On Providence

This is the second analysis of "On Providence", an essay by Seneca, that I have done. I did the first three years ago.

So. This essay is written in the form of a response to a question. Lucilius asks "why, if the world is governed by providence, it is still the case that good men suffer from many misfortunes?" In other words, why do bad things happen to good people? In Seneca's day as today, morality is a construct, a system, present because it is rooted in a divine presence. Thus, the very discussion of 'good' or 'bad' inevitably calls for a reference to God (or gods). It is for the this reason that this question can't really be discussed without religion - which will come up again and again.

First, a small foundation. Stoicism did champion a higher power, though monotheism and polytheism were used mostly interchangeably (sometimes by the same person). They believed, for the most part, in a strict determinism which disallowed free will. Happiness for them was living in accordance with nature - Seneca himself defined it as 'perfecting reason'.

The essay is split into six sections. I have tried to select quotes representative of Seneca's argument.

Section 1

He captures the reason for the essay (Lucilius' question) and then writes a long passage on how the universe is deterministic. "... [T]his great edifice of the world does not stand without some power to guard it... the stars that assemble and disperse above us are not propelled by chance."

"[I]t is not Nature's way to let good ever do harm to good; between good men and the gods exists a friendship sealed by virtue." First, Nature here is the higher power (God). Now this introduces an interesting question, based entirely on the definition of good and bad. What is 'good'? There's no good answer to this, especially because even the Stoics couldn't agree on it. Early (strict) Stoics maintained there was no good beside virtue. Later Stoics relented and allowed that things which make life easier, like good health and shelter, are 'minor goods'. (Compare Diogenes Laertius to Aristo of Chios.) Today, most would agree that many things are 'good' which don't directly impact a man's morality. The good health and prosperity of one's family is unquestionably 'good', whereas the loss of a family member is unquestionably 'bad'. Again - this is a modern view and incompatible with Stoic doctrine.

To return to Seneca's quote, then, he must assume that a 'good' (virtuous) person can only have things done to him which will increase his virtue. I think this is indefensible. Granted, Stoics didn't believe anybody could be TRULY good, since every man had a defect, but I think we can do away with hedging our bets. Take a farmer who is, for the most part, virtuous. He is 'good'. Would a bad harvest drive him towards greater morality? I think not. We would be lucky if he maintained his virtue, and would not be surprised if he lost some of it.

""[H]e does not pamper a good man like a favorite slave; he puts him to the test, hardens him, and makes him ready for service." This quote is interesting because it establishes that Seneca assumed God to be directly involved in every man's life. That is, God constantly watches each man and allots him trials and tribulations as necessary. This poses an interesting clash with rigid determinism and the absence of free will, which I will not go into.

Section 2

" 'Why do many reversals of fortune happen to good men?' Nothing bad can happen to a good man: opposites do not mix." Again with this.

"... Adversity's onslaughts are powerless to affect the spirit of a brave man... all adversity he regards as a training exercise." There is an important distinction to be made here, and perhaps I am not sticking to the Stoic party line. Some bad things are 'adverse', and some bad things are 'senseless'. By that I mean that many bad things build character. A poor grade on a test strengthens a student's resolve (hopefully) to do better, and teaches him the value of effort. But not all bad things build character. If a drunk driver hits you and kills your wife, I would be interesting in hearing how that builds your character. I submit that it does not, except in extreme cases. Thus, there are bad things which do not produce any good.

Seneca now goes into a long discussion of why adversity improves character. I think this requires no argument - I completely agree. The question at hand is why it happens, not why it might be justified.

Section 3

More on 'no bad thing can happen to a good man'.

