Seneca

4 BCE – 65 · Cordoba → Rome · Stoicism

Stoic philosopher, essayist and — uncomfortably — Nero's tutor and fixer, whose letters on time, anger and wealth are written from inside the tension.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
On the Shortness of Life, ch. 1

Core ideas

We are not given a short life; we make it short
We suffer more in imagination than in reality
Wealth is the ability to fully experience the present

Historical context

Exiled, recalled to tutor Nero, complicit in the regime's crimes, ordered to die in 65 CE — his calm prose has been argued about ever since.

Key works

Letters to Lucilius · On the Shortness of Life

Questions they speak to

How should I live?
What can I control?
What is time?

Minds in conversation

EpictetusHierapolis → Rome → Nicopolis
Marcus AureliusRome
RumiBalkh → Konya

Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Seneca