Lesson 2
The Consolations of Philosophy: Seneca and the Stoics
A centurion arrived at the house with instructions from the Emperor Nero that Seneca, Nero’s former tutor and friend and renowned Stoic philosopher, should take his own life forthwith. A conspiracy had been discovered to remove the 28 year old Nero from the throne in AD62, and the emperor, maniacal and unbridled, was seeking indiscriminate revenge.
When they learned of Nero’s command, Seneca’s companions blanched and began to weep, but the philosopher, in the account provided by (the Roman historian) Tacitus and read by the artist, David (who painted the masterpiece The Death of Seneca in 1773), remained unperturbed, and strived to check their tears and revive their courage. Where had their philosophy gone, he asked, and that resolution against impending misfortunes which they had encouraged in each other over so many years?’ Though his wishes had come into sudden, extreme conflict with reality, Seneca had not succumbed to ordinary frailties; reality’s shocking demands had been met with dignity.
Through his death, Seneca had helped create an enduring association, together with other Stoic thinkers, between the very word philosophical and a temperate, self-possessed approach to disaster. He had from the first conceived of philosophy as a discipline to assist human beings in overcoming conflicts between their wishes and reality. As Tacitus had reported, Seneca’s response to his weeping companions had been to ask, as though the two were essentially one, where their philosophy had gone, and where their resolution against impending misfortunes. Throughout his life, Seneca had faced exceptional disasters…earthquakes…tyrants… debilitating illness…suicidal depression…disgrace and exile…privileged public life too close to Nero…and knew why he had been able to withstand the anxieties. ..Years of philosophy had prepared him for the catastrophic day Nero’s centurion had struck at the villa door.
And yet, for Seneca, in so far as we can ever attain wisdom, it is by learning not to aggravate the world’s obstinacy through our own responses, through spasms of rage, self-pity, anxiety, bitterness, self righteousness and paranoia.
A single idea recurs throughout his work, that we best endure those frustrations which we have prepared ourselves for and understand and are hurt most by those we least expected and cannot fathom. Philosophy must reconcile us to the true dimensions of reality, and so spare us, if not frustration itself, then at least its panoply of pernicious accompanying emotions. Her task is to prepare for our wishes the softest landing possible on the adamantine wall of reality.
The idea that a wise person should be able to walk away from all Fortune’s gifts calmly was Stoicism’s most extreme, peculiar claim, given that Fortune grants us not only houses and money, but also our friends, our family, even our bodies. The wise man can lose nothing. He has everything invested in himself. The wise man is self-sufficient in that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them. The wise man is self-sufficient….if he loses a hand through disease or war, or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left. Which sounds absurd, unless we refine our notion of what Seneca meant by satisfied. We should not be happy to lose an eye, but life would be possible if we did so.
(Thus Stoics believed one should live life with as much equanimity and least judgment as one can – as in the Buddhist view of non-attachment to all things since all things in life constantly change). Never did I trust Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace. All those blessings which she had kindly bestowed on me – money, public office, influence – I relegated to a place from which she could take them back without disturbing m. Between them and me, I have kept a wide gap, and so she has merely taken them not torn them from me.
Of course, there would be few great human achievements if we accepted all frustrations. The motor of our ingenuity is the question: ‘Does it have to be like this?’ from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, better books. The Romans were consummate at refusing frustration. To generate the energy required to spur us to action, we are reminded by jolts of discomfort – anxiety, pain, outrage, offence – that reality is not as we would wish it. Yet these jolts have served no purpose if we cannot subsequently effect improvement, if we lose our peace of mind but are unable to divert rivers, which is why, for Seneca, wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mould reality according to our wishes and where we must accept the unalterable with tranquility.
The Consolations of Philosophy
Alain De Botton 2000
Hamish Hamilton
Dark Nights of the Soul
One time or another, most people go through a period of sadness, trial, loss, frustration, or failure that is so disturbing and long-lasting that it can be called a dark night of the soul. If your main interest in life is health, you may quickly try to overcome the darkness. But if you are looking for meaning, character and personal substance, you may discover that a dark night has many important gifts for you.
Today we label many of these experiences ‘depression’, but not all dark nights are depressive, and the word is too clinical for something that makes you question the very meaning of life. It’s time for a different way of imagining this common experience, and therefore a different way of dealing with it. But, I warn you, this business is subtle, and you will have to look closely at yourself and at examples I give you to see how a deeply disturbing episode can be a precious moment of transformation.
Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Are you going to hide out in self-delusion and distracting entertainments? Are you going to become cynical and depressed? Or are you going to open your heart to a mystery that is as natural as the sun and the moon, day and night, and summer and winter?
