Was Seneca a Tyrant-Trainer?

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Lucius Anneus Seneca (4 b. c. – 65 a. d.) is one of the brightest representatives of the philosophical school of stoics. He interpreted problems of culture in quite different way that any of the philosophers of his time (Griffin, 1992).

Seneca was born in the family of a noble knight of Rome Empire. His father was a very dominating person, whose interests were dominance of the empire and of men. His father was a very ambitious, greedy and imperious person. He tried to be in charge of each sphere of life. Of course, education and upbringing in such conditions couldn’t but set a stamp on mind of young Seneca (besides, he was named after his father). Seneca Senior was fond of rhetoric and he tried to foster interest in it to his son (Griffin, 2000).

But young Seneca was fascinated by philosophy. At first, he wanted to become one of them. But father’s upbringing set a big stamp on his decisions. His father cultivated greediness, ambitiousness and lust for power. Those were the main reasons for Seneca to continue his learning of rhetoric and politics. But he did not give up philosophy too. His in-born bents were so great that were noticed at once and many people predicted him brilliant future. But his success was stopped for a while by a severe disease. The star of Seneca ascended some time afterwards, when he appeared at the court of the emperor Caligula. At first, the emperor was kind to him, but when Seneca’s rhetoric skills exceeded those of the emperor, the least ordered to kill him. But a lucky instance saved him from death. Court of the Senators protected him and death penalty was changed onto exile (Kamm, 1995).

Years of the exile became a period of development for Seneca. He critically thought over the main principles of philosophy of Zeno, Epicurus, Cicero, and many others. And in further he posed problems of the world and a person, a person and a society, an individual and the state in quite a different way.

In 48 a. d. Seneca returned from the exile because of wish of Agrippina, wife of the emperor Claudius. Then he became the tutor of their son – future emperor Nero (Shotter, 2005). And here the story begins. When upbringing Nero, Seneca from the point of view of the time solves a problem which was in the centre of attention of the Roman thinkers since Cicero in the new way — a problem of a civic duty of the individual and his parity with a duty to his family, relatives, at last, to himself. Seneca, feeling the deepest disappointment from the unsuccessful pedagogical experiment (the young man who was brought up by him became not an ideal governor as he hoped, but one of the most bloodthirsty one in the history of the ancient world of tyrants), came to the conclusion that the main duty of the person is not a duty to the state which degenerated in the monstrous organization where customs and laws had no significant value, and a life of any person – beginning from the handicraftsman and finishing with a senator – depended on desires of only one person who tasted blood and enjoyed tortures of his victims (Reinhardt, 2008). From Seneca’s point of view, performance of the duty to the state which is personified by a tyrant brings nothing, except alarms and riots (Cooper, 1995). The person, who regards such kind of state as the most important value in his life, loses possibility to look at his personality unbiased, to understand sense of the individual existence. Besides, performance of the duty by an individual who is the citizen of empire, instead of the citizen of republic, is pretty often accompanied by infringement of establishments of morals, and it means that in actions and acts of overwhelming majority of the people boasting of the civil virtues, morality and moral legitimization are absent (Cooper, 1995).

After his failure with Nero, Seneca though over the idea that the main task which each person faces consists not in living, but in living adequately, i.e. according to morals imperatives (Scullard, 1988).

Seneca based his ideas on the reason that only morals transform culture into supreme value. The way of achievement of these morals is in self-improvement of a person, in upbringing of indestructible fidelity to the developed principles of life, tolerance to losses, insensibility to external benefits and to the death which comes inevitably to each person, whether it is an emperor who rules destinies of millions or a representative of common people, hourly caring of daily bread (Braund, 2009).

It is not difficult to notice that the ideas of Seneca found their reflections in ideas of Kant, who many centuries later proclaimed that the final aim of the nature concerning mankind is culture, and the final aim of culture is morality.

