Seneca by Jula Wildberger
Seneca und die Stoa: Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt. 2 Vols. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, Jan 1, 2006
Examines Seneca’s prose works as the writings of a Stoic by placing them within the context of th... more Examines Seneca’s prose works as the writings of a Stoic by placing them within the context of the Stoic discourse on physics, theology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, determinism and theodicy. In order to place Seneca in the system, I provide a new detailed and elaborate interpretation of our sources on Stoic physics. Care was taken to present sources and secondary readings in a comprehensive manner so that the two volumes can also be used both as an introduction to Stoic physics and a reference work.
The first volume contains the text, the second volume the bibliography, notes, and registers of passages and technical terms. Please contact me if you have difficulties accessing the books.
Seneca Philosophus. Ed. Marcia L. Colish and Jula Wildberger. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2014
Features a diversity of contributions from different generations, disciplines, and research cultu... more Features a diversity of contributions from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures. Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are made accessible in English for the first time. The volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of Imperial Rome.
Seneca, De ira/Über die Wut. Lateinisch/Deutsch. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun.., 2007
Bilingual edition with German translation, notes, and afterword
"La raison et la colère : la réfutation de la métriopathie dans le De ira de Sénèque 1.5-21". Lectures plurielles du «De ira» de Sénèque: Interprétations, contextes, enjeux. Ed. Valéry Laurand, Ermanno Malaspina, and François Prost. Boston; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. 83-117, 2021
I argue that the polemic against Aristotelian metriopathy in that section (De ira 1.5-21) should ... more I argue that the polemic against Aristotelian metriopathy in that section (De ira 1.5-21) should be read primarily as an exploration of the definientia “irrational,” “unnatural,” and “excessive” in Zeno’s definitions of passion as an “irrational, unnatural movement of the soul” and as an “excessive impulse” (ὁρμὴ πλεονάζουσα). It will be shown that the passion conceptualized and illustrated by Seneca in these terms is primarily the “third movement” of De ira 2.4.1 as understood in a recent interpretation by David Kaufman (2014) based on a suggestion by Richard Sorabji (2000), to which I would like to add a minor modification of my own: in this "third movement," the agent does not only act mistakenly (based on false opinions) or irrationally: rather, the agent no longer has any reasons for being in a passion.
“Variationen der Wut in Senecas Tragödien: Hercules furens und Thyestes.” Seneca und das Drama der Antike, edited by Christian Klees and Christoph Kugelmeier. Saarbrücken: Verlag Alma Mater, 2020. 177-204, 2020
"The kind enslaver and Seneca's failure to conceive of an ideal at the heart of his philosophy." Politische Anthropologie in der Antike, edited by Dagmar Kiesel and Christian Kietzmann, Schwabe (forthcoming)
Frequently satirizing his own and his contemporaries' prejudices, aspirations, and excesses, Sene... more Frequently satirizing his own and his contemporaries' prejudices, aspirations, and excesses, Seneca not only follows his Early Stoic predecessors in emphasizing the deep and intrinsic sociability of human beings and God himself but also embraces their egalitarianism. His ideal community is one of progressor friends, selected by character and not social status, who unite in their common project to improve each other. While laying out this lofty agenda, his work brims with derogatory remarks about disenfranchised others and those who do not belong to the privileged elite of well off free-born Roman citizens. An example of this is Epistula moralis 47, in which Seneca conceptualizes both the relation between "master" and "slave" and the relation between more and less advanced progressor friends as a form of patronage. The letter illustrates how Seneca falls short of his philosophical ideal because he is unable to critique his own entanglement in the systemic discriminatory hierarchies that have shaped him. His work is produced from the perspective of a man positioned at specific coordinates in the ranking grids of his society and compromised by an implicit concern about the social death that would result from a failure to hold that position. As a result, I will argue, Seneca cannot arrive at the radically communitarian conception of truly other-loving sociability that Early Stoic theology and anthropology would permit. Not only is he steeped in chauvinist upper-class prejudice-no wonder that-but such prejudice prevents him from being able to even think what seems to matter so much to him. Aiming for the greatness that comes with love and care for others, he revolves into self-aggrandizing condescension within a world where all goodness has to be top down.
