The Daily Stoic - How To Read Seneca (The World’s Most Interesting Stoic)

Episode Date: May 22, 2022

Seneca is one of the most fascinating Stoic figures. A famed writer, dramatist, politician and advisor, Seneca is one of the three key figures in the development of Stoicism. He not only wrote on philosophy but used it in the way it’s meant to be used: to handle and navigate through the upsides and downsides of fortune. And those he knew extremely well—varying from massive wealth to exile to handling with dignity the suicide order from his own pupil Nero.In this episode Ryan Holiday breaks down who Seneca was, why you should be interested in his work, some of the key themes from his writing and how you should read this master of Stoic Philosophy. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOIC.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most

importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. I've gone over this before. My guy is Mark Serely.

Mark Serely is the one who changed my life. But if I had a second favorite Stoic, it's Seneca. And I think Seneca is the better writer. One fact, he's actually a writer, right? Mark Serely is his writing meditation to himself. Seneca is not just writing philosophy, but he's a playwright. He's one of Rome's most famous playwrights. In fact, he was such a well-known playwright,

and I have read his plays, that there's a line of graffiti from one of those plays at Pompeii. And in fact, modern historians didn't believe that Senaika, the dramatist, and Senaika, the philosopher were the same person, and just defied their comprehension. So in today's episode, we wanna talk,

not about who Senaika is exactly, but how you read Senaika, how to actually think about his works, where to start, how to apply them, best translations, all of that. I really break down Senaika and his writings, because it's a question I get a lot. I wanna read Senaika, where do I start?

What should I be looking for? What should I take out of that? And that's what we dive into in this episode, how to read Sena Ka, who I think, as I said, is the most interesting, stoic. Certainly not the best, certainly not the most pure, but all of that makes Sena Ka even more exciting. And I'm happy to share this episode with you, how to read Seneneca. And I do hope you read Seneca. And if you ever swing by the Painted Port Chair and Master of Texas, we've got almost all these translations. And I think you'll get a lot out of them.

And I think you'll get a lot out of them. Seneca is actually born, most scholars think, the same year as Jesus Christ. And they're actually both born in provinces of the Roman Empire, and they both become immensely influential philosophers in their own time. Sena's father is a wealthy man, a bit of a writer himself.

He has his young children tutored in philosophy. Did he want them to be philosophers? No, he was probably planning for Sena to become aware aware and that's the track that Sennaka's on as an early young man until What we think is a tuberculosis diagnosis sends him all the way to Egypt He's forced to travel the Egypt where they think the climate will be better for his health right as his legal career It's about to take off. He's forced to take almost a 10-year break Way out far away from Rome early on on, Seneca is learning, as he talks about a lot in letters and his essays, that fortune is not fair, that fortune is full of

reversals, that fortune surprises us, that it lands these blows upon us, all we can do is choose how we respond. Seneca makes his way back to Rome and his political career picks up where he left off, and he climbs his way back to the top of Rome in political life. But again, just as Seneca's political career is beginning to take off, he runs a foul of the emperor, Caligula, and then Claudius. And he's exiled. He sent away from Rome the place that he had just come back to. He sent away again. We're told that Seneca was superior to all of the senators in Rome. He's the wisest, most brilliant, most admired guy.

And this is probably why he has sent away. And it goes to Corsica and Island in the Mediterranean, where he would spend the next seven or eight years. So twice now in Seneca Cruz life he's been sent away for no fault of his own. And this is where we think Santa Cruz begins writing. Santa Cruz does not take this exile well. It's hard on him, although he does console

his mother at the loss of her son. You can tell, we can tell he's feeling really sorry for himself, he's struggling. Is that talking about these ideas in the abstract, but really struggling with them as a human being? Imagine, you're just as your career is taking off, you're forced to go move to a rock in the middle of the ocean, none of your friends, none of the things you hold there.

That would be so hard. And that's what Stoicism is. It's not just a philosophy in theory, it's a philosophy for hard adversity, just like that. Seneca is given a reprieve when he is brought back to Rome to tutor a young boy who is in line to be emperor. And the boy is about 16 years old. He takes to Seneca, Seneca, to the boy, and he begins to tutor this boy just as he had been tutored in philosophy. And then this boy does become emperor.

