Philosophers are all too eager to speak about the benefits of their ideals, but will seldom mention the drawbacks. I’m afraid that it is up to the readers to figure out the problems and adopt countermeasures.
Seneca came up with essential insights about Stoicism and the good life, but also made some dire mistakes. I encourage readers to study his philosophy carefully, as though it was marked with the notice “Warning: Potential danger.”
The fact that Seneca was forced to commit suicide should serve as a warning of severe danger. Considering that Seneca ended up killing himself, it is fair to question the soundness of his philosophy.
If Seneca was so clever, why did he end up so badly? If his philosophy was so effective, how come that he killed himself? If Stoicism enables people to find happiness, how come that its cultural influence has diminished?
Seneca should have addressed these questions because, by the time he started to write, Stoic philosophy was already three hundred years old.
The ideas of Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC) and Cleanthes (330-230 BC) had been put into practice by many generations. Seneca could examine a vast body of philosophical knowledge, and reach accurate conclusions.
Seneca’s call for a fair balance
In his Letters to Lucilius, Seneca deployed serious efforts to examine the practical implications of Stoic philosophy. For a decade, until his fifty-fifth birthday approximately, he lived as he preached and did well. Later on, he went astray and suffered the consequences.
Seneca was right in many of his recommendations; when he told us to devote our leisure time to personal growth, he was giving us good advice. In his 79th Letter to Lucilius, he warned us against “empty amusements” twenty centuries before video-games and soap operas.
Similarly, Seneca was right in recommending us to strike a fair balance between thinking and action, learning and earning, solitude and social activities. His 79th Letter to Lucilius praises both parts of the spectrum as crucial to the good life.
Unfortunately, Seneca overlooked an important detail in this piece of advice. His recommendation to strike a fair balance is assuming that, from time to time, we should shift between the two ends of the spectrum.
Seneca implied that we would devote some time to thinking and then to action; some time to learning and some to earning; and that we would spend some time in solitude and then return to social activities.
Seneca’s flawed assumption
His assumption is based on logical principles identified by Aristotle (384-322 BC). In the absence of better evidence, one would assign the same weight to the two factors in the formula for happiness, right?
No, absolutely wrong. Seneca’s assumption of linearity does not have any bearing in reality. He made a terrible mistake in giving a fifty-fifty weighting to thinking and action, learning and earning, social activities and solitude.
I call it a terrible mistake because human life is never linear. Our personal history does not flow evenly from year to year. In almost every biography, you will find setbacks, turning points, and random events that bring linearity asunder.
Aristotle made the opposite assumption in his “Eudemian Ethics” and “Nicomachean Ethics.” He told readers to embrace virtue and practise it everyday precisely because human life is not linear.
When we wake up in the morning, we can never be sure if it is going to be a great day or an awful day. We don’t know if we are going to be confronted with random disaster or bad luck.
In view of the uncertainty, the best choice is to practise the Aristotelian virtues all the time, every day without exception. I don’t know when I am going to be hit by some random setback, but I prefer that it gets me when I am doing the right thing.
Seneca paid the highest price for his mistake
Seneca’s assumption of linearity led him to make a mistake that proved irreparable; he accepted to become Nero’s tutor and manage the financial interests of Empress Agrippina.
After a few months, it became obvious to Seneca that Nero was a psychopath beyond redemption. If Seneca had followed the principles of Aristotelian ethics, he would have disengaged and run away as fast as he could.
Instead of going to one end of the spectrum, as the situation was calling him to do, Seneca remained stuck in his linearity assumption. He continued to do fifty-fifty between work and leisure, doing his job in Rome and going off to his residence near Naples to rest and philosophise.
No wonder that Seneca did nothing when things grew worse and worse. No wonder that he failed to notice the lion running towards him at full speed. His suicide was not a sign of great wisdom, but the ultimate admission of philosophical failure.
Am I being too harsh on Seneca for his deep reluctance to acknowledge the facts? I don’t think so because, in the absence of warnings, other people have reproduced Seneca’s mistake and also faced terrible consequences.
Seneca should have followed the principle expressed in the 103rd Letter to Lucilius. I am referring to the expectation that philosophers should be consistent and deeply anchored in their beliefs. I do not think that partial consistency will do the trick.
Seneca and Francois Fenelon
The French philosopher Francois Fenelon (1651-1715) was well versed in ancient philosophy and Stoicism in particular. I find it sad that he made exactly the same mistake that Seneca had made seventeen centuries earlier and suffered irreparable damage.
Fenelon was born into lower nobility. Early in life, he chose to become a Catholic priest and devote his life to studying. His reputation for knowledge and wisdom landed him the post of tutor at the royal court.
Like Seneca, Fenelon must have quickly realized the danger inherent in his work environment. He would have done much better if he had feigned some illness and asked for some other job far away from Paris.
What did Fenelon do instead? He wrote a novel criticising the abuses and foolishness of the French king. It did not matter that the criticism was subtle and indirect. From the moment the book was published, Fenelon was cooked.
He ended up being prosecuted for heresy due to a doctrinal hair-splitting that, nowadays, is not even worth mentioning. He ended his days exiled from Paris, living in a small town, where he had been appointed bishop, far away from the intellectual scene that he loved so much.
The warning is unmistakable: Before you imitate Seneca or Fenelon, think things through. Don’t assume linearity or assign only fifty per cent of your time to learning and planning. If the situation calls for extreme caution, we should not hesitate to go one hundred per cent into self-protection mode.
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.”
Related articles
What Seneca got wrong about resilience
Key Seneca’s insights to implement today