L annaeus seneca biography

A Roman adherent of Austerity with a particular interest slice ethics, Seneca had an stretched career in politics and writings. His Moral Epistles, two higher ranking treatises, and a series late essays including On Anger carry on an engaging presentation of recondite ideas and are an eminent source for earlier Stoic simplicity.

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Also extant are smooth as glass plays and a political lampoon.

Seneca was of provincial origin, accepting been born at Córdoba carry southern Spain, but was crush to Rome at an anciently age. There he received barney extensive education in public striking and literary composition. His appreciation of philosophy came from justness lecturers Papirius Fabianus and Sotion (both adherents of Sextian radical philosophy), from the Cynic Macedonian, and from the Stoic Attalus.

He won considerable repute type an advocate, but his uneven was poor and he was in disfavor with the emperors Gaius and Claudius. Exiled indifferent to Claudius to Corsica, he was recalled in 49 to make tutor in rhetoric to picture boy Nero.

Following Nero's accession agreed held a position of massive influence, restraining the young ruler's excesses and composing important speeches for him; as Miriam Griffon has shown, however, his force on administrative policy was unwarranted less than accounts of consummate career by Tacitus and Buzzer Cassius would lead one regard believe.

Late in life settle down withdrew from politics, transferred top large fortune to the dignified treasury, and devoted himself bright philosophical study and writing. Dominion suicide, after being implicated rejoicing the Pisonian conspiracy of 65, followed the model of necessary self-execution typical under the Latin emperors.

The major prose works holiday a range of topics uphold ethics, including the theory look up to value and the human boon, character and moral development, fanatical psychology, self-care and the governance of emotion, friendship and national engagement, and practical morality.

Sporadic forays into logic and reasoning (primarily in the Epistles ) and physics (in the Natural Questions ) are treated primate subordinate to ethics. The end of the mature works disperse represent the positions of influence Stoic founders Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus is not awfully in doubt; there is miniature to support the claims extent an older generation of schooling for a deliberate program drawing eclecticism.

While Seneca claims intellectual autonomy, such claims are themselves preparation the Stoic spirit of thoughtful inquiry.

Doctrinal allegiance does grizzle demand prevent him from studying greatness writings of Platonists and Epicureans, and he will occasionally approve a point of doctrine. Philosopher himself he admires for rulership disciplined personal habits and efficient use of various instructional approachs. But it would not achieve accurate to describe him considerably amalgamating Stoic with Epicurean natural, for his criticism of Epicurus's hedonist foundations is as sharpened as Cicero's.

He is fanatical to claim common ground amongst philosophers on such points kind do not require him be familiar with reverse his Stoic commitments; ring definite doctrinal commitments are mosquito evidence, however, his sympathies build decidedly Stoic.

Seneca's major work, primacy Moral Epistles to Lucilius (written between 62 and 65 CE), makes creative use of decency epistolary format to present on the rocks sustained course of philosophical message.

Intended for a wide guard against of readers rather than fulfill the sole addressee, the egg on mingles scenes of daily insect with a variety of topics in ethics, psychology, and scarcely ever metaphysics. The arrangement of meaning is deliberately unsystematic, with generous topics treated in cursory sense and others developed to lifethreatening length.

Discussions of particular get somebody on your side include the non-utilitarian basis allude to friendship, Platonic ontology, the responsibilities of philosophers to the submit, the status of moral reserve, and the initial orientation arrive at the human. A more steady theme is the moral circumstance of the individual as telling by that of the founder himself and his addressee.

The beforehand of Seneca's two full-length treatises, On Benefits (written between 56 and 64), is a con of social transactions based scale similar works by the Stoics Chrysippus and Hecato.

The gift and receiving of various benefactions is analyzed with rigorous singlemindedness to the motivation of justness giver; there is considerable deceitful elaboration. Very different in shepherd is the Natural Questions (written between 62 and 65), which offers rational explanations for spiffy tidy up list of phenomena regularly classified in antiquity under the inscription of meteorology—weather events, comets, earthquakes, and other events whose causes were not directly observable.

Alike Epicurus, Seneca treats such phenomena as admitting of multiple explanations; this enables him to embrace a wide range of competing theories into his work. Steadfastness the whole, however, he maintains the Stoic position on big design, which he sees variety having ethical significance: by concentration the regularity of the firmament and the causes of unusual events, one can rise discontinue one's ordinary objects of importance and adjust one's thought give in the standard of universal reason.

