"Then how can I free myself?" you ask. You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.
“By force a way is made.”
And this way will be afforded you by philosophy. Betake yourself therefore to philosophy if you would be safe, untroubled, happy, in fine, if you wish to be—and that is most important—free. There is no other way to attain this end.
Folly is low, abject, mean, slavish, and exposed to many of the cruelest passions. These passions, which are heavy taskmasters, sometimes ruling by turns, and sometimes together, can be banished from you by wisdom, which is the only real freedom.
There is but one path leading there, and it is a straight path; you will not go astray. Proceed with steady step, and if you would have all things under your control, put yourself under the control of reason; if reason becomes your ruler, you will become ruler over many. You will learn from her what you should undertake, and how it should be done; you will not blunder into things.
You can show me no man who knows how he began to crave that which he craves. He has not been led to that pass by forethought; he has been driven to it by impulse.
Fortune attacks us as often as we attack Fortune. It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: "How did I get into this condition?" Farewell.
“By force a way is made.”
And this way will be afforded you by philosophy. Betake yourself therefore to philosophy if you would be safe, untroubled, happy, in fine, if you wish to be—and that is most important—free. There is no other way to attain this end.
Folly is low, abject, mean, slavish, and exposed to many of the cruelest passions. These passions, which are heavy taskmasters, sometimes ruling by turns, and sometimes together, can be banished from you by wisdom, which is the only real freedom.
There is but one path leading there, and it is a straight path; you will not go astray. Proceed with steady step, and if you would have all things under your control, put yourself under the control of reason; if reason becomes your ruler, you will become ruler over many. You will learn from her what you should undertake, and how it should be done; you will not blunder into things.
You can show me no man who knows how he began to crave that which he craves. He has not been led to that pass by forethought; he has been driven to it by impulse.
Fortune attacks us as often as we attack Fortune. It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: "How did I get into this condition?" Farewell.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 37
The liberty that comes from moral courage won’t make the hardships of the world go away, but it will allow me to bear my burdens with dignity and peace of mind.
When Seneca quotes Virgil here, I initially feel uncomfortable, because I have little use for appeals to blunt force. If someone yells at me to “Man up!” as I hesitate, it does no more than irritate me. Perhaps you could advise me on howit is done?
Although fortitude is the virtue concerned with resolution, merely demanding that the will push harder is much like yelling at a car for failing to start. Have I looked under the hood? Did I forget to fill the tank? My motivation to make a choice can only be as strong as my understanding of why this action brings about the greatest good, and so the key to a robust will is the direction of an informed mind. My courage is in direct proportion to my conviction.
To fall back on my Aristotelian training, while the will is the efficient cause of the act, which pushes forward, the intellect is the final cause of the act, which pulls it along. To become inspired, driven to sacrificing everything else for the sake of a goal, I will find my direction by knowing the merits of my cause.
Put another way, what use I there in being the fastest runner if I can’t see where I’m going?
Laugh all you like, but it is philosophy, in its vital sense, that makes for a genuinely brave man. A fool may have an iron nerve, but without the guidance of wisdom, everything he undertakes will be thoughtless and reckless. He rushes into danger, though he has no idea why he fights. His passions drag him about, and he fails to look before he leaps.
My thoughts turn to Boethius, one of my heroes, who was overcome with doubt and fear when he faced his impending execution. He had hardly lived a cowardly life, yet when Fortune has unexpectedly taken everything away, he did not know where to turn.
As he sat in his cell, it was only his reason, symbolized as Lady Philosophy in his last writings, The Consolation of Philosophy, that saved him from despair. She spoke to him about the relationship of our own freedom to the workings of Providence, and she explained how happiness is in our own thoughts and deeds, not in our circumstances. To the Stoic, it should sound all too familiar.
If I am just working from my gut, I am acting without any deliberate awareness. If, however, I am conscious of the true and the good within me, then no situation, however severe, can stand in the way of my happiness. My allegiance to the virtues is the one thing they can’t take away from me.
The liberty that comes from moral courage won’t make the hardships of the world go away, but it will allow me to bear my burdens with dignity and peace of mind.
When Seneca quotes Virgil here, I initially feel uncomfortable, because I have little use for appeals to blunt force. If someone yells at me to “Man up!” as I hesitate, it does no more than irritate me. Perhaps you could advise me on howit is done?
Although fortitude is the virtue concerned with resolution, merely demanding that the will push harder is much like yelling at a car for failing to start. Have I looked under the hood? Did I forget to fill the tank? My motivation to make a choice can only be as strong as my understanding of why this action brings about the greatest good, and so the key to a robust will is the direction of an informed mind. My courage is in direct proportion to my conviction.
To fall back on my Aristotelian training, while the will is the efficient cause of the act, which pushes forward, the intellect is the final cause of the act, which pulls it along. To become inspired, driven to sacrificing everything else for the sake of a goal, I will find my direction by knowing the merits of my cause.
Put another way, what use I there in being the fastest runner if I can’t see where I’m going?
Laugh all you like, but it is philosophy, in its vital sense, that makes for a genuinely brave man. A fool may have an iron nerve, but without the guidance of wisdom, everything he undertakes will be thoughtless and reckless. He rushes into danger, though he has no idea why he fights. His passions drag him about, and he fails to look before he leaps.
My thoughts turn to Boethius, one of my heroes, who was overcome with doubt and fear when he faced his impending execution. He had hardly lived a cowardly life, yet when Fortune has unexpectedly taken everything away, he did not know where to turn.
As he sat in his cell, it was only his reason, symbolized as Lady Philosophy in his last writings, The Consolation of Philosophy, that saved him from despair. She spoke to him about the relationship of our own freedom to the workings of Providence, and she explained how happiness is in our own thoughts and deeds, not in our circumstances. To the Stoic, it should sound all too familiar.
If I am just working from my gut, I am acting without any deliberate awareness. If, however, I am conscious of the true and the good within me, then no situation, however severe, can stand in the way of my happiness. My allegiance to the virtues is the one thing they can’t take away from me.
—Reflection written in 12/2012
IMAGE: Mattia Preti, Boethius and Philosophy (c. 1650)
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