Letters from a Stoic

Stoicism is a philosophical school developed by Zeno of Citium (c. 335-263 BCE) near the end of the fourth century BCE. The name derives from the Stoa Poikile, a colonnade in the Athenian agora where Zeno and his followers gathered in the early years of the school. By the time of Seneca, Stoicism had been the most popular school of philosophy in the Greco-Roman world for centuries.

The Stoic worldview maintains that the universe is governed by a rational deity, known by various names such as God, Jupiter (king of the Roman pantheon), and logos (Latin for “reason”). Human duty involves aligning with divine will by adhering to the laws of nature. This entails accepting what fate decrees, finding contentment in living with necessities, and developing one’s reason, considered a divine gift that distinguishes humans from animals. Stoics assert that through reason, individuals come to understand that true good lies in arete (virtue), defined by the qualities of wisdom, courage, self-control, and justice. Virtue alone is deemed sufficient for happiness and represents the sole path to Stoic self-sufficiency, which entails immunity to suffering despite life’s adversities. Those who attain virtue are referred to as the “Sage” or “wise man,” depending on the philosopher.

Stoicism provided a unified framework, constructed from three component ideals, through which its adherent could interpret the world. Stoic physics (the study of cosmic order) identified a divine will in the universe, ethics (the study of proper behavior) showed how to live according to the divine will, and logic (a system of formal reasoning concerned with the analysis of propositions and arguments) allowed truths to be discovered. However, the three branches were not always equally valued. Chrysippus (c. 279-206 BCE), a defining figure of early Stoicism, emphasized logic, but ethics had become the focus by the time of Seneca and the Roman Stoics. Indeed, Seneca dismissed focusing on logical proofs as largely irrelevant to the purpose of philosophy (see Letter 83).

As part of a centuries-old philosophy, Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic alternately reflects traditional Stoic ideals and innovates upon them. The letters are often focused on traditional Stoic positions such as the rejection of material wealth, Contentment and the Acceptance of Fate, and virtue’s centrality to happiness. In discussing these, Seneca references both Stoic and non-Stoic philosophers, but he identifies himself clearly as a Stoic and advances the Stoic worldview in most cases. His writing is key to the modern-day understanding of Roman Stoicism and, more broadly, the philosophical concerns of the Romans in the early imperial period. He is notably unique for his focus on humanizing the “wise man,” showing the difficulties he had with achieving the detachment valued by Stoic philosophers. When compared to Epictetus’s invariably distant wise man, who must be able to accept the loss of a child and wife without trouble, Seneca’s writings advance a more accessible version of Stoic philosophy, acknowledging the difficulty of Virtuous Action in an Ethically Complex World.