“Amicitia and Eros: Seneca’s Adaptation of a Stoic Concept of Friendship for Roman Men in Progress.” Philosophie in Rom – Römische Philosophie?: Kultur-, literar-, und philosophiegeschichtliche Perspektiven, edited by Gernot Michael Müller and Fosca M. Zini. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018: 387-425, 2018
Seneca’s brand of Stoic philosophy was shaped by and reacted to its socio-political context. Solv... more Seneca’s brand of Stoic philosophy was shaped by and reacted to its socio-political context. Solving the Stoic dilemma that fools cannot be friends, Seneca introduces a form of progressor friendship, which is an original adaptation of Stoic ἔρως (the friendship between a sage and a promising fool). Seneca adapts ἔρως for the Roman taste and allows for a loving relation between equals – equals in their imperfection and in their shared determination to better themselves. This innovation enables him to reconcile the of social values he maintains as a philosopher with his values as a member of the ruling class in Rome. Tracing Seneca’s progressor friendship to a well known definition of ἔρως as an "effort to make friend" (ἐπιβολὴ φιλοποιίας) also sheds new light on the conundrum of ‘will’ in Seneca. (There is a bit more on the erotic ἐπιβολὴ -Impulse in my paper "Liebe als wohlbegründetes Bestreben: Wesen und Funktion des Eros-Impulses eines stoischen Weisen," 2022: https://www.academia.edu/103466820/Liebe_als_wohlbegr%C3%BCndetes_Bestreben_Wesen_und_Funktion_des_Eros_Impulses_eines_stoischen_Weisen)
“Care of the Self and Social Bonding in Seneca: Recruiting Readers for a Global Network of Progressor Friends.” Vita Latina 197-198 (2018): 117-130, 2018
Cet article interprète la retraite démonstrative de la vie publique et la promotion du souci de s... more Cet article interprète la retraite démonstrative de la vie publique et la promotion du souci de soi dans les oeuvres des dernieres années de Sénèque en tant qu’entreprise politique. En développant des thèses de THOMAS HABINEK, MATTHEW ROLLER et HARRY HINE, je propose que Sénèque conçoit une vision politique d’une communauté cosmique de personnes en progrès vers la vertú. Cette communauté se fonde sur une forme spéciale d’amitié entre personnes en progrès, qui est une innovation théorique de Sénèque, introduite dans les Epistulae morales, par rapport à ces prédécesseurs stoïciens. Le réseau d’amis s’étend dans l’espace ainsi que dans le temps et est ouvert à toute personne qui partage l’engagement des autres membres envers l’amélioration personnelle et des autres. En faisant la publicité de ce souci de soi et courtisant ses lecteurs en tant que futurs amis, l’auteur des Epistulae morales vise à recruter de nouveaux membres pour cette communauté, notamment dans les premières lettres (...
“Senecan Progressor Friendship and the Characterization of Nero in Tacitus’ Annals.” Translatio humanitatis: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Riemer, edited by Christoph Kugelmeier. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2015. 471-492, 2015
In the Annals, Tacitus presents the Roman emperors within a web of social relations. Each has a p... more In the Annals, Tacitus presents the Roman emperors within a web of social relations. Each has a particular interactive pattern, which includes typical behaviors and a set of primary interactants. Showing how the emperor relates to others is a device of characterization and evaluation. Even solipsistic Tiberius is shaped by his interactions with people close to him. Claudius becomes a puppet at the hands of his wives and freedmen, unable to think or feel something without being told (12.3.2). Nero appears as a pawn in a power struggle between his mother and courtiers (13.2.1-2), and similar to Tiberius, he “erupts into an orgy of crime and ignomy alike” (6.51.3) with the weakening and removal of such authorities and the concomitant introduction of new associates.
“Seneca and the Doxography of Ethics.” Intertextuality in Seneca’s Philosophical Works, edited by Myrto Garani, Andreas N. Michalopoulos, and Sophia Papaioannou. London and New York: Routledge, 2020. 81-104, 2020
Reception of ethical doxography was a central element in the project of redefining what it meant ... more Reception of ethical doxography was a central element in the project of redefining what it meant to be a member of the Roman elite and at the same time a philosopher, which L. Annaeus Seneca set himself at the end of his life and for which he created authorial personae as role models in the works of that period. To substantiate this claim, I outline how the Letter Writer of the Epistulae morales develops as a practitioner of philosophy and point to thematic and structural parallels between the latter part of the Epistulae morales and Stoic doxography of a particularly technical nature, as we find it in Doxography B excerpted in Stobaeus’ Anthologion (2.7) and attributed to Arius Didymus. I suggest that these parallels serve to evoke a type of academic philosophy that the Letter Writer partly rejects and partly adopts. The parallels thus contribute to showcasing a change in attitude, a sign of which is also the production of the Libri moralis philosophiae mentioned in the same part of the letter corpus. Finally, I propose some suggestions about the content and structure of the lost work based on the conclusions drawn from what was observed about Seneca’s reception of Stoic doxography of ethics.
