Seneca, On the Happy Life 41: Departing from Life

They say that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within these last few days put an end to his life with his own hand, did not act according to the precepts of Epicurus, in cutting his throat.

Some choose to regard this act as the result of madness, others of recklessness. He, meanwhile, happy and filled with the consciousness of his own goodness, has borne testimony to himself by his manner of departing from life, has commended the repose of a life spent at anchor in a safe harbor, and has said what you do not like to hear, because you too ought to do it.

"I've lived, I've run the race which Fortune set me.". . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 19 (tr Stewart)

The issue of suicide was clearly as important and divisive for the Ancients as it is for us Moderns. Seneca himself ended up taking his own life, having been ordered to do so by Emperor Nero, who believed that Seneca had been involved in an assassination plot. Socrates, of course, at the order of the Athenians, drank the hemlock.

The question is not whether we will die, because it is in our nature to be mortal, or even when we will die, because how well we live surely takes precedence over how long we live. I suggest that what matters more is how and why we die, or when it might be right to sacrifice our lives, or allow our lives to end, or even to hasten that end.

The most helpful Stoic guidance for me comes from Musonius Rufus, when he offers this measure:

One who by living is of use to many has not the right to choose to die, unless by dying he may be of use to more. (Fragment 29)

I learned long ago never to be dismissive of those who consider taking their own lives, or conversely never to romanticize such an act. I have known a good number of people who have attempted it, and some who have succeeded, and there were a number of times many years ago when, tormented by the pain of the Black Dog, I stood there right at the edge myself.

I know that every life is worth living, and I understand that my own good is in the merit of my actions, not in some balance sheet of pleasure and pain. At the same time, I can consider how someone is feeling and thinking when he is faced with the prospect of jumping from a burning building.

I remind myself that I should never want to die, to cease to exist simply for its own sake, but that I should be gladly willing to suffer death if I must do so to have lived with virtue. It is my judgment and intention about my circumstances that will make all the difference between courage and cowardice.

I know nothing about the specific case of Diodorus, and so I can hardly judge it, but whether what he did was right or wrong, I think I see what Seneca admires in him. He knew above all else that he had done what life had asked him to do, and he was willing to embrace his own end in good conscience and on his own terms.

I am hardly an old man, but I learned recently that I was suffering from heart failure. I decided I would refuse certain treatments where I judged the burden or harm to be completely out of proportion to any benefits, and I asked that I not be resuscitated if and when my heart stopped beating. Some people I knew were horrified by this, and assumed I was giving up. Others nodded quietly in comprehension.

I will not choose to hasten my end, but I will not vainly resist it either. Such an attitude is only possible for me because I remain convinced that I should always choose quality over quantity.  

Written in 10/2016

Image: Peter Paul Rubens, The Dying Seneca (1613) 

Seneca, On the Happy Life 40: Virtue, Not Poverty

. . . Am I to expect that evil speaking will respect anything, seeing that it respected neither Rutilius nor Cato?

Will anyone care about being thought too rich by men for whom Diogenes the Cynic was not poor enough? That most energetic philosopher fought against all the desires of the body, and was poorer even than the other Cynics, in that besides having given up possessing anything he had also given up asking for anything.

Yet they reproached him for not being sufficiently in want, as though it were poverty, not virtue, of which he professed knowledge.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 18 (tr Stewart)

Rome had many base men, but it also had many great men. Rutilius Rufus found himself exiled for defending the citizens against the corruption of tax collectors, and Cato the Younger felt it better to die than to live in a state dominated by the arrogance of Julius Caesar. Like so many who stood for what they thought was right over what was convenient, they were vilified and condemned.

Diogenes of Sinope was well known for his extreme criticism of a society that he thought was dominated by a lust for wealth, power, and privilege. While many found his behavior shocking and scandalous, this apparently didn’t stop people from also insisting that he was never quite poor enough to live up to his own standards. One wonders how a man who lived in a barrel, and who discarded his only bowl after seeing another man drink from his hands, could possibly have given up anything more.

