🏛️ Sundays with Seneca
Sundays with Seneca explores Lucius Annaeus Seneca's writings and Stoic philosophy. Each week, I share a selected reading from one of Seneca's letters in search of ancient lessons on the art of living (along with a journaling prompt at the end). The series is exclusively available to members.
Seneca on illness and suffering
In this week’s Sundays with Seneca series, we’re exploring selected passages from a letter known today as On Ill-Health and Endurance of Suffering.
… You ask me whether every good is desirable. You say: “If it is a good to be brave under torture, to go to the stake with a stout heart, to endure illness with resignation, it follows that these things are desirable. But I do not see that any of them is worth praying for. …”
My dear Lucilius, you must distinguish between these cases; you will then comprehend that there is something in them that is to be desired. I should prefer to be free from torture, but if the time comes when it must be endured, I shall desire that I may conduct myself therein with bravery, honor, and courage. Of course, I prefer that war should not occur, but if war does occur, I shall desire that I may nobly endure the wounds, the starvation, and all that the exigency of war brings. Nor am I so mad as to crave illness, but if I must suffer illness, I shall desire that I may do nothing that shows a lack of restraint and nothing that is unmanly.
“The conclusion is that hardships are not desirable, but virtue is desirable, as it enables us to endure hardships patiently.”
Certain of our school think that, of all such qualities, a stout endurance is not desirable—though not to be deprecated either— because we ought to seek by prayer only the good which is unalloyed, peaceful, and beyond the reach of trouble. Personally, I disagree with them. And why? First, because it is impossible for anything to be good without being also desirable. Because, again, if virtue is desirable, and if nothing that is good lacks virtue, then everything good is desirable. Lastly, brave endurance, even under torture, is desirable.
