Seneca’s treatise On Benefits is the sole surviving representative of a long tradition of Stoic thought on the act of kindness (euergēsia), that is, gift-giving or the supererogatory favor. The work is rich in philosophical content. Favors (beneficia or benefits) are defined strictly in terms of intent, in such a way that the will of the giver becomes interdependent with the receiver’s willingness to reciprocate. In unpacking this definition, the Stoic author finds it necessary to speak not only about the theory of action but also about the observable effects of action, since enacted benefits impose different obligations on the recipient. Moreover, the assessment of motives and the expectation of gratitude create an intersubjectivity of giver and receiver that is revealing for Stoic ideas of friendship. Finally, Seneca takes a strong position on the autonomy even of benefactors who are unable to act otherwise, such as divine givers and entirely virtuous human agents, with implications for questions of volition and freedom.

To properly understand Seneca’s philosophical writing, one needs to appreciate his sharp and often satirical wit. Any sensitive reader can observe that the Letters on Ethics, in particular, employs many standard humorous devices to lighten the tone and to hold the reader’s attention. Examples can be given of punning, incongruity, self-caricature, and more elaborate vignettes that recall the verse satires of Horace. But there are also instances in which Seneca’s humor is directed specifically at certain modes of philosophical speech and writing: the redeployment of Epicurean sententiae in letters 1–29; the cavillatio or trick syllogism of letters 45, 48, and 49; and the riff on Stoic metaphysics in letter 113. In these cases, one can best refer to the well-attested function of Roman invective humor as a means of policing boundaries. By them, Seneca communicates certain rules of generic decorum while also alerting readers to his own deliberate transgressions.

The chapter studies the several accounts of the wise person’s joy that are found in Seneca’s works, arguing that these can give insight into his working methods as a philosopher. Seneca is clearly invested in the idea that the fulfillment of one’s rational nature would result in a life filled with joy, the virtuous counterpart to the problematic pleasure or delight of ordinary agents. Yet his explanations of how wise joy relates to objects of value are interestingly dissimilar, reflecting different views of the phenomenology of joy, the nature of its objects, and its dependence on social interactions. Graver argues that these discrepancies reflect a tendency to preserve ideas found in his various reading materials without attempting to impose a system, and, further, that the Stoic tradition itself must have had room for divergences of view concerning some specifics of moral psychology, as long as core principles were maintained.

In some key areas of ethics and psychology, Seneca is at pains to distinguish his views from those of the Peripatetic followers of Aristotle. While he probably does not know Aristotle’s works at first hand, Seneca shows some knowledge of the doctrines that were favored by most Peripatetics, gleaned from secondhand discussions in such writers as Posidonius and from at least one summary account that was similar in style to Stobaean Doxography “C,” attributed to Arius Didymus. Passing references throughout his works show a consistent effort to differentiate his Stoic positions from Peripatetic views, especially on the value of externals and on the emotions. Recognition of this fact aids with the interpretation of Epistulae morales 92, which responds point for point to a list of Peripatetic doctrines. In particular, the first paragraph of that letter should be read as accommodating the Peripatetic tripartition of soul to Seneca’s Stoic commitments rather than the other way around.

Chapter 4 is an in-depth study of Seneca’s handling of Epicurean material throughout his philosophical writings. It is primarily because of his interest in Epicurus that Seneca in the past was sometimes labeled an “eclectic” philosopher. In reality, he is implacably hostile to the philosophical doctrines of Epicureanism, from atomism and the idleness of the gods to the pleasure principle and the utilitarian basis of friendship and justice. In the Letters on Ethics, however, he signals receptivity to some of Epicurus’s therapeutic strategies, where he finds them psychologically plausible. These strategies include the use of maxims in teaching and certain arguments against the fear of death and of bodily pain. Seneca is able to adapt these to his own purposes without sacrificing his own Stoic principles.

In Seneca, we encounter a serious reader of philosophy who was at the same time a talented and ambitious writer. Thanks to his excellent collection of books on Stoicism, Epicureanism, and other philosophical systems, Seneca has played a major role in the transmission of Greek thought. But he is much more than a reporter. Deeply invested in his reading on theoretical subjects, he also has much to contribute to the conversation, in his spirited and sometimes satirical interpretations of philosophical arguments and in his active resistance to earlier positions of even his favorite authors. Though he describes himself as merely a student of philosophy, he is now universally recognized as a philosopher in his own right. Yet the word “philosopher” is inadequate to describe what he was, for as a Roman senator well connected within a burgeoning equestrian elite, thoroughly trained in rhetoric, and steeped in poetry, narrative history, and drama, Seneca brings rich cultural resources to the service of philosophical reflection.1 In his way of thinking, the work of philosophy is not done if it cannot also engage the imagination through illustrative analogies, through vivid descriptions of scenes from his own experience, and through the manipulation of literary form. What he produced is not only a literary sort of philosophy; it is philosophy as literature: a distinctively Roman answer to the intellectual artistry of Plato.

Chapter 12 gives close attention to the idea of self that is situated at the intersection of Seneca’s literary ambitions and his lifelong interest in Stoic moral psychology. The main text is Letters on Ethics 84, with its extended comparison of reading and writing to the activity of bees. Reflecting on this image, Foucault in “L’écriture de soi” captured the essential idea that writing is for Seneca an act of self-constitution. Here, a philologically informed reading recovers further ideas. Seneca has in mind not the subliterary activities that Foucault envisioned, but a consciously aesthetic practice of creation for the reading public. Study (studium) depends on reading but comes to fruition in the crafting of the ingenium, the literary talent that is to be recognized by future generations; at the same time, it is also the training of one’s character, fitting it for moral action. In the metaphoric progression of the letter, Seneca melds Roman canons of literary achievement with Stoic notion of moral progress into a conception of a scripted and exteriorized self more tightly integrated, through art, than the biological self and capable of surviving the death of the body.

Chapter 9 assesses Seneca’s claim in the Letters on Ethics to provide moral benefits to his future readers. Although he may not have read Plato’s Phaedrus, Seneca is certainly aware of the arguments Socrates makes there concerning the efficacy of writing. In his own work, Seneca sometimes seems to echo Plato’s points that writing cannot improve the character of the reader because it lacks the immediacy, the adaptability, and the interactive possibilities of spoken discourse. At the same time, however, he comments both explicitly and implicitly on the means by which a written work can indeed take on some of those characteristics when it is presented in the novel format adopted for the Letters on Ethics. Invoking the commonplace that letters have the potential to make the absent present, he develops a variety of strategies for creating a lively sense of authorial presence, for training the reader in methods of application, and for engaging the reader in a quasi-dialogic interaction with the text. Further, he explores the emotional dimension of the reader’s experience in ways that are surprising for an author of his Stoic commitments.

Chapter 7 treats the consolatory letter to Marullus, which is provided as an enclosure in Epistulae morales 99. The latest of Seneca’s consolations, this work takes an unusually rigorous Stoic line. Although the deceased was a young child, Marullus is told not to grieve at all: Even the death of an adult friend would not truly be an evil, and the correct response to it is to rejoice in the goodness of the relationship that is now concluded. As elsewhere, however, Seneca concedes that an emotion-like reaction that does not depend on a belief that the loss is an evil is both natural and blameless. That pre-emotional reaction may include tears, as also may the eupathic joy of the Stoic sage. This last claim is paralleled in Philo of Alexandria, with interesting implications for the phenomenology of the Stoic eupatheiai. At the end of his letter, Seneca considers and rejects a consolatory tactic suggested by the Epicurean Metrodorus.