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Anger, Mercy, Revenge

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Seneca and His World...........................................................................viiOn Anger TRANSLATED BY ROBERT A. KASTERTranslator's Introduction......................................................................3On Anger.......................................................................................14Notes..........................................................................................97On Clemency TRANSLATED BY ROBERT A. KASTERTranslator's Introduction......................................................................133On Clemency....................................................................................146Notes..........................................................................................180The Pumpkinification of Claudius the God TRANSLATED BY MARTHA C. NUSSBAUMTranslator's Introduction......................................................................197The Pumpkinification of Claudius the God.......................................................215Index..........................................................................................237

Chapter One

ROBERT A. KASTER

The Treatise

Sometime near the middle of the first century CE, Seneca's brotherAnnaeus Novatus asked him to "prescribe a way of soothing anger"(1.1.1). That, at any rate, is Seneca's claim in the first sentence of OnAnger. Writing—or purporting to write—in response to such a requestwas a long-established convention of polite letters, and it wouldbe understood that the "you" whom Seneca addresses throughout thetreatise represents a broad group of people beyond Novatus himself.Also conventional is the form that Seneca gave his response, a combinationof theory and therapy in which the latter presupposes theformer. Within the Stoic tradition that Seneca followed, the greatphilosopher Chrysippus (ca. 280–207 BCE) had written on the passionsin four books that similarly presented his understanding ofwhat the passions were before giving advice on how to cure them;and not quite one hundred years before Seneca took up the topicof anger, Cicero had done the like in the Tusculan Disputations—the only discussion of the passions in classical Latin more extensivethan Seneca's—when he explained and assuaged grief in particular(Book 3) and the passions more generally (Book 4).

The idea that our affective responses to life might require "therapy"will not seem odd in our own therapy-conscious culture, norwas it unique to the Stoics in antiquity: for example, the EpicureanPhilodemus, in the first century BCE, included a therapeutic sectionin his own On Anger, and Plutarch, an adherent of Plato, wrote OnControlling Anger two generations after Seneca. But the Stoics tookup the topic with special urgency, because alone among all ancientphilosophical sects they believed (for reasons we will consider below)that the passions as we commonly know them are an evil perse. For the Stoics, the only sure therapy for the passions is theireradication. Following this doctrine, and focusing on anger becauseof its especially dreadful effects, Seneca divides his three books almostexactly in half: in Book 1 and the first half of Book 2 he definesanger in orthodox Stoic terms, defends that conception of angeragainst objections, and analyzes the sequence of perceptions andjudgments that constitute the passion; he then turns toanger's therapy in the rest of Book 2 and all of Book 3. We can takea similar line, addressing first the theory and then the therapy inthe two sections following. At the end we can briefly consider Seneca'sconception of his audience and the way he speaks in trying toheal them.

The Theory

Stoicism treats the passions as central to ethics in a way and to adegree unparalleled in other ancient philosophical systems: onewould not go too far to say that thoroughly understanding Stoicviews on the passions requires thoroughly understanding Stoic viewson being human. Fortunately, we do not need to attempt that thoroughunderstanding for the purposes at hand, because Seneca's OnAnger is itself far from being a thorough Stoic account of the passions.Because Seneca is concerned less with the theory for its ownsake than with the therapy based upon it, he gives only as much ofthe former as he considers necessary for the latter. We can followsuit, first sketching some general principles in fairly broad strokesbefore concentrating on the points that Seneca treats as essential.

To start, let's consider the normative human beings who representthe Stoic ideal, the people understood to live the best humanlife: the wise. If such people happened to exist (and they are, at best,extraordinarily rare), they would live exactly as nature—which is tosay, the providential god who orders the universe—equipped themto live: hence the Stoic doctrine that the best human life is the life"according to nature." Two elements of that natural equipment areespecially important in themselves and in their bearing on the passions.The first is an innate impulse that we would probably call the"survival instinct" and that the Stoics called "appropriation" (oikeiosis):from earliest childhood we naturally regard ourselves as properobjects of our own concern, and that concern impels us to seek whatpromotes our health and well-being. Second, and most importantof all nature's endowments, there is the capacity for reason that maturehuman beings, alone of all animals, have in common with thegods. To a significant degree, the best human life simply consistsin combining these two elements of our natural makeup, using ourreason to seek what is good for ourselves.

But the matter is not as simple as that formulation makes it seem,because—here the brushstrokes must be especially broad—most ofus have great difficulty recognizing that what is good for us is not justwhat is good for us as living creatures (the "creature comforts"), butwhat is good for us specifically as human beings with the special capacitieshumans have. Just because of those capacities, the only thingthat is truly good and choiceworthy in itself is virtue, and virtue isnothing other than the mind's sure and consistent exercise of reason(conversely, the only thing that is truly evil in itself is vice, which isnothing other than the failure of reason). If our minds always conformedto this good, all our judgments would be valid and all ourbeliefs would be true, consistent, and mutually supporting: we wouldhave not merely beliefs but knowledge. A rational mind of that sort,consistently making its sure judgments and right choices, acts "accordingto nature," and that action just is the final good, which just isvirtue: traits like courage or temperance or loyalty that are called virtuesare just the capacities of the rational mind to make right choicesin particular circumstances. And because these are the actions of ourown minds, they are always under our own control. As the Stoics putit, they are always "up to us"—in fact, they are the only things thatare always "up to us." Hence, the only thing that is truly and alwaysgood in itself is also the only thing that is truly and always up to us;and the same is true of the only thing that is truly evil in itself. Allother things external to our minds' movements—health and sickness,wealth and poverty, love and loss—are, strictly speaking, indifferent:they...