Seneca on Philosophy and Friendship

Today’s episode is an excerpt from The Tao Of Seneca produced by Tim Ferriss’ Audio. In this letter Seneca writes about overcoming troubles without being affected by them, what true friendship really is, how we should value friendship, and more. Go to tim.blog/seneca to get the PDF for free. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoicSee 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.

• 0:02Ryan 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?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, I'm a big reader of physical books, but one of the questions I get all the time is, "How can I listen to the Stoics? Are there any good audiobooks of the Stoics?" And the answer, for the most part, is no, there's not too many. But my good friend Tim Ferriss, a few years ago, put together an audio collection of Seneca's letters. He calls it "The Tao of Seneca", which I thought is a really cool title because it's sort of like, you know, the sort of collective wisdom and the ways of Seneca. And I shot him an email a couple of weeks ago. I said, "Hey, could I run some excerpts from this? It'd be a cool Weekend episode for the Daily Stoic Podcast." And he said, "Yes."

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "Pick a few of your favorite letters, and you're welcome to run them." So today, we're running Letter 9 from Seneca's famous letters. In this one, Seneca writes about overcoming our troubles without being affected by them. And then he has one of, I think, the best lines in all of Seneca's writings. He says, "If you wish to be loved, love." He's referring to friendship. He's writing about what true friendship is about, how you want a friend that you're willing to work for, to die for, to sacrifice for. And he says that "A wise man never values friendship above his own self, but that we retire to our inner self, and yet friendship indisputably makes life better."

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  And I think nothing proves this more than... The letter we're talking about today, because who was Seneca writing to his friend Lucilius? And they have this multi-year philosophical dialogue with each other that makes them both better. And that's what I'm going to give you today. And so here is the audiobook of Seneca's Letter Nine from the Tao of Seneca, produced by Tim Ferriss. You actually get the PDF of this for free if you go to tim.blog/seneca. So check this out. Here is Seneca on Philosophy and Friendship. Instead of me giving you my interpretation of the Stoics, we get it today, straight from the horse's mouth, or at least from somebody reading what the horse said.

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  Here's Seneca on Philosophy and Friendship.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Letter Nine: On Philosophy and Friendship.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  You desire to know whether Epicurus is right when, in one of his letters, he rebukes those who hold that the wise man is self-sufficient and for that reason does not stand in need of friendships. This is the objection raised by Epicurus against Stilbo and those who believe that the supreme good is a soul which is insensible to feeling. We are bound to meet with a double meaning if we try to express the Greek term "lack of feeling" summarily in a single word, rendering it by the Latin word "impatientia", for it may be understood in the meaning the opposite to that which we wish it to have.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  What we mean to express is a soul which rejects any sensation of evil. But people will interpret the idea as that of a soul which can endure no evil. Consider, therefore, whether it is not better to say "a soul that cannot be harmed", or "a soul entirely beyond the realm of suffering".

• 4:22Speaker 01

  There is this difference between ourselves and the other school. Our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them. Their wise man does not even feel them. But we and they alike hold this idea, that the wise man is self-sufficient. Nevertheless, he desires friends, neighbors, and associates, no matter how much he is sufficient unto himself. And mark how self-sufficient he is, for on occasion he can be content with a part of himself. If he lose a hand through disease or war, or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes,

• 5:02Speaker 01

  he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound. But while he does not pine for these parts if they are missing, he prefers not to lose them. In this sense, the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them. When I say "can", I mean this: he endures the loss of a friend with equanimity. But he need never lack friends, for it lies in his own control how soon he shall make good a loss. Just as Phidias, if he lose a statue, can straightway carve another,

• 5:46Speaker 01

  even so our master in the art of making friendships can fill the place of a friend he has lost. If you ask how one can make oneself a friend quickly, I will tell you, provided we are agreed that I may pay my debt at once and square the account, so far as this letter is concerned. Hicato says: "I can show you a filter, compounded without drugs, herbs, or any which is incantation. If you would be loved, love." Now there is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  There is the same difference between winning a new friend and having already won him, as there is between the farmer who sows and the farmer who reaps. The philosopher Atalus used to say: "It is more pleasant to make than to keep a friend, as it is more pleasant to the artist to paint than to have finished painting."

• 6:50Speaker 01

  When one is busy and absorbed in one's work, the very absorption affords great delight. But when one has withdrawn one's hand from the completed masterpiece, the pleasure is not so keen. Henceforth, it is the fruits of his art that he enjoys. It was the art itself that he enjoyed while he was painting. In the case of our children, their young manhood yields the more abundant fruits, but their infancy was sweeter.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Let us now return to the question. The wise man, I say, self-sufficient though he be, nevertheless desires friends if only for the purpose of practising friendship, in order that his noble qualities may not lie dormant. Not, however, for the purpose mentioned by Epicurus in the letter quoted above. That there may be someone to sit by him when he is ill, to help him when he is in prison, or in want.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  But that he may have someone by whose sick-bed he himself may sit, someone a prisoner in hostile hands, whom he himself may set free. He who regards himself only, and enters upon friendships for this reason, reckons wrongly. The end will be like the beginning. He has made friends with one who might assist him out of bondage. At the first rattle of the chain, such a friend will desert him. These are the so-called fair-weather friendships. One who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Hence, prosperous men are blockaded by troops of friends, but those who have failed stand amid vast loneliness, their friends fleeing from the very crisis which is to test their worth. Hence also, we notice those many shameful cases of persons who, through fear, desert, or betray. The beginning and the end cannot but harmonize. He who begins to be your friend because it pays, will also cease because it pays. A man will be attracted by some reward offered in exchange for his friendship, if he be attracted by aught in friendship other than friendship itself.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life and pay the pledge to. The friendship which you portray is a bargain and not a friendship. It regards convenience only and looks to the results. Beyond question, the feeling of a lover has in it something akin to friendship. One might call it friendship run mad. But, though this is true, does anyone love for the sake of gain or promotion or renown? Pure love, careless of all other things,

• 9:56Speaker 01

  kindles the soul with desire for the beautiful object, not without the hope of a return of the affection.

