Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living

CHAPTER 1

The Lost Art of Friendship

Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must keep the knowledge of it to myself. . . . No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it.

—Seneca, Letters 6.4

WHEN SENECA WAS IN HIS SIXTIES, HIS GOOD FRIEND Lucilius was wrestling with a significant problem.

Lucilius was a bit younger than Seneca and held a position in Nero’s administration, governing the region of Sicily. Like Seneca, Lucilius was ambitious, talented, hardworking, and successful. He had established a high-ranking career, and even fame, in the social world of his time. But at some point in the process of achieving that high level of success, Lucilius had neglected his inner well-being. In modern terms, he was experiencing a crisis of meaning.

Seeking advice from a trusted friend, Lucilius turned to Seneca for help. Lucilius wanted to retire and live a more thoughtful and fulfilling life, but he also had become used to his wealthy lifestyle and the public acclaim he often received. And like many people today, Lucilius wondered if he had enough financial resources to retire and maintain his lifestyle, or if he should keep on working a few more years to build up his savings. While Lucilius yearned to be free, he also feared the consequences of leaving his well-paid position.

While Seneca scholars never mention it, this is the background story behind Seneca’s letters to Lucilius.

Lucilius’s questions about how to adjust his path in life gave Seneca an excuse to create his wonderful Letters, written not just for Lucilius but for a wider circle of readers. At the same time, the Letters were a cleverly designed introductory course to Seneca’s own brand of Stoic philosophy. But behind this entire project was a belief in the deep and transforming power of friendship. Throughout his Letters, Seneca discusses many aspects of friendship, but this passage highlights why friendship is so essential:

Friendship creates between us a partnership in all things. Nothing is good or bad for us alone: we live in common. Nor can anyone live happily who only cares for his own advantage. You must live for another if you would live for yourself. This fellowship, maintained with special care and respect, unites humanity as a whole, and holds that we all have certain rights in common. But it’s also beneficial for nurturing the more intimate kind of friendship, of which I’ve been speaking. For someone who has much in common with another human being will have everything in common with a friend.1

While Seneca expressed his philosophy of living to Lucilius in letters and correspondence, he wrote his earlier philosophical works for other friends, relatives, and people he knew personally. His goal was to help them achieve mental tranquility, overcome grief, or address different challenges. As we can see, for Seneca philosophy, as the art of living, was not based on creating an abstract system for other intellectuals. Instead, it involved person-to-person relationships since, in Seneca’s view, philosophy should help living people in the real world.

Seneca repeatedly criticized the academic philosophers of his time, who reduced philosophy to uncompelling logical arguments. Their approach seemed unconvincing, and it was irrelevant to addressing human needs. Seneca strongly distinguished between “real philosophy” and its alternative, which he saw as wordplay, a mere intellectual game. Many philosophers of his time, he said, focused on analyzing syllables and splitting hairs rather than exploring living ideas, which could enhance human life. He insisted that real learning is for life, not for the classroom.2 Seneca’s philosophical ideas were both systematic and consistent, but, as a writer, he understood the importance of presenting those ideas in an attractive and compelling way. By conveying philosophy with literary skill and dramatic impact, he brought philosophy to life and made it memorable.

While Lucilius saw Seneca as a close friend, he also looked upon Seneca as his philosophical mentor and adviser, a role Seneca was happy to play. Sometimes a friend can be a superb mentor. Often, someone who knows you well can offer candid feedback that would feel out of place—or even hostile—coming from a stranger. Consequently, there are many places in the Letters where Seneca “pushed back” quite hard against the kinds of false opinions (seen from Seneca’s Stoic perspective) that were causing Lucilius mental anxiety.

Seneca knew Lucilius well and, when necessary, helped him take a serious look at the underlying beliefs that were causing his problems. Seneca would then encourage Lucilius to look at things from another perspective, helping him to reframe the situation. Some of Seneca’s letters closely resemble modern-day psychotherapy sessions, in which a therapist challenges his client to question his or her patterns of thinking. In all of Seneca’s philosophical writings, he plays a mentor’s role, offering sensible advice and rational arguments to address real-life difficulties. He does this by helping his readers to reconsider their underlying beliefs. For Seneca and the Stoics, unless you can remove or deconstruct the false beliefs that cause mental suffering, it’s impossible for anyone lead a happier life.3

INSTRUMENTS OF FRIENDSHIP

Whenever your letters arrive, it seems I am with you. I feel that I’m about to speak my answer instead of writing back.

