dialogues and essays jan 2008

[...]... fashion.24 Seneca’s Dialogues and Essays Apart from the tragedies Seneca wrote and the Letters to Lucilius, the dialogues and essays represent the third major part of Seneca’s work (these treatises are commonly categorized as either dialogues or essays depending upon their manuscript transmission).25 It has already been mentioned above that Seneca engages with philosophical issues in a free and self-determined... complex understanding of the processes and events in the world and universe as a whole, which itself is conceived as rational and well ordered.14 Thus, living in agreement with nature both refers to human nature and to nature generally speaking A fully rational being cannot exist in an irrational world Thus, for the Stoics there is a perfect order to the universe, which is governed and organized by... manifold On the one hand Athens ceased to be the dominant centre for philosophy, and Rome and Alexandria took its place On the other, the peculiar nature of the ideology of the Principate was such that it embraced and strengthened the appropriation of Stoic philosophy for the purpose of formulating Roman ideology Augustus was keen to stress the continuity with the values of the Republic, and elements of... Epicureanism and Stoicism’, in M Schofield and G Striker (eds.), The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics (Cambridge, 1986), 113–44 13 On ‘affinity’ see G Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge, 1996), chs 12 and 13 Introduction xiii order to behave in the right way are external to our exercising our rational faculties, living in accordance with nature and acquiring... mean that Panaetius and Diogenes did now discuss problems of practical politics and the individual’s place, obligations, and rights not in the world as a whole but in this ‘second community’ Thus Cicero could use a treatise by Panaetius as the source for Books 1–2 of his On Obligations (De Officiis), and went some way towards articulating the affinity between traditional Roman morality and Stoic moral doctrine... Poseidonius had a great interest in science and the accumulation and organization of knowledge, and is often credited with infusing Stoicism with the encyclopedic and empirical approach that is the trademark of the Peripatos, the school founded by Aristotle The representatives of the ‘Roman Stoa’, which included Seneca, Musonius Rufus (ad 30–100), Epictetus (ad 55–135), and the emperor Marcus Aurelius (ad... (frg 71 Jocelyn): ‘the law is better than virtus; for bad men often achieve virtus; what is right and just stands clearly apart from bad men.’ Pietas refers to the bond of obligation that exists between ourselves and the gods, our country, and those we are associated with by nature, notably our parents and our children The historian Livy, engaged in Augustus’ project of moral restitution, tells many... introducing the Romans to the major schools of Hellenistic philosophy and their findings Being an Academic sceptic himself, who was not firmly committed to any particular doctrines, but who would consider the tenets and theories of the dogmatic philosophers and scrutinize and evaluate them, Cicero covered almost all major areas in philosophical dialogues in which representatives of the various schools are pitted... extended speeches, as opposed to engaging in the sharp question-andanswer format known from Platonic dialogues However, apart from his desire to introduce his readership to Greek philosophy, Cicero also thought creatively about the way in which Greek ethics and political philosophy can be used to articulate and creatively develop political ideology and attitudes This concern of his is primarily in evidence... private life and social morality.) One way in which the Stoics sought to convert others to their conception of the good life was by accommodating traditional moral concepts, such as the various virtues, and articulating and redefining them in accordance with their other views Thus, for example, practical wisdom (phronesis) was defined as ˆ ‘knowledge of what should and should not be done’, and was then . philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS SENECA Dialogues and Essays Translated. divides his time between London and Oxford, where he teaches Classics to under- graduates at Balliol and other colleges. Tobias Reinhardt is Fellow and Tutor in Latin and Greek at Somerville College,. class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" oxford world’s classics DIALOGUES AND ESSAYS Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.1bc–ad 65) was born in Corduba, Spain, and educated in Rome. Plagued all his life by ill health,