I recall reading two articles at roughly the same time, one of which argued that Teresa of Calcutta had failed to do enough for the dying, while the other claimed that she had done far too much to keep them from dying. I have heard my different leaders tell me that the problem with the poor in America is that they have too little to survive on, and also that they have far too much. An important person once told me that teachers were the most valuable assets to any society, but he also insisted that they were grossly overpaid.

The problem, I think, is that we are quick to criticize without any sound moral measure, without a sense of right and wrong to guide our judgments. Diogenes wasn’t trying to teach people how to be impoverished, but he was rather trying to teach them how to be virtuous; being poor was hardly itself the point, but being good was.

Mother Teresa would have been baffled by the criticisms of the social planners, because she thought that the dignity of every individual human being could hardly be judged by graphs and statistics. I myself am deeply confused when we demand that people make something of themselves, but then never give them the opportunities to do so; a man cannot pull himself up by his bootstraps if he has no chance to buy himself any boots. A teacher, or a student, or any person at all, should never be thought of as a commodity subject to the greed of the market, to be used only as far as they make us a profit.

Like an armchair quarterback, the critic will find something flawed about you, whatever you might do, because he simply likes to point out what is wrong. He has no room for what is right, because that would require that he be constructive, not destructive. It is always easier to dismiss a perceived evil than to embrace a true good.

The Stoic, like any decent man, begins and ends his estimation of anything by asking how it can encourage us in being virtuous, and how it can discourage us from being vicious.

His moral compass always points to the pole of virtue. It is never about being rich or poor, or being of one or another social, racial, or political persuasion, but about aiming at that excellence that fulfills our shared human condition. A man is not good because of what he does or doesn’t have, but by what he does with what he does or doesn’t have. 

Written in 3/2002

Image: John William Waterhouse, Diogenes (1882) 

Superheroes and Stoic Ethics

Comic books have long been one of my guilty pleasures, and I offer no apology for them. For me, at their best, they are just a less refined but more colorful version of the grand myths and legends humanity has always looked to for inspiration. Heracles, after all, was a sort of superhero.

I never liked Captain America as a kid, because he seemed like a platitude draped in patriotism. I began to see, however, that Steve Rogers is above all else a man guided by a moral compass, and he puts his money where his mouth is.

This panel, actually appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #537 as part of the larger Civil War story, makes me smile, and it makes me nod in approval. I no longer have the issue in front of me, but I believe it was written by none other than J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5.

A fellow once posted this on one of the Stoic forums as an example of Stoic values, only to be told by some that it was hardly Stoic at all, because it was so distinctly American in its voice, and because Rogers says its all about what you believe, and not about what is virtuous.

I am far more amenable to the Stoicism connection. I can hardly imagine Seneca or Marcus Aurelius not loving Rome, even as they also loved all of humanity, and the context of the passage makes it clear to me that true conscience is informed by the measure of right and wrong, and is not just about whatever we might happen to want.

Your mileage may vary, but I understand this through a Stoic lens, and not as jingoism or relativism.

Written in 9/2015

Seneca, On the Happy Life 39: Living Without Spite

"You talk one way," objects our adversary, "and live another."

You most spiteful of creatures, you who always show the bitterest hatred to the best of men, this reproach was flung at Plato, at Epicurus, at Zeno.

For all these declared how they ought to live, not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when I blame vices, I blame my own first of all. When I have the power, I shall live as I ought to do.

Spite, however deeply steeped in venom, shall not keep me back from what is best. That poison itself with which you bespatter others, with which you choke yourselves, shall not hinder me from continuing to praise that life which I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, from loving virtue and from following after her, albeit a long way behind her and with halting gait. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 18 (tr Stewart)

The sort of critic who looks first to your weakness will also be quite ready to consider you a hypocrite. While a man who struggles and fails is at least sincere in his goals, the hypocrite knows full well that he is a fraud, but sees nothing wrong with this. The show of noble appearance is simply another means for him to get the base things that he wants. I do wonder how often we quickly assume hypocrisy in others because we are so familiar with it from ourselves.

