Seneca's letter no. 20, part I: living in agreement

The most simple definition of wisdom

The Stoics are famous for the idea that we should live in agreement with nature. However in one formulation from Zeno the ultimate goal of life is simply to “live in agreement” (homolegoumenon):

“Zeno defined the goal thus: “living in agreement. This means living according to a single and consonant rational principle since those who live in conflict are unhappy”.

- Stobaeus, Anthology 2.6a

The idea seems to be that ambivalence and conflicting values tear us apart and that we should, thus, do our best to attain consistency in our values.

In Plato's dialogue “Protagoras" Socrates famously seemed to deny that there can be any such thing as weakness of will. If we do things we don’t want to do, it’s because we don’t fully believe that we shouldn't do those thing - not because we’re not “strong" enough. Doing those things is valuable to us whether we fully realize it or not. The cure is not to try to force ourselves not to do them - but to think harder about our values and make more informed decisions.

This line of thinking is at the heart of modern treatment of drug abuse - for example in the approach known as Motivational Interviewing where the phenomenon of ambivalence and the ideal of congruence play essential roles.

The concept of consistency also plays a key role in Cicero's overview of the Stoic theory of emotions in chapter 4 and 5 of his work Tusculan Disputations.

This idea is also a recurring focus in Seneca's letters to Lucilius - not least in the first part of letter 20 where Seneca draws on Zeno’s early Stoicism and claims that all we really need to define wisdom is the idea of consistency in values.

“Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak. Its demands are these: each person should live to the standard he himself has set; his manner of living should not be at odds either with itself or with his way of speaking; and all his actions should have a single tenor. This is the chief task of wisdom, and the best evidence of it too: that actions should be in accordance with words, that the person should be the same in all places, a match for himself. "Is there any such person?" Not many, but there are some. It is indeed difficult. And I don't mean, even, that the wise person always walks the same steps, but only that he walks a single road.

So take stock of yourself. Is your manner of dress out of line with your house? Are you generous with yourself, but stingy with your family? Do you dine frugally, but spend extravagantly on your building projects? Adopt once and for all some single rule to live by, and make your whole life conform to it. Some people cut back at home only to extend themselves in public, and live large. This discrepancy is a fault, a sign that the mind is vacillating and does not yet hold to its own character.

Moreover, I will tell you where that inconsistency from, that difference between action and intention. No one fixes his mind on what it is that he wants; or if he does, he fails to persevere and so falls away, not just altering his ways but actually regressing, returning to the very behavior he had forsworn. Let me then set aside the old definitions of wisdom and give you one that takes in a whole method of human existence. Here's one I can be content with. What is wisdom? Always wanting the same thing, always rejecting the same thing. You do not even have to add the proviso that what you want should be right: only for the right can one have a consistent wish.

Hence people don't know what it is they want except in the very moment when they want it. No one has made an all-round decision as to what he wants or does not want. Their judgment varies day by day, changing to its opposite. Many people live life as if it were a game”.

- Seneca, Letters 20.2-6

In my opinion, the naked "living in agreement"-formulation (preserved in Stobaeus' "Anthology" 2.6a) tends to be ignored - and I think Cicero and Seneca can help us throw light on it. In the excerpt quoted here from Seneca's letter no. 20 he makes it very clear that the goal of consistency in values (naked agreement), in his opinion, will lead to living according to nature (full agreement). The two formulations do not exclude one another - but they are not identical. The naked "living in agreement" is, to begin with, an ideal that does not refer to anything outside the agent's values. As such it is a lot more Socratic than the full "living in agreement with nature"-formulation.

Socrates very carefully tried to avoid lecturing people about any given theory. Instead he asked questions and tried to understand the perspective of the person he was having a conversation with. As we meet him in Plato's dialogues he certainly didn't mind undermining what he found in that process - but his point of departure was the internal perspective of the person he was questioning. This is what I mean when I claim that the naked "living in agreement”-formulation is more Socratic than the full "living in agreement with nature"-formulation. My idea about "nature" can be very, very different from yours. In other words, not much is said by adding "with nature" - and a lot of potential for controversy is added. By contrast, the naked "living in agreement"-formulation is hard for anyone to disagree with. Who doesn't want to live in agreement with his or her own values and convictions? The naked formulation is not trivial, however - as Seneca nicely shows in letter 20: striving for full internal consistency in values will very likely lead to a comprehensive theory about the world - and an audacious Stoic (be it Zeno or Seneca) would obviously have to claim that this comprehensive theory will turn out to be full fledged Stoicism.

Zeno at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark