On Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (or Seneca the Younger) was born in Cordoba around the beginning of the Christian era. His father was a renowned rhetorician who saw to it that his son was educated (at Rome) in rhetoric; he also received training in the eclectic and synthesizing Stoicism that was popular in the Imperial capitol at the time. Seneca was personally drawn to the ethical preaching of the Cynics and, as J. R. G. Wright has observed, "it is often difficult to distinguish [Cynic ethics] from his orthodox Stoicism because of the community of ideas between them..." (Wright, "Seneca," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), vols. 7-8, 406).

Wright argues that Seneca's "main philosophical aim was to lead men toward virtue, to convey to them the knowledge of the nature of the world and their place in it which would enable them to conduct their lives in accordance with the will of God...Wisdom and goodness demand a conscious harmonization of our own wills with the divine will of the universe. Once this is achieved, we will always choose what is right and reject what is wrong, thus producing actions which are not only right in themselves but which are also chosen for the right motives, a vital feature of true moral action. The man who achieves this state will be a truly godlike creature, utterly immune to the blows of Fortune" (ibid).

Wright continues: Seneca "examines with almost clinical precision the vicious effect of the passions on men and then proceeds to explain how they may be brought under control and finally conquered" (ibid, 407). In this regard he, like the other members of his school, anticipated the psychotherapeutic approach pioneered in the 20th century by Dr. Aaron Beck (i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy).

"Seneca was a practical moral teacher, a kind of spiritual guide or father confessor to his friends. In a favorite metaphor, he was a 'physician' of the soul" (ibid).

Heroes of Humanism: Salutati, Ciceronian of the Italian Renaissance

Coluccio Salutati (b. 1331–d. 1406) is primarily known today as the scholar who ensured that the humanist movement established by Petrarch was passed on successfully to Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and other scholars of the next generation. His approach to learning was more traditional than Petrarch’s; but from his base as chancellor of Florence, he began to associate humanism with the active political life in a way that would have a decisive impact on the next generation of scholars. His surviving writings range from official letters to learned treatises on government and ethics. In addition, many books survive from his substantial library, allowing us to see what his intellectual interests were and how he read his books.

Craig Kallendorf, Oxford Bibiliographies Online.

As Chancellor of Florence, Salutati "first used in the public documents of his office the sonorous Latin of Cicero, and thus forced upon Popes and Princes the necessity of securing for themselves scribes and secretaries who were masters of the classic style."

Harry Thurston Peck, A History of Classical Philology, 268.

The Indispensable Althusser

Why "scientific" history matters: it teaches us the difference between the nature of our actual condition in the world and the ideological appropriation of it by superstructural apparatuses. Such information is available to us (if it is available at all) only in retrospect. Consequently, we cannot abandon the baseline of historical evidence: it is our only palpable connection to lived reality as such.

Ideals vs. Ideologies

As we approach the "ides" of March, it behooves us to recall the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE and its commemoration in Shakespeare's play of about 1599 CE. In Shakespeare's tragedy, the conspirators who murdered their friend did so--at least professedly--out of their love for a "greater friend," the Roman republic. True to his art, Shakespeare drew a series of enigmatic portraits with his cast of characters: there does not appear to be any clear hero or villain in this tale for, as Cicero notes, "...men may construe things after their fashion,/clean from the purpose of the things themselves" (1.3.34-5). Politics then, as always, place one waist deep in the Big Muddy.

Even so, scholarly treatment of this fact ought to help us achieve some degree of clarity rather than muddy the waters further. In an otherwise helpful essay on the play ("Julius Caesar: A Modern Perspective") by Coppelia Kahn, we find this:

The republican ideal that Cassius evokes to seduce Brutus into opposing Caesar, and that Brutus uses to justify murder, is closer to myth than to history (though it was also dearly cherished as an ideal even during the worst conflicts of the republican era). Or we might call it an ideology, which, according to Louis Althusser, is a set of imagined relations as opposed to the actual political conditions of Rome.

Kahn's enlistment of Althusser in this instance is helpful, but her conflation of "ideal" and "ideology" is not. In the citation above, the conflation is not evident. In the sentence that follows this citation, it emerges: "Cassius correctly assumes that Brutus shares this ideology."

An ideology, for Althusser, substitutes "a set of imagined relations" for "the actual political conditions" that obtain "on the ground," as it were. It is a form of self-delusion. Ideals, on the other hand, are not necessarily forms of self-delusion but, rather, values one cherishes and/or goals one strives to achieve. Kahn's use of Althusser here implies that Cassius appealed to Brutus' self-delusion about "the actual political conditions of Rome" in 44 BCE. That is one possible way to read the historical evidence as dramatically presented in Shakespeare's play; another way to read the evidence is to regard Cassius as appealing to Brutus' ideals. In the latter case, Brutus joins the conspiracy against Caesar not because he fails to understand the true nature of the Roman state but because he perceives that Caesar's rise to power threatens the realization of his ideals in the immediate future.

It is a small point, perhaps, but, in my view, a politically significant one. For if we permit ideals and ideologies to be conflated, ideals become suspect rather than cherished.

Beware, then, the Ides of March: beware the dismissal of your ideals as so much ideological delusion.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Dark Pastoral for Cello & Orchestra

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The Scholar of One Candle

Nota Bena

In the Deep Rock of the Self

If our spirit has only scorn for whatever happens to us, good or bad; if it has risen above fears; if, even in its eagerness, it ceases to imagine limitless prospects, and wisely seeks riches only in itself; if it no longer dreads anything from man or god, knowing that it has little to fear from man, and nothing from god; if it despises everything that is at once the splendor and the torment of our existence; if it has come to see clearly that death in itself is not an evil, and that it rather puts an end to our many misfortunes; if it has devoted itself solely to excellence and finds every path leading to it smooth; if, as a social animal born for the good of all, it considers the whole world as a single, self-same family--then it has escaped from tempests and set foot on firm ground under a clear sky. It knows everything that is useful and indispensable to know. It has retreated into its fortress.

--Seneca, Bk. VII, Ch. 1, On Benefits.