Episcopus wrote:evening all,
i am at present working on an essay based on the letters of the Stoic Seneca (minor), and was wondering what you might make of certain issues.
1. the divine fire is god, and absolute reason, then the entire world has purpose. we therefore act upon natural necessity, so why should we try to suppress desires to seek pleasure, a human instinct, as we are negating our natural purpose. Aristotle said that the essential nature of humans is reason. this is bollocks. humans are animals, just a bit more intelligent; a man without sex is like Martial without a little boy.
2. and, if we all have a purpose to do what is necessary, why is Seneca advising his friend Lucilius so much? why doesn't he just let him get on with it? if Lucilius wishes to become swole then Seneca should let him do what he has to do. or is it the purpose, the natural duty, of Seneca to dissuade his friend?
3. virtue according to Stoicism is good. vice is bad. pleasure/pain and other pairs are neither good nor bad. there is no degree of virtue, nor of vice. therefore, if you kiss your girlfriend and are a little bit randy, that is bad. but if you not only kiss her but also make residence in her uterus then that is of equal evil?
4. if the soul is to the body as god is to the earth, and Seneca advises us not to bodybuild, then why build on earth? we should all lie down and rub the earth/praise god, to become healthier in spirit! but wait a minute, health is neither good nor bad so who cares! Seneca says "hanc [animi] valetudinem cura" - why should we care about any health if only virtue is good. virtue is life according to reason, the only good, but one must have a healthy, clean soul to be virtuous. once again the digital style ONvirtue OFFvice, everything in the middle = nothing idea seems silly. I would prefer a more analogue philosophy.
5. if some one commits suicide, he does nothing wrong, as life is of no value. you can just picture Seneca jumping about with his walking stick having murdered every man child and woman in the ancient world then saying "Quid mali?"
gah, the pursuit of truth continues.
~E
of course it's bollocks, but it's not about agreeing with this guy's philosophy, as long as you can understand where he's coming from and what it was all about, that's the important bit. They didn't know about evolution back in those days you see...
in these letters Seneca is just explaining Stoicism really for people to read them and understand what this philosophy is all about. It's basically a way to try and guarantee human's happieness, as strange as it may sound at first, when he says all emotion is to be erradicated and such like. But basically it's like this: we can't guarantee that we will always be healthy - some virus can come and make us sick at any time, especially so in his days, when medicine was not so advanced. If we take pride in the fact that we are so healthy, we'd be really sad if we then fell ill and could never walk again for example. Same with basically everything else... you can't be sure that tomorrow you will still have a job, a house, a family, friends etc., so best not to get too attached to anything and try to tell yourself that it's not in your power to make sure nothing terrible ever happens to your girlfriend, so if she dies in an accident, to make sure you won't fall down and cry with grief, you have to harden yourself off.
If you actually managed to be so emotionless you wouldn't be much a human and not live much of a life in my opinion. So you know, their attempt to make happieness independent of outside influence sort of proves that well... happieness is dependent on ourside influences really... well, I think so at least...
If my memory isn't playing tricks on me, isn't it in those letters that Seneca also says that you should not go and try to teach stoicism to everyone, just a select few? He's basically saying that it's not something for everyone to follow anyway and that you should stay away from loads of humans as they'd corrupt you and make you human again
(well, he doesn't put it quite like that, but sort of). So yeah, you've got to try and surpress being 'normal' and isolate yourself and think of nothing else for this to even have a chance to work, he admitts that himself
.
I think when it comes to suicide he doesn't really say that we should all go and kill ourselves, he says though that's nothing to be afraid of and that if life holds nothing more for us, it's ok to kill ourselves (been a while since I read that text mind you). That's a view that was generally held in ancient times, suicide was often held in high regard, if you did it under such circumstances. I think under normal circumstances though, Seneca would say that it would be unreasonable to kill oneself as then you could no longer do anything virtuous if you're dead. As long as you can still live a life that is worth living, you should go and living it.
As for living with reason being the most important virtue... he does have a point here... well, not sure about this virtue business, but reason is one of the few things that makes us humans different from animals really. We can think things through with the help of words and logic. It's the one thing that makes up human, so if we want to be really human our brain is the one thing we should use