—Seneca, Letters 67.2

Being together with a friend is the best way to enjoy each other’s company and have meaningful conversations. But that’s not always possible. In ancient times, a letter was an instrument to build, maintain, and strengthen friendships, bridging the space of separation. As Seneca wrote to Lucilius, “I never receive a letter from you without being instantly in your company.”4 Letters continued to perform this function until they were largely replaced by email, which wasn’t that long ago.

Unfortunately, I think we lost something vital with the invention of email. While emails are quick and efficient, they tend to feel disembodied and insubstantial. By comparison, a well-written physical letter can offer a significantly different experience, one that more profoundly communicates an individual’s personality and inner thoughts. While we forget emails quickly, an engaging letter can feel nourishing and is something you might save in a special place.

The fact that letter writing has gone out of style is, I believe, at least one small contributor to the “epidemic of loneliness,” about which we now read so much. Ironically, while social media platforms like Facebook connect us with hundreds of others, many people feel more lonely than ever. I think I understand why: the level of communication that takes place on social media is so diminished, compared to the kinds of real conversations we need to be happy and to flourish as human beings. While letters can embody ongoing conversations, social media is primarily made up of comments—and those are two very different things.

Of course, it is possible to write a real letter to someone by email. And, thankfully, that sometimes happens. But since most emails are just quick notes, the medium itself encourages us to communicate less thoughtfully than before, back in the day when people wrote physical letters. Put another way, with email we communicate much faster and more frequently, but also less deeply.

In his letters to Lucilius, Seneca offers us a model of what a deep kind of friendship might resemble. But in our fast-paced, utilitarian culture, with its focus on achieving quick results and immediate gratification, we often seem to forget what deep and satisfying friendships require.

THREE LEVELS OF FRIENDSHIP

Aristotle (384–322 BC) emphasized the importance of friendship over two thousand years ago, when he wrote that there were three different kinds of friendship—and how living a happy life was not possible without meaningful friendships. While you are unlikely to study friendship in a college philosophy course today, it was so crucial to Aristotle that he devoted one-fifth of his main work on ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, to exploring the nature and significance of friendship.

The most basic level of friendship, Aristotle explains, relies on mutual advantage. We can see these kinds of advantage-friendships resembling connections you might make at a networking event for work. These are the most shallow and short-lived types of friendship. Because they are often self-centered, when the advantage someone offers disappears, the friendship dissolves also. Personally, I wouldn’t call these people friends but acquaintances. In the words of Seneca, “Real friendship is stripped of its dignity when someone makes a friend just to increase his personal gain.”5

The next form of friendship relies on mutual pleasure. These pleasure-friendships consist of people who enjoy one another’s company. This could include a drinking buddy, someone you like going to movies with, or anyone you enjoy spending time with.

The deepest level of friendship for Aristotle, however, is based on mutual admiration, in which each person sees something he or she admires in the other person’s character. These character-friendships are based on something good or virtuous you notice in another person. Character-friendships require trust and an investment of time, and are the types of bonds that can easily last a lifetime. Aristotle called this kind of friendship “perfect,” and it involves sharing your inner life with another person. Like all friendships, it involves genuinely wishing well for the other person. And because it requires time, the number of real friends you can have is limited.

For both Aristotle and Seneca, no human life can be fully satisfying in isolation, without real friendships based on the love and knowledge of others.6 Equally important, by spending time with others and engaging in dialogue, we can also develop our inner qualities. Friends are like mirrors to one another, because when you see good qualities in another person that aren’t developed in yourself, it inspires you to improve your character, to become a better person.7

This is the lost art of friendship that Seneca and Lucilius practiced, which was not just philosophical but filled with genuine affection. Based on engaging dialogue and the desire for another person’s well-being, this is a kind of friendship I’m convinced many people are hungry for today, but one for which we don’t have many good role models. Certainly, those rare, deeper-quality friendships, which feel inwardly meaningful, make us feel more human and more fully alive. These kinds of friendships not only improve the quality of our lives—they make us into better people.

