Freedom. Seneca, Epistles 5.44.6-7
Seneca
tells Lucilius the secret to becoming an authentically free person:
he must recognize good and evil for himself, not deferring to
society's judgement, and carefully cultivate the good in his own life
without becoming fixated upon the means he uses to pursue it in any
given moment.
Puta
itaque te non equitem Romanum esse sed libertinum: potes hoc
consequi, ut solus sis liber inter ingenuos. Quomodo? inquis.
Si mala bonaque non populo auctore distinxeris.
Intuendum est non unde veniant, sed quo eant. Si quid est quod vitam
beatam potest facere, id bonum est suo iure; depravari enim in malum
non potest. Quid est ergo in quo erratur, cum omnes beatam vitam
optent? quod instrumenta eius pro ipsa habent et illam dum petunt
fugiunt. Nam cum summa vitae beatae sit solida securitas et eius
inconcussa fiducia, sollicitudinis colligunt causas et per insidiosum
iter vitae non tantum ferunt sarcinas sed trahunt; ita longius ab
effectu eius quod petunt semper abscedunt et quo plus operae
impenderunt, hoc se magis impediunt et feruntur retro. Quod evenit in
labyrintho properantibus: ipsa illos velocitas implicat. Vale.
Think
of yourself, then, not as a Roman knight, but rather as a freedman
(†). The latter is really the only condition you can actually achieve, in our society:
that you become a lone free person amongst others, one member of the
society of individuals genuinely as distinct from each other as they
seem. “How do I do this?” you ask. By distinguishing good and
evil without paying heed to the crowd. You must watch not whence
things come, but whither they go. If there exists a thing that can
make your life good, this thing is good by virtue of its own power;
it cannot be diverted to evil consequence. Where
do people go wrong, then, since everyone chooses the
good life? In this: they
grasp the means or instruments of that
life instead of the life
itself, so that they wind up fleeing what they are chasing after.
Even though the crown of the good life is composure so firm that
nothing can shake our trust in it, the hapless crowd collects causes
for worry and drags its burdens along life's treacherous road rather
than bear them bravely. So they always fall far short of the end they
seek, and wherever they spend more effort, there especially they get
in their own way and are carried backwards.
Like those who rush to find
the exit of a maze or
labyrinth, so do these fools
discover that their own hurry impedes them. Farewell.
---
(†)
Roman society in Seneca's time was divided into several classes:
patricians (hereditary landed nobility), plebeians (hereditary
tradesmen & commons), knights (hereditary cavalry turned
businessmen), freedmen (former slaves and their descendants, often
associated with the family of their last owners as clients), and
slaves. In Seneca's radical reformulation here, there are really just
two classes: the free,
who
have their own standards apart from society's, and the
unfree, who must look
constantly to society to judge for them because they are incapable,
for whatever reason, of judging for themselves. Anyone—patrician,
plebeian, knight, freedman, or slave—can be free, in the genuine
sense; all real freedom requires is the guts to make and live by your
own decisions, taking whatever consequences you get with a calm and
unconquered mind. Anyone can be unfree, too: all this requires is
anxiety that leads you to refer endlessly to others rather than own
any decision for yourself.