Seneca’s Secret For Gaining More Life
studying philosophers enhances the time we possess and spend
(this essay was previously published in my Medium publication, Practical Rationality)
In his work, On The Shortness of Life, Seneca makes a startling claim: “They alone who give their time to philosophy are at leisure, they alone really live.” The exclusivity he ascribes to philosophy is doubtful. But the reasoning he provides about what philosophy can give us is both solid and yet more surprising. Philosophy opens and offers to us time. He tells us:
For it’s not just their own lifetime that they watch over carefully, but they annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone before are added to their own.
How does that work? Studying philosophy adds extra years to your life? Not literally — though of course if you do devote your time to studying philosophy, rather than say, drinking heavily at a bar, you will probably extend your life a bit!
It isn’t so much about the number of years we physically live through, the amount of time before our bodies and minds grind to a halt and fall apart. What Seneca has in mind is more like the intensity or the fullness of the years that we are allotted to live. We can use the years or lifetimes offered to us through philosophy to deepen the time that we do have. How does Seneca say we can do this?
We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light. From no age are we disbarred, we have access to all, and if we want to transcend the narrow limitations of human weakness, there is a great span of time for us to range over.
Through studying the philosophy that is readily available to us, the thoughts, practices, advice, and achievements of philosophers past becomes accessible to us. (This goes even more for our internet age, when so many classic texts are just a few searches and clicks away. What belonged to those philosophers, in the past, can belong equally to us, in our present, so long as we are willing to put in the work. And, even more importantly, to make the study of philosophy a priority that takes precedence over the other matters most other people preoccupy themselves with. Seneca tells us:
This is the sole means of prolonging mortality, or rather of transforming it into immortality. Honors, monuments, all that ostentatious ambition has ordered by decree or erected in stone, are soon destroyed; there’s nothing that the long lapse of time doesn’t demolish and transform. But it cannot harm the works consecrated by wisdom. No age will efface them; no age will reduce them at all. The next age, and each one after that, will only enhance the respect in which they are held. . .
This might be a bit unduly optimistic. After all, we know that Seneca — and so many other writers in his times, and for centuries afterwards — possessed entire libraries of philosophical works that have been lost to us. But the general idea is sound. Studying philosophical works has the potential to greatly enhance our existence. But again, how?
Conversation With Philosophers
For Seneca, it clearly isn’t just about ideas abstracted away from the texts in which they are articulated considered, discussed, examined, critiqued. Textbooks, abstracts, encyclopedia entries wouldn’t cut it for him. Studying philosophy, for Seneca, isn’t just about reading texts either. Nor does it suffice to bring in a much-needed dimension of actual practice and application, experimenting and experiencing within the scope of one’s life.
The authors themselves are what — or rather, who — we should be focusing upon. They are who we should be engaging with. Seneca provides a number of reasons why this should be the case, but three passages are worth singling out in particular.
In the first of these, Seneca suggests that we can learn different things from different philosophers and schools:
We can debate (disputare) with Socrates, entertain doubt (dubitare) with Carneades, be at peace (quiescere) with Epicurus, overcome (vincere) human nature with the Stoics, and go beyond (excedere) it with the Cynics.
Each of these, of course, offers much more than just one thing to learn from them. None of them are the proverbial “one-trick pony” (if Parmenides or Aristo were included in the list, possibly they might be, though)! We acquire these capacities through reading and reflecting upon what these philosophers had to say. And each of these is something well worth our developing and doing.
In the second passage, Seneca draws a contrast between the self-centeredness, partiality, and frustrations involved in many social relations — including the client-patron one so important in Roman society — and the relationship that is possible between the living reader and the (perhaps long-)dead philosopher.
Do we suppose these clients spend time on morally commendable duties (in veris officiis morari)? But we can say as much of those who’ll want to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the other high priests of philosophical study, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their closest companions every day. None of these will ever be unavailable to you. . .
These and other philosophers, who we can access through their works, remain ever available to us, so long as we choose to devote our time, attention, and thought to engaging productively with them. He continues:
. . . none of these will fail to send his visitor off in a happier condition and more at ease with himself. None will let anyone leave empty handed; they can be approached by all mortals by night and day
Again, Seneca’s rhetoric might be a bit too sweepingly optimistic. Who among us hasn’t had an unproductive session reading philosophy from time to time? But the general point again stands. We find philosophers with whom we can consistently hold productive conversations. And they won’t hold back from us.
In the third passage, he goes into a bit more detail about what we can gain through continual conversations with past philosophers.
None of these philosophers will force you to die, but all will teach you how. None of them will diminish your years, but each will share his own years with you. With none of them will conversation be dangerous, friendship life threatening, or cultivation of them expensive.
Notice he also tells us what we can be confident what we are not risking. We’re not losing time, but gaining it. Conversations or friendship with them don’t make us vulnerable to others or to fortune. Unless we foolishly overspend on expensive books or resources — vanities actually unnecessary for learning — engaging with these authors doesn’t demand financial sacrifice or hardship.
In fact, as Seneca goes on, if we commit ourselves to this study, we set ourselves up for an intensely satisfying life.
What happiness, what a fine old age lies in store for the person who has put himself under the patronage of these people! He’ll have friends whose advice he can seek on the greatest or least important matters, whom he can consult daily about himself, from whom he can hear the truth without insult and receive praise without fawning, and who will provide a model after which to fashion himself.
A Challenge For Our Times
This opportunity that Seneca outlines for us — engaging in lifelong conversations with the brilliant minds of philosophers past, through studying their writings — raises a challenge nearly two millennia removed from him, one that we might think Seneca himself did not face. We have too much past, too many possible options for the thinkers with whom we would extend and enlarge the time we have. There are easily thousands of philosophers since Seneca’s own age. Who should we decide to read? How do we determine who best to “gain time”?
This is a legitimate problem, to be sure, one that arises for anyone in the present who decides to study philosophy, whether Seneca and his advice are involved or not. Inquirers who want to embark upon a course of study in the field often ask me: “Who are the most important philosophers for me to read?” ‘Who should I start with?” How can I know that I’m studying the right thinkers?” And a number of other questions, to which one general answer can be given.
Nobody in the present has read every thinker in philosophy’s long history. And nobody can say for certain, or definitively, who the most essential philosophers to read are. The best we can do is to say that, from the reading we’ve done, we have learned that this or that writer is worthwhile. We can, as experts, give some rough survey of the land. We can tell others about the hidden, overlooked, or even wrongly dismissed gems we can uncovered. And that’s about as good as it gets. And frankly, I think, that’s quite all right.
Seneca himself, at a number of places in his work — a topic I hope to grapple with in another post sometime — actually advises us not to attempt to be too comprehensive in our study. We can have too many books, and imprudently place upon ourselves the undue burden of trying to read them all, or even most of them. We should, he thinks, settle upon a smaller selection of those that we find ourselves benefitting from reading, reflecting upon, and rereading.
To bring these short reflections to a close, we might also consider two other points. If we buy the basic idea Seneca has explained to us, that by engaging in a kind of dialogue with great minds of the past, through their works, might we not also include Seneca himself in whatever lists of these philosophers we put together for ourselves? Don’t we benefit in a similar way by delving into his works, spending our time with him, bringing a bit of his past age and life into our own? I know how I would answer that for myself.
And if we follow out that line a little further, and consider Seneca’s own status as a go-between, doesn’t that also suggest a second point? Perhaps it isn’t just us conversing with the philosophers we read, as a set of individual, disconnected dialogues. Perhaps instead we should realize that in many cases, we are involved in something more like a conversation between multiple people, living in different ages, but speaking with each other across those diverse times.