MAKING PROGRESS TOGETHER

Seneca was in high spirits when he wrote one of his first letters to Lucilius. As he wrote with excitement in the very first line, “I can now see, Lucilius, that I’m not just being improved but transformed!”8

Seneca wasn’t just trying to help Lucilius, as a mentor, to improve his character. As this line shows, he was hoping the same for himself. Although Seneca had been studying Stoicism since he was a teenager, he still felt he had an immense amount of personal progress to make.

After telling Lucilius he was experiencing a transformation, Seneca explains this insight in greater depth. He knows that he has “many traits that should be identified, and decreased or strengthened.”9 He believes this realization is significant. It’s proof of a mind that has transformed itself for the better, because he’s now able to see his own faults.

What Seneca was feeling is the exact kind of transformation he wanted to see in Lucilius, too. Perhaps with his excitement Seneca was trying to emphasize and model these insights for Lucilius. For Seneca, if two friends could help each other improve their characters and make progress together, that would be an ideal type of friendship.

Friendships and meaningful relationships are crucial in Seneca’s philosophy for another reason (see chapter 9, “Vicious Crowds and the Ties That Bind”). That’s because the people we surround ourselves with make a huge impact on our own character. For Seneca, we should choose our friends carefully, because it’s easy to pick up, or unconsciously absorb, bad character traits from other people. Alternately, being around people with good character traits helps us to develop good character, too. Those friendships help us to make progress.

MAPPING OUT A PATH: STOICISM AS PROGRESS

As Seneca realized, only when you become aware of your faults, or what you might lack, is it possible to make real progress.

This idea was first associated with Socrates. He learned it from a wise priestess by the name of Diotima. As Diotima told Socrates, the gods possess perfect wisdom, so they don’t seek it. Most people don’t even know that they lack wisdom, so they don’t seek it either. In the end, it’s only possible to seek wisdom if you realize something is lacking.10

Put another way, if you’re not aware of your faults, if you don’t engage in self-inquiry, or if you don’t seriously examine your values, you really are unconscious of these things, and little to no progress is possible.

For the Roman Stoics like Seneca, everything was focused on making progress toward wisdom and developing a better character, with the ultimate goal of becoming a Stoic sage or wise person.

While that makes perfect sense, one of the strangest and most damaging ideas of the earliest Greek Stoics (in my view) was that virtue itself, or having a good character, was an all-or-nothing matter. This meant that only the Stoic sage was virtuous, while everyone else was described as being foolish, vice-ridden, and even insane. This idea had come from the Cynics, which helps to explain its unusual and questionable nature.

Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was strongly influenced by the life and thought of Socrates. But Zeno was also influenced by another Greek philosophical school, the Cynics. Seeking a radical state of freedom, the Cynics lived on the streets of Athens as beggars and were infamous for their extreme sayings and personal behavior that openly defied social conventions. (Plato supposedly described Cynic philosopher Diogenes as “a Socrates gone mad.”11) Nearly all of Zeno’s more radical ideas went back to the Cynics. Similarly, the idea that virtue is an all-or-nothing matter (and the idea of the sage) came from the Cynics.12

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with the basic idea of the Stoic sage. It’s actually a very helpful concept. The problem is with the idea that virtue is an all-or-nothing matter: someone can either be a perfectly virtuous sage or be completely lacking in virtue. Consequently, in my view, Zeno’s notion of an extreme dichotomy between a sage and the rest of humanity was not a helpful idea. While certainly attention-getting, it was harmful to the Stoic school, and it brought quite a bit of ridicule on the Stoics from other ancient philosophers.13

Put another way, most modern philosophers would identify the idea that virtue must be “all or nothing” as a false dichotomy, which is a logical fallacy. Similarly, a modern philosopher would not expect anyone to be perfectly virtuous; they would look for an overall excellence of character instead.

In this regard, the later Roman Stoics, like Seneca, strike me as far more realistic than the original Greeks. While the Greek Stoics had described the sage as an aloof and emotionally detached type of being, Seneca made the sage seem more human. He also stressed how the Stoic sage is, like everyone else, subject to normal human feelings. Most importantly, the Roman Stoics placed their emphasis on people who were trying to make progress toward virtue or toward improving their characters. This meant there are three groups of people in relation to Stoic philosophy: sages; “progressors,” or people making progress toward becoming sages; and a third group of people who don’t make progress. While we could call this third group non-progressors, the Roman Stoics didn’t give this group a name or even define them.14 Despite that, as we can clearly see from the writings of Seneca, this group is made up of people who are unconsciously tied to, or enslaved by, false and unexamined beliefs. For our purposes, we’ll call this group the unenquiring (see figure 1), echoing Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I’ll now try to map out this model more fully, to help explain why the Roman Stoics saw Stoicism as a kind of path and how they thought it was possible to make a bit of progress each day through self-reflection, practice, and training. While it’s unlikely for anyone to reach the level of a Stoic sage, it’s still possible, they maintained, to make progress in that direction.

