It’s useless to be strong in situations where strength plays no meaningful role. Will mental strength alone help you achieve your business, professional and social goals? Will it render you healthier and happier? I very much doubt it.
Seneca viewed mental strength as the answer to all questions. How do we minimize trouble in life? How do we prevent a nervous breakdown and maintain our motivation after a setback? Through mental strength, he argued.
The problem is that Seneca’s questions are severely biased. They assume, wrongly, that human life consists mostly of pain, misery and defeats. They forecast a dark future for everybody, everywhere, in every area of life. They only spread pessimism and resignation.
In his 13th and 24th Letters to Lucilius, Seneca categorized coping with adversity as a central goal of his philosophy. He gives his readers advice on how to prepare themselves for bad times, and encourages them to practise daily in their heads, so that they will be ready when disaster strikes.
To make things worse, Seneca calls for “mediating daily on the shortness of life,” so that we do not grow too enamoured of anyone or anything. He argues that, by preparing ourselves for the worst, we will suffer less when we experience a large loss.
The root of Seneca’s misconceptions
I consider Seneca’s low expectations as the root cause of his philosophical misconceptions: He vastly underrated the human capacity for self-improvement and for pursuing and achieving difficult goals. He placed a heavy emphasis on meditation and moderation, and too little on motivation and implementation.
Seneca’s misconceptions about human psychology run too deep to be ignored. They permeate his complete writings from the first page to the last. They must be addressed and resolved before we can enjoy the benefits of Stoicism.
Fortunately, the 17th and 18th Letters to Lucilius supply the antidote to those misconceptions. Seneca wrote those when he was already past his fiftieth birthday. I regard those two Letters as the culmination of his philosophy, as a summary of his lifetime’s work.
Like in his previous works, Seneca recommends moderation and balance, but does it in a less stringent manner. Instead of calling his readers to renounce luxury, he implies that luxury is not required for happiness. Instead of condemning wealth and success, he says that “they are to be enjoyed wisely.”
Seneca had learned through experience that it is unworkable to become a radical Stoic. For example: If we regard money and other possessions as useless, how are we supposed to make financial decisions? Or if we spend hours on self-examination, how can we get any work done?
Differences between early and late Seneca’s views
I am happy to see that the 17th and 18th Letters are showing us a more realistic and humane Seneca, one that had made vast mistakes but still preserved the ability to examine his own actions with a critical eye.
For the first time in his philosophical writing, Seneca owns up to his own acquisitiveness and acknowledges that wealth is “a tool that wise people can use beneficially,” not something to be rejected outright.
Mental strength is remarkably absent as a top priority in the 99th Letter to Lucilius. Seneca correctly equates happiness with contentment, instead of the ability to live without. He praises a simple lifestyle, but does not call for embracing poverty.
Why did Seneca, at the end of his life, give less importance to mental strength and more to other Stoic virtues? Because he had realized that human beings can not be primarily motivated by pain-avoidance.
In earlier writings, Seneca had assumed that philosophically minded people would be willing to devote years to learning how to deal with disasters, but as time went by, he realized that not even himself was willing to remain a stringent Stoic.
As a result, Seneca came to place other Stoic virtues above mental strength. Which other virtues? Simplicity, the choice of a modest but still comfortable lifestyle, self-discipline, and the love of nature.
Seneca’s virtues and William Wilberforce
The life story of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) provides a great example of Seneca’s latter philosophical views. Instead of focusing on mental strength to cope with problems, he spent his energies on looking for solutions.
I find it remarkable that Wilberforce devoted three decades of his life to abolishing slavery in the United Kingdom. He did attain his goal when he was in his early fifties, but it had been a long way since he had started campaigning in 1783, at age twenty-four.
Wilberforce embodied the Stoic virtues of simplicity, self-discipline and modesty in a superlative manner. As a member of the British Parliament, he submitted one bill after another to put an end to slavery, only to have them ridiculed and vilified, but his efforts eventually carried the day.
Seneca’s early emphasis on mental strength would not have been sufficient to motivate Wilberforce to keep going for three decades. Solely relying on mental strength cannot provide the strong sense of direction required for pursuing difficult goals.
Stringent Stoics tend to give up too easily when things turn against them. They share Seneca’s misconceptions about world affairs, which they regard too pessimistically.
If Wilberforce had adopted their views, he would not have kept going for decades in the face of fierce opposition. Mental strength is good to have, but should not become an excuse for not pursuing important goals.
If Seneca had met Wilberforce, he would have praised his perseverance and high motivation, especially considering that Wilberforce had nothing to gain personally by the abolition of slavery. He was simply pursuing moral truth each day in ways that Seneca could have hardly conceived.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all kinds of situations, I recommend my book “Against all odds: How to achieve great victories in desperate times.”
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