Seneca,

There does seem to be an interesting double-thinking occuring in this article.  It may be that it’s a rhetorical device, but it’s a thing I too have been thinking about lately.  It is true, as you say:

“[T]he thirstier a man is, the more he enjoys a drink; the hungrier he is, the more pleasure he takes in food. Whatever falls to one’s lot after a period of abstinence is welcomed with greater zest.”

This is exactly the Epicurean position, that by abstaining from the fanciest of things, we are able to take pleasure in mere barley cakes and water.  And pleasure, or lack of pain, is the Epicurean goal.

The Stoic twist, then, should be that although there is a body-pleasure, and even its perception may be increased by our training, it is still an indifferent.  It’s important to remember that the increased pleasure should not become the focus of the training.

I wonder, though, if as a stepping stone, that’s an appropriate thought during training.  To be able to hold off now for the future pleasure?  Epictetus gives us a similar trick:

‘If you are struck by the appearance of any promised pleasure, guard yourself against being hurried away by it; but let the affair wait your leisure, and procure yourself some delay. Then bring to your mind both points of time: that in which you will enjoy the pleasure, and that in which you will repent and reproach yourself after you have enjoyed it; and set before you, in opposition to these, how you will be glad and applaud yourself if you abstain.”

—Epictetus, Enchiridion 34

Which bears a similarity to a Fragment of Musonius, explicitly playing of the Epicurean position, it seems.

“If one were to measure what is agreeable by the standard of pleasure, nothing would be pleasanter than self-control; and if one were to measure what is to be avoided by pain, nothing would be more painful than lack of self-control.”

— Musonius, Fragment 24

It seems to me, that this sort of an aid to training, as an intermediary argument for the person just starting in philosophy, considering the practices of philosophy as a pleasure with which the uninstructed person is already attached has a fair broad basis in the text.

At some point, however, that needs to flip, and the προκόπτων must come to the understanding that:

“[A]ny life must seem short to those who measure its length by pleasures which are empty and for that reason unbounded.”

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

The comparison to athletic training is an apt one, since we often use it to discuss philosophical training.  Sickness seems to present itself as an “earlier than we expected” excericse.  Like the gym or the dojo, we train in the school of philosophy, but our training is meant to be carried out and used in the real world.  We sweat in the gym to avoid bleeding in the street.

Sickness, then, for the new philosopher can seem like a post-graduate exam when we’re really just getting our feet wet in the general curriculum of under-grad.  But it’s not up to us when such challenges are presented.

So let us also win the way to victory in all our struggles, – for the reward is not a garland or a palm or a trumpeter who calls for silence at the proclamation of our names, but rather virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time, if fortune has once been utterly vanquished in any combat.

This section stuck out at me when I was in pain.  It was these couple lines that rallied my spirit when instead I was wallowing in self-pity.

Do you think that you are doing nothing if you possess self-control in your illness? You will be showing that a disease can be overcome, or at any rate endured. There is, I assure you, a place for virtue even upon a bed of sickness. It is not only the sword and the battle-line that prove the soul alert and unconquered by fear; a man can display bravery even when wrapped in his bed-clothes.

Thank you for the words.

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

As I said yesterday, my first real attempt at reading this Letter and putting it into practice was a couple of months ago during my second (but first known to me) gout flare up.

“The reason, however, why the inexperienced are impatient when their bodies suffer is, that they have not accustomed themselves to be contented in spirit. They have been closely associated with the body. Therefore a high-minded and sensible man divorces soul from body, and dwells much with the better or divine part, and only as far as he must with this complaining and frail portion.”

There is a despising of the body present in Epictetus which is not found in earlier Stoic texts.  It’s a pretty serious change to my mind.  Generally, my understanding, is that the ancient perspective was not really of two things mind-body, but a sort of mixing of the two.  Each equally important, but different.  In Epictetus we start to see a shift away from that.  Maybe that’s just him, or maybe it’s trend towards the modern perspective.

Either way, the idea is clearly easier for we moderns to grok, since our society today is firmly Cartesian, even if some scientists argue the mind is no more than an epiphenomenon of networked cells.

“…to fast, to feel thirst and hunger.” These are indeed serious when one first abstains from them. Later the desire dies down, because the appetites themselves which lead to desire are wearied and forsake us; then the stomach becomes petulant, then the food which we craved before becomes hateful. Our very wants die away. But there is no bitterness in doing without that which you have ceased to desire.”

I’m seeing this myself with the appropriately named Camp Seneca.  The first day of one meal a day was mildly difficult, but as the days go on (we’re on Day 5 at the time of this writing), the twinges of the body are less and less as it becomes accustomed to the new regime.

“Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it; but if, on the other hand, you begin to encourage yourself and say, “It is nothing, – a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease”; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer.”

This where training and preconceptions come into play.  We might have convinced ourselves that we’ve eliminated or changed the way we think about a thing, and then the universe plops into our laps a swelling of the joints so painful the weight of the body itself or a even a sheet seems too much to bear.  Then we get the reality check.

“[E]very one adds much to his own ills, and tells lies to himself.”

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

The closing of this letter is very a good piece of rhetoric.  I don’t mean to diminish it, I’m just noting it’s well composed, and the ferver is appropriate to the corrective nature it.

“Will you not borrow that [Spartan] boy’s courage, and say: “I am no slave!”? Unhappy fellow, you are a slave to men, you are a slave to your business, you are a slave to life. For life, if courage to die be lacking, is slavery.”