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  What then? Can a cause which is more honorable produce a passion that is base? You may retort. We are now discussing the question whether friendship is to be cultivated for its own sake. On the contrary, nothing more urgently requires demonstration; for if friendship is to be sought for its own sake, he may seek it, who is self-sufficient. How then, you ask, does he seek it? Precisely as he seeks an object of great beauty, not attracted to it by desire for gain, nor yet frightened by the instability of fortune.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  One who seeks friendship for favorable occasions strips it of all its nobility. The wise man is self-sufficient.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  This phrase, my dear Lucilius, is incorrectly explained by many, for they withdraw the wise man from the world and force him to dwell within his own skin. But we must mark with care what the sentence signifies and how far it applies: "The wise man is sufficient unto himself for a happy existence, but not for mere existence; for he needs many helps towards mere existence; but for a happy existence he needs only a sound and upright soul, one that despises fortune." I should like also to state to you one of the distinctions of Chrysippus,

• 11:44Speaker 01

  who declares that the wise man is in want of nothing and yet needs many things. On the other hand, he says, "Nothing is needed by the fool, for he does not understand how to use anything, but he is in want of everything." The wise man needs hands, eyes, and many things that are necessary for his daily use, but he is in want of nothing; for want implies a necessity, and nothing is necessary to the wise man. Therefore, although he is self-sufficient, yet he has need of friends.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  He craves as many friends as possible, not, however, that he may live happily, for he will live happily even without friends. The supreme good calls for no practical aids from outside; it is developed at home and arises entirely within itself. If the good seeks any portion of itself from without, it begins to be subject to the play of fortune. People may say: "But what sort of existence will the wise man have, if he be left friendless when thrown into prison, or when stranded in some foreign nation, or when delayed on a long voyage, or when out upon a lonely shore?"

• 13:07Speaker 01

  His life will be like that of Jupiter, who, amid the dissolution of the world, when the gods are confounded together and nature rests for a space from her work, can retire into himself and give himself over to his own thoughts. In some such way as this the sage will act: he will retreat into himself and live with himself. As long as he is allowed to order his affairs according to his judgment, he is self-sufficient and marries a wife; he is self-sufficient and brings up children; he is self-sufficient and yet could not live if he had to live without the society of man.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Natural promptings and not his own selfish needs draw him into friendships; for just as other things have for us an inherent attractiveness, so has friendship. As we hate solitude and crave society, as nature draws men to each other, so in this matter also there is an attraction which makes us desirous of friendship. Nevertheless, though the sage may love his friends dearly, often comparing them with himself and putting them ahead of himself, yet all the good will be limited to his own being, and he will speak the words which were spoken by the very Stillbo whom Epicurus criticizes in his letter.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  For Stillbo, after his country was captured and his children and his wife lost, as he emerged from the general desolation alone and yet happy, spoke as follows to Demetrius, called Sacker of cities, because of the destruction he brought upon them, in answer to the question whether he had lost anything: "I have all my goods with me."

• 15:01Speaker 01

  There is a brave and stout-hearted man for you. The enemy conquered, but Stilbo conquered his conqueror. I have lost nothing. Aye, he forced Demetrius to wonder whether he himself had conquered after all. My goods are all with me. In other words, he deemed nothing that might be taken from him to be a good. We marvel at certain animals, because they can pass through fire and suffer no bodily harm. But how much more marvelous is a man who has marched forth unhurt and unscathed through fire and sword and devastation?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Do you understand now how much easier it is to conquer a whole tribe than to conquer one man? This saying of Stilbo makes common ground with Stoicism. The Stoic also can carry his goods unimpaired through cities that have been burned to ashes, for he is self-sufficient. Such are the bounds which he sets to his own happiness. But you must not think that our school alone can utter noble words. Epicurus himself, the reviler of Stilbo, spoke similar language. Put it down to my credit, though I have already wiped out my debt for the present day.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  He says, "Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth is unhappy, though he be master of the whole world."

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Or, if the following seems to you a more suitable phrase, for we must try to render the meaning and not the mere words, "A man may rule the world and still be unhappy if he does not feel that he is supremely happy."

• 16:58Speaker 01

  In order, however, that you may know that these sentiments are universal, suggested, of course, by nature, you will find in one of the comic poets this verse: "Unblessed is he who thinks himself un-blessed."

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Or, what does your condition matter if it is bad in your own eyes? You may say, what then? If yonder man, rich by base means, and yonder man, lord of many but slave of more, shall call themselves happy, will their own opinion make them happy? It matters not what one says, what one feels. Also, not how one feels on one particular day, but how one feels at all times. There is no reason, however, why you should fear that this great privilege will fall into unworthy hands. Only the wise man is pleased with his own.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Folly is ever troubled with weariness of itself.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Farewell.

• 18:06Ryan Holiday?

  If you're looking for ways to keep these Stoic lessons with you, check out our Daily Stoic store. These are all items that were designed to embody Stoicism, to help you carry the Stoic practice with you. We wanted to make things that we would actually use ourselves. That's why we don't make t-shirts, or stickers, or wristbands. We make things of super high quality that we stand behind, that we think are awesome, that embody Stoicism. We have our Memento Mori medallion, our Amor Fati medallion, we have prints with Marcus Aurelius quotes, and so much more. You can check out dailystoic.com/store for more. Thanks for listening, and see you soon.