I must always remember that the malice in people’s hearts appears to them, in however twisted a way, to be a good. The adversaries that Seneca faces are not so different from the adversaries we all face every day, because what they all share in common is the belief that the only way they can make themselves better is to make less of others. It proceeds from the ignorance that for one person to win, another must lose. I once foolishly thought I just had the bad luck of only running into such people in my neck of the woods, but I learned that such an error could be found anywhere and everywhere.

It is easy to meet hatred from others with hatred from myself, but the bitter irony is that while another may have called me inferior, I will only make myself inferior by responding in kind, and I will really become that hypocrite if I preach virtue but pursue vice. Like any passion divorced from sound judgment, spite becomes infectious. Just as he is called to find the good in any circumstance, the Stoic must transform evil done to him into good done by him.

Other people may try to keep me from improvement, but that is on them. I will be the only one who decides if I will spit poison. When I am reminded that I am not good enough, and another takes pleasure in having targeted a weakness, I can tell myself that what I know I must seek never needs to be hindered by what others might think or say. The progress of a good life will continue only as long as I don’t let myself be distracted by spite. 

Written in 3/2002

Seneca, On the Happy Life 38: Better than the Worst

. . . I will add some reproaches afterwards, and will bring more accusations against myself than you can think of.

For the present, I will make you the following answer: "I am not a wise man, and I will not be one in order to feed your spite, so do not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely to be better than the worst. I am satisfied, if every day I take away something from my vices and correct my faults.

“I have not arrived at perfect soundness of mind, indeed, I never shall arrive at it. I compound palliatives rather than remedies for my gout, and I am satisfied if it comes at rarer intervals, and does not shoot so painfully.

“Compared with your feet, which are lame, I am a racer."

I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in virtue.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 17 (tr Stewart)

A common characteristic of an arrogant man is his belief that he can really do no wrong. You may find him telling you that he might have been in error, but listen to his words closely. His flaw is hardly ever a flaw, because he says he acted with too much honesty, or kindness, or understanding, and in criticizing himself, he is actually praising himself for just being too good. Since he doesn’t really make mistakes, he then assumes other people must think in exactly the same way.

Seneca isn’t claiming to be without weaknesses, because he knows that every man is subject to failure. A good life is hardly a perfect state, but a constant process of learning, of growth, of improvement. It is never about being the best, but always about striving to be better. Each of us, as they say, will inevitably fall down, but the success is in getting up, dusting ourselves off, and trying again. The doing and the living is itself the goal.

We never really cure ourselves of making mistakes, because that would mean no longer being creatures moved by our own thinking and choices, though with effort we become better at managing our weaknesses. Sometimes the progress seems so slow, and sometimes we seem to slide backwards, but even the slightest effort, and the smallest improvement, is an essential part of the practice of living well.

A worse man is content to think he is already good, while a better man always struggles to raise himself higher. Remember that Socrates learned that he was wise because he could admit he was ignorant, just as any man who aspires to virtue recognizes all of his vices.

I sometimes feel that I carry with me the burden of far too many terrible choices, many that make me squirm in shame, some that seem downright irredeemable. There are weak times when I wish I could erase them, though a dose of Stoic common sense can usually sets me straight.

It is not only that they did happen, but also that every one of them played a necessary part in becoming who I now am, and in what good I have within me. Each was an opportunity to become better. That does not justify an error, but it allows me to transform an error into something good. While I cannot go back and remove a mistake, I can always continue making right out of something wrong. 

Written in 3/2002

Image: Double Herm of Seneca and Socrates (3rd cent. AD) 

Seneca, On the Happy Life 37: Yelping at Philosophy

If, therefore, any one of those dogs who yelp at philosophy were to say, as they are wont to do, "Why, then, do you talk so much more bravely than you live? Why do you check your words in the presence of your superiors, and consider money to be a necessary implement? Why are you disturbed when you sustain losses, and weep on hearing of the death of your wife or your friend? Why do you pay regard to common rumor, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip?

