Letter 82: On the natural fear of death
I have already ceased to be anxious about you.
“Whom then of the gods,” you ask, “have you found as your voucher?”
A god, let me tell you, who deceives no one—a soul in love with that which is upright and good. The better part of yourself is on safe ground. Fortune can inflict injury upon you; what is more pertinent is that I have no fears lest you do injury to yourself.
Proceed as you have begun, and settle yourself in this way of living, not luxuriously, but calmly. I prefer to be in trouble rather than in luxury; and you had better interpret the term “in trouble” as popular usage is wont to interpret it: living a “hard,” “rough,” “toilsome” life.
We are wont to hear the lives of certain men praised as follows, when they are objects of unpopularity: “So-and-So lives luxuriously”; but by this they mean: “He is softened by luxury.”
For the soul is made womanish by degrees, and is weakened until it matches the ease and laziness in which it lies. Lo, is it not better for one who is really a man even to become hardened? Next, these same dandies fear that which they have made their own lives resemble. Much difference is there between lying idle and lying buried!
“But,” you say, “is it not better even to lie idle than to whirl round in these eddies of business distraction?”
Both extremes are to be deprecated—both tension and sluggishness. I hold that he who lies on a perfumed couch is no less dead than he who is dragged along by the executioner’s hook.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 82
This is the sort of encouragement I believe should be offered by genuine philosophers. During my college years, I was often reprimanded for not citing enough secondary sources, and I was sometimes praised for an exceptional grade, but I barely remember a moment when anyone was interested in the formation of my character. If you reply that professional academia should hardly be concerned with the virtues, I suspect that you have unwittingly exposed the very problem.
We are trained for careers where success is measured by grappling with fortune, when none of that makes any difference without the discipline to conquer ourselves. There is much attention to accumulating various prizes on the outside, while we are clueless about how to follow a moral compass on the inside.
I recently shared a quote by Viktor Frankl with my students: "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.” Though I knew it would be a challenge for them, I was rather taken aback by their outright hostility toward the notion. Their daily habits are unfortunately tangled up in the complexities of a hectic game, so they are unfamiliar with the purity of a tranquil soul.
It is only by distancing ourselves from the pesky diversions of life that the simplicity of our natural calling is revealed. We are inclined to speak of extravagant luxuries as if they were absolute necessities, because we cannot conceive of a day without constant sensory gratification. Indeed, though I hate to admit it, I can agree with Seneca that a degree of discomfort, a healthy dose of hard living, does wonders to awaken our powers of self-reliance.
I have no attraction to the image of macho toughness, which is usually little more than an excuse for thoughtlessness and brutality, yet I have also learned why the softness of a decadent culture is like a poison to peace of mind. There were feeble dandies back in Rome, and there are a group of lazy hipsters lounging outside of my office door right now, debating the merits of vintage vinyl while slurping on their designer coffee. The weakness is in a lack of constancy, not in any absence of grunting and sweating.
Yes, it is just as bad to run around in a frenzy as it is to stare blindly at the wall, since both an excess and a deficiency of action are the marks of a soul in desperate need of a conscience. I am either desperate for new amusements or I curl up in a stupor whenever I forget how the best life is the one that finds so much dignity in so very little.
—Reflection written in 12/2013
IMAGE: Thomas Rowlandson, Scene in a Club Lounge (1798)
Letter 82: On the natural fear of death
I have already ceased to be anxious about you.
“Whom then of the gods,” you ask, “have you found as your voucher?”
A god, let me tell you, who deceives no one—a soul in love with that which is upright and good. The better part of yourself is on safe ground. Fortune can inflict injury upon you; what is more pertinent is that I have no fears lest you do injury to yourself.
Proceed as you have begun, and settle yourself in this way of living, not luxuriously, but calmly. I prefer to be in trouble rather than in luxury; and you had better interpret the term “in trouble” as popular usage is wont to interpret it: living a “hard,” “rough,” “toilsome” life.
We are wont to hear the lives of certain men praised as follows, when they are objects of unpopularity: “So-and-So lives luxuriously”; but by this they mean: “He is softened by luxury.”
For the soul is made womanish by degrees, and is weakened until it matches the ease and laziness in which it lies. Lo, is it not better for one who is really a man even to become hardened? Next, these same dandies fear that which they have made their own lives resemble. Much difference is there between lying idle and lying buried!
“But,” you say, “is it not better even to lie idle than to whirl round in these eddies of business distraction?”
Both extremes are to be deprecated—both tension and sluggishness. I hold that he who lies on a perfumed couch is no less dead than he who is dragged along by the executioner’s hook.
I have already ceased to be anxious about you.
“Whom then of the gods,” you ask, “have you found as your voucher?”
A god, let me tell you, who deceives no one—a soul in love with that which is upright and good. The better part of yourself is on safe ground. Fortune can inflict injury upon you; what is more pertinent is that I have no fears lest you do injury to yourself.
