S.'s volume offers a rigorous analysis of the particularities of Roman culture and of the importance of social relations in Seneca's exposition of how to live a Stoic life. S. proceeds through a series of incisive readings of selected Senecan texts, mainly drawn from the Epistulae morales (though incorporating passages from the dialogues, too), recognising that Seneca's choice of epistolography as a medium is an important indication of the centrality of interpersonal relationships to his project. Seneca's primary concern, in this regard, as S. rightly underlines, is with the role of community among those aspiring to wisdom rather than those who have already attained it.
S.'s introduction (Chapter 1) offers an overview of the ways in which Seneca's philosophy and its relationship to his social and political position have been understood in recent years; S. highlights the differences in approach between, for instance, M. Foucault (emphasising Seneca's pursuit of therapeutic self-transformation) and M. Nussbaum (highlighting rather the centrality of reason to his project). Should we (following T. Habinek) see philosophy as merely constituting a kind of cultural capital for Seneca? S. recognises moments where Seneca's arguments serve to justify aspects of aristocratic privilege (for instance, with regard to slave-owning). However, he takes issue with the ultimately instrumentalist claim that for Seneca philosophy is a second-best substitute for traditional elite political participation. S.'s Seneca is often alert to potential clashes between philosophy and ambient social norms; his advocacy of the philosophical life, on S.'s view, is not simply a consequence of Roman elite values, but is rather in continual dialogue with them.
Following this introduction, S. offers four meaty chapters, each concerned with a pertinent theme. Chapter 2 on solitude (focusing particularly on Letters 7, 18, 29, 62, 90, 95, 120) presents a persuasive account of the respects in which (despite the importance of the Cynic legacy within the Stoic school) Seneca's Stoicism differs from the pared down approach of the Cynics, for whom the virtuous life involved withdrawal from society and a rejection of custom. While Seneca often (e.g. in Letter 7) counsels against certain kinds of social interaction, the virtuous life, on his account, is integrally related to and grounded in a thorough understanding of the connected nature of the rational cosmos, something no individual can attain in isolation; our interaction with carefully selected others is essential to moral progress. Philosophical education (as S.'s analysis of Letter 90 brings out) marks a crucial distinction between the life of primitive humans (relatively wholesome through circumstance) and the truly virtuous life of one who has made the challenging and arduous commitment to philosophy. For Seneca, indeed, because of the rarity of fully instantiated virtue, literary tradition has a crucial role to play in communicating idealised models of behaviour associated with long dead individuals such as Socrates.
Chapter 3 on philosophical schools offers a nuanced account of Seneca's engagement with, in particular, Epicureanism. S. highlights the increasing importance, for the philosophical schools that emerged during the Hellenistic period, of virtual communities, sustained through letters – and foundational texts. At the same time, his analysis of Letters 33 and 64 (as well as a passage from De uita beata) brings out Seneca's characterisation of key differences between Epicurean and Stoic approaches (though S. is also fully aware of the extent to which Seneca recognised the distinctive strengths of Epicurean teaching); while the Epicureans venerate a single founder, within Stoicism, on Seneca's view at least, multiple authorities are subject to ongoing critique and supplementation. Readings of Letters 21 and 79 track their exploration of the interrelationship of fame, literary reputation and philosophical achievement. For S., Seneca presents philosophical distinction as unequivocally trumping distinction in the literary sphere. Other letters, on my view, particularly 114, show Seneca less ready to let go of the pursuit of distinction in the sphere of literature; indeed, his invocation of Virgil as a model at 21.5 also hints at the specifically literary ambition helping to drive his ostensibly philosophical project.
Chapter 4 (focusing on Letters 27, 88, 77, 80) analyses the way in which slavery (along with its social consequences) was central to Seneca's conceptual world. As S. brings out, while Seneca's analogy between the life of the non-wise person and the abjection associated with slavery serves to underline the undesirability of the former, the behaviour Seneca ascribes to individuals who are legally slaves is often in strong contrast with ‘servile’ characteristics, as they are generally represented in Roman literary texts. Indeed, these stories underline the scope for moral agency available even to slaves, while slaves’ paradigmatic eagerness to acquire legal freedom is invoked as a model for others who must learn to recognise the value of spiritual liberation. This chapter tracks with particular clarity Seneca's shifts between the literal and the metaphorical senses of slavery. Seneca, as S. makes clear, mobilises the stark distinction between slavery and freedom, a brutally familiar fact of life in Roman society, to illustrate the transformative nature of the self-liberation offered by philosophy.
Chapter 5, on the res publica, though less compelling in terms of overall argument, provides thought-provoking insights into another group of texts (the final part of De beneficiis 3 as well as Letters 14 and 73), in a discussion that highlights some of the ways in which Seneca deploys the special moral status Romans associated with the res publica to explain the nature of the life of philosophy. S. productively situates his discussion within recent debates concerning the degree to which Hellenistic political philosophy should be seen as detached from or engaged with the political context within which it developed. Acknowledging the significance of the particular political context in which Seneca lived, S. emphasises rather his concern with more general Roman ideas about political power and intergenerational obligations. While sharing with Cicero a sense that Romans owe a debt of gratitude to earlier generations for their political institutions, in Seneca's scheme due gratitude to the maiores, in the philosophical sphere at least, is to be ‘supplemented by and channelled into a rivalrous zeal to surpass that benefit’ (p. 152). In Letter 73, by contrast, on S.'s thought-provoking interpretation, while the cosmic res publica of the wise may command the philosopher's primary loyalty, Seneca identifies a particular benefit, public order (securitas publica), which only the political leaders of the individual state can confer on those wishing to pursue a philosophical life. S. is reluctant to see any critique of Nero in this letter, but given that Seneca, by this point in uneasy retirement from his role as imperial adviser, had earlier served as Nero's tutor, the comparison he draws (73.4) between the gratitude felt by the philosopher to the ruler and that characteristic of the student towards his teacher is surely rather barbed.
My 2019 edition of selected letters of Seneca (which includes many of the texts S. discusses in Chapters 2 and 3) will have appeared too late for S. to take account of it, but I was pleased to see we are generally in close agreement in our interpretation of Seneca's position. There are moments where I feel S. perhaps underestimates the imbrication of Seneca's writing in a complex and highly competitive literary tradition and the ways in which (in Letter 21, for instance) this inevitably generates tensions in his writing. But this is an impressive study, nevertheless. In Seneca's work, on S.'s reading, philosophy illuminates the specifically Roman communal context, but this process also works the other way; Seneca draws masterfully on the values of Roman life and the resources of Roman literature to articulate a ‘deepened and enriched’ conception of the philosophical life (p. 19). S.'s sympathetic and insightful approach to Seneca's project brings out with great clarity the interplay between Seneca's philosophical ideas and the culture in which he operates.
