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Legacy[modifier | modifier le code]
As a proto-Christian saint[modifier | modifier le code]
Seneca's writings were well known in the later Roman period, and Quintilian, writing thirty years after Seneca's death, remarked on the popularity of his works amongst the youth.[1] While he found much to admire, Quintillian criticised Seneca for what he regarded as a degenerate literary style—a criticism echoed by Aulus Gellius in the middle of the 2nd century.[1]
The early Christian Church was very favorably disposed towards Seneca and his writings, and the church leader Tertullian possessively referred to him as "our Seneca".[2] By the 4th century an apocryphal correspondence with Paul the Apostle had been created linking Seneca into the Christian tradition.[3] The letters are mentioned by Jerome who also included Seneca among a list of Christian writers, and Seneca is similarly mentioned by Augustine.[3] In the 6th century Martin of Braga synthesised Seneca's thought into a couple of treatises that became popular in their own right.[4] Otherwise, Seneca was mainly known through a large number of quotes and extracts in the florilegia, which were popular throughout the medieval period.[4] When his writings were read in the later Middle Ages, it was mostly his Letters to Lucilius—the longer essays and plays being relatively unknown.[5]
Medieval writers and works continued to link him to Christianity because of his alleged association with Paul.[6] The Golden Legend, a 13th-century hagiographical account of famous saints that was widely read, included an account of Seneca's death scene, and erroneously presented Nero as a witness to Seneca's suicide.[6] Dante placed Seneca (alongside Cicero) among the "great spirits" in the First Circle of Hell, or Limbo.[7] Boccaccio, who in 1370 came across the works of Tacitus whilst browsing the library at Montecassino, wrote an account of Seneca's suicide hinting that it was a kind of disguised baptism, or a de facto baptism in spirit.[8] Some, such as Albertino Mussato and Giovanni Colonna, went even further and concluded that Seneca must have been a Christian convert.[9]
An improving reputation[modifier | modifier le code]
Seneca remains one of the few popular Roman philosophers from the period. He appears not only in Dante, but also in Chaucer and to a large degree in Petrarch, who adopted his style in his own essays and who quotes him more than any other authority except Virgil. In the Renaissance, printed editions and translations of his works became common, including an edition by Erasmus and a commentary by John Calvin.[10] John of Salisbury, Erasmus and others celebrated his works. French essayist Montaigne, who gave a spirited defense of Seneca and Plutarch in his Essays, was himself considered by Pasquier a "French Seneca".[11] Similarly, Thomas Fuller praised Joseph Hall as "our English Seneca". Many who considered his ideas not particularly original, still argued that he was important in making the Greek philosophers presentable and intelligible.[12] His suicide has also been a popular subject in art, from Jacques-Louis David's 1773 painting The Death of Seneca to the 1951 film Quo Vadis.
Even with the admiration of an earlier group of intellectual stalwarts, Seneca has never been without his detractors. In his own time, he was accused of hypocrisy or, at least, a less than "Stoic" lifestyle. While banished to Corsica, he wrote a plea for restoration rather incompatible with his advocacy of a simple life and the acceptance of fate. In his Apocolocyntosis he ridiculed the behaviors and policies of Claudius, and flattered Nero—such as proclaiming that Nero would live longer and be wiser than the legendary Nestor. The claims of Publius Suillius Rufus that Seneca acquired some "three hundred million sesterces" through Nero's favor, are highly partisan, but they reflect the reality that Seneca was both powerful and wealthy.[13] Robin Campbell, a translator of Seneca's letters, writes that the "stock criticism of Seneca right down the centuries [has been]...the apparent contrast between his philosophical teachings and his practice."[13]
In 1562 Gerolamo Cardano wrote an apology praising Nero in his Encomium Neronis, printed in Basel.[14] This was likely intended as a mock encomium, inverting the portrayal of Nero and Seneca that appears in Tacitus.[15] In this work Cardano portrayed Seneca as a crook of the worst kind, an empty rhetorician who was only thinking to grab money and power, after having poisoned the mind of the young emperor. Cardano stated that Seneca well deserved death.
Among the historians who have sought to reappraise Seneca is the scholar Anna Lydia Motto who in 1966 argued that the negative image has been based almost entirely on Suillius's account, while many others who might have lauded him have been lost.[16]
"We are therefore left with no contemporary record of Seneca's life, save for the desperate opinion of Publius Suillius. Think of the barren image we should have of Socrates, had the works of Plato and Xenophon not come down to us and were we wholly dependent upon Aristophanes' description of this Athenian philosopher. To be sure, we should have a highly distorted, misconstrued view. Such is the view left to us of Seneca, if we were to rely upon Suillius alone."[17]
More recent work is changing the dominant perception of Seneca as a mere conduit for pre-existing ideas showing originality in Seneca's contribution to the history of ideas. Examination of Seneca's life and thought in relation to contemporary education and to the psychology of emotions is revealing the relevance of his thought. For example, Martha Nussbaum in her discussion of desire and emotion includes Seneca among the Stoics who offered important insights and perspectives on emotions and their role in our lives.[18] Specifically devoting a chapter to his treatment of anger and its management, she shows Seneca's appreciation of the damaging role of uncontrolled anger, and its pathological connections. Nussbaum later extended her examination to Seneca's contribution to political philosophy[19] showing considerable subtlety and richness in his thoughts about politics, education, and notions of global citizenship—and finding a basis for reform-minded education in Seneca's ideas she used to propose a mode of modern education that avoids both narrow traditionalism and total rejection of tradition. Elsewhere Seneca has been noted as the first great Western thinker on the complex nature and role of gratitude in human relationships.[20]
- Laarmann 2013, p. 54 citing Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, x.1.126f; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xii. 2.
- Moses Hadas. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, 1958. 1.
- Laarmann 2013, p. 54
- Laarmann 2013, p. 55
- Wilson 2014, p. 218
- Wilson 2014, p. 219
- Ker 2009, p. 197 citing Dante, Inf., 4.141
- Ker 2009, p. 221–22
- Laarmann 2013, p. 59
- Richard Mott Gummere, Seneca the philosopher, and his modern message, p. 97.
- Gummere, Seneca the philosopher, and his modern message, p. 106.
- Moses Hadas. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, 1958. 3.
- Campbell 1969, p. 11
- Available in English as Girolamo Cardano, Nero: an Exemplary Life Inkstone, 2012
- (en) Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning, University of Michigan Press, , 157–58 p.
- Lydia Motto, Anna Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic The Classic Journal, Vol. 61, No. 6 (1966) pp. 254–58
- Lydia Motto, Anna Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic The Classic Journal, Vol. 61, No. 6 (1966) p. 257
- Nussbaum, M. (1996). The Therapy of Desire. Princeton University Press
- Nussbaum, M. (1999). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Harvard University Press
- Harpham, E. (2004). Gratitude in the History of Ideas, 19–37 in M. A. Emmons and M. E. McCulloch, editors, The Psychology of Gratitude, Oxford University Press.