Seneca,
It’s fortuitous that you write me today on prayer.  I have a tab open in my browser for a blog article from Chris Fisher on piety to read today, and he is talking about you!

You may be aware, or you may find it surprising, that in a sub-set of modern Stoics, there’s an ample amount of energy spent in displacing the religious nature of the writings we’ve inherited.

Frankly, it seems to be a political issue, and one which no longer holds much interest to me.  If folks want to pretend that words don’t mean what they clearly mean, that’s their prerogative, I suppose.

Moving on…

“As for your former prayers, you may dispense the gods from answering them; offer new prayers; pray for a sound mind and for good health, first of soul and then of body. And of course you should offer those prayers frequently. Call boldly upon God; you will not be asking him for that which belongs to another.”

Epictetus extols to us, similarly as you, that we had better attempt to remedy the soul than the body, for it is better to die well, than to live in a state of madness.  This past weekend, I found myself frustrated by the tiniest of problem.  I’ll illustrate just how small by telling you precisely what it was.  While shopping, I wanted to buy two carrots for a lentil soup for this week.  There was an error in ringing them up, and my two small carrots were charged as if they were each a bunch of carrots, totaling about $3 for the two carrots.

I incorrectly (and very quickly) assented to the impression that I was wronged somehow, ignoring that the issue was one of money and carrots (there’s a sentence one never expects to write…), and as a result, my mood was shot.  I tried to call to mind the tenets of our School, but strangely, they were not helping.

It was only when I thought of a friend of mine, who is preparing to endure a (possibly) very long separation from his children that I said, “My friend is saying good-bye to his children, and I’m upset over carrots,” that I was able to find the proper perspective.

I realized, “I’m upset over carrots, and that’s a really  unreasonable situation.”  Indeed, it is better that we focus on healing this soul-malaise, and that is especially driven home to me these days.

“Know that thou art freed from all desires when thou hast reached such a point that thou prayest to God for nothing except what thou canst pray for openly.”

Maybe I’m engaging in some of that “pretending words don’t mean what they clearly mean, but do you mean pray-pray?  Like, on one’s knees, talking to God?  It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done that.  I may have even forgotten how.

“Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening”

This, I think, I can remember how to do.

Farewell.

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

Stilpo is an interesting character.  A Megarian, and one of the tutors of Zeno of Citium before he founded the Stoa, Stilpo reportedly witnessed the razing of his country, loss of his people and family, and walked out of the ashy remains with a smile, has he ‘had all his goods with him.’

Megarians were interested in Logic and Virtue, which Zeno and Stoicism inherits.  I don’t recall that we hear of Stilpo other than this little quip in Seneca.

The Stoic’s ‘self-sufficiency’ and ability to retire into himself (which Marcus will refer to as ‘the Inner Citadel) seems to be the method for mixing with the world, yet not being affected by it.

I need to think on this some more.  If we had inherited a holistic program from the old Stoics, I’d suspect we’d learn about some specific meditation techinques around this time, yet sadly, those Letters, dear Seneca, seem to have been lost in the post of time.

Farewell.

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

Seneca,
I appreciate your addressing some of my concerns from the previous letter, and this one seems to me to be more in tune with the tenor of our school, which I’ve come to expect.

“Hold fast, then, to this sound and wholesome rule of life – that you indulge the body only so far as is needful for good health. The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind. Eat merely to relieve your hunger; drink merely to quench your thirst; dress merely to keep out the cold; house yourself merely as a protection against personal discomfort.”

For the past several months, beginning to flirt with a year really, while I’m clearly a student of Stoicism; it would be more fair to say I’ve been a student of Musonius.  I’ve been reading and digesting his lectures and fragments, such as we have, since that time.

Musonius calls us, and Epictetus follows suit, to a more austere manner of living, which is echoed in the above quote from your letter today.  I will admit to a certain amount of hypocrisy, as I myself have not fully adopted the Grecian regimen that those great philosophers extol so highly.

I’ve even gone so far as to extract a program from Musonius, and while I’ve tested each of these for a number of weeks separately across the past year, I’ve not put it all together in my own practice.

Modern Stoicism seems to be lacking this ascetic regimen.  Somewhat, I think, it comes from a misunderstanding.  Folks are familiar with the “matted hair” types of India, who may sit with one arm raised until it whither on the body.  This kind of torture is called ‘ascetic.’  But this is not what we the Stoics mean when we call each other to ἄσκησις (áskēsis), rather we call them to training and moderation.

The modern person is so indulgent to every passion and pleasure.  We’re so hedonistic, even Epicurus and the Cyrenaics would turn away in disgust.  We’re so far on the spectrum, that what is truly simple moderation appears austere and tortuous.

I will take your letter as a call to action, and a challenge.

In the spirit of σωφροσύνη (sophrosyne), I bid you a fond farewell.

