In the passage quoted in my previous blog post, Seneca expresses the hope that his own faults will die before him. But in Letter 29 to Lucilius, Seneca discuses the faults of their mutual friend Marcellinus:
"He can still be saved, but only if a hand is extended to him right away. Indeed, there is a danger that he will drag the rescuer down with him; for his intellect is very forceful, but tending just now toward ill. Nonetheless, I will go to meet this danger; I will dare to show him his faults. He will do what he usually does: he will pass it off with jokes that would make even a mourner laugh; he'll make fun of himself first, and then make fun of me; he'll deflect everything I am about to say. He'll scrutinize our [Stoic] school and find objections to throw at our philosophers -- payoffs, girlfriends, gluttony."
A list of what the Stoics (or at least Seneca) considered to be faults can be found in his Letter 75; it includes anger, lust, desire, and fear. Seneca goes on to equate faults with mental infirmities:
"The infirmities are faults that have become ingrained and hard, like greed and ambition. These are conditions that bind the mind much more tightly and have begun to be permanent afflictions. To give a brief definition, an infirmity is a persistent judgment in a corrupted person that certain things are very much worth pursuing that in fact are only slightly worth pursuing. Or, if you prefer, we can define it this way: it is being overly concerned with things that one ought to pursue either casually or not at all, or considering something to be of great value when in fact it is either of some lesser value or of no value at all."
On some days, it seems to me as though a list of my own faults would be far too long for just one blog post. However, on others days, I believe that I have come to the point in life where I know the things which are worth pursuing -- as well as those things that are not.
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Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 29, 4-6, page 99; Letter 75, 11-14, page 238.
