Seneca on Choosing Our Teachers

Today’s episode is an excerpt from The Tao Of Seneca produced by Tim Ferriss’ Audio. In this letter Seneca writes about the importance of having a model to measure yourself against, how to learn from the great men and women of history, learning not only from the strengths but also from the fault and weaknesses of others, and more. Go to tim.blog/seneca to get the PDF for free. Centered is a Mac and Windows app that helps you get into Flow and work faster...and healthier. Join thousands of users who have discovered their Flow States by running Centered in the background while they work. Download Centered today at centered.app/stoic and use the Promo Code “STOIC” by October 31st to get a free month of Premium, and also be entered to win a variety of prizes! We've joined Team Feed Corporate to help end hunger in America. No one should go without a meal, yet more than 38 million people in America still face hunger. We created this fundraiser to help provide these much needed meals to our neighbors through the Feeding America network of food banks and we're asking you to join us in our cause. Go to https://dailystoic.com/feeding to donate and let's end hunger together! Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Daily Stoic is raising money for Feeding America. Last year, the Daily Stoic community came together and raised over $100,000 together, providing more than a million meals. And this year, we're trying to go twice as big. We've donated the first $20,000, and we'd like your help getting to our goal, $200,000, which would provide more than 2 million meals for families across the country. You just have to head over to dailystoic.com/feeding, and together, we can make a small dent in a big problem. We can't alleviate everyone's struggle or suffering, of course, but for the people we can help, the difference is huge. So let's do it. Let's be good Stoics today.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  Let's fulfill our obligation. Just go to dailystoic.com/feeding. Even $1 can provide as many as 10 meals. So head over to dailystoic.com/feeding to help us reach our goal of providing 2 million meals for families across the country.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. People often ask me about audiobooks, about the Stoics, what's the best audiobook edition of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. I don't really have a great answer for those two, but I do very much recommend this audiobook edition of Seneca that Tim Ferriss put together a few years ago called The Tao of Seneca. It is available actually as a PDF totally for free if you go to tim.blog/seneca. And here we have one of the letters from this adaptation of Seneca's letters on choosing our teachers. Seneca, in this letter, is writing to Lucilius about the importance of learning from great men and women of history, the

• 2:42Ryan Holiday?

  importance of learning to find the fault and the weaknesses, as well as the virtues of both. We need a helping hand, he says, someone to look to, to measure ourselves against, to study. In conclusion, he says that we must choose--this is one of my favorite passages in all of Seneca's writings, the idea of picking a model, someone to measure ourselves against, people whose lives tell us how we ought to be, who prove it then with their practice. Last week, we had this excerpt from Rome's Last Citizen on Cato. Well, Cato was that person for Seneca, and you'll hear why in this wonderful essay. If you want the audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, produced by Tim Ferriss, you can check that

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  out on Audible. I suggest that you do so. I think it's a wonderful public service that Tim has done here, and the fact that he gives the PDF of it away for free is also wonderful. And thank you to Tim and Christo for allowing me to excerpt it in today's episode. I hope you enjoy.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Letter 52, on choosing our teachers.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  What is this force, Lucilius, that drags us in one direction when we are aiming in another, urging us on to the exact place from which we long to withdraw? What is it that wrestles with our spirit, and does not allow us to desire anything once for all? We veer from plan to plan. None of our wishes is free, none is unqualified, none is lasting. "But it is the fool," you say, "who is inconsistent. Nothing suits him for long." But how or when can we tear ourselves away from this folly? No man by himself has sufficient strength to rise above it; he needs a helping hand,

• 4:39Speaker 01

  and someone to extricate him. Epicurus remarks that certain men have worked their way to the truth without anyone's assistance, carving out their own passage. And he gives special praise to these, for their impulse has come from within, and they have forged to the front by themselves. Again, he says, there are others who need outside help, who will not proceed unless someone leads the way, but who will follow faithfully. Of these, he says, Metrodorus was one. This type of man is also excellent but belongs to the second grade. We ourselves are not of that first class either. We shall be well-treated if we are admitted into the second.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Nor need you despise a man who can gain salvation only with the assistance of another. The will to be saved means a great deal, too. You will find still another class of man, and a class not to be despised, who can be forced and driven into righteousness, who do not need a guide as much as they require someone to encourage, and, as it were, to force them along. This is the third variety. If you ask me for a man of this pattern also, Epicurus tells us that Hermakos was such. And of the two last-named classes, he is more ready to congratulate the one, but he feels

