Under the stoa, philosophers sought to understand the art of how to live. For millennia since, stoicism has been practiced as a mode of acceptance of that which one cannot control. Stoicism is not, as some unjustly purport, a philosophy that disenfranchises humans or removes all agency from humankind. Instead, it places further onus on humans to control that which is the most impactful force in life: one’s character. What can be the point of philosophy if not to strengthen and shape one’s character? Seneca’s published letters to Lucilius make the answer to this question transparent: there is no greater pursuit.

What a human can control most surely is his or her character. If one neglects character and decides to devote all care to another pursuit at the expense of one’s character, life will be hell. However, if one places one’s character above all other pursuits, one will surely find peace in life and be rewarded with goodness in the end. Horrible occurrences will inflict difficulty on one’s life, but one’s character that has been a person’s chief goal of cultivation will sustain. As Seneca writes in Letter XVIII, “It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself to deal with difficult times.” Only strength of character will sustain.

And what then is philosophy if not the pursuit of an understanding of how one must live in the highest character? How can philo sophia, or the love of wisdom, come to mean anything greater than this pursuit: how to live? In Letter CVIII, Seneca condemns the bastardization of philosophy, its debasement to syllogisms and structures. Seneca writes, “The teachers of philosophy…today teach us how to argue instead of how to live.” Or when he writes in Letter LXXXVIII that too many philosophers “know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.” This, according to Seneca the great Stoic, is never what philosophy was meant to be and never what it should become. Seneca’s stance against these separate schools of philosophy is severe. One on the other side could argue that to understand how to properly structure an argument is necessary in order to argue how one should live as Seneca does. I see this as fair, and there certainly is need for proper logical argumentation, or philosophy in practice devolves into feeling and intuition, which are not the pursuit of wisdom.

However, these argumentative philosophies must aim toward the sole goal of understanding how one should live. To consider the ultimate goal of philosophy the creation of a new argumentative structure would be to craft the most beautiful piano without the intention to ever play music. The tools we have as philosophers must be employed in order to help eliminate sentiment and bias and truly pursue that which is true, that which is good, that which is right above all else.

-Charlie, December 2023