The Emotional Intelligence of Epicureans
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The Emotional Intelligence of Epicureans: Doctrinalism and Adaptation in Seneca’s Epistles Seneca’s frequent and often appreciative references to Epicureanism have proved baffling even to so confident an interpreter of classical antiquity as Pierluigi Donini. In the context of a wide-ranging historical analysis which I have long admired, Donini remarks on how exceptional it was for any major thinker of the Hellenistic period to be influenced by Epicurus; Seneca, he says, was “a completely peculiar and isolated instance.”1 In the continuation of his essay, Donini effectively demolishes the old model of the history of ancient philosophy constructed by Eduard Zeller and Karl Praechter, according to which Seneca and several other authors of the early Roman empire were seen as “eclectic” philosophers who accepted elements of competing systems—Stoic, Epicurean, or Platonist—with little regard for the coherence of the result. Even Seneca, Donini insists, cannot be assimilated to that model. “In my judgment,” he writes, “there is either no eclecticism in Seneca or there is a hint of a further widening of the meaning of the term.”2 Vigorous research over the last several decades has done much to increase our awareness of Seneca’s real intellectual integrity; few today would wish to speak of him as an “eclectic” philosopher.3 Yet the historical puzzle presented by Epicurus’ sizeable 1 Donini 2011: 204. (The essay was first published in 1988.) 2 Donini 2011: 209. 3 Seneca’s orthodoxy on the main outlines of Stoic doctrine was established in Rist 1980; the argument has been extended in Cooper 2004; Inwood 2005; Wildberger 2006; Graver 2007: 125-32. The works collected in Damschen and Heil, eds. 2014 offer comprehensive guidance to the issues with further bibliography. 2 role in the Epistulae morales is still with us. Some partial solutions have been suggested,4 but none that does justice to the full depth and complexity of the problem, or that respects the firmness of Seneca’s convictions and the fineness of his intellect. For the fact is that Seneca’s response to Epicurus in this, his longest and most elaborate work, operates on several different levels at once. It is an interestingly layered reaction, and its multiple layers, like geological strata, sometimes tend in opposite directions. To resolve the apparent contradictions in his attitude, one has to keep in mind that Epicureanism as known to first century CE Romans was much more than a set of philosophical doctrines. It was also a certain manner of living, the abstemious personal habits and communal lifestyle of the school in Athens in the third century; moreover, it represented a certain way of viewing philosophy itself, as a means to tranquility and an activity more important than public service; and, further, a certain method of teaching philosophy, through brief, authoritative pronouncements with injunction to reflect daily upon their application. Insofar as these aspects of Epicurean thought and practice are conceptually independent of one another, they might evoke quite different reactions in a single thoughtful observer. This, I mean to argue, is what we find in the Epistulae morales. Seneca’s fundamental objections to Epicurus’ hedonist system of ethics did not preclude his finding other elements of Epicureanism that he could accept and even embrace. Not only the personal habits of early Epicureans, but also some features of the school’s educational method and even some of its characteristic claims could be absorbed into his way of thinking without detriment to his Stoic adherence. In particular, Seneca appears to have been attracted by a number of Epicurean assertions having to do with the inner life of the human being. These include claims 4 Works dealing specifically with the issue include Mutschmann 1915, Schottländer 1955, Motto and Clark 1968, andré 1970, Inwood 2007c; and see Setaioli 1988: 172-248; Mazzoli 1989: 1872-3. a list of references may be found in Ferguson 1990: 2280-2. 3 about the efficacy of certain therapeutic arguments and techniques, the claim of KD 4 that corporeal pain is always either mild or short, the assertion of KD 34 and 35 that malefactors are tormented by anxiety, and several others. I argue here that Seneca understands this series of statements not as normative claims at the level of doctrine but as mere descriptions of typical human reactions. He therefore considers himself justified in drawing upon them as a repository of cultural wisdom concerning the characteristics of the psyche. Indeed, insofar as he concedes that the reactions Epicurus describes do actually occur, he feels himself required to resolve any appearance of conflict with Stoic psychology, just as any philosopher must do all he can to make sure that his theory accords with the phenomena of human existence. He therefore makes