" 'Is it to our benefit', you ask, 'to be thrown into exile, to be reduced to poverty, to follow the funeral procession... to be broken in health?' If you are surprised that these things are of benefit to a man, you will be surprised that surgery and cautery... and abstinence from food and drink, sometimes make sick men whole." BS. Cutting a man with a knife does sometimes make sick men whole, but most of the time it hurts and degrades one's health. Abstinence from food and drink leads to death if taken in excess - it only improves health if the man was fat to start with. So it is with adversity. Throwing one into exile can certainly bring about soul-searching which would reinforce virtue, but even then the adversity is only the indirect cause. You might try to make a case that exile/poverty/hunger removes the distracting effects of immoral people/wealth/excess, but a truly 'good' person wouldn't be susceptible to those distractions. In modern terms, a truly 'good' person doesn't need exile to avoid becoming bad - he is already good!

"Nothing... seems to me more unhappy than the man who has no experience of adversity." Couldn't agree more!

Seneca lists several famous Romans who were unhappy because of excess or happy because of privation.

"The human race has surely not become so subject to vice that there is any doubt that more men would prefer to be born a Regulus than a Maecenas, if fate permitted them a choice." That is, Seneca believe most men would prefer to be born poor than rich if they could choose. Very few modern people choose to live below their means, so Seneca would be disappointed in us. In any case, the underlying argument is that living well makes one less likely to be 'good'. I venture that this is a product of human psychology, not of logic. I imagine an expensive and thorough study could identify whether people born into well-off families are more or less likely to exhibit a few carefully selected virtuous traits, but I don't know of any such study.

Section 4

"... [O]nly a great man is able to triumph over the disasters and terrors afflicting mortal life." This raises an interesting question. Can non-great men be good? Stoics included courage in their virtues, so maybe this wasn't a problem for them. But modern morality has little, on the surface, to do with the ability to overcome adversity. I can fulfill all of God's commandments (as many as are possible, anyway) while being a complete coward. If my life is easy and my faith untested, nothing in the morality construct itself makes my 'good' life any less 'good'. Extending this further - is there a minimum amount a person must be tested to confirm they are 'good'? That would be a window into God's own playbook, and I don't think Seneca meant to go that far.

"Why does God afflict the best men with bad health, or grief, or other misfortunes? Because in the army, the bravest men are ordered to carry out dangerous missions." This implies God has a fixed amount of adversity to hand out, and thus selects people up to the task. This removes God's absolute power and, frankly, seems ridiculous. "Hmm, another year. How to divvy up three million cases of infant death?"

"God has judged us worthy instruments of his purpose to ascertain how much human nature can bear." God is omnipotent - any power capable of endowing humanity certainly knows its limits.

In the rest of this section, Seneca makes the case that God is only testing us by submitting us to hardship. As in the previous case, I think an omnipotent power already knows to what depths our faith goes. In any event, Stoicism is deterministic - what you do is already ordained, so why examine? In a non-deterministic world this idea is more valid, but still implies a God with partial knowledge.

Section 5

"Take into account the further fact that it is to everyone's benefit that all the best men become soldiers, so to speak." See above. Adversity is not synonymous with development.

"... [I]t will appear that there are goods, if these are granted only to good men, and that there are evils, if these penalize only bad men." I think these is one of the more-thought provoking parts of this essay. As you might have guessed from above, I hold that people are in a large part 'determined' by the rules (though we may not know them) of psychology. Yet the universe could still be changed to provide different inputs to those rules. Seneca uses the example of blindness - if it only afflicted good people, would it be desirable? Probably. I'm having trouble coming up with a more applicable example, but I think there's something to this argument. There remains those unquestionable 'bad' events, however - losing a family member, for instance. In the end, however, this brings up another problem. If a person's moral character could be ascertained from what happens to them, how would faith and free will be changed? And if a higher power necessarily sprinkled in random occurrences of the good and bad events to 'throw us off the trail', then we've simply returned to the original question.

Seneca spends a couple paragraphs expounding a very Stoic principle, that none of this life was ours to start with and the loss of any one part is merely a reduction in what was given to us. Agreed.

