On the meaning of the Latin “Securitas” in Seneca
Hadot’s Sénèque: Direction spirituelle et pratique de la philosophie now turns to sections on two key words which Seneca uses to describe the goal or objective of philosophy: securitas and tranquilitate animi. Answering to the question “what is the happy life [quid est beata vita]?”, securitas et perpetua tranquillitas constitutes one of the definitions of happiness (Letters to Lucilius 92, 3).
The way Hadot presents things here, these are two “subordinate ends which represent, on the foundation of knowledge”, the goal of life. This is a complex issue: the relationship or identity between the different terms for the goal of life Seneca and the Stoics nominate.
There is the perfected reason, there is virtue or the virtues (as we’ve seen). Then there are these seeming psychological “corollaries”, if that is indeed the word: some sense of “security”, at least ethically or psychologically, and “tranquility”, but we could also add “constancy”, in terms of the constancy of the sapiens or “sage” (and ask whether this is a virtue or a psychological phenomenon, or in fact, by our lights, both).
In any case, my task in this blog is d’abord one of exegesis, since this groundbreaking text is otherwise unavailable to anglophones at present.