Founding of Seneca’s principles presented above, it is obvious that he couldn’t be called a tyrant-trainer. Nero can be considered only as his disappointing experiment. As a tutor, he wanted to create an ideal person whose life aims and values were represented in the state (just as his father’s ideas were). The student perverted ideas of his teacher. This fact found its reflection in the book of Suetonius about life of Nero:

During his reign many abuses were severely punished and put down, and no fewer new laws were made: a limit was set to expenditures; the public banquets were confined to a distribution of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands in the taverns was forbidden, with the exception of pulse and vegetables, whereas before every sort of dainty was exposed for sale. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. He put an end to the diversions of the chariot drivers, who from immunity of long standing claimed the right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by cheating and robbing the people. The pantomimic actors and their partisans were banished from the city (2010, pp. 111-113).

Of course, Seneca cannot be blamed in being a tyrant trainer. His ideas and desires were to create a perfect and devoted man of his nation and state. From his point of view, both a slave and a free citizen are members of “the community of humans and gods” (Seneca, 2008). Each person, that was born by a woman, to his point of view, is granted from the birth with mind, intelligence, emotions and the ability of setting aims and reaching them.

Moreover, to his point of view, wealth and noble origin cannot be regarded as reasons to dominate over other people, because one can eat from golden plates, one can rule millions of people, but one can be also a slave of his own desires and passions and obey his base desires. Nero was the embodiment of all these suppositions. He was cruel and severe tyrant; he killed his mother and brother in order to take the throne. But that was not Seneca’s fault. He considered that each person must educate and bring up personality individually. The teacher only gives the direction. The main idea of self-upbringing by Seneca is upbringing the soul, morality. Seneca offered a new strategy of making a cultural individual, where the main subject and object of upbringing is every person individually (Seneca, 2010).

According to these ideas presented by Seneca we can see him as a person with good intentions. But the fate played a bad joke with him. His best beginning and worse ending, Nero, whom he raised and educated carefully, trying to foster interests of the young emperor in more peaceful ways, ordered to kill him. It is really terrible when a creature kills its creator. If Seneca had been a tyrant trainer, he wouldn’t have been ordered to be killed by the emperor.

Seneca’s philosophy was kind and peaceful, but Nero – just as Seneca written in his works – was the only person to bring himself up ad to take care of his beliefs and Seneca’s fault was only in his agreement given to Agrippina.

Seneca’s upbringing was similar to Nero’s. His father fostered his interests in state, duties, and politics, but he didn’t grow up into a bloodthirsty knight or murderer. According to his philosophy, a lot of depends on personality. And it can be easily seen in the example with Nero.

References

Braund, S. M., 2009. Introduction. In Seneca. De Clementia. Translated and with an introduction by S. M. Braund. pp. 1–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cooper, J. M. & Procopé, J. F., 1995. General Introduction. In Seneca. Moral and Political Essays. pp. xi–xxxvi. Edited and Translated by J. M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cooper, J. M. & Procopé, J. F., 1995. Introduction to “De Clementia”. In Seneca. Moral and Political Essays. pp. 119–127. Edited and Translated by J. M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Griffin, M., 1992. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Griffin, M., 2000. Seneca and Pliny. In C. Rowe and M. Schofield (Eds.). The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. pp. 532–558. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kamm, A., 1995. The Romans: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Reinhardt, T., 2008. Introduction. In Seneca. Dialogues and Essays. pp. vii–xxvii. Translated by J. Davie with an introduction by T. Reinhardt. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.
Scullard, H. H., 1988. From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68. 5^th Edition. pp. 304–312, 351–353. London: Routledge.
Seneca, 2010. De Clementia Extract. Melbourne: Trinity College Foundation Studies.
Seneca, 2008. Dialogues and Essays. Translated by J. Davie with an introduction by T. Reinhardt. Oxford World’s Classics.
Shotter, D., 2005. Nero. 2^nd Edition. London: Routledge
Suetonius, 2010. Life of Nero Extract. Melbourne: Trinity College Foundation Studies.

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Was Seneca a Tyrant-Trainer?

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