“ Why is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires? Why do you not dine according to your own maxims? Why is your furniture smarter than it need be? Why do you drink wine that is older than yourself? Why are your grounds laid out? Why do you plant trees that afford nothing except shade? Why does your wife wear in her ears the price of a rich man's house? Why are your children at school dressed in costly clothes? Why is it a science to wait upon you at table? Why is your silver plate not set down anyhow or at random, but skillfully disposed in regular order, with a superintendent to preside over the carving of the food?"

Add to this, if you like, the questions, "Why do you own property beyond the seas? Why do you own more than you know of? It is a shame for you not to know your slaves by sight, for you must be very neglectful of them if you only own a few, or very extravagant if you have too many for your memory to retain." . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 17 (tr Stewart)

That a man will not live up to an ideal does not reflect poorly on the ideal, but upon the man. As a being of judgment and choice, he can, and he will, fail, and the reality of such failure makes the dignity of the goal all the more important.

Yet notice how often we attack the person who points to the true and the good, instead of considering the value of the true and the good itself. We seem to like killing the messenger.

This is, of course, the material fallacy of ad hominem, of critiquing the arguer, not the argument, and it is so tempting because it diverts from the question at hand, while also allowing us a perverse sense of personal superiority. It is a favorite weapon of someone who believes that an argument is about winning a conflict, not about discovering a truth.

Seneca has been explaining why our happiness can never be about what happens to us, but derives from how well we live, and that it is virtue, and not merely pleasure, that defines the good life. Happiness comes from the inside, not from the outside. Instead of debating the merits of these claims, the critic wishes to draw attention to Seneca’s continued concern with external things.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that these claims are true. I believe a good Stoic, or any good philosopher, must respond with a certain degree of humility and gratitude. Yes, I don’t always live up to the standards I aspire to, and thank you, I’m glad you’ve reminded me of all the work I still need to do. Rome was not built in a day, and a man will only better himself by gradually rebuilding his habits. A certain sense of good humor can’t hurt, either: perhaps we can help one another improve together?

I try to look over these twenty character flaws with as much honesty and humility as I can muster, and I find myself quite regularly guilty of four of them. Anyone who knows me will recognize exactly which ones they are. That the remaining sixteen are largely off of my radar is due less to my credit than the fact that I have never really been wealthy or influential. That I can recognize my failings, and know what I must do to correct them, is already progress. 

Written in 3/2002

Seneca, On the Happy Life 36: Does It Suffice?

. . . "What? Does virtue alone suffice to make you happy?" Why, of course, consummate and god-like virtue such as this not only suffices, but more than suffices, for when a man is placed beyond the reach of any desire, what can he possibly lack? If all that he needs is centered in himself, how can he require anything from without?

He, however, who is only on the road to virtue, although he may have made great progress along it, nevertheless needs some favor from fortune while he is still struggling among mere human interests, while he is untying that knot, and all the bonds which bind him to mortality.

What, then, is the difference between them? It is that some are tied more or less tightly by these bonds, and some have even tied themselves with them as well; whereas he who has made progress towards the upper regions and raised himself upwards drags a looser chain, and though not yet free, is yet as good as free.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 16 (tr Stewart)

A good business sense, the same one that tells us the buyer should beware, reminds us that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. Whenever the media says that the government is going to make things easier for me, or a Nigerian prince tells me he will share his millions of dollars, I should rightly be suspicious.

Now why should I believe these Stoics, who are insisting that happiness is so simple? It may actually be simple, but it isn’t always easy. It is simple, because all higher truths admit of simplicity, of being one, and not being divided. It is also difficult, however, because the weight of my habits and the pull of social custom tells me it can’t possibly be right. It only seems too good to be true because we are so out of touch with what is good and true.

In the world of business, full of liars and crooks, I can never assume that another person is reliable. In the world of happiness, which depends entirely upon myself, I am only as reliable as I let myself be. It was when we started being convinced that happiness was a commodity to buy and sell that it all became a confusing game. Life sadly ends up being more about the art of playing than the art of living.

My only opposition to the simplicity of happiness proceeds from the complexity of dependence, when I believe I need so many things I don’t really need at all. Those ties of dependence are easy to bind, but hard to break. I was already convinced of them as a child, and I still struggle with them as I slouch toward the end of things. For someone who has made the Stoic Turn, the goal may be completely clear, but it may also take some effort to get there.

