GARETH D. WILLIAMS
In our principal manuscript, the late eleventh-century Codex Ambrosianus, On Leisure is joined to On the Happy Life without a break. Marc Antoine de Muret, Montaigne” s tutor (1526–1585), first proposed that two separate works were conjoined at On the Happy Life 28; the two were separated in Justus Lipsius’s edition of 1605. The title De otio is known from the table of contents of the Codex Ambrosianus, but the name of its addressee is effaced from the entry Ad [seven letters erased] de otio. Annaeus Serenus, prefect of the watch under Nero (d. 62/63 CE), is commonly accepted as Seneca’s addressee, not least because his personality as drawn in On Leisure is in keeping with his characterization in On the Constancy of the Wise Person and On Tranquility of Mind, which are both addressed to him. If we accept Serenus as the addressee, On Leisure was composed no later than 63—a scenario that allows Seneca to have composed this justification of retirement from practical life in the period of his own de facto withdrawal from the Neronian court. As for the extent of the lacuna before the transmitted beginning of On Leisure, Seneca’s formal division of his argument into two parts at 2.1–2 indicates that the surviving text begins soon after its opening.
An outraged interlocutory voice in 1.4 (whether attributed to Serenus or to an imaginary other) represents the orthodox Stoic view, allegedly contested by Seneca, that “we shall remain in active service right up to the very end of life.” Seneca denies any breach of Stoic allegiance in proposing to argue (2.1–2) (i) that even from early age the Stoic may reject the practical life for that of contemplation, and (ii) that after a career in public service, the Stoic may retire to the contemplative life. The latter point in particular has been invoked to support the work’s dating to the period of Seneca’s withdrawal from court; but the treatise has a philosophical importance that far outstrips its possible biographical significance as a justification of his own retirement. Essential to Seneca’s vindication of the contemplative life, whether “even from the earliest age” (2.1) or “when someone has already completed his official service and his life is far advanced” (2.2), is that even in contemplation the Stoic is fully committed to active service of the sort pledged by the interlocutor in 1.4. Where they differ is in the interlocutor’s failure, or refusal, to look beyond the confines of the localized res publica (4.1), and beyond a conventional view of service to the state, to the greater res publica—the cosmic megalopolis—that is envisaged in 4.2. The detached philosopher who resides intellectually in the latter is still committed to the goal of Stoic action, but he meets that goal not in the conventional sense understood by the interlocutor of 1.4. In terms of 2.1–2, the Stoic who retires to philosophy after a career in public service fulfills his duty “to remain in active service right up to the very end of life” through teaching (2.2) and by personal example (cf. 3.5: “Whoever serves himself well benefits others by the very fact that he provides what will be helpful to them”). As for the young philosopher who withdraws “even from the earliest age,” he belongs in the category of Stoic who makes every effort to find a suitable state in which to serve (8.1–3); but from his detached viewpoint in the cosmic megalopolis, the pervasiveness of everyday corruption in the localized res publica—in any state, Athens, Carthage and (we might infer) even Rome—forces his withdrawal to the contemplative life (cf. 8.3: “But if no commonwealth is to be found of the sort that we visualize for ourselves, leisure turns out to be the inescapable option for all”). But even as he retires, he still engages in “active” contemplation that meets the Stoic mandate to public service, just as Zeno and Chrysippus, those Stoic preeminences, did in serving mankind by their philosophical influence and writings (6.4–5).
On this approach, a different but related controversy is open to resolution. Is On Leisure incomplete at its transmitted end as well as at its beginning? A main argument for its incompleteness at 8.4 (which, to some critics, is in any case a suspiciously weak and abrupt conclusion) lies precisely in the perceived need for Seneca to change direction in a lost portion of the work so as to accommodate the second proposition of 2.2; for if he maintains that all practical service in the localized res publica is ruled out because of the corrupt condition of any state (8.3), how can it be possible to embark in the first place on a public career from which eventual retirement is justified? How, that is, can Seneca’s second proposition in 2.2 ever be a realistic option for the philosopher? If never, how can that second topic be anything other than redundant, at least in the treatise as we have it? Yet the counterargument for completeness again rests on the key point that the philosopher remains committed to action even in retreat. Both propositions in 2.1–2 are fully accounted for in the work as we have it, in that both fully observe the mandated Stoic commitment to action throughout life (cf. 1.4). If a suitable state can be found, the Stoic will serve publicly for as long as he practically can (hence the emphasis in 2.2 on retirement when “life is far advanced”); after retirement, he is no less committed to philosophical action to the very end; if no suitable state can be found despite his best efforts to serve in the localized res publica, he is fully entitled to withdraw to the contemplative life at any age; but action nevertheless remains the priority even in retirement.
Further Reading
Griffin, M. T. 1976. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, Clarendon Press; repr. with postscript, 1992), esp. 315–21, 328–34.
Williams, G. D., ed. 2003. Seneca: “De Otio,” “De Brevitate Vitae” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), esp. 10–18.