Seneca Made Horrible Mistakes: What He Got Right Is Life Changing
There’s no one like Seneca alive today.
Imagine one man was the US president’s chief of staff, Hollywood’s most talented screenwriter, the world’s leading self-help guru, and an innovative scientist probing the world’s mysteries — all at the same time. That’s Seneca.
People loved and hated Seneca during his life and in every subsequent era. They’ve raised him onto pedestals and damned him as a hypocrite. But Seneca is worth considering not only because he wrote philosophy that feels like it's speaking directly to us and our modern problems 2,000 years after his death, but because he wasn’t just an ivory tower intellectual.
Seneca lived in the trenches of life and contended with impossible dilemmas. He made mistakes and admitted he was no sage. But the way he approached life provides an ideal foil for our own dicey decision-making and moral quandaries.
What you think of Seneca is like a Rorschach test for wisdom lovers. Personally, I vacillate on what I’d do in his situation regularly. But I’ll always appreciate him because his ideas have made my life so much better.
Seneca’s Life and Work:
Seneca did a good job running the Roman Empire while Emperor Nero was an adolescent, but transitioned into the position of sidelined and morally-compromised top advisor. He wrote the emperor’s speeches and wooed crowds with his rhetoric, but an increasingly assertive and degenerate Nero learned to use Seneca’s reputation for virtue as cover for his misdeeds. When Nero murdered his stepbrother, mother, and wife, Seneca looked the other way and may have actively colluded. He certainly tried to convince the Senate not to turn against the emperor. Nero eventually ordered Seneca to kill himself.
Seneca was most famous for his Stoic philosophical works, which were popular during his lifetime and never went out of fashion. Medieval Christian monks, Renaissance thinkers, and the best minds of the Enlightenment loved Seneca’s philosophy; his letters are still read today.
His mostly-forgotten plays — all tragedies except for one satire — are an ancient mix of Shakespeare and Quinten Terrintio. Don’t come looking for happy endings. Ill-fated heroes and gods give long soliloquies venting their rage at fate’s cruelty. Everything ends in violence, natural disaster, and societal breakdown. The end is always nigh. There’s lots of blood and death and even a bit of cannibalism. I read their intent as a trojan horse for philosophy — after you realize how the passions bring us all to ruin, you might be open to doing something about it.
“Natural Questions,” is one of few Roman works investigating the natural world. “I have decided to traverse the world, to seek out its causes and secrets, and to present them for others to learn about,” Seneca declares. The scientific method wasn’t around in Seneeca’s day, and his seeking is a mix of observation, thought experiments, and parsing the ideas of previous thinkers.
The Flavor of Seneca’s Philosophical Writing:
Many people find Seneca’s ideas on the good life valuable.
He’s a less gruff philosophical drill sergeant (Epictetus, cough) and a more kindly uncle. He understands we’re not perfect. He insists he’s flawed himself but trying to do better, and he wants us to be better too.
Seneca believes strong passions like anger are forms of temporary madness that destroy lives. Greed, consumerism, desire for power and influence, and immoderate sexual and culinary desires erode our ability to be happy and take us down stupid life paths. Seneca’s violent tragedies are giant illustrations of how these things destroy us, and his philosophical teaching revolves around strategies for lessening their hold on us.
Seneca wrote 124 moral letters to his friend Lucillius and 12 books/essays, so the range of topics he considered was vast.
A small sampling of his ideas:
It’s really valuable to have a respected benchmark “sage,” living in our heads to help us solve our problems and provide perspective. We do this by finding a respected exemplar and repeatedly imbibing their ideas until they’re a part of us and we can feed them back to ourselves as therapy and advice.
Virtue is the only truly good thing in life and the key to Eudaimonia (flourishing/happiness). Without it, we have nothing, even if we’re rich and powerful.
Life will challenge us, but each setback is an opportunity to become better people. Unfortunate occurrences can be used as whetstones to sharpen our minds to keen points capable of slicing through further challenges. Pity those who never suffer hardship.
Our lives are fleeting. Don’t waste it on things that aren’t important.
Ambition is good. We should seek to make our corner of the world better and contribute to society. But too much ambition leads us away from virtue and makes us miserable. One should keep enough space in their life to maintain a philosophic practice and stay grounded.
Knowing thyself is important, and like most Stoics, Seneca had a way of reviewing his life to find perspective and administer self-therapy. Modern scientists have found Stoic-style journaling to be effective in tamping down cognitive bias and achieving wiser reasoning.
Where to start with Seneca:
Seneca is probably the most approachable Stoic. Many people enjoy his letters, which are short and can be read as part of a once-per-day philosophic practice. My favorite translation is by Margaret Graver, but Robin Campbell’s lower-priced translation isn’t bad. If you like those, look into his longer essays/books.
If you’re intimidated by Seneca because you feel you don’t know enough about Stoicsm or philosophy, or you wonder how his ideas can be applied to your life, I highly recommend David Fideler’s excellent Breakfast with Seneca.
You can read more about Seneca, Stoicism, and the pursuit of the good life at my Subsack, Socratic State of Mind