" 'But why was God so unjust in allotting fate that he assigned poverty and wounds and cruel deaths to good men?' The creator cannot alter matter: this is the law to which it has been submitted." Seneca means that some people have a character which naturally begets adversity - ridiculous, in my opinion. Taken another way, however, one might think that Seneca was saying that God has to play by his own rules. The universe was made and operates according to rules. The bacteria that infects and kills you does so by the same physics that every other organism uses. This half-answers the question of why bad things happen to good people, but it also somewhat kicks the can down the road. Partially because God could have changed the rules at the beginning, and partially because every religion holds that miracles happen(ed). Since the rules can always be changed, why weren't they changed to prevent the bad thing from happening to you? Back to the original question. Besides, a hands-off determinism is so impersonal, don't you think?

Section 6

"Why, then, are you surprised that God allows the good man to experience something that the man sometimes chooses for himself? ... They are killed: why not, as sometimes they choose to take their own lives?" So, because some choose to commit suicide (which I don't feel makes you a bad person), the rest of the good people are now opened to having it forced upon them? What about before the first suicide - were good people immortal? No good people (for this would make you bad) give children cancer, so why does that happen? Et cetera.

"This is where you may surpass God: he is beyond the endurance of evil, you triumph over it." Nice quote.

Seneca closes with a couple paragraph on how death is much quicker than birth, and thus you should not fear it. Agreed, for the most part. Though this does nothing to further the argument.

Conclusion

I don't think Seneca answered the question. Not even an answer that I could disagree with, just no answer. He makes many arguments about why bad things can be beneficial (half-agreed) and why bad things should be beneficial (agreed with some exceptions). But no coherent explanation of why.

So why can bad things be allowed to happen to good people?

1.  Everything that happens is random. I don't think this is true - we may not understand all the rules, but we know there are rules. It is logical that more rules, however many and indecipherable they are, will explain everything else.

2.  Everything that happens is pre-determined. So God could not change the rules to eliminate this question? Of course not, so the rules must have been put in place with this dilemma already known. Could there be some necessary reason for bad things to happen to good people? We'll go into that in a second. And all religions believe God can break the rules at will anyway, so this can't be so.

3.  God simply doesn't care what happens. Nonsensical.

4.  God wants to test us. Doesn't he already know our resolve and our faith? A truly all-powerful presence could. This sort option is amply demonstrated by the biblical story of Job, a story which theologians still disagree on whether it is factual or fable. I don't think this is the case, though perhaps it is the second-most likely option.

5.  God is building us up through adversity. As I wrote above, too many 'bad' things have no positive effect that I can't believe this is true.

6.  My final explanation, and the one that I believe, comes from a book I once read by Rabbi Waldman. I call it the Settling Account explanation. No good person is entirely good, and no bad person is entirely bad. When a good thing befalls a bad person, it is simply God saying, "There, that's for the few good things you did - now I don't owe you a thing." Likewise, God might be saying to a good person, "Alright, sorry, but now you've atoned for the few bad things you've done."

Stoic Ontology

Ah, back to Stoicism! I have only read the first few chapters, but it is as refreshing as I imagined.

The philosophical curriculum - Stoicism is divided into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. Most Stoics put them in that order of precedence, not necessarily in the order of importance, but rather in the recommended course of study. I disagree somewhat with the order of the last two, but logic at the fore is indisputable. The many subsets of philosophy fit in to one or more of those departments. I took issue with Seneca referring to philosophy as the only 'pure' undertaking; he labelled mathematics as requiring hypotheses. I disagree - I would call them both pure, though mathematics could be seen as the purest form of physical or natural philosophy. Finally, I was very confused with Stobaeus' remarks on the value of 'pursuits', or intellectual activities and values that are not virtue. These include literature and music, which he claims are valuable assets of the Stoic sage. I am not sure how or why they are valued as such.

Existence - Everything subsists. That is, anything which is 'something' can be said to 'be'. However, not everything exists. Only corporeals exist. This is important, because Stoics separated the spectrum of everything (something) into incorporeals, body, and neither. There are only four incorporeals, but I would include many more if I was rewriting this section. I will wait to see how the Stoics develop their argument, though.