Proceed as you have begun, and settle yourself in this way of living, not luxuriously, but calmly. I prefer to be in trouble rather than in luxury; and you had better interpret the term “in trouble” as popular usage is wont to interpret it: living a “hard,” “rough,” “toilsome” life.
We are wont to hear the lives of certain men praised as follows, when they are objects of unpopularity: “So-and-So lives luxuriously”; but by this they mean: “He is softened by luxury.”
For the soul is made womanish by degrees, and is weakened until it matches the ease and laziness in which it lies. Lo, is it not better for one who is really a man even to become hardened? Next, these same dandies fear that which they have made their own lives resemble. Much difference is there between lying idle and lying buried!
“But,” you say, “is it not better even to lie idle than to whirl round in these eddies of business distraction?”
Both extremes are to be deprecated—both tension and sluggishness. I hold that he who lies on a perfumed couch is no less dead than he who is dragged along by the executioner’s hook.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 82
This is the sort of encouragement I believe should be offered by genuine philosophers. During my college years, I was often reprimanded for not citing enough secondary sources, and I was sometimes praised for an exceptional grade, but I barely remember a moment when anyone was interested in the formation of my character. If you reply that professional academia should hardly be concerned with the virtues, I suspect that you have unwittingly exposed the very problem.
We are trained for careers where success is measured by grappling with fortune, when none of that makes any difference without the discipline to conquer ourselves. There is much attention to accumulating various prizes on the outside, while we are clueless about how to follow a moral compass on the inside.
I recently shared a quote by Viktor Frankl with my students: "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.” Though I knew it would be a challenge for them, I was rather taken aback by their outright hostility toward the notion. Their daily habits are unfortunately tangled up in the complexities of a hectic game, so they are unfamiliar with the purity of a tranquil soul.
It is only by distancing ourselves from the pesky diversions of life that the simplicity of our natural calling is revealed. We are inclined to speak of extravagant luxuries as if they were absolute necessities, because we cannot conceive of a day without constant sensory gratification. Indeed, though I hate to admit it, I can agree with Seneca that a degree of discomfort, a healthy dose of hard living, does wonders to awaken our powers of self-reliance.
I have no attraction to the image of macho toughness, which is usually little more than an excuse for thoughtlessness and brutality, yet I have also learned why the softness of a decadent culture is like a poison to peace of mind. There were feeble dandies back in Rome, and there are a group of lazy hipsters lounging outside of my office door right now, debating the merits of vintage vinyl while slurping on their designer coffee. The weakness is in a lack of constancy, not in any absence of grunting and sweating.
Yes, it is just as bad to run around in a frenzy as it is to stare blindly at the wall, since both an excess and a deficiency of action are the marks of a soul in desperate need of a conscience. I am either desperate for new amusements or I curl up in a stupor whenever I forget how the best life is the one that finds so much dignity in so very little.
This is the sort of encouragement I believe should be offered by genuine philosophers. During my college years, I was often reprimanded for not citing enough secondary sources, and I was sometimes praised for an exceptional grade, but I barely remember a moment when anyone was interested in the formation of my character. If you reply that professional academia should hardly be concerned with the virtues, I suspect that you have unwittingly exposed the very problem.
We are trained for careers where success is measured by grappling with fortune, when none of that makes any difference without the discipline to conquer ourselves. There is much attention to accumulating various prizes on the outside, while we are clueless about how to follow a moral compass on the inside.
I recently shared a quote by Viktor Frankl with my students: "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.” Though I knew it would be a challenge for them, I was rather taken aback by their outright hostility toward the notion. Their daily habits are unfortunately tangled up in the complexities of a hectic game, so they are unfamiliar with the purity of a tranquil soul.
It is only by distancing ourselves from the pesky diversions of life that the simplicity of our natural calling is revealed. We are inclined to speak of extravagant luxuries as if they were absolute necessities, because we cannot conceive of a day without constant sensory gratification. Indeed, though I hate to admit it, I can agree with Seneca that a degree of discomfort, a healthy dose of hard living, does wonders to awaken our powers of self-reliance.
I have no attraction to the image of macho toughness, which is usually little more than an excuse for thoughtlessness and brutality, yet I have also learned why the softness of a decadent culture is like a poison to peace of mind. There were feeble dandies back in Rome, and there are a group of lazy hipsters lounging outside of my office door right now, debating the merits of vintage vinyl while slurping on their designer coffee. The weakness is in a lack of constancy, not in any absence of grunting and sweating.
Yes, it is just as bad to run around in a frenzy as it is to stare blindly at the wall, since both an excess and a deficiency of action are the marks of a soul in desperate need of a conscience. I am either desperate for new amusements or I curl up in a stupor whenever I forget how the best life is the one that finds so much dignity in so very little.
—Reflection written in 12/2013
IMAGE: Thomas Rowlandson, Scene in a Club Lounge (1798)
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