Seneca, On the Happy Life 23: The Master Becomes the Slave

When I say that I do nothing for the sake of pleasure, I allude to that wise man, whom alone you admit to be capable of pleasure.

Now I do not call a man wise who is overcome by anything, let alone by pleasure. Yet, if engrossed by pleasure, how will he resist toil, danger, want, and all the ills that surround and threaten the life of man? How will he bear the sight of death or of pain? How will he endure the tumult of the world, and make head against so many most active foes, if he is conquered by so weak an antagonist?

He will do whatever pleasure advises him. Well, do you not see how many things it will advise him to do?

"It will not," says our adversary, "be able to give him any bad advice, because it is combined with virtue."

Again, do you not see what a poor kind of highest good that must be which requires a guardian to ensure its being good at all? And how is virtue to rule pleasure if she follows it, seeing that to follow is the duty of a subordinate, to rule that of a commander? Do you put that which commands in the background? . . .

—Seneca the Younger, On the happy life, Chapter 11 (tr Stewart)

Whenever I have sought after pleasure, I have thought of myself as a powerful conqueror, and if I only tried hard enough, the world was there for the taking. There is indeed a certain feeling of achievement in getting what I want. This is an illusion. I am not getting what I want, but what I want is getting me.

The sensualist may be clever, cunning, and forceful in pursuing his goal, but he is not pulling the strings. He does not rule himself at all, but rather is ruled by his passions, and he is pushed and pulled by the external objects of his desires.

I think of all those images from literature and film where the mighty hunter realizes that he has become the hunted. That wonderful scene from Jurassic Park, when Muldoon succumbs to the raptors, comes to mind whenever I have sadly let myself be fooled: “Clever girl!” Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi is not far behind: “It’s a trap!”

If a man allows himself to be determined by pleasure and pain, or by any of the circumstances of his life, he is hardly strong at all, but is actually quite weak. Change the condition, and you change him. Give him something from the outside, and he feels happy; take it away, and he is miserable. He laughs or cries depending on the direction of the wind.

But surely if my want for pleasure is accompanied by virtue, says the Epicurean, I will make good choices. The mouse will not fall for the cheese if he knows what’s good for him.

There’s the rub. As soon as I say that pleasure must be tempered by virtue, or that my desires must always be directed by wisdom, pleasure is no longer the highest good at all. Its value is now relative, because it depends upon another measure. The sensualist, while still insisting that happiness is pleasure, is beginning to sound more and more like a Stoic. 

Written in 2/2006