Preaching what is practiced: A criticism of Seneca’s Stoicism
Seneca has been extensively accused of failing to practice what he preached. A Stoic, his critics say, should not have had an interest in increasing his wealth and power, let alone as emperor Nero’s speech writer and adviser. These criticisms heavily depend on one’s definition of Stoicism and interpretation of the elusive category of Stoic ‘indifferents’ (things that are neither good nor bad) — most of these criticisms are straw man arguments.
A more penetrating, and less controversial, criticism of Seneca’s Stoicism, which hardly makes headlines, is that Seneca preached what was practiced. I first encountered it in the A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium in a chapter written by Paul Veyne, and later in Emily Wilson’s book Seneca: A Life.
This criticism focuses on the social aspects of Seneca’s Stoicism. What both authors suggest is that, in some respects, Seneca was an undercover apologist of the social norms of the day. As Veyne caustically puts it, regarding Roman upper-class Stoicism in general:
‘[Stoicism] was reduced to little more than a sophisticated version of prevailing morality: a man’s duties to himself and others were identified with institutions, which this bastard doctrine ingeniously sought to internalize as moral precepts.’
He then gives the specific example of Seneca’s views on slavery:
‘For Seneca, slavery was not a product of “society” but an individual misfortune, a misfortune that might befall any one of us, for we are all men, subject to the same tricks of fate as these unfortunates. … It is Fortune that determines each man’s fate. What, then, is the good man’s duty? To do whatever he has to do wherever fate has placed him, be he king, citizen, or slave.’
Seneca’s perspective is distinct from Aristotle’s “ethics” of slavery, according to which some people are born to be slaves. Seneca presents slavery as a misfortune, but he leaves the core of slavery as an institution uncontested. Even if slavery falls into the Stoic category of indifferents from the Stoic individual’s perspective, he doesn’t argue why it should also be indifferent to someone that other people are slaves — or his slaves, for that matter.
Emily Wilson gives an extensive account of a treatise titled De Clementia (‘On Mercifulness’) that Seneca addressed to Nero. She notes that the treatise ‘presents the emperor as possessing absolute power, whose source is never explained or justified.’ She continues:
‘”Clementia” is presented as a virtue that can only be achieved by a person in a superior position of power. … Seneca’s work thus provides a theoretical framework for what was already true in practice, that the emperor was above the law — and therefore had need not of justice … but of mercifulness toward his inferiors. These inferiors have no rights in relation to him and can only hope that he will treat them kindly.’
She also notes that mercifulness was the quality that emperors have been propounding to market themselves as benevolent autocrats:
‘From the days of Julius Ceasar, as one-man rule had taken hold in Rome, successive emperors had seized on the notion of personal mercifulness as a way of dealing with the people’s fear of, and hostility toward, the idea of tyranny.’
It is true that Seneca did not theorize about the necessity, or legitimacy, of slavery (as Aristotle did) and autocracy. But by using them as a neutral backdrop in front of which his Stoic moral theories were expounded, he contributed — intentionally or not — in legitimizing their status and befuddling their victims. As always, power lies in the unquestionable.
References:
Paul Veyne, 1992, “The Roman Empire” in Philippe Arries and Georges Duby, general editors, and Paul Veyne, editor, A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Emily Wilson, 2015. Seneca: A Life.
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