The Consolation of Philosophy IV

I don't think I found one iota of useful discourse in this chapter. The main argument is that while it may seem that good people sometimes experience hardship, and bad people sometimes profit, that really this doesn't happen. The good are also truly powerful, and the bad are truly powerless.

To make these conclusions Boethius has to carefully define many terms and concepts, sometimes redefining what he spoke of in previous chapters. Happiness is still the unity of independence, power, fame, glory, and pleasure. Pursuit of that happiness is divine and truly good. Good people, in making advances towards happiness, are powerful and bad people are powerless as they do not advance towards happiness. This is a conclusion of his - I don't follow. It also appears Boethius defines good and evil as a dichotomy; a person is either good, or bad. Nowhere does he mention how he separates people, and nowhere does he even pay lip service to the idea of a graduated scale of good and evil.

Most of the latter half of the chapter concerns how God administers the universe, and why we (incorrectly) perceive injustice. I found the argument to be shallow and poorly evidenced, even considering the early state of the Christian religion at the time. Descartes and Spinoza had much better theological arguments, and Seneca had a much clearer discussion of why good things happen to bad people.

Ancient Geology

The last of Seneca's Dialogues and Essays was On Earthquakes, Book 6 of his Natural Questions. I will add that I am interested in reading the remainder of this large work on the natural sciences. It is true that most of his actual scientific theory is sadly outdated. I am sure that with the information available to him the book was once a valuable resource, but it is now interesting only as a relic of ancient thinking. His causes of earthquakes include large underground caverns of water, fire, and (his personal belief) the agitation of air trapped within the Earth; how the air becomes agitated, I do not know. It is somewhat disheartening to realize just how stunted natural science was in those days, but I suppose that means little to Seneca's other successes. This work, even, is sprinkled with valuable philosophical afterthoughts that tie the science into knowledge useful for all educated people.

One of the more curious things I found in the reading was this: "The reward will be to know Nature, and no prize is greater than this. The subject has numerous features which will prove useful, but the perusal of this material contains nothing more beautiful in itself than that by means of its own splendor it engages the minds of men and is cultivated, not for the sake of profit, but for the wonder it excites."


I wish I more clearly understood Seneca's meaning here. It seems to me he is saying that knowledge of this subject is valuable only in itself, not for the purpose which the knowledge serves. On the surface, this begs the question: is knowledge valuable for itself? I certainly believe it is. Knowledge is good because it is knowledge, not as a means to an end. Much like virtue is desirable only for itself. Though this does raise another issue - knowledge itself is not a virtue, and as a Stoic I recognize that virtue is the highest and most desirable possession. What place, then, does knowledge have? Is it only a means to an end, a means to achieve virtue? Delving more deeply into Seneca's statement, why is knowledge not valuable as a means to an end? Greater understanding of earthquakes has allowed modern man to minimize the danger to human life, better design buildings and possessions to withstand damage, and alter human development to avoid threat to the previous two categories. However, Seneca's particularly ambivalent attitude towards human life and possessions would make him disdainful of effort spent protecting ourselves from earthquakes. Is Seneca truly that prescient that he realized pursuit of natural science would not benefit a true Stoic? Or does he just fail to realize how incorrect he was pinpointing the causes of earthquakes? A more thorough reading of the rest of Natural Questions might resolve this series of questions. 

Seneca's Mercy

Today's reading from Seneca's Dialogues and Essays was On Mercy, an essay addressed to Emperor Nero. Must have been somewhat nerve-wracking, writing something to Nero, even considering Seneca's privileged position. It reminded me of the prefaces Renaissance writers put before their works. The general tone of On Mercy was a sort of blend of Aristotle and Machiavelli. Seneca extols the benefits of ruling mercifully, both intrinsic and not. He defends his position by examining virtue and necessarily how mercy, as a virtue, differs from vices such as cruelty.