It sounds like a very happy story, but it gets really complicated because that boy is Nero. Seneca, the stoic philosopher, is a tutor and then works in the court and holds positions of leadership during the administration of one of the worst Roman emperors. It becomes this really provocative question. Was Seneca complicit in Neuros Crime or was Seneca the adult in the room? The first couple of years of Neuros' reign go really well.

Seneca is credited for that, but then as Neuros spins into insanity, Seneca is also implicated in that. So it's this tension, right? Did Seneca live up to his teachings? Was Seneca selfless? Or was Seneca part of the problem? Seneca was rich, she was wealthy.

Is this a contradiction? Some people thought so, even in Seneca's time they did. But Seneca says, we should cease to forbid philosophers from the possession of money. No one has condemned wisdom to poverty. The philosopher can own ample wealthy said, but it should have been rested from no man, nor should it be stained with another man's blood. Wealth acquired without harmed any man without base dealing is no less

honorable, and it should make no man grown except the spiteful. And this is true. This is the problem is, you know, Senka did get blood stained money. He got it from Nero. But his point was that a philosopher could be rich. What mattered is were you indifferent to the wealth. If you had the wealth, you should enjoy it. And in fact, Mark really says this about his stepfather Antoninus. He says what makes Antoninus great is that while he had abundance, he enjoyed it. But when it was gone or when it wasn't there, he didn't miss it. But in the end, Nero turns on Seneca or Seneca turns on Nero and Seneca is driven from public life one more time. And this is, I think, where he spends the rest of his life

doing his most important work. He says, the duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow man. If possible, to be the useful to many, failing this to be useful to a few, failing this to be useful to his neighbors and failing this to himself. But when he helps others, he advances the general interests of mankind. I think Senka's most important work is not his political work. It's his writing. His writing is what survives to us today, what I hope you will start reading. He knew what it was like to be successful, and he knew that the real purpose

was doing this philosophical work. He spent the last three years of his life completing his books and letters, and towards the end, he reflects, he says, my days have this one goal, as do my nights. He says, this is my daily task and my study, to do away with old evils. Before I came old, I took care to live well

and in old age, I take care to die well. And that is ultimately one of the most prevalent themes in all of Seneca's writings is death. Seneca says, the time that passes belongs to death. It says like for me, I shouldn't think of death as something that might come 40 years from now, if I'm 34 right now, that maybe I'm lucky to live to be 80, so I got, you know, 45 or so years. I should think of death as something that's already happened to me. I've already died 33 years. And so how we spend our time is what makes death either a tragedy or simply the final chapter

on a wonderful life. And in the end, Seneca is forced to make good on all of his teachings. Nero suspects that Seneca has conspired against him, puts to death some of Seneca's closest family members and friends, and ultimately comes for Seneca too. Seneca has been out of power for several years when Nero's goons come for him and demand his suicide. And Seneca now has to meet death bravely because he's written about it so much.

And so he goes bravely to his death first, he slits his wrists, but he's too old and lean for this to work, then he takes poison. That doesn't work. And finally, he's smothered to death in the bath. He meets this death as something that he had been in effect preparing for his entire life because it's true. And it becomes his greatest moment.

It's captured in many beautiful paintings. It becomes sort of an inspiration of resistance to tyrants everywhere, kind of a, the idea that we can be dignified even in our last moments. And he said, look, yes, Nero is taking my life. But in the end, evil drinks the largest of its own poison. And he knew that ultimately it was better to be him than to be Nero.