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2011
See https://www.academia.edu/103513318/Cleanthes_on_the_Function_of_Poetry_in_Seneca_Epistulae_morales_108_SVF_1_487_and_Philodemus_On_Music_4_SVF_1_486_
COLUMBIA STUDIES IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION, Jan 1, 2006
“Seneca.” Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy, edited by Duncan Pritchard et al. Oxford University Press, 2020
The first edition (2015) was produced together with Ermanno Malaspina, the updated edition (2020)... more The first edition (2015) was produced together with Ermanno Malaspina, the updated edition (2020) also in collaboration with Veronica Revello.
Brill's Companion to Seneca, 2014
Gymnasium, Jan 1, 2008
... | Ayuda. Vier Seneca - Kommentare. Autores: Jula Wildberger; Localización: Gymnasium, ISSN 03... more ... | Ayuda. Vier Seneca - Kommentare. Autores: Jula Wildberger; Localización: Gymnasium, ISSN 0342-5231, Vol. 115, Nº. 6, 2008 , pags. 587-594. © 2001-2010 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos reservados. XHTML 1.0; UTF‑8.
Journal of Roman Studies, 2011
Stoicism by Jula Wildberger
Stoicism for the 21st Century: How Did We Get There and What to Make of It. In: Oxford Handbook of Stoicism, edited by Dominic Bailey (forthcoming), 2024
The paper describes and discusses practices and publications of 21st-century Stoicism. Revised ve... more The paper describes and discusses practices and publications of 21st-century Stoicism. Revised version 12 October 2024.
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Seneca by Jula Wildberger
The first volume contains the text, the second volume the bibliography, notes, and registers of passages and technical terms. Please contact me if you have difficulties accessing the books.
For the psychology of rage, see also https://www.academia.edu/96545695/La_raison_et_la_col%C3%A8re_la_r%C3%A9futation_de_la_m%C3%A9triopathie_dans_le_De_ira_de_S%C3%A9n%C3%A8que_1_5_21
For the connection to our times, see also https://www.academia.edu/103468125/Is_there_a_Male_Will_in_Stoicism_The_Case_of_Aggression
The published paper may be a bit difficult to come by. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested.
Stoicism by Jula Wildberger
The first volume contains the text, the second volume the bibliography, notes, and registers of passages and technical terms. Please contact me if you have difficulties accessing the books.
For the psychology of rage, see also https://www.academia.edu/96545695/La_raison_et_la_col%C3%A8re_la_r%C3%A9futation_de_la_m%C3%A9triopathie_dans_le_De_ira_de_S%C3%A9n%C3%A8que_1_5_21
For the connection to our times, see also https://www.academia.edu/103468125/Is_there_a_Male_Will_in_Stoicism_The_Case_of_Aggression
The published paper may be a bit difficult to come by. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested.
Marcus Aurelius addresses himself as sociable by nature, as someone made to belong to a political community, and as a citizen of the cosmos. The good life for him consists in obeying the gods and cooperating with his fellow citizens in service of the common interest. His fellow citizens are all beings endowed with reason, and as a human he cares for all other people, whoever they may be. The Meditations demonstrate detailed knowledge and agreement with the conceptual foundations of Stoic cosmopolitanism, but specific approaches can be identified. Marcus underscores the organismic and egalitarian nature of the cosmic community and often gives a functional account of his status as a part of the cosmos. His rule as emperor he conceives as a personal challenge to live up to the model of his predecessor, Antoninus Pius, also sharing the latter's conservativism and traditionalism. Marcus' Stoicism is more apparent in his quest for sincere and truly loving sociability, a striving that finds its limits in the aversion and disappointment Marcus often seems to experience with regard to those around him. The chapter also provides an overview of evidence (much of which is in German) whether or whether not Marcus' Stoicism did impact on his political practice.
In the meantime, I have become more aware of the problem of top-down, rationalist thinking implied in Stoic beauty. Stoic beauty is a non-scalar property of absolute goodness and perfection, and the whole as well as the individuals in it are all the product and in a way the same as the divine agency of the World Soul (aka God) and the divine Cosmos (the individual constituted by God from and in Matter). Still, the concept of beauty as "symmetry of the parts toward each other and toward the whole" in itself does not require Stoic theology. The theology allows cosmic beauty to occur. But there might be a way of adapting the concept without Stoic absolutism to describe the goodness of complex systems in a better way than by a purely utilitarian or holist value theory.
