In Defense of New Stoicism: Public Advocacy and Political Thought in the Age of Nero

Abstract

Philosophers have rarely been on good terms with the city and its rulers. Among the rhetorical devices with which they have defended themselves and their discipline, few have proven more reliable than the Straussian technique of “philosophic politics.” This article calls attention to a defining moment in the history of this persuasive technique: Seneca the Younger's defense of Roman Stoicism in the mid-first century CE. In light of his public advocacy and political thought, the article concludes that an expansion of the concept of philosophic politics is in order. In addition to philosophical tracts and treatises, it should be widened to include the nonphilosophical works of their authors.

Notes

1. Compare Aristotle's praise of contemplation in Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b, and Socrates’ statement on exile in Plato's Republic, 496d-e.

2. This characterization of Stoicism is the latest in a line of interpretation extending from Hegel to Zeller to the work of T. A. Sinclair and Moses I. Finley. A useful revision of this tradition may be found in Schofield 1999.

3. On the communicative ethics and Stoic ancestry of Kantian rhetorical theory, see McCormick 2005.

4. Clearly, this passage is channeling Aristotle's Politics, 1325b. On the relationship between the Aristotelian polis and the Stoic cosmopolis, see Nussbaum 1996, 343–344. On the moral and political significance of contemplation, see Arendt 1971, 1980, 227–264.

5. On the persuasive artistry and political intelligence of Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, see McCormick (forthcoming).

6. A more thorough discussion of political agency such as this is provided in Rancière 1999.