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

Seneca,
The point I take most from the second part of your letter is one I noted yesterday, with a twist.  Yesterday, I said, “Indulgence trains our moral will,”  and today you mention, what effect on our character does witnessing such spectacles have?

The question might at first seem a strange one.  These men, thieves and murders though they be, are tortured.  Whether their treatment be just or unjust, the operative questions is, what is the effect on our souls?

This is a question which more and more seems relevant to me, but it is shortly followed up with another.  What is the effect on our souls should we hide away from it?  Should we rather not face it down and seek to change the thing which is so damaging to ourselves?  It must surely be at least if not more damaging to the fellow who is under the lash?  And the other spectators, are their souls not worth the saving?

Epicurus retreated to his Garden, and surrounded himself with a few.  But let us not forget, that for the Epicurean hedone and tranquility are goods.  For us:  not at all.  Only virtue.

Can it be virtuous to hide away and protect our lily white souls while the murderous games go unchallenged?

If it’s the case that our social roles and our obligations to others are a part of an excellent character:  should we not assist?  If we must not assist, how can it be said that our roles and obligations are a part of our excellent character?

It seems it must be one or the other.

Farewell, and thank you for the letter.

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

Seneca,

At first blush, the “entertainments” of Rome seem far removed from the life of the average westerner.  We’ve safely hidden away violence and death, wars are fought “elsewhere,” and they even hide the dead in hospitals.

My people have no stomach for such things.

Yet, I started to think about it a bit more.  Maybe, your entertainments, as bestial as they are, are more honest.  Instead, we write our gossip large.  Shown on billboards, printed in magazines made for such rumors; we broadcast it to every corner of the globe.  This celebrity’s drug habit, this other one’s sexual proclivities and vices, this one’s adultery, and that one’s lies.  This one’s vain surgery, that one’s shocking revelation.  Click to find out!

Maybe there’s something more honest in the butchery of flesh than the butchery of character?

Your comments on the crowd and on retreats are in line with my own thoughts, which, if you’ll pardon the slight, has caused me a second thought.

How do we balance our personal desire for retreat with our obligations and social roles?  What use is the philosopher and all his goodness if it needs protected from the world?  If it needs protected from the outside, how good is it really?

Instead, shouldn’t the goodness of the philosopher be used to mix with the world?  Maybe make it better, or at least to show another way by example?

I admit, I’m hoping for the answer, “No.  Retire to the mountains with your books.”

But that’s probably not the virtuous answer.

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

Your letter today calls to my mind one of the Stoic “paradoxes,” or that which goes against the common understanding.  That is the total binary nature of virtue and vice, of the σοφός (sophós) and the ἰδιώτης (idiótés).

It seems to be a universal that we look for marks of progress, that we see how our tools have shaped the soul we are seeking to sculpt.  We even call the practicing Stoic προκόπτων (prokóptôn), the one who is making progress.

Now, that seems like the regular sort of ‘paradox’ meaning a contradiction, not just against the popular belief.

I look back on the past three years of my study, and I see a change in how I handle impressions, a change in my treatment and valuation of indifferents.  If the philosopher is merely the ‘sick person closer to the window, better able to see and describe the outside to the other patients,’ then the words of the Stoics have show me that I’m ‘closer to health’ as it were than I was before.

Even you yourself, Seneca, remark on the progress our School as helped us make.  Yet, we’re told, there is no value in this.  If the only good is our own moral good, and the only evil or own moral evil, isn’t the change from more of the latter to more of the former something worthy?

Maybe the firm statement that there are no levels of progress is not a prescriptive truth, but a pedagogic tool to help inculcate ἀπάθεια (apátheia) even for something like εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), the telos of our philosophy.

It is with the thoughts of hallmark state of the Sage in mind, and the Stoic paradoxes, that I bid you a fond farewell.

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

“Well then, shall we act like other men? Shall there be no distinction between ourselves and the world?”

Yes, a very great one; let men find that we are unlike the common herd, if they look closely. If they visit us at home, they should admire us, rather than our household appointments. He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.

Seneca,

It seems fortuitous at the end of the first week of our correspondence we being with an exhortation to continued study, and congratulations of such.  Fate is a funny critter, at times.

However, you promptly moved on to my chief concern with your interpretation of our school.  I agree that a great man uses earthenware as if it silver, and the reverse also.  Yet, your final sentence in the passage I’ve quoted smacks as a justification of, if you’ll pardon my frankness, the clear opulence in which you live.

Shall we line up, Musonius, Epictetus, and even Marcus to see if they live in a way such as you’ve posited?  I think you’ll find your position wanting.  Epictetus extolled Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic, as a philosopher par excellence and the very model of the Sage!

Stoic askesis requires that we actually practice being self-controlled to inculcate that virtue, that we be just, courageous, and wise.  It is not, as Socrates posited, merely enough to know about virtue; to know it and have it we must act.  We must train.