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They love to learn from people who had experiences, had insights, had interesting lives. That's one of the things I love about podcasts. It's like an hour or two hours or three hours sometimes right into the brain of a person who thinks very differently or has experienced things, very different from what you've experienced. And that's something I always feel when I listen to my friend Jordan Harbinger's podcast, the Jordan Harbinger Show, which is the sponsor of today's episode. It's show as interviewed interviewed, basically everywhere. You can listen to this episode with Robert Green on the laws of human nature, or both my

episodes. We talk about solving for what you want in life. You talk about my book, Conspiracy, or Stillness is Key. I mean, he's had literally everyone you can imagine on professional art foragers to billionaire entrepreneurs, to mafia, hitmen, to models, to professional athletes. He did this episode about birth control and how it alters the partners we pick and how medicine can affect elements of our personalities. He talks about just everything you can imagine. It's just a great show recommended. The podcast covers a lot, but I think the one thing

that's constant is it always pulls useful bits of advice from his guests, and I can say that from experience. I always feel like the interviews I do on the Jordan Harbinger show get something out of me that I didn't talk about the interview I did just a few days earlier. Like when I would point you to those interviews, if I would say, hey, someone's like, hey, what's a podcast you were on? I connect you, I might link you to those interviews, if I would say, hey, someone's like, hey, what's a podcast you are on?

I connect you, I might link you to one of my episodes of Jordan, because it would be different from all the other ones. And I think that's all you can really ask for from a podcast. I enjoy it, I recommend it. There's so much there. You can check out JordanHarbinger.com slash start

for episode recommendations, or just look for the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you to Jordan for sponsoring this podcast. And I hope you give it a listen. I think Sennaka is one of the most accessible and readable of all the Stoics. In part because he's not writing these complicated philosophy texts. In fact, his best writing comes to us in the form of letters. Hundreds of letters from Sennaka to his friend Lohan. writing these complicated philosophy texts, in fact his best writing comes to us in the form of

letters. Hundreds of letters from Seneca to his friend Lucilius survive. The second letter, I think, captures a great way to think about Seneca. He says, you should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a place in your mind. To be everywhere is nowhere. People who spend their whole lives traveling abroad and to having plenty of places where they can find hospitality, but no real friendships.

Basically what Sennickette is saying is that you have to linger on the works of these master thinkers. That you read them not just once, but many, many times. I find that I can dip in and out of Senaika, but every time I read him, I take away something else. And I think that's because Senaika's writings are informed again, not just by his thinking, but also his deep experiences with loss, with pain, with grief, with power, with greed, with money. Right?

Senaq has one of the richest people in Rome. So as he talks about money or finances, as he talks about wealth, he's speaking about this really from experience. One of the things that really struck me reading Senaq in my early 20s, is he talks about choosing yourself a Cato. Right? Picking an example, somebody whose life you're going to model yourself against. He says, choose yourself a Cato, choose someone whose way of life, as well as words, and whose very face mirrors the character that lies behind it.

Pick someone who is one-year approval. Be always pointing to him as your guardian or as your model. He said, there is a need in my view for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do this against, you cannot make crooked straight. So I love this idea of picking a model, picking someone who you are checking yourself against.

You'd say, what would Kato do in this situation? What would Seneca do in this situation? Well, my grandfather, my grandmother, do in this situation. What would Jesus do? It doesn't matter what it is, but he was really talking about philosophy as a way of picking your heroes, choosing your heroes, and then modeling yourself against them. One of the reasons I have this Seneca statue in my office is a reminder of just to see what Sika would do in a situation. Sometimes I want to do it, sometimes I want to do the opposite of that. One of the things I think is most fascinating about Senaika is the wide breadth of philosophy

and ideas that he draws from. Yes, Senaika is a stoke philosopher, but you'd be surprised the philosopher he quotes most in this book is actually Epicurus. If you've heard of Epicurianism, it's in rival school to the Stokes. But Seneca says, I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. He says, I read the other philosophers like a spy in the enemy's camp. He's trying to learn from everyone and everything to be a better, wiser, kinder, smarter human being. And to me, that captures the essence of the philosophical lens that Santa Cus is coming from.

Seneca really talks beautifully about how we are spin-thrus with time, that we don't value our most precious resource. And we should, and it's tragic that we don't. He says, look, if your neighbor came over and parked their car on your property, if your neighbor built a shed on your property, he said, what is this? Get off, you can't do this.

