Seneca, Lucius Annaeus

SENECA, LUCIUS ANNAEUS. - Roman philosopher, son of Annaeus Seneca the rhetorician, born at Cordova, in Spain, between 4 and 8 A.D., died at Rome in 65. Having come early to the City, he had as teachers of philosophy the Stoics Attalus and Sotion, from whom he learned a taste for the austere life. Devoting himself to political life, he reached the rank of quaestor; but a speech delivered in the Senate nearly cost him his life. Involved in a political machination of Messalina, he was accused by her of complicity in the amours of her niece Julia Livilla and relegated to Corsica in 41, where he wrote a Consolatio ad Polybium, shamefully adulatory toward the emperor Claudius. After Messalina was killed, he was recalled to Rome and appointed by Agrippina as tutor to Nero; having become his chief minister in 54, after the death of Claudius, he remained at his side even when his presence, by then useless, could seem a dishonest compliance with his misdeeds. His retirement from political life was fruitful, for a period of three years, in works and meditations. But in 65, wrongly accused of complicity in the conspiracy promoted by Calpurnius Piso, he received the order to cut his veins.

Many of his works are lost. Under the improper title of Dialogorum libri, there remain to us: the De consolatione ad Marciam and the De ira, the oldest of the preserved works; the Consolatio ad Polybium and the Consolatio ad Helviam matrem, written during his exile in Corsica; the De brevitate vitae, composed perhaps around the year 48; the De constantia sapientis and the De vita beata, which go back to the period from 55 to 60; the De providentia, which belongs to the last years of his life; the De otio and the De tranquillitate animi, for which there are no chronological indications. Extraneous to the collection of the Dialogues are the De clementia, written in 55, which has come down to us incomplete; the De beneficiis, which perhaps goes back to 60 or 61; the Epistularum moralium libri ad Lucilium, composed from 61 to 65. To be remembered are also the nine tragedies (Hercules furens; Troades; Phoenissae; Medea; Phaedra; Oedipus; Agamemnon; Thyestes; Hercules Oetaeus) which exercised a singular influence on the theater of the Renaissance and of the Elizabethan age; the Naturalium quaestionum libri, composed after 60, one of the few scientific works of the Roman world; and the Ludus de morte Claudii (Apocolocyntosis).

S. is one of the greatest moralists of all time. In many respects he belongs to Stoicism (v.), from which he accepts not a few metaphysical and moral motifs. In reality, his thought springs rather from a direct knowledge of the soul and of human vicissitudes, as well as from an unprejudiced understanding of the inquiries of others. He writes: "I can dispute with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, find serenity with Epicurus, conquer human nature with the Stoics, surpass it with the Cynics" (De brev. vitae, XIV, 2). With the Stoics he admits the division of philosophy into three parts: physics, logic, and ethics. Stoic is his naturalistic monism (v.): no distinction between the corporeal and the incorporeal. The universe is indeed composed of a passive principle, matter, and of an active principle, God; but these principles are the two faces, inseparable and correlative, of a single reality (Epist., 65, 12). God is the soul of the universe, reason diffused through all things, the immanent source of life (Nat. quaest., I, 13-14): he is the Destiny that links all events in a chain of causes and conditions the organic unity of the cosmos; he is the Providence that sustains every being in life and preserves it (De benef., IV, 4): he is the great Whole that we see, the support of everything and sufficient unto himself (Nat. quaest., II, 45-46). But the most vivid sense of moral interiority carries S. beyond pantheistic naturalism and dictates to him thoughts that seem to announce a personalistic theological exigency: God is near us, is with us, within us; "sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos" (Epist., 41, 1-5). In the final analysis, God is unknowable (Nat. quaest., I, praef.). The problems of metaphysics (v.) are not the most pressing object of his inquiries: his solutions, not univocal, reveal the oscillations of a thought as far removed from systematic dogmatism as it is trembling before the unknowns of being. Uncertain is the fate of the soul, obscure the problem of its freedom in the face of Destiny, insoluble the problem of the afterlife. S. struggles amid the narrow confines of Stoic naturalism (v.) and seems to demand a personal immortality (Epist., 120, 14-16: "dies iste quem tamquam extremum reformidas, aeterni natalis est") against the omnipresence of death, the freedom of the soul from the bonds of inexorable Destiny, the personality of the spirit in the face of the impersonal order of the world.

