All these things gave me the inclination to succor myself and to endure any torture; besides, it is a most miserable state to have lost one’s zest for dying, and to have no zest in living.
These, then, are the remedies to which you should have recourse. The physician will prescribe your walks and your exercise; he will warn you not to become addicted to idleness, as is the tendency of the inactive invalid; he will order you to read in a louder voice and to exercise your lungs the passages and cavity of which are affected; or to sail and shake up your bowels by a little mild motion; he will recommend the proper food, and the suitable time for aiding your strength with wine or refraining from it in order to keep your cough from being irritated and hacking.
But as for me, my counsel to you is this—and it is a cure, not merely of this disease of yours, but of your whole life—“Despise death.”
There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death. There are these three serious elements in every disease: fear of death, bodily pain, and interruption of pleasures.
Concerning death enough has been said, and I shall add only a word: this fear is not a fear of disease, but a fear of nature. Disease has often postponed death, and a vision of dying has been many a man’s salvation. You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped.
These, then, are the remedies to which you should have recourse. The physician will prescribe your walks and your exercise; he will warn you not to become addicted to idleness, as is the tendency of the inactive invalid; he will order you to read in a louder voice and to exercise your lungs the passages and cavity of which are affected; or to sail and shake up your bowels by a little mild motion; he will recommend the proper food, and the suitable time for aiding your strength with wine or refraining from it in order to keep your cough from being irritated and hacking.
But as for me, my counsel to you is this—and it is a cure, not merely of this disease of yours, but of your whole life—“Despise death.”
There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death. There are these three serious elements in every disease: fear of death, bodily pain, and interruption of pleasures.
Concerning death enough has been said, and I shall add only a word: this fear is not a fear of disease, but a fear of nature. Disease has often postponed death, and a vision of dying has been many a man’s salvation. You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 78
My snide remarks will sometimes lead people to assume that I despise all doctors and lawyers, which is certainly not the case; I have the greatest respect for both vocations, though I am deeply disappointed to find so many aspirants falling short. In all of my travels, I fear I have only known one selfless doctor and one honest lawyer, which tells me that we have much work to do on our standards of health and justice.
And in case you suspect any bias, I fear that the academics are hardly better. A supposed professionalism is vastly overrated; with Wendell Berry, I have a far greater faith in the motives of the amateur.
Beyond the problem of seeking a tidy profit for their services, physicians are often confused about the very source of human well-being. They are right to offer prescriptions for our aches and pains, even as these panaceas will swiftly change with the fashions of the day, yet they are wrong to consider us as if we were nothing more than bags of flesh and bone. While their treatments are perhaps a beginning, they can surely not be the end.
Lofty scholarship will not provide the cure any more than medicine, but a personal commitment to genuine philosophy, with no interest in fame or fortune, will remove the disorder at the root, by liberating us from our darkest fears. The doctor thinks his job is done once he has suppressed the patient’s symptoms, while the philosopher reveals the power of indifference to any conditions.
I am grateful for this clear and concise division of my anxieties: I am frightened of dying, I am frightened of receiving pain, and I am frightened of losing pleasure. While these are my passions speaking to me, I am so much bigger than the sum of my appetites.
As for the first, Seneca reminds us of a basic Stoic principle, one he has explained to Lucilius many times before: death is a part of our nature, and so it cannot be an evil. The dread of our mortality fades away after virtue is established as our highest good.
My snide remarks will sometimes lead people to assume that I despise all doctors and lawyers, which is certainly not the case; I have the greatest respect for both vocations, though I am deeply disappointed to find so many aspirants falling short. In all of my travels, I fear I have only known one selfless doctor and one honest lawyer, which tells me that we have much work to do on our standards of health and justice.
And in case you suspect any bias, I fear that the academics are hardly better. A supposed professionalism is vastly overrated; with Wendell Berry, I have a far greater faith in the motives of the amateur.
Beyond the problem of seeking a tidy profit for their services, physicians are often confused about the very source of human well-being. They are right to offer prescriptions for our aches and pains, even as these panaceas will swiftly change with the fashions of the day, yet they are wrong to consider us as if we were nothing more than bags of flesh and bone. While their treatments are perhaps a beginning, they can surely not be the end.
Lofty scholarship will not provide the cure any more than medicine, but a personal commitment to genuine philosophy, with no interest in fame or fortune, will remove the disorder at the root, by liberating us from our darkest fears. The doctor thinks his job is done once he has suppressed the patient’s symptoms, while the philosopher reveals the power of indifference to any conditions.
I am grateful for this clear and concise division of my anxieties: I am frightened of dying, I am frightened of receiving pain, and I am frightened of losing pleasure. While these are my passions speaking to me, I am so much bigger than the sum of my appetites.
As for the first, Seneca reminds us of a basic Stoic principle, one he has explained to Lucilius many times before: death is a part of our nature, and so it cannot be an evil. The dread of our mortality fades away after virtue is established as our highest good.
—Reflection written in 11/2013
IMAGE: Gerrit Dou, The Quack (1652)
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