But if your neighbor wasted an hour of your time, you would let them. Which is insane because you can get more property. You cannot get more time. And so, you know, he talks about how we had this unsatiable appetite for accomplishments at the cost of time. I have this quote actually up in my office, a country in the SSA, he says, the one thing fools all have in common is that they're always beginning to live,

that they're always putting things off. And he says, you know, some of us, we lack the courage to change. She says, we lack the courage to live as we should and instead simply live as we have begun. We just stay. We're afraid of challenging the status quo. I would say one of the most powerful essays that Seneca writes is his essay on anger. And it's sort of written to his brother, that's what it's dedicated to.

But in fact, it's written to Nero. He's trying to advise Nero and all Romans about the importance of being in control of oneself because this is what theaters have to do. He says anger is a kind of madness and he says that delay is the greatest remedy for anger. He says to get angry is like returning a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule. The point of stoicism is to be unperturbed, not be riled up, to not be at the mercy of your great passions. One of Seneca's most famous exercises, he talks about pre-meditashio-malarm, he says, practice, anticipate all the things that could happen,

he says, exile war, torture, shipwreck, all the lots, all the terms of the human condition should be before our eyes. And as I said, it's good that he thought this way because he does suffer shipwrecks. He is exile. He is tortured. Ultimately, he's executed. Right? despite his privilege and success. Senika is prepared for this. He says, the unexpected blow lands heaviest. What we anticipate, we take the bite out of it. So Senika is always thinking about what could happen, not to become anxious, but to prepare for it. And I know sometimes people think, well, if I'm thinking about the worst-case scenario,

always, isn't that gonna make me depressed, or scared, or anxious? Senika says, no, because it's actually, is not what we're talking about, it's about preparation. And he says, look, to suffer in advance is the wrong way to do it too. He talks about how often the things we imagine that we're worried about are honestly worse

than whatever happens. He says, we suffer more in imagination than reality. So part of this for Senica is also being present. It's this balance. It's like, how do you think about the worst case scenario? Prepare for it, have a plan, and then you can be fully present. Because if it does happen, you know what you're going to do. If it doesn't happen, you keep doing what you're doing.

And this is a really important balance. In letter 107, Cenna talks about adversity. And again, we know he's talking from experience because life has kicked this guy's ass. He says life is no soft affair. It's a long road you've started on. You can't but expect to have slips and knocks and falls. And so we have to be prepared for these things. We have to be tough.

And Cedica says it's good to experience this. He says there's no one I pity more in this world than a person who is not experienced adversity, because they don't know what they're capable of. They're not ready. As you're reading Seddica, you're seeing all the tough things that happens. You shouldn't be like, oh, I hope that doesn't happen to me. You should think, well, how have I been tested? What adversity have I dealt with?

What do I know that I'm capable of? Right? And that's what we're trying to cultivate. The Stoics practice training, right? The Stoics prepare for adversity so when stuff happens, we're ready. In one of Seneca's plays, I think he talks about this, he says, this is a beautiful line, he says, if the breaking day sees someone proud, the ending day sees them brought low, no one should put too much trust in triumph. No one should give up hope of trials improving. Klautho is the God of chance. Mixes with the other and stops fortune from

resting, spinning every fate around. No one has had so much divine favor that they could guarantee themselves tomorrow. God keeps our lives hurtling on spinning in a ruined. And I think Seneca's life embodies this, right? Moments of triumph, moments of trial and adversity, moments of great good fortune, moments of profound misfortune. But he endures all of it. He soldiers through all of it. He does his best, which is all we can do. We absorb the blows of fate, we keep going, we don't get discouraged.

I guess one last theme to think about for Senica is the theme of friendship, right? His letters to Lucilius are filled with all sorts of affection and kindness to his friend. You shouldn't think that the stillness were without joy. And I think of all the stillness, Senica seemed like he lived the happiest, most interesting life, the most filled with friends.

You know, Senica reportedly, and this is what people were critical of, he had 300 tables. He would throw these Gatsby-esque parties for all his friends. And there is a criticism to that, but it's also, you know, to me, evidence that he wasn't just some dour philosopher. Senika had friends. He said nothing delights the mind so much as loving and loyal friendship, right? And my favorite part of Santa Claus, he says, how do I know I'm making progress as I study philosophy? How do I know I'm getting better? He says, I know I'm becoming a better friend to myself.

