DESPITE THE VERY HIGH level of interest in Stoicism today, no one has written a book explaining Seneca’s teachings for the general reader, even though he’s been called “the most compelling and elegant of the Stoic writers.”3 I hope this book will fill that void, and provide a bird’s-eye view of his thinking. (Seneca is very consistent in his thinking, but his ideas about specific topics are scattered across hundreds of pages.)
This book might satisfy the entire curiosity of some readers about Seneca’s philosophy. But for those who wish to continue on to Seneca’s actual writings, or to host their own breakfasts with Seneca, may this guide serve as a helpful companion on that quest.
—David Fideler
BREAKFAST
WITH
SENECA
INTRODUCTION
A Life Truly Worth Living
SENECA (C. 4 BC–AD 65) WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST and most learned writers of his time. As an unhappy adviser to the ill-fated regime of the Emperor Nero in Rome, he also became one of the richest men in the world. But the reason most people are interested in Seneca today has to do with something else: it’s because he wrote about Stoic philosophy, which has undergone a tremendous, popular revival in recent years.
While the Stoic school started in Athens roughly three hundred years before Seneca was born, the writings of the Greek Stoics are mostly lost. They only survive in brief quotations or fragments. This makes Seneca the first major Stoic writer whose philosophical works have come down to us in a nearly complete form. He had one of the most well-informed and curious minds of his age, and displayed a daring intellectual freedom and open-mindedness in his writings. It is this quality that makes him seem very modern.
In this book, which features fresh translations from his work, I explain Seneca’s key ideas and wise teachings in the clearest way possible. This is also an introduction to Stoic philosophy in general, because it’s impossible to fully understand Seneca’s thinking without understanding the Stoic ideas on which it was based. To further explain and amplify the ideas that Seneca held, I also quote from two later Roman Stoics, Epictetus (c. AD 50–135) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180).
PHILOSOPHY AS “THE ART OF LIVING”: STOICISM AND ITS LASTING APPEAL
The mind would rather amuse itself than heal itself, making philosophy into a diversion when it is really a cure.
—Seneca, Letters 117.33
Before we start exploring Stoicism, we must clear up one popular misconception. Stoicism has nothing to do with “keeping a stiff upper lip” or “bottling up your emotions,” which everyone knows to be unhealthy. While Seneca was a Stoic philosopher, it’s essential to recognize that over the centuries the meaning of stoic has changed radically: the word stoic today, written with a small s, has no relationship with the capital-S Stoicism of the ancient world. While the modern word stoic means “to repress your emotions,” the ancient Stoics never advocated anything along those lines. Like everyone else, the Stoic philosophers had no issue with normal, healthy feelings like love and affection. As the philosopher Epictetus wrote, the Stoic should not be “unfeeling like a statue.” Rather, the Stoics developed a “therapy of the passions” to help prevent extreme, violent, and negative emotions that can overwhelm the personality, like anger, fear, and anxiety. Rather than repress these negative emotions, their goal was to transform them through understanding.
Some important Stoic ideas go back to the Greek philosopher Socrates (c. 470–399 BC), who famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In other words, “Know yourself”: self-knowledge is essential for leading a happy life. Socrates also suggested that in the same way gymnastics is designed to keep our bodies healthy, there must also be some kind of art that would care for the health of our souls. While Socrates never gave this “art” a name, the clear implication was that it is the role of philosophy and the philosopher to “care for the soul.”1
These two ideas—that knowledge is critical for happiness and living a good life, and that philosophy is a kind of therapy for the soul—were essential foundations on which Stoicism was based. As a school, Stoicism originated in Athens around 300 BC, where the philosopher Zeno of Citium (c. 334–c. 262 BC) lectured at the Stoa Poikilē or “Painted Porch”—hence the name of the school.2
Like other philosophers of the time, the Stoics were intensely concerned with the question What is needed to live the best possible life? If humans could answer that question, they believed, we could then flourish and live happy, tranquil lives—even if the world itself seems to be crazy and out of control. This made Stoicism a supremely practical philosophy, and also explains its revival today, because our own time—socially, politically, economically, and environmentally—also strikes people as feeling crazy and out of control.
Even if the world seems out of control, the Stoics taught that we could lead meaningful, productive, and happy lives. Moreover, even in adverse situations, our lives can still be tranquil and characterized by psychological equanimity. It is this strong emphasis on the project of living a good, meaningful, and tranquil life that made Roman Stoicism so popular as a philosophical school during the times of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and it’s also what makes Stoicism popular today, in times that are no less stressful.
This emphasis on living a good life also separates Stoicism from modern academic philosophy, which has given up on such practical human concerns in favor of abstract theoretical issues, most of which are meaningless to others outside of the philosopher’s ivory tower. But as the ancient philosopher Epicurus (340–270 BC) stressed,
Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sicknesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul.3
Similarly, the Stoics saw philosophy as a way of curing the “diseases of the soul.” They saw it as resembling “a medical art,” and even called the philosopher “a doctor of the soul.” The Stoics also called philosophy “the art of living,” and Seneca described his own teachings as being like “medical remedies.” He found these “remedies” to be helpful in treating his own conditions and wanted to share them with others, including future generations.4
EIGHT CORE TEACHINGS OF Roman STOICISM
As you might expect, Stoic philosophers held different ideas about many topics, but there are several key points that all Roman Stoic philosophers agreed on. That’s what made them Stoics and not members of another philosophical school. These foundational ideas of Stoicism are reflected in the works of Seneca, too, and most of them go back to the earliest Greek Stoics.
While we’ll explore these ideas more deeply in the chapters that follow, it’s worth mentioning these eight main ideas of Stoic thought here, as a quick taste of what is to come. (That said, if you’d rather consider these points later, please feel free to skip ahead to the next section of this introduction.)
1