What I think should rather be investigated is this—a question which I feel has not been made sufficiently clear: "Whether he who has helped us has squared the account and has freed us from our debt, if he has done us harm later." You may add this question also, if you like: “when the harm done later has been more than the help rendered previously.”
If you are seeking for the formal and just decision of a strict judge, you will find that he checks off one act by the other, and declares: “Though the injuries outweigh the benefits, yet we should credit to the benefits anything that stands over even after the injury.”
The harm done was indeed greater, but the helpful act was done first. Hence the time also should be taken into account. Other cases are so clear that I need not remind you that you should also look into such points as: how gladly was the help offered, and how reluctantly was the harm done—since benefits, as well as injuries, depend on the spirit.
“I did not wish to confer the benefit; but I was won over by my respect for the man, or by the importunity of his request, or by hope.” Our feeling about every obligation depends in each case upon the spirit in which the benefit is conferred; we weigh not the bulk of the gift, but the quality of the good will which prompted it.
So now let us do away with guesswork; the former deed was a benefit, and the latter, which transcended the earlier benefit, is an injury. The good man so arranges the two sides of his ledger that he voluntarily cheats himself by adding to the benefit and subtracting from the injury.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 81
Like so many philosophers, the Stoics were fond of examining hypothetical cases, so as to better grasp the greater patterns of reality. The problem, of course, is that we can too easily get caught up in the subtlety, while losing sight of the simplicity. I have been discovering how the rules of life do not need to be complicated, as long as I can keep my eyes fixed on the guiding principles.
We have endless volumes of civil and criminal law, because we are forever confronted by new circumstances; the lawyer clings to the letter, while the philosopher seeks out the spirit. It is prudence that permits us to apply the universal to the particular, without getting lost in the conditions and the technicalities.
The problem raised by Seneca concerns a balance sheet of benefit and harm, and it can easily become a trick question, because I will assume that life is measured by quantity instead of by quality. If, for example, a fellow had once done me a great favor, but he has now brought me into an even greater misfortune, what does he owe me in order to make things right?
Like yuppies trying to split the lunch bill, I am tempted to reach for a calculator in the clinical quest for accuracy. I am told judges have intricate formulas provided for them, so they might inflict their justice with a brutal efficiency. Nerds will bicker endlessly over variations of the “Trolley Problem”. A clever lad from elementary school reminded me for three years about why the gift I gave him for his ninth birthday was not proportionate in value to the amount of pizza I ate at the party paid for by his mother.
Once I begin to judge my life by forcing one hand to wash the other, by the standards of the quid pro quo, by tit for tat, I am already hopelessly lost. Now I have no doubt that justice demands a balance, but what should be the origin of this harmony, the source of right and wrong? Do you think a man is better by what is given, or by what is taken?
There’s the rub.
Folks talk about justice, but what they really want is convenience.
—Reflection written in 12/2013
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