• 6:05Speaker 01

  more respect for the other, for although both reach the same goal, it is a greater credit to have brought about the same result with the more difficult material upon which to work. Suppose that two buildings have been erected, unlike as to their foundations, but equal in height and in grandeur. One is built on faultless ground, and the process of erection goes right ahead. In the other case, the foundations have exhausted the building materials, for they have been sunk into soft and shifting ground, and much labor has been wasted in reaching the solid rock. As one looks at both of them, one sees clearly what progress the former has made,

• 6:48Speaker 01

  but the larger and more difficult part of the latter is hidden. So with men's dispositions. Some are pliable and easy to manage, but others have to be laboriously wrought out by hand, so to speak, and are wholly employed in the making of their own foundations. I should accordingly deem more fortunate the man who has never had any trouble with himself, but the other, I feel, has deserved better of himself, who has won a victory over the meanness of his own nature, and has not gently led himself, but has wrestled his way to wisdom. You may be sure that this refractory nature, which demands much toil, has been implanted in us.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  There are obstacles in our path, so let us fight, and call to our assistance some helpers. Whom, you say, shall I call upon? Shall it be this man or that?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  There is another choice also open to you. You may go to the ancients, for they have the time to help you. We can get assistance not only from the living, but from those of the past. Let us choose, however, from among the living not men who pour forth their words with the greatest glibness, turning out commonplaces and holding, as it were, their own little private exhibitions. Not these, I say, but men who teach us by their lives, men who tell us what we ought to do, and then prove it by practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak. Of course, I would not prevent you from listening also to those philosophers who are wont to hold public meetings and discussions, provided they appear before the people for the express purpose of improving themselves and others, and do not practise their profession for the sake of self-seeking. For what is baser than philosophy courting applause? Does the sick man praise the surgeon while he is operating? In silence and with reverent awe, submit to the cure. Even though you cry applause,

• 9:12Speaker 01

  I shall listen to your cries as if you were groaning when your sores were touched. Do you wish to bear witness that you are attentive, that you are stirred by the grandeur of the subject? You may do this at the proper time. I shall of course allow you to pass judgment and cast a vote as to the better course. Pythagoras made his pupils keep silence for five years. Do you think that they had the right on that account to break out immediately into applause?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  How mad is he, who leaves the lecture-room in a happy frame of mind simply because of applause from the ignorant? Why do you take pleasure in being praised by men whom you yourself cannot praise? Fabianus used to give popular talks, but his audience listened with self-control. Occasionally a loud shout of praise would burst forth, but it was prompted by the greatness of his subject, and not by the sound of oratory that slipped forth pleasantly and softly. There should be a difference between the applause of the theatre and the applause of the school, and there is a certain decency even in bestowing praise.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  If you mark them carefully, all acts are always significant, and you can gauge character by even the most trifling signs. The lecherous man is revealed by his gait, by a movement of the hand, sometimes by a single answer, by his touching his head with a finger, by the shifting of his eye. The scamp is shown up by his laugh, the madman by his face and general appearance. These qualities become known by certain marks, but you can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise. The philosopher's audience, from this corner and that, stretch forth admiring hands,

• 11:13Speaker 01

  and sometimes the adoring crowd almost hang over the lecturer's head. But, if you really understand, that is not praise, it is merely applause. These outcry should be left for the arts which aim to please the crowd; let philosophy be worshipped in silence. Young men indeed must sometimes have free play to follow their impulses, but it should only be at times when they act from impulse and when they cannot force themselves to be silent. Such praise as that gives a certain kind of encouragement to the hearers themselves and acts as a spur to the youthful mind.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  But let them be roused to the matter and not to the style; otherwise eloquence does them harm, making them enamored of itself and not of the subject. I shall postpone this topic for the present. It demands a long and special investigation to show how the public should be addressed, what indulgences should be allowed to a speaker on a public occasion, and what should be allowed to the crowd itself in the presence of the speaker. There can be no doubt that philosophy has suffered a loss, now that she has exposed her charms for sale.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  But she can still be viewed in her sanctuary if her exhibitor is a priest and not a peddler. Farewell.

• 12:50Ryan Holiday?

  My new book, Courage is Calling, is now officially a New York Times bestseller. Thank you so much to everyone who supported the book. It was literally and figuratively overwhelming. We signed almost 10,000 copies of the book. It's just, you know, it hit me right here and I appreciate it so much. If you haven't picked up a copy or you want to pick up a signed copy as a gift, please do. You can get your copy at dailystoic.com/courageiscalling or you can just go to store.dailystoic.com.