Sundays with Seneca
Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on Perennial Meditations. Join the search for ancient lessons on the art of living from the writings and Stoic philosophy of Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
***Apologies for not doing an audio episode of this one.
In a letter known today as On Pleasure and Joy, Seneca wrote,
I received great pleasure from your letter; kindly allow me to use these words in their everyday meaning without insisting upon their Stoic import. For we Stoics hold that pleasure is a vice. Very likely, it is a vice; but we are accustomed to using the word when we wish to indicate a happy state of mind.
I am aware that if we test words by our formula, even pleasure is a thing of ill repute, and joy can be attained only by the wise. For “joy” is an elation of spirit, of a spirit which trusts in the goodness and truth of its own possessions. The common usage, however, is that we derive great “joy” from a friend’s position as consul, or from his marriage, or from the birth of his child; but these events, so far from being matters of joy, are more often the beginnings of sorrow to come. No, it is a characteristic of real joy that it never ceases and never changes into its opposite.
Accordingly, when our Vergil speaks of
The evil joys of the mind,
his words are eloquent but not strictly appropriate. For no “joy” can be evil. He has given the name “joy” to pleasures and has thus expressed his meaning. For he has conveyed the idea that men take delight in their own evil.
