Category Archives: Uncategorized

6 months of Seneca, whew!

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duble_herma_of_socrates_and_seneca_antikensammlung_berlin_07So, the close of this week marks the half-way point for the Seneca’s Letters Reading Program.  That’s been six-months of daily (during the week) readings.  I’m thinking of taking some additional time in the second six-month period to focus on Marcus.

I’ll work up a reading plan, which will probably use one or two different translations of Meditations coupled with Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel.  Expect to see this project in the next couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, thanks for following along.  I’ve found the more in depth study of Seneca useful, even if we’re often in disagreement.  I’ve found a new appreciation for the work, however.

Stoic swag

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There was a post in the FB group not too long ago about Stoic swag.  I’d mentioned I was looking into a Marcus dinarius to make a necklace out of.  I came across this guy and snapped it up, however.

A coin from Cyprus, 1993.  With Zeno of Citium.

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New Translation of Epictetus

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While I’ve been putting together those YouTube videos of the Enchiridion with Jean, he pointed me to a new translation of the works of Epictetus that I previously hadn’t been exposed to.dairesis

Franco Scalenghe runs http://www.epitteto.com/ and you can download as PDF or read as hypertext his new translation of the Enchiridion, Discourses, and Fragments.  Franco’s translation attempts to keep the conversational style of the Discourses alive, in a way that some of the translations from the 20th or 19th centuries may lack for modern readers.

I’m working Franco’s translation now, and it’s an exciting new light in which to view Epictetus.  I suspect it will get a permanent place right next to the Higginson translation for me.

Enchiridion 1:5

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Long:
“Straightway then practise saying to every harsh appearance, You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be. Then examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power or to things which are not in our power: and if it relates to any thing which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you.”

Higginson:
“Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, “You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing.” And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power, or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.”

Koine:
“εὐθὺς οὖν πάσῃ φαντασίᾳ τραχείᾳ μελέτα ἐπιλέγειν ὅτι ‘φαντασία εἶ καὶ οὐ πάντως τὸ φαινόμενον.’ ἔπειτα ἐξέταζε αὐτὴν καὶ δοκίμαζε τοῖς κανόσι τούτοις οἷς ἔχεις, πρώτῳ δὲ τούτῳ καὶ μάλιστα, πότερον περὶ τὰ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν ἐστιν ἢ περὶ τὰ οὐκ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν: κἂν περί τι τῶν οὐκ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν ᾖ, πρόχειρον ἔστω τὸ διότι ‘οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ’.”

Are philosophers “marginal persons” ?

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“Are monks and hippies and poets relevant? No, we are deliberately irrelevant. We live with an ingrained irrelevance which is proper to every human being. The marginal man accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life. He struggles with the fact of death in himself, trying to seek something deeper than death; because there is something deeper than death, and the office of the monk or marginal person, the meditative person or the poet is to go beyond death even in this life, to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death and to be therefore, a witness to life.”

What makes a marginal person?

  • some level of detachment in relation to the secular concerns of the world;
  • a deep appreciation for the inner life of faith and wisdom; and
  • a “special concern with inner transformation, a deepening of consciousness toward an eventual breakthrough and discovery of a transcendental dimension of life beyond that of the ordinary empirical self and of ethical and pious observance.”

http://mertoninasia.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/relevance-of-irrelevant.html