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Seneca to Lucilius: 74, on virtue and what is truly good or bad in life
One of the defining questions that differentiated most of the Hellenistic schools of practical philosophy was that of the relationship between virtue and “externals,” that is the sort of thing that most human beings value, including health, wealth, reputation, and so on. The 74th letter written by Seneca to his friend Lucilius explores precisely this territory and provides us with a clear presentation of the Stoic position.
Seneca approaches the theme in his own inimitable fashion, beginning with one reason we should focus on virtue: to avoid the vagaries of Fortune. He writes:
“Anyone who deems other things to be good, puts himself in the power of Fortune, and goes under the control of another; but he who has in every case defined the good by the honorable, is happy with an inward happiness.” (Letter LXXIV.1)
Happiness, that is, is an inside job, and it is unwise to bet on externals because they are not under our control. If we allow ourselves to care too much for that sort of thing then our happiness will be hostage to Fortune, and Fortune is notoriously fickle. Seneca then goes on to examine the unhappiness of so many who bet on externals rather than virtue:
“You will find men who are completely upset by failure to win an election, and others who are actually plagued by the offices which they have won. But the largest throng of unhappy men among the host of mortals are those whom the expectation of death, which threatens them on every hand, drives to despair. For there is no quarter from which death may not approach.” (Letter LXXIV.2–3)
People are unhappy because they lose elections, or because they win them. But most importantly people are unhappy because they cannot control the ultimate external: life itself. Which is why Seneca says that, in a sense, all of philosophy aims at preparing us for the ultimate test of character, the one inevitably presented to us by our own mortality.
But can virtue really make us self-sufficient? Seneca addresses the question head on:
“Do you ask why virtue needs nothing? Because it is pleased with what it has, and does not lust after that which it has not. Whatever is enough is abundant in the eyes of virtue…
