Seneca’s Secret For Gaining More Life

studying philosophers enhances the time we possess and spend

In his work, On The Shortness of Life, Seneca makes a startling claim: “They alone who give their time to philosophy are at leisure, they alone really live.” The exclusivity he ascribes to philosophy is doubtful. But the reasoning he provides about what philosophy can give us is both solid and yet more surprising. Philosophy opens and offers to us time. He tells us:

For it’s not just their own lifetime that they watch over carefully, but they annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone before are added to their own.

How does that work? Studying philosophy adds extra years to your life? Not literally — though of course if you do devote your time to studying philosophy, rather than say, drinking heavily at a bar, you will probably extend your life a bit!

It isn’t so much about the number of years we physically live through, the amount of time before our bodies and minds grind to a halt and fall apart. What Seneca has in mind is more like the intensity or the fullness of the years that we are allotted to live. We can use the years or lifetimes offered to us through philosophy to…