Fig 1: Three broad types of people on the philosophical path, according to the Roman Stoics.

At the apex of figure 1, we find the figure of the Stoic sage, a perfectly wise person. A Stoic sage in normal circumstances is happy, joyous, and tranquil, and displays psychological equanimity. In addition, a sage doesn’t experience any passions (pathē in Greek) or violent emotions, like extreme anger, because those kinds of intense emotions arise from faulty inner judgments. What keeps the Stoic sage free from negative emotions is that he or she only makes sound judgments, so violent emotions never even have a chance to arise. (That said, a Stoic sage will experience normal human feelings, a topic discussed in chapters 4 and 12.)

As we can see, the Stoic sage is an extremely rare kind of philosophical creature. Seneca said it’s so rare that a sage only appears like the Egyptian phoenix, once every five hundred years. (That’s why I’ve included a little phoenix on top of the diagram, as a reminder of its rarity.) And while almost every Stoic philosopher spoke about the sage or wise person, not a single one of them claimed to be a Stoic sage. Within the Stoic school, stretching over centuries, the person most commonly identified as being a true sage was Socrates.15

So if the sage is not impossible, but incredibly rare, what practical value does the idea have? In the end, the sage is a kind of role model: a compass or north star, to give students something to aim for, and to keep them moving in the right direction. In the words of Emily Wilson, Seneca’s biographer, “The figure of the perfect Stoic sage is of interest to Seneca not as an abstraction but as a tool to enable his readers to behave better toward one another.”16

Seneca himself didn’t claim to be a sage. As he admitted, “I am far from being a tolerable human, much less a perfect one.”17 But Seneca referred to the sage or the wise person often, because it was a useful tool. In fact, Seneca defines the nature of the sage so well in his writings that a student of Stoicism could find himself in almost any situation and ask, “How would a Stoic sage respond to this situation?” Even though it might not be perfect, it’s a tool that works.

At the opposite and least philosophically inclined level of my pyramid, the unenquiring corresponds to the group of people that Socrates described as unaware: because they don’t realize they lack wisdom, they will never desire to seek it out. (Even worse, some in this group might believe they are already wise, which is just as limiting.)

In modern terms, we’d say the lives of the unenquiring are deeply shaped by beliefs absorbed through socialization and social conditioning, which they haven’t yet begun to actively question. Because of this, they tend to take things at face value, maybe things like the implied messages of advertisers, “Buying this product will increase your status and self-worth.” From the ancient Stoic perspective, deeply entrenched false beliefs like this inspire people to seek out luxurious pleasure, wealth, possessions, fame, and social approval. But in the Stoic view, all of these things are “false goods,” instead of the real good of having an excellent inner character, which would also allow us to use external things in a wise and beneficial way. In addition, the false opinions held by the unenquiring frequently cause them to experience extreme negative emotions like worry, fear, anxiety, and anger.

Given the fact that you’re now reading this book, it’s almost certain that you’re a curious person, interested in learning new things, and that you’re not totally unaware (or totally wise, either) but fall into the middle group of people, we call progressors. A progressor is someone who realizes that he or she is not already wise, and is thereby capable of improving and becoming a better person. This is the audience that Seneca wrote for, and he placed himself and Lucilius into this category too.

Progressor is a translation of the ancient Greek term for a student of Stoicism, a prokoptōn, or “one who makes progress.” Since none of the Stoic philosophers claimed to be perfect sages but tried to make progress each and every day through the use of self-reflection and various exercises, all of the Stoic philosophers were progressors.

In the end, to make progress as a human being, you must first realize that you are imperfect (or have reason to improve) and, second, have a desire to improve. It’s no coincidence that one of Seneca’s most frequently used words in his letters is “progress,” or making progress toward wisdom. And as he concluded, “most of progress consists in the desire to make progress.”18 For without that desire, progress itself is impossible.