I do wonder if Epictetus was familiar at all with Seneca.  I always assumed that Epictetus’ calling his students “Slave!” whenever he was making a severe correction was due to his own training under Musonius, and also his life in slave condition before philosophy.  I wonder if he might have heard this story about the Spartan boy, too, though?

You are afraid of death; but how can you scorn it in the midst of a mushroom supper?

I’m personally not a fan of mushrooms, so that supper might be more conducive to me to dispise the perils of death… but in all seriousness, this harkens back to the ascetic training which we need to undergo (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4).  We might talk a good game while living in a palace, but the possibility for self-deception is too high there.

You wish to live; well, do you know how lo live?

That’s the rub, isn’t it?  Mostly our worry over life and death is based in a fundamental fear.  The fear of the unknown.  The fear of missing out.  The fear of what’s to come.  The fear of nothing.  The one thought that recently has been mildly helpful in this regard comes from Marcus, and viewing what came before life as death as also.  Such a great span of time in this universe unravelled and unspun while we did not exist.  The same void, the same nothing that existed then might exist after.  That parallel is oddly comforting.  Also from Marcus, if there are gods, and if there is life after death, it will be towards the good.  And if there is not, that too is towards the good.  This is becoming a better cause of a surcease of those worries for me.

You are afraid to die. But come now: is this life of yours anything but death?

Hmm.  There’s an almost Buddhist feel to this question.  Life as dukkha.

That is the answer which should be given to men to whom death would come as a relief. “You are afraid to die; what! are you alive now?”

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

Today’s letter begins a discussion on suicide, a perennial topic in your Letters, dear Seneca.  I do rather like the description that ‘philosophy is training to die,’ and this fits well in that vein.  A few things stuck out at me.

“Do not torment yourself, my dear Marcellinus, as if the question which you are weighing were a matter of importance. It is not an important matter to live; all your slaves live, and so do all animals; but it is important to die honourably, sensibly, bravely. Reflect how long you have been doing the same thing: food, sleep, lust, – this is one’s daily round. The desire to die may be felt, not only by the sensible man or the brave or unhappy man, but even by the man who is merely surfeited.”

Especially this: Reflect how long you have been doing the same thing: food, sleep, lust, – this is one’s daily round.
It’s an interesting tact to take to help frame the question for Marcellinus.

No one is so ignorant as not to know that we must at some time die; nevertheless, when one draws near death, one turns to flight, trembles, and laments.

Well, many have this fret long before the time comes, but still, point well taken.

You were born to be subject to this law; this fate befell your father, your mother, your ancestors, all who came before you; and it will befall all who shall come after you. A sequence which cannot be broken or altered by any power binds all things together and draws all things in its course.

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

I finished your last letter today, and it had several morsels on which I could chew.

“None of those whom you behold clad in purple is happy… None of those who have been raised to a loftier height by riches and honours is really great. Why then does he seem great to you? It is because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man.”

Despite the fact that we intellectually know what’s valuable, what’s admirable, what’s honorable, and what’s virtuous we make incorrect judgments.  We have decades of habit, in action, thought, and intention to overcome.  It requires a constant reminder and training to undo what we’ve done thoughtlessly.  Whether by accident or intentional volition, we train ourselves and our judgments.  It’s far better to train intentionally that thoughtlessly.

“Today it is you who threaten me with these terrors; but I have always threatened myself with them, and have prepared myself as a man to meet man’s destiny.”

Our training in part inoculates us against the loss of apparent-goods.  When we know that we can do without the varied and multiple indifferents in life, we’re better able to choose virtue.  Choosing virtue when it’s easy is one thing, but when it’s hard, when it puts us at risk, when it goes against our lusting-desires… that’s another thing entirely.

‘We sometimes hear the inexperienced say: “I knew that this was in store for me.” But the wise man knows that all things are in store for him. Whatever happens, he says: “I knew it.” ‘

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

The closing of you last letter echoed thoughts of my own.  The diminution of virtue via accepting external goods as been something I’ve warned modern Stoics against for some time.

“If, however, you accept the view that there is anything good besides that which is honourable, all the virtues will suffer. For it will never be possible for any virtue to be won and held, if there is anything outside itself which virtue must take into consideration.”

As far as I know, this focus on what’s honorable is something particular to you letters, dear Seneca.  It seems a god metric.  It easily illuminates the correct path in a situation.  What would an honorable person do? Seem to me to be an easier question to answer quickly than What would a Sage do?

“If anything except the honourable is good, we shall be hounded by greed for life, and by greed for the things which provide life with its furnishings, – an intolerable state, subject to no limits, unstable.”

The above passage seems like curse.

“[W]hithersoever I am led and summoned by honour, I will go.”

Thank you for the letter.

Farewell.

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

Seneca,

“For all other things, which arouse our desires, depress the soul and weaken it, and when we think that they are uplifting the soul, they are merely puffing it up and cheating it with much emptiness. Therefore, that alone is good which will make the soul better.” 

While studying philosophy, it seems we have just many things to unlearn as we do to learn.  When we are talking about ἐπιθυμία-desire, and the need to irradiate or suspend certain hankerings, that flies in the face of what we have spent a goodly portion of our lives until now doing.

We have hankered after titles, fame, money, power, influence, renown, body-pleasures, and more besides.  The bit I’ve quoted at the top, the mere puffing up, a cheating emptiness: this is what ἐπιθυμία-desire promises.  And, like a thing true to its nature, it delivers.

It’s difficult to go through one’s life with the fine toothed comb, hunting and picking for these emptinesses.  But it’s a necessary thing.  I hope my experiment with Camp Seneca helps with this process.

Farewell.

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