Most of the essay doesn't provoke much thought on a philosophical level. The majority of the argument would be better identified as political theory, though I suppose that could be placed within the purview of philosophy. I agree that mercy is a beneficial quality in a leader, but to what extent I suppose I don't quite know. Seneca quotes an example of Emperor Augustus pardoning a young man who attempted to take the Emperor's life - I am not sure I would be so merciful. Mercy is certainly valuable insofar as the punishment must suit the crime, but it is surely difficult to guage the applicability of a punishment to different situations. Furthermore, can it be said that the degree to which mercy is valuable has changed in the past two millenia? Does the presence of social media, multiple independently-strong religions, widespread education, and the proliferation of powerful weapons change how mercy may be applied? Did the value of mercy change between when Seneca analyzed it and when Machiavelli did? If not, which of the two is correct; both have persuasive arguments.

I did agree with Seneca that mercy is surely different from pity. Pity is a vice; to pardon someone is an act of weakness. I should note that Seneca's definition of pardon, and now mine as well, is to fail to punish someone who deserves punishment. This is different from mercy, which is merely the altering of a punishment. I cede that in many cases, the merciful act and a pardon amount to the same thing. Cruelty is, in the Aristotelian tradition, the opposite extreme and thus a vice as well.

I found particularly interesting Seneca's two arguments against cruelty on the basis of signalling. For one, a large number of convicted or punished criminals allows them to see one another. If they true number of criminals was known to each of them, and they were allowed to mingle according to their own desires, then something tantamount to organized crime would result. In the same vein, a large number of criminals conveys something negative about the Emperor's ability to lead effectively. A small number of acknowledge criminals, however, indicates a successful and prosperous state. Stalin and Zedong must have read this essay.

My new nonfiction book is Under the Care of the Fatherly Leader. It's a long exploration of the lives of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. I was more or less pushed towards this book by obvious recent events. Seneca's essay had particular gravity in relation to what I have read so far in this book. So far I have only read the first three chapters - I am roughly up to Kim Il-Sung's late twenties. His childhood in rural Korea and China is remarkably similar to that described in a book on China's Cultural Revolution I read in college. Wish I could remember the name of that one. So far I find in myself mixed feelings for Kim. Unlike his son and grandson, he labored for his country and fought for Korean independence. Patriotism like that certainly deserves my respect. On the other hand he was a Marxist. One of these days I'll get around to reading that rubbish; as Sun Tzu says, 'Know thine enemy'.

On The Shortness Of Life

This chapter of Seneca's Dialogues and Essay's is a must-read. Any Stoic would find much to interest himself in these pages, and I am sure I will return to them often. The essay is a letter to a friend of Seneca's exhorting him to use his time wisely. Seneca wants the letter's recipient to engage himself in worthwhile occupation - I found the argument compelling.

The beginning of the letter is mainly that time is valuable. It is truly the most valuable commodity of all, being the only one that cannot be acquired. We have a fixed reserve of this resource, though we don't know when it will end. Seneca takes a unique viewpoint, one which I agree with, that time given to others is more or less wasted. I would not describe all time spent this way, such as time spent with one's family, but certainly time spent responding to the demands of others is time wasted. In this way, he makes the claim that an old man may just be a man who has existed for a long time, rather than lived for a long time. Certainly this outlook has important ramifications for personal ethics. However, later in the letter, Seneca writes "For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now bring him? All are known, or have been tasted to the full." This seems to place value on new experiences. I am not yet sure of how this can be reconciled with taking control of one's own time. In my view, many experiences are simply surrendering yourself to others, so that you may see something new. Travel is much like this - surrendering yourself to a new culture in order to broaden your outlook. That is not the same as living every second on your own terms.