Like Plato’s philosopher returning into the Cave, or some heretical Rabbi telling us that we need not worry about what we eat or wear, we will be deemed insane as soon as we try to strip away the illusions. I know I have begun to free myself from the ties that bind when I no longer care about being thought insane, and when I no longer worry about playing the game.

I can’t count the times I have made a sincere commitment to the fullness of life in the evening, and I then immediately begin to make excuses for myself the next morning. That only happens because I haven’t removed all the chains.

Yes, Nature will suffice. Whatever circumstances may befall me, I need only my own power of judgment and choice to live with excellence. It may, however, take me some time to untie the knots, and I will doubt and grumble as I wean myself from the habits of dependence. One day at a time. 

Written in 1/2012

Image: William Blake, Christian Reading in His Book, from the Pilgrim's Progress (c. 1825) 

Howard Jones: Good Luck, Bad Luck

As a reference for Seneca 35:

Howard Jones, "Good Luck, Bad Luck", from One to One (1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E8U2BTVfws

The film script lies ahead
Change the future, change the past
Choose the players, choose the role
Cast of thousands, cast of few
Imagination decides the plot
Play the good guy, play the bad
Here's the victim, here's the saint
Here's the canvas, here's the paint

Good luck bad luck who knows
Good luck bad luck who knows

The world is peopled by many minds
Whirling faster than the wind
Solving a dilemma of life and death
Trying to make some sense of it all
No good blaming the outside world
Pleasure and pain are in the mind
Whether we like it or whether we don't
We found as much as we wanted to find

Good luck, bad luck who knows
Good luck, bad luck who knows

We can make it horror we can make it blue
We can make it slow time, make it move
The director sits behind those eyes
Play it straight or in disguise
Imagination decides the plot
Play the good guy play the bad
Here's the victim, here's the saint
Here's the canvas and here's the paint

Good luck bad luck who knows
Good luck bad luck who knows

Seneca, On the Happy Life 35: Defining Bad or Good

True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue. And what will this virtue bid you to do? Not to think of anything as bad or good which is connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness. And in the next place, both to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as is right, to form a god out of what is good.

What reward does she promise you for this campaign? An enormous one, and one that raises you to the level of the gods. You shall be subject to no restraint and to no want; you shall be free, safe, unhurt; you shall fail in nothing that you attempt; you shall be debarred from nothing; everything shall turn out according to your wish; no misfortune shall befall you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect and hope for. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 16 (tr Stewart)

We constantly label things in our lives as “good” or “bad”. That promotion at the firm, the one that comes with a bigger salary, more vacation days, and the window office, is surely something good, or at least that’s what they told me back in Boston. The fact that my truck broke down, my dog died, and my girl left me is surely something bad, or at least that’s what they tell me in Oklahoma. 

Yet it has been precisely that sort of thinking that has made me miserable. It reduces to the scramble to acquire and avoid what is outside of us. That every thing in Nature, each with its own identity and purpose, is good in its own being is hopefully clear enough, but that things are as they are is neither here nor there when it comes to my own happiness. What is good or bad, as specific to my own human nature, concerns itself with one aspect alone: how well or how poorly am I thinking, choosing and acting? The value of anything and everything else for me depends entirely on whether I use those conditions to assist me in living in virtue, and to avoid living in vice.

The Stoic teaching of indifference tells us that we should never consider any circumstance of Fortune as itself beneficial or harmful, desirable or undesirable. Hard experience has long taught me that getting the raise, or winning the girl, can be just as much of a curse as it can be a blessing. It has less to do with what I have, than with what I do with what I have. Nor is absence any worse than presence, because an absence offers just as much of an opportunity for action.

Once I have changed the parameters of happiness to what is within my power, to how I can make good use of any situation for my own character, there is nothing further I could need, nothing that can hinder me, and nothing beyond my own wishes. I already have whatever I require, and whatever life can give, or can take away, is just another chance to live with prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Do right or wrong to me, and I will be the only one who decides whether I will do right or wrong in the face of it.

