Introducing Seneca, Rome’s First Great Stoic
Seneca (born Lucius Annaues Seneca) was an influential ancient Roman, Stoic philosopher, and rhetorician. His writings were incredibly important when it came to reviving Stoic thinking during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. His ideas also influenced the great thinkers of those periods: men such as Montaigne, Francis Bacon and Pascal.
Seneca was a teacher and philosopher who tried to enlighten Rome’s citizens with moral values. He also tried to instill the importance of acquiring reason through education and learning. Moreover, Seneca encouraged people to embrace wisdom to better navigate through life’s challenges, and he believed wisdom was to be acquired through learning and education. In other words, humans only achieve wisdom by going through educational and intellectual growth. Seneca’s belief in the benefits of learning can be seen in his following statements:
“Timendi causa est nescire — Ignorance is the cause of fear”.
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live”.
Seneca
Seneca advocated for this perspective of life, because this way your hunger for learning will never die out and you will continue to grow as a human and an intellectual. In other words, never think that you have learned everything or that you know everything.
Seneca: A Man of Many Talents
Among his many talents, Seneca was a prolific writer and his works are usually seen as a lens to his life. However, his writings are not autobiographical. In fact, Seneca invites the reader to contemplate issues of his/her own life. After all, Stoic philosophy is a guide to help us learn about ourselves. His writings further encourage people to be self-critical, self-reflective and self-aware.
But self-awareness is not something to take lightly or underestimate. Being self-aware allows people to see things more clearly and to analyze those things in order to understand the world around them. It is self-awareness that spurs the human spirit to fight for freedom and for their rights. A man who is unaware shall forever remain a sheep, while a man who is self-aware shall become a shepherd capable of action and of creating change.
In addition to being a philosopher, Seneca was also an influential politician, tutor and advisor to the mad Roman Emperor Nero. Seneca was able to climb the social ranks of Rome since many philosophers, including Stoics, were held in great esteem throughout Imperial Rome. However, it was not only his Stoic beliefs that granted him those positions, as Seneca was a man who possessed many talents. He could advise, write, conduct research, analyze big and small issues, learn, and most importantly he could teach. Without teachers we would have no students, and without students there would be no one qualified to carry out intellectual work. As a teacher, Seneca dispensed one of life’s most precious and necessary things: passing on knowledge and experience from one generation to the next. Undoubtedly, that is why we know about his teachings in the present day.
Stoic Realism
For Seneca, the objective of Stoicism was not to promote happiness; instead he believed Stoics should preach ideas that are based on reality. One aspect of reality is tragedy and therefore he believed people must accept life’s tragedies. This is seen in his own work, especially in his poetry. Poetry is often viewed as a window to a person’s soul, and so Seneca’s poems could be considered a window to his philosophical beliefs about life. There is a common saying: ‘they say he has the soul of a poet’ and Seneca fits that bill to the nail.
Many modern philosophers, including Stoics, agree with this analysis of Seneca’s writings. Certain philosophers and historians also believe that some of the themes Seneca focused on were based on his own beliefs. For example, through his works, including his writings, poems and plays, Seneca paid particular attention to ethics and psychology (psychological philosophy). Ethics provides us with a moral compass, while psychology offers us the ability to interact with people and to understand more clearly their thoughts and feelings. Seneca also gave us one of the most profound quotes on the complex human mind; a quote which encompasses both morals and psychology:
“Men do not care about how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long”.
Seneca
Seneca was commentating on the irony of the human situation, although he also believed we should focus on what we can change in our lives, rather than pursuing what we can’t change. It matters not how long one lives, but how we live. In other words, we should live as good human beings for as long as we live.
A Self-Portrait Through Seneca’s Eyes
We can learn from Seneca’s writings on self-analysis in order to accurately examine ourselves. Seneca was a man of profound thinking who believed in the independence of man. For Seneca, independence derived from acquiring intellectual sovereignty (having the capacity to freely think about things and then to analyze them). Seneca teaches us that we should never take our freedom and independence for granted, and if either or both are ever threatened or non-existent, then we should fight to regain them. Human freedom and independence are non-negotiable; only the degree or the extent of one’s autonomy and freedom can be negotiated.
As a matter of fact, Seneca was a dichotomous Stoic philosopher. On the one hand, he was a traditionalist in the mold of a classical philosophical statesman and on the other hand, he was a reformer. He was willing to revise and change his ideas by disagreeing with others and critically analyzing past beliefs. Seneca can be described as a philosopher who existed within the Stoic system; but who also injected his own ideas into that system.
So, what can Seneca teach us? He can teach us the importance of having principles, but to not be dogmatic. Learn to reform and adapt, but keep your sovereignty intact. And finally, never lose courage, for life itself breeds courage and bravado in us all.