Strangely, one question the Stoics, as a school, never explored in depth is, What causes someone to become a progressor in the first place? While the precise answer to this would vary from person to person, obviously some kind of “wake-up call,” as we say today, is generally needed. It could be a personal crisis, a personal loss, repeated failures, or just a slowly growing realization that life is too precious to waste on the false goods that the world is constantly trying to sell to us. Alternately, the wake-up call could be a persistent feeling of unhappiness or depression—because a person’s real, inner needs are not being met by his or her current beliefs or lifestyle.

MAKING PROGRESS EVERY DAY

Don’t demand that I should be equal to the best, but better than the worst. It’s enough for me if, every day, I reduce the number of my vices and correct my mistakes.

—Seneca, On the Happy Life 17.3

Roman Stoicism is a kind of path that focuses on making small, incremental amounts of progress each day, one step at a time. No one is perfect, and that’s why Stoicism, at least in part, is a practice: and it’s not just a practice that you undertake, but something that you practice at—in the same way a musician or an athlete practices—to get better at what you do.

Every day new situations arise that test our characters in small or significant ways, giving us ongoing opportunities to be mindful, virtuous, and to make the best (or wisest) judgments possible.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius highlights the fact that Stoicism is a daily, incremental practice. Over the course of many days, Marcus reflected in his private journal on how to live a better life. By writing these notes to himself, he rehearsed his Stoic beliefs and reflected on how he could apply them in his life.19 That’s also one of the reasons Seneca wrote his philosophy in letters. Each day brings a new opportunity for self-reflection and progress, and a series of letters is itself “a work in progress”—just as developing one’s character is a work in progress, too.

Other Stoic exercises show progress to be incremental, like the daily review of one’s activities before bedtime, which was practiced by Seneca and other philosophers. In this exercise, Stoics would examine the mistakes they made during the day and consider how to act better in the future. As Seneca explains, after his wife has fallen asleep, “I carefully examine my entire day and review my deeds and words. I don’t hide anything from myself, and overlook nothing. For why should I fear anything from my errors, when I’m able to say: ‘Make sure you don’t do that any longer, and now I forgive you.’?”20

In the various forms of this simple practice, one asked several questions:

•​Where did I go wrong?

•​What did I do right?

•​What did I leave undone?

•​What could I do better in the future?

This was not the only kind of “philosophical exercise” practiced by the Stoics. Others are mentioned throughout this book and a short listing is given in the appendix, “Stoic Philosophical Exercises.” But as we can see, especially from this exercise, a Roman Stoic was encouraged to review his or her behavior each day, in order to make steady, incremental progress.

EXPERIENCING A SAGE-LIKE MOMENT

While none of the Stoic philosophers claimed to be a perfect sage, when I deeply study the most compelling writings of the Roman Stoics—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—I can’t believe that they didn’t experience sage-like moments. In those moments, they would have felt total peace of mind, felt in harmony with the universe, felt capable of making the best judgments, and felt a deep sense of joy. In fact, now and then, I’ve tasted these sage-like moments, too, even if they didn’t last.

According to traditional Stoic arguments, being a sage is an all-or-nothing matter. But to me, something is missing in those arguments. What is the point of aspiring to be a sage if it’s not even possible to taste what that state might be like occasionally? While our day-to-day lives may feel far from perfect, there are those rare moments, sometimes experienced in nature, when we can glimpse the sublime beauty and perfection of the world, despite what suffering or mayhem might be taking place elsewhere.

Aside from experiencing those moments, which I believe can be experienced by anyone, it doesn’t matter if we become a perfect sage. What mattered for Seneca and the Roman Stoics is that we make some kind of steady progress, enhancing our excellence of character, so that we can live good and meaningful lives, no matter what outer circumstances we might face.

For Seneca, making progress in life is not an isolated experience: it involves friendship, spending time with kindred spirits, and receiving a helping hand from others. The Stoics believed strongly in the value of human community. The highest kind of friendship, in theory, would exist between perfectly wise people. But since perfectly wise people don’t even exist (or are extremely rare), the next best kind of friendship exists between people devoted to helping each other make inner progress, to become better human beings. While all friendships have value, the most remarkable are those that help us—and others—to understand the world and ourselves more deeply.