Stoics, Modern and Ancient
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn penned his reservations about Stalin’s dictatorship in a private letter, the bullish Soviet authorities exiled him to a gulag. Instead of crushing his spirit, Solzhenitsyn’s suffering bolstered his commitment to truthfulness. “When you’ve robbed a man of everything,” he reflected years after his liberation, “he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.”Solzhenitsyn’s words might well have come from Seneca himself. The son of a renowned orator, historian, and equestrian elite, Seneca was born in Córdoba, Spain, in 4 B.C. As a young boy, he moved to Rome to study rhetoric and philosophy, which facilitated his rise as a senator and renowned statesman.
In A.D. 41, Seneca was exiled to Corsica by Emperor Claudius for alleged participation in a political scandal. He was stripped of his freedom and separated from his family. Yet the exile left him unscathed. As he would later write, echoing Solzhenitsyn’s insight, “A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
Somewhat like Solzhenitsyn, Seneca was exiled for eight years, after which he returned to tutor soon-to-be Emperor Nero. At the age of 69, he was accused of conspiring to usurp the throne. Innocence notwithstanding, Nero ordered him to commit suicide. The tranquility of his final moments has inspired such stunning paintings as Manuel Sánchez’s “The Death of Seneca.”
Seneca’s Letters: Philosophy as a Way of Life
Seneca wrote 12 essays, nine tragedies, one satire, and a famous collection of letters. Former National Football League executive Michael Lombardi recently stated that Seneca’s works are part of his daily reading routine. They advise him that in “a profession that has many outside influences, it is always good to remind yourself each day to worry and work on only that you can control.”
The letters comprise 124 reflections written during Seneca’s last years. They address a “Lucilius,” whom Seneca characterized as Sicily’s financial administrator during Nero’s rule. It’s unclear if Lucilius existed and if Seneca’s mentorship helped him become a great leader as it has helped Mr. Lombardi. What matters is that, for Seneca and for the Romans, philosophy was primarily a system to live well and effectively.
The Best Life Is Simple and Moderate
The number of people living in poverty has decreased steadily over the past few decades. For much of the world’s population, existence affords historically unprecedented comforts. Despite worldwide positive trends in material well-being, humanity also faces increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and related psychological ailments. In the United States alone, 29 percent of adults have been diagnosed with depression. Why is a richer world more miserable?Industriousness Aimed at Good Pursuits
Simplicity means frugality, but it doesn’t mean lethargy. Someone without aims and aspirations, Seneca knew, is destined for misery or dull sluggishness. Aimlessness is one feature of what cognitive scientist John Vervaeke calls the “meaning crisis,” an alienation from the world that has produced nihilism and angst in large swaths of the world’s population. To avert this ruinous fate, we must, as Seneca says, “busy ourselves with interests that are good.” We may toil on a business proposal, study for a degree, or weed our gardens. Seneca had a long list of accomplishments to illustrate the benefits of industriousness. His philosophies on work ethic were deeply admired by Washington, who agreed that “the much occupied man has no time for wantonness, and it is an obvious commonplace that the evils of leisure can be shaken off by hard work.”Accept Emotions But Don’t Indulge Them
In 2013, the Getty Villa Theatre Lab commissioned the theater ensemble Not Man Apart to stage Seneca’s tragedy “The Madness of Hercules.“ The play portrays a sequence of maniacal fits, in the last of which Hercules murders his family. Seneca’s frequent encounters with illness, prison, and exile presented plenty of occasions to experience the power and danger of intense emotions. So did the life of U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and 1992 vice-presidential candidate James Stockdale, whose best-selling memoir ”In Love and War” recounts experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, which he endured partly through his practice of Stoic principles.The Stoics are often misunderstood as rejecting emotions entirely. However, they know that emotions are natural and inevitable. Seneca tells us that “tears fall, no matter how we try to check them, and by being shed they ease the soul.” Sadness is not inherently bad. It’s excessive indulgence in sadness that impairs our ability to reason and act according to our situation’s demands. Stockdale realized just that during seven years of ghastly imprisonment. We should, as Seneca reminded him, allow tears “to fall, but let us not command them to do so.”
Attend to the Future but Only Sparingly
American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck’s influential “Cognitive Therapy of Depression“ credits the Stoic insistence on rejecting “cognitive distortions” with informing the foundations for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). As of 2023, CBT had the best-documented efficacy in long-term treatments for clinical depression.Seneca thought that most cognitive distortions stem from the imagination. We often foresee ills and misfortunes without motive, catastrophize the immutable past, or project onto our present fear-inducing hypotheticals. A life lived between the swaying currents of thought and time is perpetually unstable. “The only harbor safe from the seething storms of this life,” Seneca remarks, “is scorn of the future, a firm stand.” Seneca is not endorsing complete neglect of what’s to come. As CBT recommends, it’s rather about abolishing the habits of mind that distract us from the real “now” to fabricate a distant “then.” The future is unpredictable, swayed by “seething storms.” It’s best to measure the attention it receives, lest the storms engulf us.
Seneca’s simple yet formidable ideas pervade the popular imagination, be it in biographical movies, psychotherapeutic innovation, or inspiring accounts of resilience during war. The Stoic’s precepts have inspired millions to endure suffering, achieve greatness, and even, in the Founding Fathers’ case, lay the foundations of a newfound nation.
The Stoics knew that embracing principles conceptually is easier than practicing them daily, hence their many “life manuals.” Seneca himself practiced a host of exercises, including journaling reflections on daily feats and shortcomings, meditating on life’s finitude, and honing his rhetorical skills to triumph in every occasion. These practices helped the Roman withstand the world, and they might help us, too, live better, greater lives.