When I wrote this paper Aistė Čelkytė's book The Stoic theory of beauty (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020, see https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.07.44/) had not yet appeared. I tried to take account of her findings as best as I could from ealier draft parts of the book, but I would recommend it as essential reading concerning the topic.
Since Stoic social thought is not framed in terms of rights, I adapt a broad definition of human rights by Pablo Gilabert's to define a concept "human worth obligations" in order to see to which extent Stoics may have acknowledged such an obligation in lieu of a human right in the proper sense. Human worth obligations are
(1) obligations obtaining universally toward each human being
(2) not only in inter-personal relations between individuals
(3) but also within social units, such that a community, institution, or political body would be blameworthy if it fails to assure that they are met.
(4) Fulfilling a human worth obligation has extremely high intrinsic natural value for the agent and thus is a preferred indifferent of the highest priority, such that under normal circumstances failing to meet it would constitute an evil act and thus be bad for the agent.
(5) In substance, human worth obligations include respecting and maintaining what nowadays is regarded as a human right and set out as such in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, or other such documents.
(6) The obligation toward the other arises from the other's dignity as a person: (a) As an intrinsic property it is the reason for the naturally high value both of the other person and the acts executed in the interest of that person and makes meeting the obligation toward them kathēkon, an appropriate and well-reasoned act; (b) as a relational property the dignity of a person is motive of respect and of the practical impulse to meet obligations toward them.
It turns out that Stoics did acknowledge anything like human rights obligations: Only sages are full citizens of the cosmos, and so if someone has dignity, it should be them. However, they do not need anything and cannot be benefited by fools. If someone respects a sage, they do so for their own sake, not the sage's. Children and fools are the targets of human sociability. All healthy humans have a natural loving and caring disposition to other people. However, this is not respect. It could, however, entail human worth obligations, depending on the concrete axiology of indifferents a Stoic holds. Our sources demand kindness and recoiling from aggression deemed unnecessary. All the same, they also contain behavioral recommendations that we would now call crimes against humanity (e.g. exploitation of imperial subjects, torture, or infanticide). What is more, indifferents are by definition fungible, and so a human rights obligation might always be discarded because of a preferred indifferent. What we call human rights are always alienable and no person is exclusively an end in themselves. Nor is there much evidence that Stoics saw a need for social reform to alleviate injustice toward disenfranchised others. The elite men we know as practicing Stoics, might condescendingly care for individuals, but the everyday plights of the disenfranchised taken for granted -- if seen at all.
In the lexical part I argue that tolerare was not just used for endurance of pain. Intolerantia and the verb tolerare assume meanings that might be possible precursors of tolerantia in the modern sense. Patientia, on the other, has a negative connotation of submissiveness. In Greek there is the verb anekhestai (which Fiala and Lombardini identify as a precursor to the modern term). More specifically also a noun derived from that verb, anexikakia, comes closes to toleration in the modern sense.
In the conceptual part I argue, like Lombardini, that what might be a form of toleration in ancient Stoicism appears a disposition of the superior (the powerful, the politician) to show patience, mildness, and a caring social orientation toward those inferior of them, a virtue that Seneca names humanitas. The predominant concern is anger control for social cohesion, political success, and as the duty of a world citizen.
What distinguishes the Stoic conception from Forst's Toleranz is the lack of Ergebnisoffenheit. No real disagreement is possible because what is true and good is already determined. Still, there some openness of results may follow (a) from the fact that those tolerating each other are all fools and thus cannot be certain whether they have grasped the truth and (b) from the fact that the Cosmic Law that is the benchmark of all particular communities may be implemented in locally different, but equally appropriate ways.
In practice, both in the church fathers and in Stoic authors this kind of loving acceptance can take quite gruesome and cruel forms, depending on how the (superior) agent conceives of the others' interest.
I argue that the early Stoics had only one concept of erōs, an emotion they regarded fools as incapable of. Only sages could maintain an erōs-state. Later doxographies present another type of erōs, an emotion of fools. That one is a species of the passion desire (epithumia) and thus an orexis (a reaching for what is perceived as a good). Erōs in the early Stoic sense is not an orexis, but an epibolē, an impulse not directed at a good.
Still, it is important that epibolē is a strong impulse, so strong that a species of it can be denoted with an expression for intense sexual desire. As it seems, the early Stoics saw their sages' infatuation with beloved beauties as more than a patronizing pedagogic drive but rather as a deep personal commitment for which it was worth to take the risk of failure.