In discussing the past, present, and future Seneca tells the reader to take control of all three. Utilize the past and present to shape the future. Only a detailed and honest reflection on the past will allow growth and development for the future. This is quite Stoic, in my opinion. Towards the end of the letter Seneca praises philosophy as the only way to harness the intellectual power of past ages in order to increase the potency of the present. I could write a whole post on only the few paragraphs Seneca writes on this subject, and perhaps someday I will.

The Tranquility of Mind

Seneca's dialogue with Serenus, more of an essay than a dialogue, is essentially comprised of the many tenets of Stoic morals and virtues. Seneca explains to Serenus how to maintain a tranquil mind, and in doing so runs down the 13 or so high points of Stoic doctrine.

One of the newer points was doing whatever you can to be productive and helpful. I suppose this could be inferred from more established Stoic literature, but I liked the particular exhortations on the subject of Seneca to Serenus. Essentially, one should always do what they can, regardless of the hand they are dealt. If only everyone would act in this way. I think you would see many more volunteers, at least.

A few pages later, Seneca reemphasizes that adversity grows character, indeed it is essential to our well-being. We should be thankful that habit allows us to become accustomed to adversity, allowing us to withstand it. I am not sure this is always a good thing. The way Seneca writes, it seems he had in mind perhaps a slave, who gradually becomes used to his restraints and becomes more productive and receptive of orders. However, habit could also be used maliciously. Complacency is certainly a negative possession of the mind, and allows a man to become inured to offenses against him. Habit, while it can be good, also allows man to grow weary of fighting for virtue; not all right action and judgement can be instilled once in the form of a virtue and forgotten about. Much must be fought for continuously; complacency forces some men into accepting bad as good.

Towards the end, Seneca writes that man should not always look to advance his station, but is justified in turning to entertainment at times. There is certainly an argument to be made that entertainment refreshes the mind and allows it to replenish itself. Seneca goes so far as to advocate drinking (alcohol) as a means of refreshing ourselves. I was rather shocked to see his argument progress this far, but I can't say I agree with even the beginning. For if we are in search of the Stoic sage, the perfectly wise and just man, then I doubt we would be right in holding up a weak man as our ideal. For that is what I consider entertainment to be - the indulgence of a weakness. I should qualify my position by saying I am consider television and video games as 'entertainment' as Seneca is referring to; not, for example, the ballet or the orchestra. If advancing yourself for half of the day is good, how is advancing yourself for the entire day not infinitely better?

On a meta-note: if you are a real person and not a bot, please comment or at least drop me a message. I should think a critical reading of philosophy would be much easier and more productive with another person to converse with.

On Anger

I managed to complete the second of Seneca's Dialogues and Essays before noon. The excerpt I have, Book 3 of his letter to Novatus (of how many books, I do not know) was fairly unorganized. Broadly, Seneca first addresses what to do when you are angry (wait, essentially), then how to avoid becoming angry, and finally how to calm down other angry people. The second of those three is by far the bulk of the section, in classic Stoic form. Much of the writing is in the form of references to historical accounts, accompanied by exhortations of the reader to live Stoically. I enjoyed the reading and expect to return to the passage in the future. Due to the chaotic nature of the letter, I'll address parts of it by section.

5 - In Aristotelian fashion, Seneca examines the nature of anger relative to other undesirable emotions. Anger is the worst of all the emotions, of course. It is the only one, in Seneca's opinion, which seizes a man and acts immediately. Moreover, unlike malice or envy, which desire a passive change in the situation, anger calls for an active change. I liked this viewpoint. It outdoes malice and envy, for those wish a man to become unfortunate, anger wishes to make him so.

7 - I was surprised to see a seemingly reversed evaluation of anger's value. Defeat will drive a man of spirit to anger, but induce sadness in one whose nature is sluggish and passive. This seems to me like Seneca looks upon anger as a sometimes-valuable emotion, when it spurs us to overcome failure or setbacks. It also makes it seem that anger is preferable to sadness, at least sometimes. This contradicts the tone of the letter and I am not sure whether this comes from the translation or not.

