Seneca Explains The Art of Argument

0:04Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

0:43Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm recording this right now from a balcony in Ithaca. I wanted to see some of the sights from the Odyssey. We've been to Olympia. We're going on to the Delphi. We're going to see Marathon. We're going to see the Battle of Thermopylae. We're visiting the philosophical sites, the historical sites. We're making many of the same trips that the Romans did. And yet I thought it was interesting Donald Robertson pointed out that Seneca maybe hadn't done this, which has given me something to think about. And that cues up today's episode.

1:22We've brought you chunks of this over the years. Obviously, reading Seneca is great, but sometimes it can be great to listen to him. And Tim Ferriss put together this awesome audiobook edition of Seneca called The Tao of Seneca. This is going to be letter 45, which is on sophisticated argumentation. And Seneca is talking about living authentically according to nature's laws, valuing virtue over material wealth, and not pursuing those superficial goals. We're going after what really matters, which to him would be self-improvement, character, good judgment, right? Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom.

2:02You can get a free PDF of this book if you go to tim.blog.seneca. You can listen to our other episodes that Tim is nice enough to let us use. And you can grab the audiobook on Audible. That's the Tao of Seneca. I think this is one of the best audio editions of Seneca or any of the Stoics out there, and I think you will enjoy it. All right, I'm gonna go put my kids to bed. Enjoy.

2:28Letter 45 On Sophistical Argumentation You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality rather than quantity that matters. A limited list of reading benefits. A varied assortment serves only for delight. He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest is not traveling, it is mere tramping. But, you say, I should rather have you give me advice than books. Still, I am ready to send you all the books I have to ransack the whole storehouse. If it were possible, I should join you there myself.

3:23and were it not for the hope that you will soon complete your term of office, I should have imposed upon myself this old man's journey. No Scylla or Charybdis or their storied straits could have frightened me away. I should not only have crossed over, but should have been willing to swim over those waters, provided that I could greet you and judge in your presence how much you had grown in spirit. Your desire, however, that I should dispatch to you my own writings, does not make me think myself learned, any more than a request for my picture would flatter my beauty. I know that it is due to your charity rather than to your judgment, and even if it is the result of judgment, it was charity that forced the judgment upon you.

4:11But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking and were not aware of the truth, and were seeking it obstinately too. For I have sold myself to no man. I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men, but I claim something also for my own. For these men, too, have left to us not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought. They might perhaps have discovered the essentials had they not sought the superfluous also. They lost much time in quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation. All that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose.

5:00We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then try to untie them. Have we leisure enough for this? Do we already know how to live or die? We should rather proceed with our whole souls towards the point where it is our duty to take heed lest things, as well as words, deceive us. Why, pray, do you discriminate between similar words when nobody is ever deceived by them except during the discussion? It is things that lead us astray. It is between things that you must discriminate. We embrace evil instead of good. We pray for something opposite to that which we have prayed for in the past.

5:47Our prayers clash with our prayers, our plans with our plans. How closely flattery resembles friendship It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race With wide open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart And it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm Show me how I may be able to see through this resemblance

6:23I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school, and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although, here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey, because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound, if you have Prime, with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. and they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

7:00Everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with confidence. Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

7:12An enemy comes to me full of compliments in the guise of a friend. Vices creep into our hearts under the name of virtues. Rashness lurks beneath the appellation of bravery. Moderation is called sluggishness, and the coward is regarded as prudent. There is great danger if we go astray in these matters, so stamp them with special labels. Then, too, the man who is asked whether he has horns on his head is not such a fool as to feel for them on his forehead, nor again so silly or dense that you can persuade him by means of argumentation, no matter how subtle, that he does not know the facts. Such quibbles are just as harmlessly deceptive as the juggler's cup and dice, in which it is the very trickery that pleases me.

8:05But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein. And I hold the same opinion about these tricky word plays, for by what other name can one call such sophistries? Not to know them does no harm, and mastering them does no good. At any rate, if you wish to sift doubtful meanings of this kind, teach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns in constancy, who sees no man with whom he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, is unerring in judgment, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom fortune, when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armory, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.

9:23For fortune's other missiles, with which she vanquishes mankind in general, rebound from such a one, like hail which rattles on the roof with no harm to the dweller therein, and then melts away. Why do you bore me with that which you yourself call the liar fallacy, about which so many books have been written? Come now, suppose that my whole life is a lie. Prove that to be wrong, and, if you are sharp enough, bring that back to the truth. At present, it holds things to be essential of which the greater part is superfluous. And even that which is not superfluous is of no significance in respect to its power of making one fortunate and blessed.

10:09For, if a thing be necessary, it does not follow that it is a good. Else we degrade the meaning of good if we apply that name to bread and barley porridge and other commodities without which we cannot live. The good must in every case be necessary. But that which is necessary is not in every case a good, since certain very paltry things are indeed necessary. No one is to such an extent ignorant of the noble meaning of the word good as to debase it to the level of these humdrum utilities. What then? Shall you not rather transfer your efforts to making it clear to all men that the search for the superfluous means a great outlay of time, and that many have gone through life merely accumulating the instruments of life?

11:03Consider individuals, survey men in general. There is none whose life does not look forward to the morrow. What harm is there in this, you ask? Infinite harm. For such persons do not live, but are preparing to live. They postpone everything. Even if we paid strict attention, life would soon get ahead of us. But as we are now, life finds us lingering and passes us by as if it belonged to another, and though it ends on the final day, it perishes every day. But I must not exceed the bounds of a letter, which ought not to fill the reader's left hand. So I shall postpone to another day our case against the hair splitters, those over-subtle fellows who make argumentation supreme instead of subordinate.

12:01Farewell.

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