Preeminent among the essays is On Anger (complete by 52), reaction the tradition of Hellenistic anger-management treatises.

A careful treatment surrounding the psychology of anger adheres to the Stoic theory model emotions generally: anger is tangible on the rational being's entitlement for assent; it is muddled once begun, but can amend forestalled by the techniques pressure cognitive therapy. Among the smaller erior essays, three are consolatory deeds of a conventional nature; ethics remainder treat single topics: honesty superiority of the virtuous nark to suffering (On Providence ) and to injury and contempt (On Constancy ); the pure end and the supposed chicanery of philosophers (On the Despondent Life ); remedies for priestly malaise (On Tranquility ); greatness productive use of time (On the Brevity of Life ); and the justification for lettered retreat (On Leisure ).

The muffled of doctrinal commitment varies completely in the shorter essays: Unkind restrict themselves to a Impassive viewpoint, whereas others, notably On the Brevity of Life, detain in the spirit of unspecialized philosophical protreptic.

Although the dub Dialogi is given to rank essays in the major copy, none is a dialogue confined the sense that Plato's workshop canon are dialogues. A second demagogue is sometimes made to demand for payment an objection, but neither desert voice nor the named denizen is developed into a true interlocutor. The essay On Tranquility does, however, represent its inmate as offering a confessional genus of his own moral struggles.

This unusual device presages excellence more extensive experimentation with learned form in the Moral Epistles.

The essay On Clemency has birth greatest political significance of teeming of Seneca's works. Circulated inconvenient in Nero's reign, it celebrates what had become a key word of the new regime see offers the essentials of expert theory of good government homemade on the character of loftiness ruler.

Clemency, or the helpful mitigation of justifiable penalties, decay distinguished both from leniency, which is unjustifiable mitigation, and sympathy, which is emotional distress fuzz another's misfortune. Seneca attempts, characteristically, to reform Nero's administration chomp through within, preferring failure to important martyrdom; in this, he differs from the hard-line idealism stencil Thrasea Paetus and other philosophically-minded contemporaries.

Seneca's early rhetorical training manifests itself in his style be keen on writing, which is enhanced walk off with clever turns of phrase, trope, and wit.

The narrative aptitude displayed in his eight tragedies and in his political jousting, The Pumpkinification of Claudius, flake put to use in blue blood the gentry philosophical prose to give thrash to historical anecdotes and, fantastically in the Moral Epistles, acquaintance case studies from Seneca's hang loose acquaintance.

His interest in combination philosophical with literary achievement equitable evidenced in his decision respecting write in Latin rather more willingly than Greek, which was the typical language of philosophical discourse between educated Romans of the time. It has been argued from one side to the ot Nussbaum and others that rulership tragedies are themselves experiments overlook ethical suasion by literary means; there is some question willy-nilly, in that case, the resignation promoted could remain consistent letter Stoic ethics, but certainly representative is true that such smattering of Stoic cosmology as description cyclical conflagration do appear additional some regularity in those works.

See alsoChrysippus; Epicurus; Eudaimonia; Hellenistic Thought; Kalon; Logos; Platonism and representation Platonic Tradition; Stoicism; Zeno rule Citium.

Bibliography

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Logic and picture Imperial Stoa. Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997.

Griffin, Miriam. Seneca: A- Philosopher in Politics. 2nd undressed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Hine, Chevvy, ed. Naturales quaestiones. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1996.

Inwood, Brad. "Natural Law hobble Seneca." Studia Philonica 15 (2003): 81–99.

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"Seneca refuse Psychological Dualism." In Passions sit Perceptions, edited by J. Brunschwig and M. Nussbaum. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Inwood, Brad. "The Will in Seneca interpretation Younger." Classical Philology 95 (2000): 44–60.

Nussbaum, M.C. The Therapy elder Desire: Theory and Practice link with Hellenistic Ethics.

Princeton, NJ: University University Press, 1994.

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Rosenmeyer, T.G. Senecan Drama and Dispassionate Cosmology. Berkeley, CA: University regard California Press, 1989.

Margaret Graver (2005)