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a pen, with paper, you can use highlight flags, but you want to read it and really digest what you have. As you read it, I want you to read not just once, but many times. Read over and over and over again. My favorite translation of Seneca's letters is this one, Seneca's letters from Aesthoic by Penguin Classics. The Penguin translation is really a best of Seneca on some core stoic topics. Grief, wealth, poverty, success, education, temper, right? The things that human beings struggle with, particularly ambitious, busy people in the world.

You can also get the Loeb classical library has all the letters. This is only a selection of the letters. You can get all of them here. These are also available for free online, but I prefer physical. This one's cool, if you can read Latin, which I can't, there's also a Latin translation, but this is all the letters. This is like 50 or 60 of the letters. I think ultimately there's like

200 letters. You get all of them with with lobe. Sena's moral essays. He's written a ton of different essays. One is called on Providence. One is called on Anger. One is called on the happy life. There's one called on the tranquility of the mind. On the Shortness of Life, which is actually my favorite of Seneca's essays. Penguin has a little translation called On the Shortness of Life, which has not just that title. It has Consolation to Helvia, which is I was telling you about earlier, which is Seneca's letter

to his mother, and on Tranquility to the Mind. This one's awesome. I actually sell my bookstores at Painted Port, if you want to check that one out. This is another good one by Moses Sedas. It's a bunch of different of Seneca's essays. James Rom, who wrote my favorite biography of Seneca. This is called Dying Everyday. Seneca has this beautiful quote about how we are dying every day. That isn't this thing in the future, but it's something we're moving towards. it's something that's happening right now.

So this is a really beautiful biography. It's haunted and moving. I've had them on the podcast a couple of times. But if you haven't read this book, you absolutely should. This is another little translation of Seneca that I like. This is called How to Keep Your Cool by James Rom. I actually blurb it. I wrote, few have written more eloquently and profoundly on the perils of anger than Seneca.

And this is just a collection of some of Seneca's best stuff on anger. James Rom has this translation of Seneca, which I love, called How to Die. And it's an illustration of just how often Seneca speaks of this, that a selection, not even the entirety of his works on this theme, could surpass 230 pages. But I love this little translation from the Princeton University Press and definitely suggest it. And of course, I have a chapter on Sennaka in my book, Lies of the Stelix. Here's the chapter on him.

You can check out, there's a fascinating statue of Sennaka and Nero by the artist Eduardo Barone. And I think it captures the tragic relationship between the wise patient Sennaka and the petulant, egotistical, undisciplined Nero. No, Nero is sort of thrown, it's got to hood over his head, the quintessential, indifferent, uninterested student. And Senna Kuz there, he's got this book spread out before

and he's trying to teach, and Nero is having none of it. And I think it captures where Senna Kuz was. It's that expression, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. But I think it applies to all of us. The Seneca's provided all this wisdom. Was he the perfect teacher? Was he a little bit of a hypocrite? Are there some cautionary elements to him? Yes.

There's so much writing, are we going to take the time to read it though? Are we going to avail ourselves of it? Are we going to apply the wisdom? Are we going to turn the wisdom into works? That's what that's on us. Seneca put it all out there. He lived it by experience, right? And then the question is, are we going to take advantage of it? Are we going to be a a neuro? Are we going to be a hero? Are we going to apply the ideas? Are we going

to ignore them? And I think that's to me what that statue represents. I think it's a powerful image. I think about it always. And look, there's a reason I have these busts of Seneca in my office. This is one we actually sell in the daily store, but it's interesting. You know, Seneca's image is of himself this way. And this is what we thought Seneca looked like, but they've come to discover that this is not Seneca. This is a sculpture they now refer to as pseudoceneca, right? Seneca sees himself and presents himself

in his writing as this haggard, thin, lean figure, but in fact, he looked more like this. There's the only actual bust of Seneca that survives is this bust and it's actually on the back, his scissoros coming out. But actually, this was more, Seneca. And to me, the difference of the image and the reality is also an important philosophical concept.

And it ties into one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Reales who says, don't waste your time talking about what a good man is like. You should be one. Seneca didn't get there. He wasn't perfect. None of us are. But we can, nevertheless, learn from him, be inspired by him, and hopefully be made better because of him.

Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day, check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.