10: What Should One Wish Or Pray For?

     The subjects of praying and wishing come up often in Seneca's letters to his friend Lucilius. For example, in the tenth letter, Seneca advises Lucilius that, if he is going to pray to the gods, he should ask them for excellence of mind and mental well being before asking for physical health. And in Letter 32, there is the following extraordinary passage:
          "There were other things your parents wished for you to have; what I wish for you is to have contempt for all their bountiful wishes. In their prayers, many are robbed to make you rich: whatever they transfer to you, they must take from someone else. My wish is this: may you be your own master; may your mind, which is now driven this way and that by its concerns, come at last to a halt, sure and content in itself; may you come to understand those true goods that belong to you in the moment you understand them, and feel no need of additional years. In order to rise above necessities, to gain one's discharge, to be free, one must live a life that is already complete."
     The initial purpose of this blog was to explore the concept of moderation. So my readers will perhaps not find it surprising that I consider myself to be an agnostic, one who has not taken a final position on the issue of whether God exists or does not exist (arguably, both extreme positions). Seneca was most certainly not an agnostic, a topic I intend to explore in another post. And -- contrary to Seneca's advice -- when I have prayed, it has usually been for the physical health of those close to me: my wife, during her two battles with cancer; my mother, when her appendix burst and she had to have emergency surgery; and my aunt, during her two battles with cancer (the second of which has just started). I do not think that such prayers are inconsistent with moderation. But perhaps I am guilty of the charge often leveled against moderates -- that we like to have our cake and eat it, too.
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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 10, 4, page 45; see also Letter 32, 4-5, page 109. 

4/5: Living According To Nature

     As noted in my 12/30/17 post, in his fourth letter to Lucilius, Seneca quotes Epicurus' maxim that "Poverty is great wealth when it adjusts to nature's law". In Letter 5, Seneca goes on to flesh out his view of the Stoic concept of nature for Lucilius in good-humored (or perhaps sarcastic) fashion:
          "Our aim is to live in accordance with nature, is it not? This is contrary to nature: tormenting one's body, swearing off simple matters of grooming, affecting a squalid appearance, partaking of foods that are not merely inexpensive but rancid and coarse. A hankering after delicacies is a sign of self-indulgence; by the same token, avoidance of those comforts that are quite ordinary and easy to obtain is an indication of insanity. Philosophy demands self-restraint, not self-abnegation -- and even self-restraint can comb its hair. The limit I suggest is this: our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion, our way of life should be one that everyone can admire without finding it unrecognizable."
     Here Seneca seems to be making an argument in favor of moderation ("... our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion ...") which is the founding principle of this blog. The passage also brings to mind Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, discussed in my post of  10/19/17. As readers may recall, in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined virtues as the mean between excess and deficiency. Regarding temperance, for example, he said it was destroyed by excess (licentiousness) and deficiency (insensibility) but preserved by the mean.
     In closing, it is worth noting that Seneca authored a separate treatise called "Natural Questions" -- also included in the University of Chicago's recent series of translations of his complete works into English -- which I hope to read some day.
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     Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics, London, 2004; original translation by Thomson, revised by Tredennick, introduction by Barnes), Book II, page 34, pages 40-49; see also Appendix 1.
     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 5, 4-5, page 32.