Seneca,

“[W]hy is it that folly holds us with such an insistent grasp? It is, primarily, because we do not combat it strongly enough, because we do not struggle towards salvation with all our might; secondly, because we do not put sufficient trust in the discoveries of the wise, and do not drink in their words with open hearts; we approach this great problem in too trifling a spirit.”

Here, this is the reason.  We have many and many modern Stoics who discount the words of the very people the profess to follow.  “No, no, they didn’t really mean we should do these things.  It’s all tricks and lifehacks for dealing with modern stress.”  Bah.

But what’s worse, those who would discount out of hand the teachings or those who see that the teachings are needed, but don’t do it anyway?

““You call me a man of sense, but I understand how many of the things which I crave are useless, and how many of the things which I desire will do me harm. I have not even the knowledge, which satiety teaches to animals, of what should be the measure of my food or my drink. I do not yet know how much I can hold.””

Clearly then, the latter.  Which is the camp I’m firmly in.  I can clearly see that explicit recommendations are laid out… I’m just not doing them.

“But how can a man learn, in the struggle against his vices, an amount that is enough, if the time which he gives to learning is only the amount left over from his vices? None of us goes deep below the surface. We skim the top only, and we regard the smattering of time spent in the search for wisdom as enough and to spare for a busy man.”

It seems that there can be no “part-time philosophers.”  Most of us, myself included, our tourists.  That’s an untenable situation, one which will either result in our buckling down and really getting to work, or moving on to a different hobby at some point.

Thank you for the letter today, it’s an excellent mirror which shows a dingy reflection.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

We Stoics are often misconstrued a would-be emotionless automatons.  The confusion likes in our wishing to be rid of our πάθη, when the common conception is that ‘passion’ is a good thing, enlivening.  We seek a state called ἀπάθεια, too easily misunderstood as the common sort amotivational apathy.  By the time we get around to discussing εὐπάθη, the average listener already has their mind made up.  Robots.

Your letter today remarks on this distinction, here between ‘pleasure’ and ‘joy.’  The joy of the Sage, then, an unshakeable, rational elation of the spirit in the face of human existence and the breadth of the cosmos is as different from the base pleasures of vice than anything else we can imagine.

Thank you for the letter.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

The last section of your letter dealing with life and with on which conditions we might assent to end it was interesting to me today.  The Stoics get a lot of flak these days for their stance on suicide, which is almost always misinterpreted.

The qualifications seem reasonable:  mere pain or aging parts is not enough.  If the rational faculty is injured, or the human part of life gone, merely the movements of the body, it might be too late.  So, it is wise to meet the inevitable just before we might become incapable.

Thank you for the letter.

Vale.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

“None of us is the same man in old age that he was in youth; nor the same on the morrow as on the day preceding. Our bodies are burned along like flowing waters; every visible object accompanies time in its flight; of the things which we see, nothing is fixed.”

This brings to mind the Heraclitus Fragment:

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνουσιν ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
“On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow.”

Heh, that will teach me to start writing a blog post before finishing the letter!  This same quote is the next line!

“We are weak, watery beings standing in the midst of unrealities; therefore let us turn our minds to the things that are everlasting. Let us look up to the ideal outlines of all things, that flit about on high, and to the God who moves among them and plans how he may defend from death that which he could not make imperishable because its substance forbade, and so by reason may overcome the defects of the body.”

So far, I’ve really enjoyed these days’ readings of the letter.  It’s excellent food for thought.  The lesson that even something as hypothetical as Platonic forms can be turned, like someone would do a sermon, into a message that we can use to better ourselves is a poignant one.

Early on in my study, I began to notice “Stoic messages” in things that I saw.  Whether it was Man of La Mancha (wow, was that really two years ago?), or some other bit of entertainment.  Of course, the authors probably did not mean to make such allusions as I was plucking from their works, but in looking back, I now see that as a crucial step to internalizing the teachings we’re working with.

It’s like “blue car syndrome”  but rather than simply noticing something we now have a greater affinity for, our minds are beginning to filter our sense-impressions, and even our memories through a Stoic lens.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

Wow, some of this is difficult to follow in English, if I may say so.  I wonder if the more overtly coded grammar of Latin made it any easier on Luicilius?  As it is, I’m passingly familiar with the specifics of Stoic ontology, and I would probably find this easier to parse if the Greek words were included.  I wrote about Something yesterday in passing, the highest classification of which you are speaking.

