Philosophical lessons from Seneca’s life (Part 4)

When a philosopher spends his life telling others what to do, it’s fair to ask if his own life has been a success. In the case of Seneca, the fact that he committed suicide at sixty-nine makes it hard to categorize his life as success. Emperor Nero had decided Seneca’s execution, but giving him first the order to commit suicide. If Seneca had refused, a Roman soldier would have killed him right away, decapitated him, and taken his head to Rome. In the Roman Empire, it wasn’t considered a sign of cruelty to decapitate the victim. It was the normal procedure to prove to the Roman Emperor that his orders had been carried out. Seneca knew what awaited him if he refused to kill himself. Very wisely, he committed suicide in front of witnesses, so that decapitation would become unnecessary. The witnesses would constitute sufficient proof of Seneca’s death. Despite the glorification of Seneca’s suicide by practitioners of Stoicism, I can only view it as gruesome and pointless. The mistakes made by Seneca in the prior years were dragging him down into the gutter. His suicide was a sign of total defeat, not a philosophical victory. If Seneca had been an external observer, he would have regarded the last decade of his life as a cumulation of dire mistakes. I am sure that he would have quoted extensively from his Letters to Lucilius and from his essay “On the Constancy of the Wise.” Seneca was a great philosopher and his ending turned into a tragedy of the first magnitude. The people who had witnessed his suicide were familiar with his doctrines, especially with his call for moral consistency. In his 69th Letter to Lucilius, Seneca condemned individuals who say one thing, but then do something else. He demanded a constant, assiduous implementation of Stoic philosophy. Virtue is to be practised all the time, so that it can deliver its benefits. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/practical-lessons-from-senecas-life-part-4/