S. is the philosopher of individual freedom and of salvation: in the corrupt and crazed society of his time he taught man how it is possible not to desert society and concrete human duties and at the same time to preserve his own inner independence in the midst of the crowd. He is the teacher of the few, or rather of anyone who wishes to raise himself above the anonymous multitude in order to save himself. And yet, there is no distrust of man in him, no pessimism (v.), no appeal to a supernatural grace. The sad tone that accompanies his pages does not arise from a metaphysical attitude, but is the sentiment of one who has had the misfortune to be born outside his own time. He believes in human nature: if God is the reason immanent in the universe and the absolute condition of cosmic harmony, he is also immanent in the human soul and the primary condition of universal solidarity. This is the foundation of virtue and at the same time of freedom. Every man is free, because every man is capable of virtuous actions. S.'s struggle against slavery, that is, against the effects of conventions and of positive law, is unconditional: "quid est enim eques Romanus aut libertinus aut servus? nomina ex ambitione aut ex iniuria nata. Subsilire in caelum ex angulo licet" (Epist., 31, 11). "Servi sunt". Immo homines" (ibid., 47, 1). Human equality is by natural right: solidarity rediscovers in it its foundation. In society man must realize that unity of nature of which God is the absolute condition; and realize it through love. "Age, infelix, ecquando amabis?" (De ira, III, 28): it is an urgent appeal that seems Christian. One must love even one's enemies and return good for evil: "si deos imitaris, da et ingratis beneficia: nam et sceleratis sol oritur" (De benef., IV, 24; cf. Mt. 5, 44-45), since the law of love is a law of nature (Epist., 95, 52). For love of neighbor man must even endure the gravest evils of life and renounce suicide, which is nevertheless the supreme of liberations: "hoc quoque imperet sibi animus, ubi utilitas suorum exigit... Ingentia animi est aliena causa ad vitam reverti" (ibid., 104, 3). It cannot be said, however, that S. places the ultimate end of morality in associated life. Society indeed constitutes a duty and an occasion for the exercise of moral activity, but it is also true that it is a recurring threat to the interiority of the individual and to his spiritual independence. "Meliores erimus singuli" (De otio, I, 1). Solidarity and love are therefore also an aspect of inner coherence. The ultimate end of the moral life is in fact the autonomy (v.) of the person in the face of men and events, it is the freedom of the spirit from everything that can profane the divine serenity of the soul. At the center is the individual (v.), thirsting for salvation. In his tendency to realize in himself the very condition of the Absolute, the individual rejects all those characteristics of contingency and relativity that belong to lower activity: pleasure, utility, reward, fame... The sage gives, like God, out of the superabundance of his being, detached from the results of his actions, heedless of men's gratitude: "beneficiorum simplex ratio est: tantum erogatur... Ego illud dedi, ut darem" (De benef., I, 2); "conscientiae satis fiat, nihil in famam laboremus" (De ira, III, 41). Virtue is a value so complete in itself as to require nothing beyond itself: "contentus eris te teste: aliquoi non bene facere delectat, sed videri bene fecisse... Haec enim beneficii inter duos lex est: alter statim oblivisci debet dati, alter accepti numquam" (De benef., II, 10). Thus the sage acts not in order to become worthy of God, but indeed in order to conform himself to him. With the absoluteness of the act is identified the purity of intention that constitutes its value: "non videtur dedisse beneficium, qui a malo animo profuit; casus enim beneficium est, hominis iniuria" (De benef., II, 19); "exercetur et aperitur opere nequitia, non incipit" (ibid., V, 14). Although he affirms that "bonus vir sine deo nemo est" (Epist., 41, 2), although he grounds law on nature, S.'s morality aims to be the celebration of the autonomy of human reason and the exaltation of pure activity: on this ground it announces Kant's second Critique.

From this same attitude arises S.'s unconditional aversion to national polytheism: he combats external rites, religious fanaticism, and the cult of tradition in the name of an entirely interior piety, made up of knowledge and good works: the temple of God is in the human heart; neither offerings nor the blood of victims are of any use, but rather the sacrifice of the passions and of hatred; we cannot draw near to the unknowable Divinity except with a pure soul (Epist., 31, 10; and in Lactantius, Iust., VI, 25, 3). No wonder, then, that there has been talk of a Senecan Christianity and of a supposed correspondence between S. and St. Paul. In reality, the substance of the pagan philosopher's moral doctrine is very far from Christianity. The sapiens, in S.'s ideal, although he does not forget God nor fail to acknowledge love (v.), stands alone with his own heroic will and with the pride of his own intangible freedom; he holds no personal conversations with God, nor does he aim to build the civitas Dei on earth; God's self-sufficiency is his self-sufficiency; his virtue either dissolves under the force of the determinism that threatens every moral value, or declares itself an absolutely human work, valid only insofar as it is human. His perpetual awareness of death, which makes him lucidly conscious of his ephemeral condition and leads him to the brink of nothingness in order to reinvigorate the sense of moral duty, performs no religious function as Christianity understands it: it kindles neither faith nor hope; it leaves him within his human dimensions. In many respects he is a Heideggerian before the letter, even when he rises up against the anonymous crowd and rediscovers his authenticity in asserting himself in his unconditional autonomy. « Non it qua populus, sed, ut sidera contrarium mundi iter intendunt, ita hic (sapiens) adversus opinionem omnium vadit » (De const. sap., XIV, 4). S.'s moral doctrine goes well beyond the metaphysical premises that ought to justify it: born not so much from theoretical presuppositions as from the very dialectic of life and from a vivid sense of interior freedom, it announces the problematic of modern ethics.

Giuseppe Faggin

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SENECA AND ST. PAUL - A collection of 14 apocryphal letters, 8 by the philosopher and 6 by St. Paul.

The work, owing to its poverty of ideas, not only appears absolutely unworthy of the Apostle, but is also unbecoming to the elegance and seriousness of S. The letters, in fact, deal with trifles. S. takes care to advise Paul to use greater propriety of language (letter VII), indeed he sends him a veritable stylistic model entitled De verborum copia (letter IX). Paul shows himself worried about the reaction of the emperor Nero to the reading of some of his writings (letter VIII), while S. dwells on citing examples of pagan fortitude to console Paul and the Christians persecuted after the fire of Rome (letter XI). The apocryphon in the late Middle Ages had an undeserved diffusion and contributed to the formation of the legend of meetings between Paul and S. and of the latter's secret conversion to Christianity. According to some, the work would have arisen around the 8th century and would therefore have to be distinguished from the collection of letters already known to St. Jerome (De viris ill., 12: PL 23, 662) and to St. Augustine (Epist., 153, 14: CSEL, 44, 412). But such a distinction does not seem necessary, even if the approval, not exactly unconditional, of the two great doctors for so insipid an apocryphon occasions a certain astonishment. There exist no ancient translations of the work, written in Latin before 392, the year of the composition of Jerome's De viris illustribus.

Angelo Penna