If you are like most people, you have gone through several dark nights of the soul. You may be in the middle of one right now. You may be caught in a difficult marriage, have a child in trouble, or find yourself caught up in a tenacious and terrible mood. You may be grieving the loss of a spouse or parent. You may have been betrayed by a lover or a business partner or going through a divorce. For some people, these situations are problems to be solved, but for others they are a source of deep despair. A true dark night of the soul is not a surface challenge but a development that takes you away from the joy of ordinary life. An external event or an internal mood strikes at the core of your existence. This is not just a feeling but a rupture in your very being, and it may take a long while to get through to the other end of it.
A dark night might not feel like depression…Depression is a label and a syndrome, while a dark night is a meaningful event. Depression is a psychological sickness, a dark night is a spiritual trial. ..A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.
Here I want to explore positive contributions of your dark nights, painful though they may be. I don’t want to romanticise them or deny their dangers. I don’t even want to suggest you can always get through them. But I do see them as opportunities to be transformed from within, in ways you could never imagine. A dark night is like Dante getting sleepy, wandering from his path, mindlessly slipping into a cave. It is like Alice looking at a mirror then going through it. It is like Odysseus being tossed by stormy waves and Tristan adrift without an oar. You don’t choose a dark night for yourself. It is given to you. Your job is to get close to it and sift it for gold.
A dark night of the soul is not that extraordinary or rare. It is a natural part of life, and you can gain as much from it as you can from times of normalcy. Just look around at your friends and acquaintances…
The phrase ‘dark night of the soul’ comes from the Spanish mystic and poet, John of the Cross (1541 – 1597). John was a member of the Christian order of the Carmelites and, along with St. Theresa of Avila, tried to reform that order. Many in the order were so against reform that they imprisoned John for eight months, during which he wrote a series of remarkable poems. His later writing is chiefly commentary on those poems, one of them entitled ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
John writes about the night of the senses and the night of the spirit. The first phase is a purifying of intention and motivation, the second a process of living by radical faith and trust. John’s work is used especially by those who devote themselves seriously to cultivating a spiritual life through community, meditation, and various forms of service.
This book begins with some strong images from ancient ritual and religion. People of the far distant past knew secrets to dealing with trying times that have been forgotten, the mage of the night journey, the notion of catharsis, rituals to help with life’s passages, and a moon spirit with rather unholy but helpful blessings. Then we look at intelligence and love, how to think and how to be connected, as important lessons to be learned from a dark night. Finally, we consider various aspects of ordinary life in which the dark night of the soul might well appear in attempts to be creative and our need for beauty, in anger and in those times when we ‘lose it’, in illness and old age. Each of these experiences might spawn a special kind of dark night.
The dark night of the soul provides a rest from the hyperactivity of the good times and the strenuous attempts to understand yourself and get it all right. During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to the unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along. It’s time of enforced retreat and perhaps unwilling withdrawal. The dark night is more than a learning experience; it’s a profound initiation into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with external concerns and material success, prepares you for.
The dark night may be profoundly unsettling, offering no conceivable way out, except perhaps to rely on pure faith and resources far beyond your understanding and capability. It pushes you to the edge of what is familiar and reliable, stretching your imagination about how life works and who or what controls it all. The dark night serves the spirit by forcing you to rely on something beyond human capacity. It can open you up to new and mysterious possibilities
The lesson I take is that there is no loss too great or challenge too overwhelming, provided you are anchored in your vision and your values, while following your destiny…
Religion, too, often avoids the dark by hiding behind platitudes and false assurances. Nothing is more irrelevant than feeble, religious piousness in the face of stark, life-threatening darkness… Religion tends to sentimentalize the light and demonize the darkness. ..Religion easily becomes a defence and an avoidance. Of course, this is not the real purpose of religion, and the religious traditions of the world, full of beautifully stated wisdom, are your best source of guidance in the dark.
But there is real religion and there is the empty shell of religion. Know the difference. Your life is at stake. Flight from the dark infantilizes your spirituality, because the dark nights of the soul are supposed to initiate you into spiritual adulthood. You have to be exceptionally alert in the sphere of religion, because, for all its beauty and substance, it can be full of traps. Even those who perpetrate religious nonsense don’t seem to be aware of what they are doing, and that makes it only more difficult for the susceptible seeker of spiritual wisdom. You have to use your intelligence every step of the way.
Your dark night is forcing you to consider alternatives. It is taking you out of the active life of submission to alien goals and purposes. It is offering you your own approach to life. You can sit with it and consider who you are and who you want to be. You can be fortified by it to stand strong in your very existence. You can be born again, not into an ideology that needs your surrender, but into yourself, your uniqueness, your God-given reality, the life destined for you… It is the great obstacle to getting on with life, and yet it is the best means of entry into what fate has in store for you.
Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide To Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals
Thomas Moore 2004
Gotham Books