The philosophy of Lucius Seneca

Seneca is among the brightest and most controversial figures of moralists who have surpassed the whirlwind of their era, which has become a connection between the times. His philosophical reflections often look like sentences, some of them having the fate of flying phrases that penetrate the everyday life of culture and nourish moralism, essayism, journalism, literature over the centuries. At times when ethics are not that small anymore, but the great moralists still do not reach, there will be room for the moralist Seneca. For, unlike ethics, which deals mainly with the knowledge of morality as an objective fact and reflects this fact in the theoretical constructs difficult to perceive the daily consciousness, the moralist becomes a model and a moral leader with his way of life. He stigmatizes disasters, scours the vices of society, looks like a compassionate moral reaction to evil, as a moral hope for movement for the good. Not the theoretical system making, not the dull and didactic offering of norms, but the aphoristic and passionate answer to everyday issues what to do and how to live - that is his power.

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This response conquers not only its form but also the weight of its human elements. Morality regulates elementary interpersonal relationships, and therefore concentrates significant human content more than is possible in law, politics, or religion. Therefore, generation after generation, under radically changing historical circumstances, by asking itself questions - how to resist evil, how to struggle in the worst conditions, how to fight the fear of death, the misfortunes in his personal life, the diseases and suffering, man rediscovers the glory of moralism, he can experience his aphoristic instructions as being about him, about the things around him. Lucius Seneca is a philosopher, political figure, writer and one of the richest Romans. Born between 4 and 5 years. in Cordoba, Spain, and committed suicide at the age of seventy in the 65s. in Rome. His father, Seneca Sarshi, belongs to the class of the Roman horsemen and is a famous rhetoric who has remained in the history of literature under the name Seneca-rhetor. He gave his son initial education, then continued with various teachers and turned him into one of the most educated people of his time. Philosophy is studied at Stalist Attalus, Pythagorean Sotius, Ebbiticus Fabian Papyrius and Demetrius the cinic. For all of them, Seneca responds with enthusiasm, and their ideas, albeit to varying degrees, have a corresponding impact on him. At first, he engages in pygagoreanism and even under his influence becomes a vet, but ultimately Stoicism has the strongest influence on him. Seneca's philosophical popularity was born under the sign of his belonging to ancient Stoicism - the last great system of ancient philosophy. Since its inception in the 3rd century AD, in more than half a century of existence, it traverses various stages related to the crisis of the old world to finally dissolve in neoplatonism and to be replaced with it by Christianity.

Stoicism brings with it a new spiritual atmosphere, altered social perceptions. In the unexpectedly expanding boundaries of the human world of the Hellenistic epoch, in the accelerating course of heterogeneous events the individual person suddenly diminishes. Having lost the stability of his external world, man receives from the Stoics a proposal to seek peace in his inner world. This world of spirit also has odyssey and obstacles, but it can preserve and dispel significant values. When everything around is collapsing, it can shine with its greatness, overcome crises and breakthroughs. Stoicism thus poses fundamental human questions and the ambition of them to be asked and solved has a sufficiently long-standing cultural pathos. Moving the center of philosophical attention to the doctrine of morality, Stoicism brings out the main normative obstacles to how to live from the most general narrophilosophical considerations. As with Democritus, the Cyrenians, the Pupils, the Epicureans, the goal of philosophy is happiness, which is conceived as a life according to the natural requirements. And since the logos are at the core of nature, the intellect spilled into everything existing and manifested in man as reason in the proper sense of the word, to live by nature means to live according to reason. Thus, morality is transformed into a broad area that includes all the regulators of human behavior. Both politics and law and the various technological norms in human life are dissolved in morality. Stoic ethics therefore deals not only with good and evil, but also with questions of reason and sensuality, passions and apathy, delight and suffering, attitude to the state, body hygiene, health, and many other things.He is a man in all areas of his life.

Seneca himself has the fame of a good speaker, and this inevitably reflects on the ways of his philosophizing. The style of philosophical thinking is a style of propaganda, in which the form of the phrase, enthusiasm, examples of life, emotional pathos, high valuation of speech, common associative ties, friendly intimacy of speech, metaphors and comparisons take special place. A favorite technique through which Seneca affirms many of his theses is historical examples. The hint, the humor, the anecdote are a weapon for spreading ethical ideas. The most famous of all his writings, "Letters of Law to Lucius", owes its popularity to the fact that the philosopher leads his narrative not as a boring rhetoric or a distant preacher, but as a simple and feeble man complaining of his health, telling about his problems and at the same time gradually pushing the whole conversation in one direction - Lucius' conviction in the basic ideas of Stoicism. This tone, in which the emotional excitement often takes an external edge over the argumentation, also feels in "For Wrath", "For the Worry of the Wise", "For Brevity of Life", "For the Serenity of the Soul", "For the Happy Life" "Comfort to Marcia", "Comfort to Hevilia". In them philosophy seems not as a system of theoretical views but as a way to reach the moral ideal and happiness. It is both morality and politics, it transmits sparks of malice, personal sympathy and antipathies, contradictory directions of temporary moods. Behind the outer boundlessness of the mosaic of letters, conversations, reflections, however, ultimately lies a whole concept. Indeed, the basic principles of this concept are not stagnant and strictly contradictory. Completed and ready-made dogmatic solutions have always been practically difficult to apply. In this sense, Seneca's stoicism is an open doctrine in which the principle can always be supplemented and corrected to make a satisfactory response to a new life situation.