21 September 2010

Seneca Essay

http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_3.html#%E2%80%98XCVI1

The first letter I choose was On Facing Hardship, in this letter it mentions that with all the complaining about bad circumstances, there is really only one bad part of this whole equation which is you complaining. He mentions that affairs come by order and not by chance. In life you will have the ups and downs that’s apart of living. This attitude on facing hardships is similar in the dichotomy of control, you can’t control everything bad in your life, things are going to happen to you and you will just need to accept it. Focus on the things in life you can control with the help of setting goals.

http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_2.html

In the second letter I choose On the Diseases of the Soul, in this letter Seneca mentions there is a difference between the disease of the mind and its passions. The diseases are “harden and chronic vices, such as greed and ambition”, while passions are “objectionable impulses of the spirit, sudden and vehement.” With the diseases of the mind like greed and ambition can be an impulse from not letting go of incident in the past, for example whether you think someone has more than you. But with fatalism you have to let go of the past to be able to move on with the future. Only at that time will you be “undisturbed by fears, unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be neither afraid of death nor the Gods, it means not craving wickedness or excess; it means possessing supreme power over oneself.”

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