Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

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Martha C. Nussbaum
life. In On Anger, he tries to convince the interlocutor, his brother, that
even military affairs are best pursued without anger, in a spirit of rational
self-government. He shows us how personal pride leads to deforming
revenge, how a noble detachment can rise above petty spite and vindictiveness.
Even in cases that would strike any Roman as cases where
anger is appropriate, he urges a non-emotional pursuit of one’s duty:
if one’s father has been murdered, one should prosecute the offender,
but one should do this because it is right, not in a spirit of anger (Ir.
I.12). He fills the text with examples of anger run amok, particularly
from the recent reign of Caligula.
Late in On Anger, Seneca approaches a highly sensitive topic: how
one ought to behave when a tyrant orders one to do something disgraceful.
Here he does appear to waver, condemning people in history
who knuckled under to tyrants and did their bidding, even when the
tyrant ordered them to kill, or, in one case, to eat, their own children.
At one point, he says of one of the fathers in question, “God curse that
man”, an utterance that sounds rather angry (Ir. III.14). And yet, he
maintains a greater consistency than does Cicero, by insisting that in
such a situation one can yet avoid the angry response – by committing
suicide. The good Stoic always has avenues of liberty open to him, even
in the worst possible circumstances, since one may always exercise rational
control by taking one’s own life. Every vein in one’s body, he
says, is a road to liberty (Ir. III.15).
It is not obvious that the Stoic doctrine of suicide is fully consistent
with Stoic detachment. If the events that politics brings one’s way have
no true worth or importance, if only one’s inner life has real importance,
then why would such a calamitous external event as a tyrant’s
order to kill or eat one’s own child be important enough to make the
difference between life and death? I shall not, however, pursue that
line of thought here. On the whole, then, Seneca manages to present
a more or less consistent picture of Stoic emotions in politics, showing
that one can engage with uncertain events in a spirit of detachment, and
yet be strongly concerned to do one’s duty; and, if it becomes impossible
to do one’s duty, one may always end one’s life.
But did Seneca live by this credo? The description of his suicide by
the historian Tacitus suggests that he did. Tacitus emphasizes his lofty,
noble attitude, his lack of fear, and his commitment to writing philosophy
until the very end. (Tacitus says he would have recorded the
works that Seneca dictated while his blood was running out, but for
the fact that they are published in his collected works! [Ann. 15.63])