency.
Seneca’s recipe for self-improvement
Stoicism is not only about copying with problems, but also about self-improvement. The 112th Letter to Lucilius provides the gist of Seneca’s philosophy in this respect.
Individuals who want a better life, Seneca explains, should start by acquiring better habits, but those can only be acquired “little by little.” Humans can only change when their old habits are “softened by time” and replaced by better ones.
I would compare the process of self-improvement described by Seneca to the process employed by Phidias (490-430 BC) to make his beautiful sculptures. Instead of applying brute force to the marble, Phidias gave it shape little by little. It is a long process composed of lots of small strokes and touches.
Seneca’s ideas and Mary Kingsley
The British explorer Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) embodies the ideals from Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius. Her life illustrates how to keep a cool head in crisis situations, and apply oneself to self-improvement, little by little.
Kingsley built her self-confidence already as a child. She discarded the idea of fragility, learned to climb tall trees, and practised often. She also read voraciously, all kinds of books, to expand her knowledge.
At the beginning, Kingsley read children’s books, but then she started to get interested in other subjects. It didn’t take long before she was reading history, chemistry and biology books. It did not matter that she had initially found those books difficult to understand.
Kingsley grew famous after she quit her life in England and departed for West Africa. She was twenty-nine at that time. It had taken her a while to “abandon the ordinary path,” but little by little, she had built sufficient physical and mental strength.
During her travels through West Africa, Kingsley tasted all local dishes, learned to paddle on a canoe, collected specimens of insects and amphibians, and cured herself from snake bites by using remedies she had learned from the native population.
Kingsley took detailed notes and wrote two books about her adventures in West Africa. She was thirty-seven when the first book came out. The tone of detachment and resilience reminds me of Seneca’s philosophy in many respects.
Seneca had recommended to seize the day and enjoy life to the maximum, and Kingsley adopted the motto of “living life in full” and avoiding inaction. I find it particularly ingenious that she managed to earn a living by selling African specimens to museums across Great Britain.
I find it impressive how Kingsley built her own strength by taking daily steps. When she started travelling, she didn’t have a definite plan for earning a living, but she followed the Stoic principle of giving shape to solutions, little by little.
Eventually, Kingsley ended up with a diversified income in which she combined the earnings from her books “Travels in West Africa” (1897) and “West African Studies” (1899), from newspaper and magazine articles, public lectures, and the sale of specimens to museums. Seneca would not have done it any better.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all kinds of situations, I recommend my book “The Philosophy of Builders.”
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