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On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

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Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#31
post #11

I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe without anyone in particular making it fair. Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed t…

Well... bear with me and I'll try not to throw a dissertation-length explanation at you :)

Rome in the days of Seneca and the other major Stoics was far from having a single unified religion. There was a "state religion" following the co-opted Greek pantheon we all learn about in school (Jupiter/Zeus at the top, etc.), but that's far from the whole story. I've got a book sitting next to me right now which just provides a survey and nutshell summaries of the important traditions and major concepts, and it runs around 300 pages; "religion" in the Empire was a huge tangled collection of monotheistic groups, polytheistic groups, pantheistic groups, arguably atheistic groups, and a vast cobweb of cross-pollinations between Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Christian traditions.

So a short answer to one of your questions is: "yeah, they had monotheism, but also they didn't".

As to Seneca and the Stoic view: the Stoics like to toss around the word "λόγος" (Logos). But every other philosophy and practically every mystery religion of the day also used the term (plus it got co-opted into Christianity early on), and though the intended meaning is similar in a lot of cases there are also crucial differences. Plus, λόγος and its root λέγω are extremely overloaded to begin with even in everyday Greek. Though you'll often see the basic translations as "word" or "speak", the original concept was "gather", with a further sense of "count/enumerate" (an artifact of this meaning in modern English is "catalogue": καταλέγειν/"count" gives κατάλογος, the list of things counted) and "order/arrange", and from there you can dive off not only into gathering words but also gathering thoughts, and off into much more abstract ideas such as repetition/succession of things or events.

So λόγος can embody a huge number of concepts, but within the context of Stoicism a good approximation is of an all-pervading rational order in the universe, exemplified by the succession of events under natural law. You will find Stoic philosophers who identify this with a god or gods -- typically Jupiter/Zeus -- but it can be difficult to figure out whether they're doing that because they really believe it, or because (as was common at the time) they were simply trying to tie into or co-opt already-familiar ideas, because what they meant by λόγος was something quite different from the personal, corporeal gods of the Roman state religion.

Ultimately, Stoicism -- if it's theistic at all -- is pantheistic, because λόγος by its all-pervading nature must be everywhere and in everything. And since the ordering of things in nature follows rational, predictable principles they argued by analogy that λόγος, the source of those principles, must similarly be rational. They also argued that it must (as a consequence) be deterministic; and thus Stoicism advocates acceptance of things as they happen. To the Stoic, this is the only real choice: to fight, pointlessly, to turn the course of events one way or another, or to accept and make peace with things as they are, and devote yourself to philosophy and reflection and the life of the mind. Even if you can't improve the lot of society, you can improve yourself.

So questions of "fairness" don't really come into it; what Seneca's trying to get at is not that lifetimes have been allotted by some intelligence to serve some purpose, but that so many people waste so much of their lives on a fight they cannot possibly win and end up neglecting the one thing they can genuinely do to improve themselves and find contentment.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#32

50 AD for a somewhat relevant post... that's going to be tough to beat.

Julius Caesar's got some good quotes: It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life. It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking. As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can. Cowards die many times before their actual deaths. and that's between 100BC and 44BC

I think that last one was Shakespeare:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once." - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, sc. ii (1599)

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The…

Are we sure of these figures? Adding the world wars together, civil wars, and the razings of the ancient world I would figure man has killed man much more often than nature has been able to.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#34
post #11

I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe without anyone in particular making it fair. Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed t…

"I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly."

The Stoic thought process would simply reject the exceptionalism of Man and the maxim naturally follows without recourse to a higher entity.

After all, we do observe that all other life forms seem to have just enough time to do their thing. And when we speak of "properly" (or "wisely"), naturally it is only meaningful given that we have the ability to make choices. (c.f. "to thine own self be true")

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The…

Are we sure of these figures? Adding the world wars together, civil wars, and the razings of the ancient world I would figure man has killed man much more often than nature has been able to.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox : During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths.

Smallpox has been around for over 10,000 years. In the 20th century it killed more people than all the wars in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#36

Seneca was a Stoic. But being a Stoic has little to do with the standard cliche of suppressing your emotions. It is a philosophy that emphasises a rational response to nature, your own and that of the universe. "Follow nature" is a common Stoic saying - unconditionally accept that which is the case and do not disturb yourself with emotional upheavals about that which one can do nothing. The French philosopher Pierre…

- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…

- "I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil."

Ah, that you see is the challenge of Stoicism. A Stoic does not believe that there is anything evil in nature, impersonal perhaps, but not bad. There is nothing evil about death, earthquakes, viruses or asteroids. They just do their thing and sometimes happen to go against human interests. This does not make them evil.

This is a difficult way to think at first, but it makes sense to me. Stand out under the stars and look up. Take a look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field). The universe is just so much bigger than me, so much bigger than my species. Why would I be surprised that it does not always operate directly in my interests?

Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests?

That is one of the lessons I have learned from observing nature. The complete absence of self pity, ruthlessly so.

The short poem 'Self Pity' by DH Lawrence illustrates this well:

"I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself."

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we sure of these figures? Adding the world wars together, civil wars, and the razings of the ancient world I would figure man has killed man much more often than nature has been able to.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox : During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. Smallpox has been around for over 10,000 years. In the 20th century it killed more people than all the wars in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll

War is far from the only way people kill people. Add up all the people in the US killed in auto accidents and you are going to be in the top 10 on that list.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#38
post #8
post #2

Ars longa, vita brevis - originally from the Greek (Hippocrates), where the original read in full (as translated into English): "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment fallible, judgment difficult." The original Greek of this is a sublimely succinct rendering of wonderfully expressed aphorisms. It is found here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis ) along with a pretty good explana…

I agree. However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are in need of more observational evidence?

Could you explain better what you mean? (I think I got it, but ...)

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#39
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The…

"His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives"

Yes, but with the extra 1 billion humans on earth, how many more animal species will be pushed into extinction each decade? How many more acres of rain forest will be destroyed every week? How many more barrels of oil will be pulled from the earth and burned into the air?

I'm personally against mass-scale chopping, burning, and killing, which I know that more people on this planet leads to.

Maybe the meme "the human species must expand at all costs" needs an evil check.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#40
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

> What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

If we had the means, this would do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture) . Obviously, planets are not safe unless very dead, which is also inconvenient.

(Not that I think that 'fixing' mortality would necessarily be a good idea ...)

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