23.8.2006
I hope what follows may pass as a rough sketch of a Stoic position. I'm
aware it causes a lot more questions than it helps to answer, and it would
have to be far more carefully developed if it was to be attributed in
earnest to Seneca (or any other author). It is also incomplete: there
are a number of important issues in Stoic philosophy which I don't mention
here. (I will take up some of them in later posts.)
A lot of things that people think of as valuable and worth to be pursued
actually aren't, for instance wealth, or fame. (They may have some
attraction, but that doesn't make them valuable. To value something
is different from being attracted by it.) Their availability is subject to
circumstances. Sometimes circumstances are beneficial, sometimes they are
adverse. People can easily get in situations in which, for instance, they
lose all their money (without being able to do something about it - think of
a stock market crash or similar events). They might not even have had to do
anything at all to get it in the first place (they could have inherited it
instead). Even those who have worked hard and achieved their wealth, or fame,
by themselves are not safe with it - some change in the state of affairs may
reduce them to poverty tomorrow, or bring them in discredit with the public.
True, they may be successful in preserving their favored state until their
last days - but what good will it be then to them?
Is it more plausible if we don't identify the money itself with the
primary value, but instead the ability of their owner to enjoy, during their
lifetime, all they can buy with it? On reflection, this seems not persuasive -
these things look even more arbitrary to be identified with what has value:
ephemeral pleasures, arbitrary joys, superficial experiences that begin to
vanish from the very second they are lived through (and again, are
eliminated with their subject's other memories after their death).
A Stoic thinks considerations like this show that 'external goods'
(external, that is, to oneself) have no value in themselves. Nothing has
such a value except leading a good life, which means to scrutinize one's
actions and thoughts and improve on them, bringing them into accord with
reason. Since being reasonable is the distinctively human nature, that
should be what we are aiming at, all the time. Whenever you spend time
doing something else, you waste a bit of your lifetime.
This is the point of the opening of Seneca's first letter to Lucilius:
"Omnia aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est" (I, 3) - nothing is
really yours, all these external goods are at best for a while in your
possession, they may be taken from you at any time (at the very latest when
you die); only your lifetime (which may be short or long) belongs to you.
And every bit of that time that you don't use well is lost forever.
In a short text, De brevitate vitae, Seneca forcefully criticizes
people who waste every single second of their time in worthless activities -
and then complain, unjustly, about the all-too-brief amount of time that
they have been accorded. But there is enough time, for (almost) all people,
to make sensible use of. If you are leading a worthy life (worth of a human
being, that is, in accord with human nature, which is identified with acting
and thinking rationally), you make good use of your time, and thus make good
use of the only thing that is truly yours. (From this it follows, almost by
definition, that there is no such thing as a lifetime that is too short. A
short life that is led completely in accord with reason is equal in value
with a much longer life which is also led so. This claim admittedly may be
hard to defend. But on the other hand, consider that it also follows that a
short, but well-lived life should be worth more than a long life full of
idle, pointless activity. At least this later point should be plausible
enough.)
So, how does one know what to do, how to act, then? Well, one should stop
to be after external goods. The only valuable things can be found inside
yourself, that is, in your thoughts and attitudes. For only these are under
your control, and not subject to circumstances. In other words: you can't
bear responsibility for the effects of external forces. If you are born poor
or otherwise impaired, this doesn't make your life worth less (or more) a
single bit. If you are rich or otherwise privileged (thanks to yourself or
others), this doesn't make you any better (or worse). You are judged (and
this means primarily, you should judge yourself) only by the things that
result from your actions, beliefs and decisions. This means leading
a life of self-examination and constant striving to get those actions,
beliefs and decisions into accord with reason. (Seneca derives this general
guideline from the identification of reason as human 'nature', that which
distinguishes humans from pretty much anything else. I am myself uneasy with
that notion of 'nature'. This term is historically overloaded and, given
its modern interpretation, not very helpful in our present context anyway.
I think something like Robert Nozick's idea of 'reality', in the sense of
'being more real' as developed in his The Examined Life [1] might
possibly play a similar role in an approach that would be defensible
today.)
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[1] Robert Nozick, The Examined Life. Philosophical
Meditations, New York: Touchstone 1989.