From there we break down into corporeal forms which exist, and incorporeals (time, void, space, lekta) which subsist, but don’t exist.  In the modern parlance, they supervene.  Within things corporeal we have the active and passive components, matter and pneuma.

With those broad strokes, we can fill in the specifics of everything from rocks, plants, animals and man.

It might just be that spreading out this letter of a few days is not the easiest method for groking it, and after we’re done, I’ll probably go back and read it straight through.

I’m looking forward to the discussion, though!

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

This letter of yours we are breaking into several chunks.  Today’s bit is a ramping up, as it were, for the discussion at hand.  You discuss the linguistic and philosophical problems of translation.  Don’t worry, we haven’t figured it out either.

Learning another language is not learning how to translate words, quid pro quo, but rather learning to think with new tools.  I’ve seen the word ὄν (but usually in the plural), translated as “some things,” and “the things which are,” and more besides.  Your translation of “that which is” seems to be in a similar vein.

Language and philosophy naturally go hand in hand.  Where I suspect your letter will bend is a place I too have gone.  I started studying Koine Greek in this most recent October.  I want to be able to read the primary texts in their native tongue.

I do wonder, however, if as a non-native speaker with no current, living language community, will I always be outside looking in?  Even at my early stages, the problems presented by ὄν and οὐσία are not small.  We see the same issue again and again with words like τι (Something), σῶμα (Body), and and ὑποστάσεω (subsistence, grounding), to name a few.

I’m looking forward to rest of this letter, because the incorporeals and the language issue are both interesting to me.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

I found two parts particularly interesting from you letter today.  The first ties into something I was thinking about yesterday.  Currently, there is a common conception that the common English word stoic with a little-S is the same as our own school.  While it may be inspired by it, they are not the same.  This misapprehension results in people’s believing that Stoics are trying to “repress their emotions.”

I’m reading a book by Margaret Graver, in which she note the following:

Your discussion today about the physiological responses to external stimuli as different from the passions fits well in with what Graver says above.

The second part which stuck out at me was the discussion on the nature of the soul.  For modern thinkers, the very idea of the soul has a material entity is alien.  We are all mostly dyed in the Cartesian model, and the concept that the soul could be a physical thing mixed in with the body is hard to grok.

I enjoy reading and thinking about these conceptions.  Thank you for the letter.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.

Seneca,

I’ve very much enjoyed yeterday’s and today’s letter.  These thoughts have been heavy on my mind lately.  Two section stuck out at me, and I’d like to comment on them.

The first:

“For all unconcealed vices are less serious; a disease also is farther on the road to being cured when it breaks forth from concealment and manifests its power. So with greed, ambition, and the other evils of the mind, – you may be sure that they do most harm when they are hidden behind a pretence of soundness.”

In an earlier letter, I think it was you mention that men build walls and homes not for protection, but to hide away their vices.  They secret them behind many kinds of walls.  Some of stone, and some of society, and more yet words and deeds.  Yet, we should act as if all our actions are within the public view.  Whether it be from God, or from the Sage, or simply from the people wish we could be; we should act as if none of our actions are hidden.

“Men think that we are in retirement, and yet we are not. For if we have sincerely retired, and have sounded the signal for retreat, and have scorned outward attractions, then, as I remarked above, no outward thing will distract us; no music of men or of birds can interrupt good thoughts, when they have once become steadfast and sure.  The mind which starts at words or at chance sounds is unstable and has not yet withdrawn into itself; it contains within itself an element of anxiety and rooted fear, and this makes one a prey to care…”

Ah!  This was what I was getting at with yesterday’s worries.  If we retire, are we neglecting some thing.  From this, I take, that the retirement that Marcus speaks of as ‘the inner citadel’ is the same sort of retirement you’re getting at.  However, we may have to train ourselves to it.  If that’s the case, it’s not a concern really that the training looks different from the thing itself.  A boxer may lift weights, jump rope, and stand up and down on boxes daily as training, but the fight itself contains none of these actions.

Our physical retirement, then, a temporary retreat from the world to train our inner citadel is well founded.  Once that training has been complete, we can return to the city, and carry our retirement with us.

Thank you for letter, it has been a great help.

Farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.