I know what you may reply to me at this point: "Are you trying to make us believe that it does not matter whether a man feels joy, or whether he lies upon the rack and tires out his torturer?"
I might say in answer: "Epicurus also maintains that the wise man, though he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: 'Tis pleasant, and concerns me not at all.'"
Why need you wonder, if I maintain that he who reclines at a banquet and the victim who stoutly withstands torture possess equal goods, when Epicurus maintains a thing that is harder to believe, namely, that it is pleasant to be roasted in this way?
But the reply which I do make, is that there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it.
So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.
Vexation and pain and other inconveniences are of no consequence, for they are overcome by virtue. Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances, and wrongs; and wherever its radiance reaches, all lights which shine without the help of virtue are extinguished; and inconveniences, when they come in contact with virtue, play no more important a part than does a storm-cloud at sea.
I might say in answer: "Epicurus also maintains that the wise man, though he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: 'Tis pleasant, and concerns me not at all.'"
Why need you wonder, if I maintain that he who reclines at a banquet and the victim who stoutly withstands torture possess equal goods, when Epicurus maintains a thing that is harder to believe, namely, that it is pleasant to be roasted in this way?
But the reply which I do make, is that there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it.
So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.
Vexation and pain and other inconveniences are of no consequence, for they are overcome by virtue. Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances, and wrongs; and wherever its radiance reaches, all lights which shine without the help of virtue are extinguished; and inconveniences, when they come in contact with virtue, play no more important a part than does a storm-cloud at sea.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
As with the previous claim on the equality of all the virtues, Seneca’s insistence that pleasure and pain do not determine the value of our lives will sound absurd to the modern ear. Once again, this is because we are so entrenched in an attitude of gratification, of reducing the human person to a merely appetitive animal. Break free from this presumption, and you escape from a slavery to the passions.
Seneca is neither excluding nor diminishing the role of the emotions, but he is rather explaining why the way we feel is to be guided by the way we understand. As an animal, it is natural for me to desire pleasure and to shun pain, and so I will prefer the one over the other. As a rational animal, it is for me to judge what is right from what is wrong, and to interpret my preferences through my conscience.
I will not say, with Epicurus, that pain can be pleasurable, though I will say that he who acts with virtue, whatever the situation, possesses the highest human good, and so embraces the greatest happiness. Here the Stoic stands with the Aristotelian in defining happiness as the act of living well, not simply as a pleasing sensation. We will all face our quotas of pleasure and pain, and the only thing that will make a difference is how we respond to them.
Once I alter the way I think, I then find that the way I feel is also transformed, slowly but surely. I may not enjoy an agony in the body, yet once I am aware of why it is right to surrender a certain comfort, I perceive a sort of satisfaction, what I can only call an inner peace, from having pursued the correct path. Such a feeling is no longer what I seek, and it is instead a natural consequence or a sign of what I seek, to live with decency. How silly of me to have confused the cause and the effect!
While I must resist the urge to get caught up in the scholarly details here, I do often think about how our particular choice of words reflects the subtleties in our intentions. I am wary of using “happy” as an emotional state, when it is really a moral activity, and I avoid treating “pleasure” and “pain” as if they were interchangeable with “good” and “bad”.
For that experience of fulfillment that accompanies trying to do right, I often call it “joy”, for lack of a better term, the Latin gaudium as distinct from voluptas. I struggle when Seneca uses gaudium in this letter to apparently mean pleasure of the lesser sort, but I hope that my principles are still in harmony with his; I attribute the problem to the limitations of my own vocabulary.
But enough of that! The deeper point is about recognizing the priority of conscience over concupiscence, and about discerning how insignificant a suffering in the body becomes in the face of an excellence in the soul. Certain things I once thought I could never live without have now become trivial to me, just as a candle holds nothing to the sun, and a hardship pales in comparison to a virtue.
As with the previous claim on the equality of all the virtues, Seneca’s insistence that pleasure and pain do not determine the value of our lives will sound absurd to the modern ear. Once again, this is because we are so entrenched in an attitude of gratification, of reducing the human person to a merely appetitive animal. Break free from this presumption, and you escape from a slavery to the passions.
Seneca is neither excluding nor diminishing the role of the emotions, but he is rather explaining why the way we feel is to be guided by the way we understand. As an animal, it is natural for me to desire pleasure and to shun pain, and so I will prefer the one over the other. As a rational animal, it is for me to judge what is right from what is wrong, and to interpret my preferences through my conscience.
I will not say, with Epicurus, that pain can be pleasurable, though I will say that he who acts with virtue, whatever the situation, possesses the highest human good, and so embraces the greatest happiness. Here the Stoic stands with the Aristotelian in defining happiness as the act of living well, not simply as a pleasing sensation. We will all face our quotas of pleasure and pain, and the only thing that will make a difference is how we respond to them.
Once I alter the way I think, I then find that the way I feel is also transformed, slowly but surely. I may not enjoy an agony in the body, yet once I am aware of why it is right to surrender a certain comfort, I perceive a sort of satisfaction, what I can only call an inner peace, from having pursued the correct path. Such a feeling is no longer what I seek, and it is instead a natural consequence or a sign of what I seek, to live with decency. How silly of me to have confused the cause and the effect!
While I must resist the urge to get caught up in the scholarly details here, I do often think about how our particular choice of words reflects the subtleties in our intentions. I am wary of using “happy” as an emotional state, when it is really a moral activity, and I avoid treating “pleasure” and “pain” as if they were interchangeable with “good” and “bad”.
For that experience of fulfillment that accompanies trying to do right, I often call it “joy”, for lack of a better term, the Latin gaudium as distinct from voluptas. I struggle when Seneca uses gaudium in this letter to apparently mean pleasure of the lesser sort, but I hope that my principles are still in harmony with his; I attribute the problem to the limitations of my own vocabulary.
But enough of that! The deeper point is about recognizing the priority of conscience over concupiscence, and about discerning how insignificant a suffering in the body becomes in the face of an excellence in the soul. Certain things I once thought I could never live without have now become trivial to me, just as a candle holds nothing to the sun, and a hardship pales in comparison to a virtue.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Pierre Woeiriot, The Bronze Bull of Phalaris (c. 1550)
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