10 - Not all men are wounded in the same place; and so you ought to know what part of you is weak, so you can give it the most protection.

15 - Do you ask what path leads to liberty? Any vein you please in your body. This is second of Seneca's two passages that look favorably upon suicide. I don't know if that is a Roman influence or a Stoic influence. I wonder why suicide has become so reprehensible to us today. I don't claim to be a theologist, but I do not know where religion's animosity to suicide comes from. 

26 - No good quotation sums up this chapter. Seneca argues that we should not be bothered by the intentions or judgement of those who have wronged us. I thought on this for a little while and at least for now I agree with him. We do not become angry with dogs or mules, for they lack judgement and act on instinct. But how much less can many people be said to act on instinct, in defiance of judgement? Perhaps even more existentialist, how much less can I be said to act on instinct and in defiance of judgement? Returning to practical ethics, I think this is a valuable idea to keep before me. Those who irritate me during the day are more than likely not doing so intentionally, but rather from a lack of education or right morals. And how much more can I blame them than a dog or an ass?

30 - On what humans are angered by. Also quite a prescient section. He examines how people are often disappointed by the relative value of what they got. But who can say I got less than I deserved, or if I deserved less than I got? I should think this runs quite well with Epictetus examination of why we should not be angry if we are not invited to dinner - for we have not paid the price of spending time with the host. It is, I do admit, overwhelmingly difficult to examine every interaction with others objectively, rather than subjectively.

41 - Let us grant to our soul that peace which will be provided by constant study of beneficial instruction, by noble actions, and a mind fixed on desire only for what is honorable.

Why do good things happen to bad people?

The first of Seneca's Dialogues and Essays was 'On Providence'. He is writing to a friend about why good things happen to bad men, and vice-versa.

I expected the quite Stoic approach to it, but I still found the argument more persuasive and well-conceived that I envsioned. Indeed, that's why I bought the book. The overriding viewpoint is that good events are not something to be desired. Much in the same way as we fatten animals to get more meat from them, a life of leisure is a detriment to us. A life of toil and labor hardens us, and prepares us for further hurdles.

But the writing left me with many questions. For one, Seneca seems to refer to an afterlife. He includes death as a hurdle men can overcome - but if death prepares us to better encounter something else, what else can that be? I am not very familiar with what Seneca's beliefs on the afterlife should be. Second, I wonder what he would say to advantages which can be given to a person, clearly of the positive variety, which do make a person stronger. I immediately think of having read that over the past hundred years or so, adults in developed countries have increased their average height considerably due to better nutrition and a more plentiful and steady food supply. Clearly this is a luxury, having such a well-developed food delivery network at our disposal, but it makes a person stronger and better able to conquer later challenges. I hope this point comes up in a later argument. Finally, Seneca is somewhat vague on how the universe is ordered. Stoics believed that there was a Deity who ordered the world, acting through Nature (much like Intelligent Design theory). In the beginning of Seneca's argument, men seem to be exposed to good or bad fortune as they are out of or in God's favor. This makes it seem like a conscious sorting on God's part, or assigning good and bad fortune to men based on their inherent qualities. Later on, it seems that God only chooses some of the things that happen to us, in order to 'prepare' us for those events that may occur later on, unforeseeable to us. And towards the end, it could be said that Seneca's writing indicates nothing at all is consciously chosen for us, merely that the universe tends to right itself. Perhaps a more cautious rereading later would answer these questions.

The very last part of the essay included a few potent observations on death. Speaking from God's perspective, "Above all I have taken care that no one may detain you against your will; the way out lies open: if you do not wish to fight, you may run away. That is why, out of all the things I judged necessary for you, I have made nothing easier than dying." How prescient! Life truly is like a game, some of us winning and others sitting and doing little. But in the end, losing the game, or rather ending it, is the simplest course of action. And as for abhorring our own death, Seneca advises us to be ashamed of being apprehensive of so short an event. A simple line, but powerful in reflection.