The doctors and the experts have many fancy names for it, but I have always just called it the Black Dog. As the years have gone by, the melancholic weight seems only to get worse, and I have wasted too much of my energy casting blame or cursing fate. It was only when I began to work with pain, and not against it, that I could learn to live with more freedom.

It hurt, but what was I going to do with that hurt? I began to seek out ways, seemingly insignificant at first, where I could do something good by means of that experience. It didn’t matter if anyone else knew, because I knew, and my own estimation is the key to my happiness. The victory only needed to be mine.

Fortune is itself never really good or bad at all, though what I choose to make of it can be very good or very bad. Once again, my old musical hero Howard Jones was probably thinking in Taoist or Buddhist terms, though they could just as well be Stoic, when he wondered: “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Written in 1/2012

Image: Giacinto Gimignani, Fortune Favors Ignorance and Repels Virtue (1672)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 34: The Liberty to Obey

. . . On the other hand, he who grumbles and complains and bemoans himself is nevertheless forcibly obliged to obey orders, and is dragged away, however much against his will, to carry them out.

Yet what madness is it to be dragged rather than to follow? As great, by Hercules, as it is folly and ignorance of one's true position to grieve because one has not got something, or because something has caused us rough treatment, or to be surprised or indignant at those ills which befall good men as well as bad ones, I mean diseases, deaths, illnesses, and the other cross accidents of human life.

Let us bear with magnanimity whatever the system of the Universe makes it needful for us to bear. We are all bound by this oath: "To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a good grace to what we cannot avoid."

We have been born into a monarchy: our liberty is to obey God.

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

In our supposedly democratic and egalitarian age, we dislike the very idea of obeying. This is, I suspect, because we automatically assume that it proceeds only from fear or coercion. We avoid speeding in our cars, so the conventional wisdom goes, because we fear the sanction of receiving a ticket. We resent the intrusion, but we submit begrudgingly. This is why we feel liberated by breaking the law when no one is looking.

Like good Utilitarians, we may show kindness to others because we fear the sanction of social disapproval. We may not enjoy it, but we submit begrudgingly. This is why we feel liberated by mocking or dismissing others when they are not looking.

How many times have I slammed on the brakes when I see a police car? How many times have I found a sinister pleasure in gossiping about someone to whom I had just given a friendly smile moments earlier?

It doesn’t have to be that way. I can choose to drive safely, or show respect to my neighbor, not because I have to, but because I want to. I need not obey out of fear, but because I know that something is right. I can replace that resentment with willing love.

Nature will unfold according to her own laws, and things in this world will be as they are, often far beyond my power to determine. What remains for me is to decide how I will relate to everything that is around me. Will I freely join with Nature, or will I oppose and resist her? Will I work with or against the good in things? Will I take Fortune and all of my circumstances, whether painful or pleasant, with character and dignity, or will I demand and complain? Either way, I will be subject to Providence, but as a partner in one way, or as a prisoner in another.

Over the years, I had many students who resisted learning, who felt that they were merely being forced to jump through all the hoops of education. In many ways they were quite right, because so much of what we consider schooling has sadly become an exercise in conformity and submission.

I reminded them that the norms of our society, right or wrong, do indeed demand this of them, but they may now make of this whatever they choose. Are they willing to discover something in the situation, to freely decide to find something valuable in what is before them? I suggested they think less about bowing to their teachers, or running after the best grades, and simply become curious for their own sake, and to think for themselves. It was funny how all the grades and achievements took care of themselves, if only they made that willing commitment.

For many years, I have felt bound by the profound promises I made to my wife. Sometimes it has been a joy, and sometimes it has been a struggle. There has been great pleasure, and there has also been great pain, as there is in all walks of life. That commitment holds meaning not because I must follow, but because I choose to follow. I submit and obey not from a law of fear or force, but from a law of hope and love. I am bound, for better or for worse, because I wish to be bound.

We may not be too keen on the idea of monarchy these days, but when Seneca speaks of God as a king, he means it not as a tyrant to be feared, but as a benefactor to be loved. 

