🏛️ Sundays with Seneca
Sundays with Seneca explores Lucius Annaeus Seneca's writings and Stoic philosophy. Each week, I share selected passages from one of Seneca's letters in search of ancient lessons on the art of living (along with a journaling prompt at the end). ***This series is exclusively available to members.
Seneca on Wisdom and Retirement
In this week’s Sundays with Seneca series, we’re exploring selected passages from a letter known today as On Wisdom and Retirement.
I fall in with your plan: retire and conceal yourself in repose. But at the same time conceal your retirement also. In doing this, you may be sure that you will follow the example of the Stoics, if not their precept. But you will also be acting according to their precept; you will thus satisfy yourself and any Stoic you please.
We Stoics do not urge men to take up public life in every case, or at all times, or without any qualification. Besides, when we have assigned to our wise man that field of public life which is worthy of him—in other words, the universe—he is then not apart from public life, even if he withdraws; no, perhaps he has abandoned only one little corner thereof and has passed over into greater and wider regions; and when he has been set in the heavens, he understands how lowly was the place in which he sat when he mounted the curule chair or the judgment-seat. Lay this to heart, that the wise man is never more active in affairs than when things divine as well as things human have come within his range of knowledge.
I now return to the advice I set out to give you: keep your retirement in the background.
“There is no need to fasten a placard upon yourself with the words: ‘Philosopher and Quietist.’ Give your purpose another name; call it ill-health, bodily weakness, or mere laziness. To boast of our retirement is but idle self-seeking.”
Certain animals hide themselves from discovery by confusing the marks of their footprints in the neighborhood of their lairs. It would be best if you did the same. Otherwise, there will always be someone following your footsteps. Many men pass by that which is visible and peer after things hidden and concealed; a locked room invites the thief. Things that lie in the open appear cheap; the house-breaker passes by that which is exposed to view. This is the way of the world and the way of all ignorant men: they crave to burst in upon hidden things. It is, therefore, best not to vaunt one’s retirement.
It is, however, a sort of vaunting to make too much of one’s concealment and of one’s withdrawal from the sight of men. So-and-so has gone into his retreat at Tarentum; that other man has shut himself up at Naples; this third person, for many years, has not crossed the threshold of his own house. To advertise one’s retirement is to collect a crowd. …
What, then, am I doing with my leisure? I am trying to cure my own sores. If I were to show you a swollen foot, an inflamed hand, or some shriveled sinews in a withered leg, you would permit me to lie quiet in one place and apply lotions to the diseased member. But my trouble is greater than any of these, and I cannot show it to you. The abscess, or ulcer, is deep within my breast. Pray, pray, do not commend me, do not say: “What a great man! He has learned to despise all things; condemning the madnesses of man’s life, he has made his escape!” I have condemned nothing except myself.
“There is no reason why you should desire to come to me for the sake of making progress. You are mistaken if you think you will get assistance from this quarter; it is not a physician who dwells here but a sick man.”
I would rather have you say, on leaving my presence: ‘I used to think him a happy man and a learned one, and I had pricked up my ears to hear him; but I have been defrauded. I have seen nothing, heard nothing which I craved and which I came back to hear.’ If you feel thus, and speak thus, some progress has been made. I prefer you to pardon rather than envy my retirement.
Seneca continues,
Then you say: ‘Is it retirement, Seneca, that you recommend to me? You will soon be falling back upon the maxims of Epicurus!’ I do recommend retirement to you, but only that you may use it for greater and more beautiful activities than those which you have resigned; to knock at the haughty doors of the influential, to make alphabetical lists of childless old men, to wield the highest authority in public life—this kind of power exposes you to hatred, is short-lived, and, if you rate it at its true value, is tawdry.
One man shall be far ahead of me as regards his influence in public life, another in salary as an army officer and in the position which results from this, another in the crowd of his clients; but it is worthwhile to be outdone by all these men, provided that I myself can outdo Fortune. And I am no match for her in the crowd; she has the greater backing. …
Would we not discuss the happy life in plain view of death! But even now, let us have no delay. For now, we can take the word of experience, which tells us that there are many superfluous and hostile things; we should long since have taken the word of reason.
Let us do what men are wont to do when they are late in setting forth and wish to make up for lost time by increasing their speed—let us ply the spur. Our time of life is the best possible for these pursuits, for the period of boiling and foaming is now past. The faults that were uncontrolled in the first fierce heat of youth are now weakened, but little further effort is needed to extinguish them.
Seneca concludes,
‘And when,’ you ask, ‘will that profit you which you do not learn until your departure, and how will it profit you?’ Precisely in this way, that I shall depart a better man. You need not think, however, that any time of life is more fitted to the attainment of a sound mind than that which has gained the victory over itself by many trials and by long and oft-repeated regret for past mistakes and its passions assuaged, has reached a state of health. This is indeed the time to have acquired this good; he who has attained wisdom in his old age has attained it by his years. Farewell.
Journaling Prompt
Interestingly, Seneca urges Lucilius (and us) not to commend him as someone who has “learned to despise. In another letter, Seneca writes, “I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.” What does it mean to view yourself (and others) as a patient in need of healing (or wisdom)?
—
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
P.S. New here? Catch up on previous volumes in the archive!