The opportunity for self-delusional indulgence is simply to high to skimp on the training for the average prokopton.  Indulgence trains our moral will.

It’s possible, sir, that you are a unique specimen of philosophy, and I do not levy that you might not be.  That is not for me to say.  But as for me, and for the multitudes of philosophers who aspire to our mutual School:  we must train.

Epictetus does not say to us to examine our books, our writings, or our words.  It is not how well we handle the syllogism, or grok the readings of Chryssipus.
He says rather something else:

“Watch your own conduct thus and you will discover to what school you belong. You will find that most of you are Epicureans and some few Peripatetics, but with all the fibre gone from you. Where have you shown that you really hold virtue to be equal to all else, or even superior?

Show me a Stoic if you can! Where or how is he to be found? You can show me men who use the fine phrases of the Stoics, in any number, for the same men who do this can recite Epicurean phrases just as well and can repeat those of the Peripatetics just as perfectly; is it not so?

Who then is a Stoic?

Show me a man moulded to the pattern of the judgements that he utters, in the same way as we call a statue Phidian that is moulded according to the art of Phidias. Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path. Do me this kindness, do not grudge an old man like me a sight I never saw till now.”

— Epictetus, Discourses II.19

“Show me a man moulded to the pattern of the judgements that he utters.”

While we are warned not to pretend to “the philosopher’s mien” too quickly (pun intended), a beard and tribon do not a Stoic make:  our judgments clearly should shape our lives, and the indifferents with which we surround ourselves as well.

It is with thoughts of the pious, ascetic, virtuous Sage in mind, that I bid you a very fond farewell.

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

“But do you not see what trifling reasons impel men to scorn life? One hangs himself before the door of his mistress; another hurls himself from the house-top that he may no longer be compelled to bear the taunts of a bad-tempered master; a third, to be saved from arrest after running away, drives a sword into his vitals. Do you not suppose that virtue will be as efficacious as excessive fear?“

One of the hardest concepts in our School’s thought, is that virtue and vice are binary, allowing for no progress or median states.  There are the wise and the insane.

Yet, seeing it placed so, as in your later last, that virtue must be as efficacious as vice… that’s an interesting thought.  I am all to aware of the whirlwind which the passions produce in the soul.  But to think of that whirlwind’s metaphysical opposite reinforces to me that I am not there yet… assuming that’s the measure to take.  (;

“Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”

Through my studies, my concern with the indifferents of life has significantly lessened.  I measure this by the amount of stress which accompany financial matters, the amount of discomfort which comes with opening my wallet; and my response to the actions of others.  In this regard alone, the me of today is vastly different from five years ago.

I am reasonably sure that I could maintain equanimity for myself in many ‘hardships of life,’  but I suspect that I would not be up to the challenge of those I care about being so subjected… especially if preventing that is one of my social roles.

”Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature’s needs are easily provided and ready to hand. 11 It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores. That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.”

Fair enough, but this seems to be advocating the Cynic’s life, which I don’t discard as wrong, mind you.  But how do we mesh this with our social roles as providers for families?  As citizens?

With the thoughts of our duties to nature and virtue, and our duties to our family and friends, I bid you farewell.

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

The working definition I have of ‘friend’ is modified from Frank Herbert, it is “One in whose company you would be proud die.”  With this definition in mind, I’d say that I have a very select few friends, but many with whom I’m amicable.  As I get older, I seem to have become more selective of those whose company I keep.

I seem to have lost more friends in the past five years than I have made.

It seems to be the philosopher’s task to balance the roles of friend, teacher, student, family member, citizen, and social body.  We have some obligation to others, that seems to be undisputed, but how far they extend and to what extent we must oblige them seems to be different, however.

I suppose I will take it as some small conciliation that my diminishing circle of friends is not at odds with the thoughts of the School.

Yet, it seems to me to maybe be a bit sad that the life of the philosopher might also be a lonely one.

With those thoughts in mind, I bid you farewell.

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

Your letter was timely, as I just received three new books on Stoicism over the winter holiday.  I’ve been much better at buying books the past year or two than I have of reading them, and there again much better are starting one than finishing it.

I do find myself going over the same few writings, specifically those of Our School, over and over.  This is a strange change, as I formerly subscribed to the motto of “He who dies with the most books wins.”

The issue I’m most facing is finding the time and energy for study in the midst of the social roles and preoccupations of the standard householder life.  The Stoic path seems to be particularly difficult, as we were are taught that we have obligations in the family, community, and state as philosophers.

How nice it might be to retire for some time to a retreat or wooded cabin, with nothing but books and time to accompany us?

But, as you reminded me in your last letter, it’s not that there is so little time, but that I am spending it poorly.  Keeping in this in mind, I will try to earmark some specific time each day for my studies.

Again, thank you for the timely reminder.

Farewell.

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