In a nutshell, in the first type (here I still call attribute it to Stoics generally) the individual being is constantly being attached by Nature to itself as it is actually constituted, what it values is that which it is. In the other type, characteristic of Hellenistic and Imperial Roman thinkers in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, the attachment is one and the same for the whole being's existence: it has been attached to itself as instance of its type, i.e. it's form or species nature.
In this paper, I apply this distinction to the question of old age and argue that attachment of the first type allows flourishing even while bodily and mental functions decline and even if one must look back to a long life of failure. Any moment, it is possible to turn the whole, that is a person's life, into a good thing.
Making use of Delattre's new edition of Philodemus' On Music, I reread the fragments and propose some new ideas. In particular, I argue Cleanthes assigned a more specific function to poetry than usually assumed, a function which is closely aligned with his ideas about the physiology of human cognition. In a nutshell: poetic form provides language with a force that Cleanthes seems to have conceptualized as some kind of physiological striking. The effect of such poetic nudges was not only to communicate the sense of the verbal account itself. Cleanthes also hoped to trigger and support action-relevant cognition, both the direct perception of the referents of the poetic account and the reinforcement of natural concepts that enable rational beings to react to perceptions with the right kind of impulse.
I explain relevant Stoic concepts and how Cicero uses Panaetius' model to shape a theory of duties that suits his own political and ethical outlook and deviates significantly from earlier Stoic views.
I argue that Cicero's blindness or indifference is systematic and connected to a consistent ethical outlook, if not a complete theory, for which he found the most congenial Stoic model in Panaetius.
One element of this paper is a more detailed distinction between two ideal-types of oikeiōsis ("attachment") to see what Cicero (or, e.g., Cicero's Cato) presents of them: a Chrysippean-style version and a Peripatetic/Antiochean version. Even though Cicero seems to sympathize more with the Peripatetic type, as presented by Piso in De finibus 5, in fact, he embraces neither. Yes, he insisted on continuity of values from cradle to grave, but the choice between the two types did not pose itself for him in the same way as for the modern theoretician. This is so because he did not notice or register, as I argue in some detail, key elements of a Chrysippean-type oikeiōsis and followed yet a third account, that of Panaetius as it is attested for us by Cicero himself. As far as one can judge from Cicero's adaptation, Panaetius' account did not address the details of early-stage development and seems to have sat squarely between the two ideal types conceptualized in my paper.
Close readings and formalizations of Epicurus, Sent. 2 and Ep. Men. 124f.; and Lucr. 3.830ff.
David KONSTAN, Epicurean Phantasia p. 1
Luciana REPICI, «Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor». Errori di valutazione nell’etica epicurea p. 19
Julie GIOVACCHINI, La confusion du juste chez Épicure, Hermarque et Lucrèce. Une inégalité intellectuelle des citoyens? p. 39
René BROUWER, Why Human Beings Become Bad. The Early Stoic Doctrine of Double Perversion p. 61
Christelle VEILLARD, Hecato of Rhodes and Stoic Casuistry p. 83
Giovanni ZAGO, Corruzione morale e virtù nel pensiero di Posidonio. Per il riesame di alcuni frammenti p. 103
Francesca Romana BERNO, Blinded by the Vice. A Reading of Seneca’s Letter 50 p. 115
Marcelo D. BOERI, Galen and the Stoic ‘Double Perversion’ Theory p. 135
Catalina BALMACEDA, The Year of the Four Emperors. Axiological Confusion in Tacitus’ Histories p. 151
General Bibliography on Axiological Confusion and Its Causes p. 171
A. Exceptionality (she's the ONLY one)
B. Comparison with mythological figures
C. Deification
D. Blending of beloved with gods of love
E. Describing the relation as one of master and slave (servitium amoris)
F. The Lady controls the lover's whole life and identity
G. Beauty (forma potens)
Then I discuss characteristic differences between the elegists:
Tibullus idealizes his beloved (of which he has more than one). When the beloved have power over the lover, they are blended with the gods of luve, such that it's the god rather than the girl or boy that dominates him.
These motifs are all present in Propertius' Monobiblos, and he enhances the uniqueness of his Cynthia. Beginning from the second book, love poetry itself becomes a second power dominating his life and parallel to this, Cynthia becomes more generic. It is as a poet that he increasingly loosens the bond in the third book.
In Ovid's Amores begin with that hierarchical inverson that Propertius. The powers that dominate him are poetry and Amor, not some woman. Idealization becomes a rhetorical tool for courtship and exhortation; is presented in exaggerated cliché and thus critiqued. Still, Ovid also innovates on the motif of the ideal woman, as in Am. 1.5 and 3.3.