Written in 1/2012

Image: Nainsukh. The Poet Bihari Offers Homage to Radha and Krishna (c. 1760)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 33: Rise to That Height . . .

. . . Let the highest good, then, rise to that height from which no force can dislodge it, where no pain can ascend, no hope, no fear, nor anything else that can impair the authority of the highest good.

There alone virtue can make her way; by her aid that hill must be climbed. She will bravely stand her ground and endure whatever may befall her not only resignedly, but even willingly.

She will know that all hard times come in obedience to natural laws, and like a good soldier, she will bear wounds, count scars, and when transfixed and dying will yet adore the general for whom she falls. She will bear in mind the old maxim, "Follow God." . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

The truly happy life will be one that is in a state of unassailable liberty. Like any proper Roman, Seneca employs the image of a soldier capturing and holding the high ground, though such a martial theme may not speak to everyone. One might also consider the analogy of how the ascent of a mountain provides a broader perspective, or how the undertaking of a journey builds awareness and commitment, or how the safety of one’s true home can offer comfort and stability from a painful world.

I once, only partly in jest, made use of the story of The Three Little Pigs to explain something similar to a group of fifth graders. They were young enough to still know the story, but also old enough to start reflecting on all the different things it could mean; they were at that wonderful point between the grammar and dialectic stages of learning.

There will be those things in the world that seem to threaten us, and those people in the world who want to hurt us. That would be the Wolf.

We worry about the dangers, and we wonder what barriers we can put between those dangers and ourselves. Those would be the pigs and their houses.

If we rely upon the weak and pliable defenses of Fortune, and we prepare ourselves poorly, we will succumb to our circumstances. Those would be the first two pigs and their houses made of straw and wood.

But if we build upon something immovable, and we are ready for whatever may befall us, we may count ourselves content in this life. That would be the last pig and his house of stone.

This perhaps reflects poorly upon me, but I always preferred the older versions of the tale, the ones that hadn’t been cleaned up, where the wolf tries to come down the chimney, is trapped in a pot of boiling hot water, and becomes lunch for the pig. Not only is the last pig safe, but the tables have also been turned.

Some people think that rising above our conditions involves simply denying the danger, ignoring what is real, or disposing of whatever burdens us. That is hardly virtue, but cowardice.

Seneca’s soldier fighting for the high ground is not running from the battle, but is in the midst of the carnage. It is not that he is immune to pain and death, but that he faces these things with character. He may fall in the battle, but it is not his body that is invulnerable. It is his soul that cannot be defeated, because he knows that his own virtue is that unconquerable highest good.

My virtue is my house of stone, because no one can take it from me.

To “follow God” is not the murderous ravings of the fanatic, who is driven by his own hatred and desire to conquer others, or the despair of the determinist, who has already surrendered to blind fate. For the Stoic, it means understanding that all of Nature follows a Divine order and purpose, and that I can freely choose to find my own peace within Nature by living well. This never depends upon what happens to me, but upon what I do.

In my own mind, I will often think about the squares of British infantry that stood against the French cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is hardly their final victory in the battle itself that inspires me, because I have much the same respect for the opposing French Cuirassiers.

Whatever image can help us to understand this ideal, I believe it requires the recognition that any true victory is over oneself, and not over another. 

Written in 1/2012

Image: Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, The Battle of Waterloo: The British Squares Receiving the Charge of the French Cuirassiers (1874)

Seneca, On the Happy Life 32: Liberty Under the Yoke

. . . Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance, and that, too, a one-sided one, between virtue and pleasure, clogs whatever strength the one may possess by the weakness of the other, and sends liberty under the yoke, for liberty can only remain unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself.

For he begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter slavery. His life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timorous, fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for critical moments of time. You do not afford virtue a solid immovable base if you bid it stand on what is unsteady, and what can be so unsteady as dependence on mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things that act on the body?

How can such a man obey God and receive everything which comes to pass in a cheerful spirit, never complaining of fate, and putting a good construction upon everything that befalls him, if he be agitated by the petty pin-pricks of pleasures and pains?