an effort to integrate the Epicurean observations into his own system, supplying alternative explanations for them as needed. In this regard—but only in this regard—Epicureanism becomes for Seneca a legitimate realm of philosophical discovery and an opportunity for philosophical creativity. Epicurean Doctrine in the Letters In contrast to some of Seneca’s earlier works, notably the De uita beata and De beneficiis, the Epistulae morales make little effort to argue against the central theses of Epicurean ethics. Seneca does not contend here, as he did in those works, that Epicurus is wrong to treat pleasure as the goal of all rational behavior and that virtuous conduct ought not to be regarded merely as a means to attain a pleasurable life. Only as concerns the ultimate basis of friendship, a topic not treated in the earlier works, does he present specific argumentation against an Epicurean position. On this point, however, his objections are clearly and vigorously expressed, and the complaint is laid out right away in Ep. 9, which dominates the initial phase of the correspondence both in length and in intellectual substance. Thereafter his objections are again muted as concerns Epicurean hedonism itself. That his position on that issue remains hostile appears 4 mainly in scattered remarks that seem to presuppose knowledge of his earlier views. In Ep. 33.2, for instance, he takes it for granted that most readers would consider Epicurus to have “professed effeminacy” (mollitiam professo) just as he himself had remarked in Ben. 4.2.4 and Constant. 14.5; in Ep. 48.2, if he were consulting his own interests alone he would be “talking like an Epicurean” (tamquam Epicureus loquor); in 88.5, the Epicurean typically “praises civic repose while living amid songs and parties” (laudantem statum quietae ciuitatis et inter conuiuia cantusque uitam exigentis; cf. Ben. 4.2.1). At 90.35 it must be Epicurean philosophy that “situates the citizen outside his community and the gods outside the world, making virtue the instrument of pleasure” (quae ciuem extra patriam posuit, extra mundum deos, quae uirtutem donauit uoluptati) for this is essentially the summary of Epicurean doctrine Seneca had recently given in Ben. 4.2 and 4.19. a more oblique form of criticism is implied in several passages in which a point of agreement between Stoics and Epicureans is treated as an a fortiori argument for the rightness of the Stoic view. In these it is repeatedly assumed that the view of Epicurus is less likely to be correct than that of the Stoic school; if even he upholds a particular claim, then the same claim is yet more defensible when asserted by Stoics. Concerning pain, for instance, he twice reuses an argument he had put forward in Constant. 16, to the effect that when one remembers Epicurus’ famous deathbed letter, the Stoic view that pain cannot impair the blessedness of the wise ceases to strain credulity. The structure of the argument is made especially clear in Ep. 92: Incredibilia nobis haec uidentur et supra humanam naturam excurrentia; maiestatem enim eius ex nostra inbecillitate metimur et uitiis nostris nomen uirtutis inponimus. Quid porro? non aeque incredibile uidetur aliquem in summis cruciatibus positum dicere ‘beatus sum’? Atqui haec uox in ipsa officina uoluptatis audita est. ‘Beatissimum’ inquit ‘hunc et ultimum diem ago’ Epicurus, cum illum hinc urinae difficultas torqueret, hinc 5 insanabilis exulcerati dolor uentris. Quare ergo incredibilia ista sint apud eos qui uirtutem colunt, cum apud eos quoque reperiantur apud quos uoluptas imperauit? We find these things incredible and beyond human nature. That is because we measure virtue’s grandeur by our own weakness and confer its name on our own failings. But wait—don’t we find it equally incredible that someone undergoing extreme torment should say “I am happy”? Yet those words have been heard within the very workshop of pleasure. “This final day of my life is the happiest,” said Epicurus, when he was experiencing the double torture of urinary blockage and an incurable ulcer of the stomach. Why, then, is such an attitude incredible in the case of those who cultivate virtue, seeing that it is also found in those who follow pleasure’s commands?5 a similar argument in Ep. 66.45-6 gives occasion for Seneca to display some depth of knowledge concerning Epicurean ethics. Pushing a difficult Stoic case for the equality of all goods, he notes that Epicurus, too, is committed to the thesis, since Epicurus’ “highest and happiest good” (summum illud beatumque) consists in freedom from pain in the body and freedom from disturbance in the mind, and these conditions, once fulfilled, cannot be increased in degree any more than the Stoic goods can.6 None of this connotes positive approval of Epicurus’ views. Quite the contrary: Seneca’s point is 5 Ep. 92.25-26 (and compare 66.47-48). Note, however, that the principal targets of the polemic in Ep.