Stefan Röttig

Why should we do good deeds for each other, or to what end? Ancient ethicists often declare personal happiness as the highest good or telos and explore its nature and the means to achieve it. But in De officiis, the focus shifts towards the community, particularly the res publica. Cicero is primarily concerned with its formation or preservation, viewing beneficence (beneficentia/liberalitas/benignitas) as a key tool in this endeavor. The idea that beneficence is advantageous for the community is not a new or contested one. However, that the community is its primary goal, taking precedence over personal happiness, has not been systematically explored until now. This article takes on that task, comparing Cicero’s conception of beneficence with Seneca’s. I argue that for Cicero, the primary goal of giving and receiving benefits is the formation or preservation of the community. In contrast, Seneca mainly demonstrates how these deeds contribute to personal happiness.

In the 89th letter to Lucilius Seneca divides philosophy into three parts, namely ethics, physics, and logic. As philosophy in general he also divides its ethical parts into three parts: the first one has to do with value judgments, the second with impulses, and the third with actions. But instead of characterizing each of these parts and giving an overview of their contents he rather describes an ideal action: first, one makes a correct value judgment, then, one initiates a regulated and ordered impulse, and finally, one brings this impulse into harmony with one’s external action by paying attention to the circumstances under which one intends to act. If each of these action moments has the mentioned character, one is consistent with oneself—an important step towards reaching full self-consistency, i.e., virtue. If those moments do not have the mentioned character, as for example in a passion, one cannot be consistent with oneself. As a result, one diverges from the goal of full self-consistency and thus from virtue. The thesis of my book takes up the parallel Seneca is drawing between ethics and its parts on the one hand and an action and its moments on the other hand. I argue that his ethics is based on an action theory that has as its main moments a judgment, an impulse and an external action. Within this theoretical framework, Seneca gives an answer to the question of what one should do in order to reach full self-consistency, i.e., virtue, which for a Stoic like him is a necessary and sufficient condition for happiness. My book, correspondingly, has two major parts: first, I am working out Seneca’s action theory and its philosophical origins, then, I am concerned with his ethics. In the first main chapter, I further argue that his action theory stems for the most part from the early Stoics, but that unlike them he has a concept of will. This concept, as I want to show in the second part, plays an important role in his ethics, too.

Roman philosophy is not just Greek philosophy in Latin language. It has some aspects that are specifically Roman. This is particularly clear with regard to Seneca’s concept of virtue. In contrast to a common view that the latter became almost completely identical with ἀρετή, this article shows, by reference to Seneca’s image of the sage, that it kept its Roman aspect of manliness. That Seneca’s concept of virtue is Roman in character becomes also apparent when he reflects upon ‚pudicitia‘ („sexual integrity“), which he describes as a female virtue that can be lost due to acts of violence. Both aspects of Seneca’s concept of virtue seem to be problematic for central tenets in his ethics. The following inquiry is an attempt to solve or explain these problems. In doing so, I relate Seneca’s philosophy to his identity as a Roman.

In this chapter, I explore Seneca’s characterization of becoming and being good, wise, or virtuous, which for a Stoic always amount to the same thing. There is one passage in which Seneca says it is an ars to become good; in another, he says wisdom is an ars, namely an ars vitae. If one bears in mind that wisdom in Stoic philosophy stands for the best possible moral state of character a human being can develop, Seneca’s remarks cannot but attract our attention: it is an ars to become good and an ars to be good. Since it is natural to regard becoming and being (good) as two different things, it is natural to assume that the ars of the person who is striving after virtue (the proficiens) cannot be identical to the ars of the person who already is virtuous. I want to ask what the difference is.