A man cannot be a good protector of his country, a good avenger of her wrongs, or a good defender of his friends, if he is inclined to pleasures. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

The liberty Seneca speaks of is the power to rule oneself, that foundation upon which the whole structure of Stoic happiness is built. To be genuinely free is not to assert the power of the will over the world, but to take complete responsibility for our choices in the world.

The happy man should not expect to shape things in his own image, and Fortune will have her own way with what is under her authority. The happy man will rather improve himself regarding what is under his own authority, in the way that he judges, chooses, and acts. To permit my own happiness to depend upon my circumstances is to make those circumstances more valuable than myself, whether it is in the pursuit of pleasure, or of fame, or of power. These things are not mine, they do not concern me, and I enslave myself to them whenever I choose to pursue them. My weakness is then in the willful surrender of my self-reliance.

If I wish to build upon something unmoving, I need only look to Nature, and how she asks me to live within her order. I often notice how our frustration and complaints at the unfair ways of the world seem to become more exaggerated as we become more spoiled and entitled. This should be a clear sign that the things we think are gifts to our freedom are actually only burdens to our happiness. I need to change the focus of my attention.

Growing up in New England, I was baffled by the many luxurious vacation houses built on beaches that would soon be washed away by the elements. When I moved west, I noticed how greedy developers built family homes that soon succumbed to flooding or plunged into sinkholes. There is then often outrage and blame, even though people of common sense had known for centuries not to build on such poor land.

As one of my old philosophy professors, known for his especially painful sense of humor, would often say, “The yokes on you.”

Written in 1/2012

Seneca, On the Happy Life 31: That Proverbial Cake

"But what," asks our adversary, "is there to hinder virtue and pleasure being combined together, and a highest good being thus formed, so that honor and pleasure may be the same thing?"

Because nothing except what is honorable can form a part of honor, and the highest good would lose its purity if it were to see within itself anything unlike its own better part.

Even the joy which arises from virtue, although it is a good thing, yet is not a part of absolute good, any more than cheerfulness or peace of mind, which are indeed good things, but which merely follow the highest good, and do not contribute to its perfection, although they are generated by the noblest causes. . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 15 (tr Stewart)

There are few things more tempting, and few things we will dedicate ourselves to more desperately and frantically, than trying to have it both ways. Being told that we can’t have our cake and eat it too seems to make us uncomfortable and squirmy. I have heard dozens of ridiculous semantic contortions that vainly try to explain away the logical principle of non-contradiction, and thereby insist that my cake can be both on my plate and in my belly at the same time.

I suspect that sometimes we know quite well that we cannot have or be two conflicting things, but we may desire the reality of one of them and merely the appearance of the other. I know that this is what I have meant when I think I can give equal value to both virtue and pleasure. Give me the gratification, but make it look like I’m being noble in getting it.

I cannot treat virtue and pleasure as being equally good, or as always being in agreement with one another, or as one and the same thing. Virtue, by its very definition as the excellence of our actions, is always unconditionally good, while pleasure is only conditionally good, dependent upon the value of the action from which it proceeds.  I have never gone wrong in my life by doing the right thing, but I have often gone wrong in my life by craving the wrong thing. That which is superior cannot be measured by what is inferior.

Living well may indeed give me a feeling of approval, and I have often found that the pleasure that can follows from a virtue is far more satisfying than the pleasure that can follow from a vice. This seems quite fitting, because the former is about our human fulfillment, while the latter is about our emptiness through dependence.

Yet as soon as I treat the pleasure as an end itself, and not merely as an associated consequence, I have already cast aside that very act of moral fulfillment. I cannot be doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or aim for what is good in itself when all I really seek is what feels good to me.  

There are many other things in life that can be good, but as a consequence and not as the cause. The relative always flows out from the absolute. I am not a good man because I am cheerful, friendly, or mild-mannered, but I will certainly be cheerful, friendly, and mild-mannered if I am a good man. I don’t become kind if someone respects me, but I can be respected if I am kind. Being wealthy won’t make me fair, but my fairness could make me wealthy.

In the relationship of virtue and pleasure, one will have to lead, and the other will have to follow. I often think of the passage from Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

Written in 1/2012