How can we use our time constructively? How to distinguish useful things from superfluous ones? How to react positively to adversity? How to calm your mind? How to be happy?
These are just some of the many questions to which the Roman philosopher Lucio Anneo Seneca tries to answer in his famous ones moral dialoguesnow republished in a new guise by the publisher Arc Books of Rimini, in the series “The Bows“.
These are eight works: “The Brevity of Life”, “Tranquility of Mind”, “Idleness”, “Providence”, “Clemency”, “Happy Life”, “Wrath” e “The Steadfastness of the Wise”retranslated with facing Latin text and accompanied by annotations, comments and an extensive introduction.
The almost pocket-sized format of the series and the simple and elegant graphic design make these texts even more captivating, which seem eternal even though their content manages to remain current in any era.
It’s “The brevity of life“, translated and commented by Salvatore Primiceri, the absolute protagonist is time. In particular, how we use it, how we administer it and, above all, how much of it we waste. Seneca believes that men are wrong to complain about the shortness of life. It is not a problem of duration but of quality. People are too busy with futile things, vices, idleness, passions and ambitions and they don’t take care of themselves, so much so that they get to their last hour damning themselves for having used their time badly. The Stoic philosopher offers us a double key to live life to the fullest: on the one hand he explains to us which phase, between past, present and future, must be given more importance; on the other he lists the wrong occupations that harm us and make us live badly. The solution is to take refuge in oneself, to carve out and occupy one’s free time by cultivating wisdom and following reason. The wise die in peace, the busy die without having lived.
“The tranquility of the soul“, instead, translated by Mirko Rizzotto with the introduction of Salvatore Primiceri, is a real recipe book for the care of one’s soul and for the achievement of tranquility, a state that allows you to reconcile active and public life with a retired life. Addressing those, including himself, who have not yet found the supreme good (virtue) which makes them wise and imperturbable, the Roman philosopher lists numerous values which allow human beings to alleviate the disturbances of the soul, among which the knowledge of self, friendship, moderation, temperance, thrift, frugality, self-control. For Seneca, the life of each of us, more or less unfortunate as it may be, is potentially full of satisfactions. The secret to facing it positively lies in the peace of mind.
How to make a retired life active? Seneca tries to answer this question through dialogue “The uncle” with his friend Sereno. Now dismissed from his political role with the emperor Nero, the Roman philosopher tries to demonstrate how idleness, understood as a time for meditation and contemplation, is by no means a passive and useless activity. On the contrary, contemplation is an even more important action than many public activities because it involves all the intellectual faculties of man in the design of nature and because it is aimed at an ideal and global state where every people lives in harmony according to virtue. The translation is edited by Mirko Rizzottothe introduction of Salvatore Primiceri.
The dialogue “Providence” it presents itself as Seneca’s answer to an existential question from his friend Lucilius (the same recipient of the Moral Letters), or how serious (sometimes unsustainable) misfortunes can happen to good and virtuous people, if divine Providence really exists. A figure dear to Seneca then reappears, namely that of the wise man in the fight against misfortune. The wise and virtuous man cannot, in truth, receive any authentic evil: since it is precisely his knowing how to bear adversity and obstacles a proof of divine benevolence. If misfortunes did not exist, how could individual virtue ever be tested? Edited by Mirko Rizzotto. Preface by Salvatore Primiceri.
“Clemency” it is instead a text that deals with the delicate issue of the education of the governor. Shortly after 15 December 55 AD, Lucio Anneo Seneca, now assigned on a permanent basis by the Empress Agrippina as mentor and political adviser to her son Nero, decided to publish a work in which the cornerstones of his own political-moral thought were summarized on the figure of the ideal princeps. Having already understood Nero’s violent character, Seneca attempts an education of the future tyrant under the banner of meekness and mercy, understood as the greatest virtue of the wise man. The influence of Seneca’s good advice on Nero lasted only a few years but this treatise, anticipating concepts that are still fundamental today for a rule of law, remains an extraordinary lesson on how institutions can be administered with goodness and justice. Translation of Mirko Rizzotto and introduction of Salvatore Primiceri. Opposite Latin text.
The topic of dialogue “The happy life”, on the other hand, dedicated to his brother Gallione, is happiness and how it should be achieved, as man is born with the natural instinct to seek it. The value of this dialogue is that of being faced with a wise man who does not run away from the criticisms that are posed to him by his informers. Indeed, analyzing them under the magnifying glass of “stoicism”, the philosophical current to which Seneca adhered and whose principles he disseminated, they become an opportunity to clarify that the path to wisdom is not free from errors. What matters, for Seneca, is the fact of engaging every day, with all one’s strength, in an exercise of constant self-improvement and continuous search for virtue, the only element that will open the door to true happiness and freedom. . Translation and notes by Mirko Rizzottointroduction of Salvatore Primiceri.
By virtue of its lively dialogical component, “Ira” could be compared to a very effective practical manual. Seneca’s text, however, does not give us instructions to learn how to cook or paint in just a few steps: his goal – a little more ambitious – is to guide us to a full awareness of the assent we give to external impulses when we fall into a passion and, specifically, into anger; it is this assent, in fact, that determines the irruption of anger in the animus, with devastating and irrevocable consequences. At the origin of every passion – Seneca tells us – and even of the most fatal of passions, there is always our yes. But precisely for this reason, against such an evil, so ruinous as to overwhelm both the angry one and those who come within range, it is possible for man to oppose the solid strength of his own Reason. Introduction, translation and notes by Fulvio Vallena. Opposite Latin text.
“The Steadfastness of the Wise”Finally, dedicated to the young Serenus, it deals with a central theme of Stoic philosophy, that of the imperturbability of the wise man with respect to human stupidity and wickedness. The wise man can receive offenses, insults and injustices, but he does not suffer them as he has reached perfect harmony with reason (Lògos) which governs everything. Seneca, in describing the characteristics of the wise and, therefore, of the just man, also addresses the theme of the intentionality of evil and that of freedom, all topics very dear to the stoicism of the imperial era. Edited by Mirko Rizzotto. Preface by Salvatore Primiceri. Opposite Latin text.
The texts can be purchased individually in physical and online bookstores, or on the websites of the publishing houses Primeri Editore e Arc Books.
