Another prong of the defense lies in turning away from Seneca himself toward the famous philosophers and moral exemplary figures of the past: Plato, Epicurus, Zeno, and the famous Cynic philosophers all suffered accusations of failing to practice what they preached (18.1–19.3). He reminds us that even these great heroes may not have always matched their actions to their words; but the real point about them is not how they failed, but what they achieved. “The practice of trying to become healthy is worth praising, regardless of whether it works. Surely it isn’t surprising if people who set off on the steep path don’t reach the very top. If you’re a man, look up to those who are attempting great things, even if they fall” (20.2). In an inspiring crescendo, Seneca celebrates the attempt to live up to Stoic ideals, even if one fails ever to fully achieve them. But there remains a certain sense of anxiety, a suspicion that ambition, even philosophical ambition, can be dangerous. Seneca ends his call to philosophical aspiration with a quotation from Ovid: even if one fails, “still he fails from mighty acts of daring” (20.5). As Seneca knew, the context in Ovid is the moment when Phaethon, son of the Sun-God, begs to take his father’s chariot across the sky: he fails to control the divine horses and falls to his death, scorching the entire earth.
Seneca returns, then, to the topic of whether a philosopher should possess wealth and other material benefits and avoid the “indifferent” problems of death, sickness, or exile. He suggests that the real issue is not whether one has wealth, health, or life; it is how one feels about the possessions. The philosopher will not object if such things fall in his lap and will, in fact, be glad of them; he will be equally calm if they happen to depart: “He does not love riches, but he would rather have them” (On the Happy Life 21.4). The justification for this position is that the philosopher is particularly glad of the extra opportunities wealth gives for the practice of virtue: “In poverty, there is only one kind of virtue—not to be oppressed or crushed by it. But in wealth, there is a wide field of opportunity for being moderate, for being generous, for being hard-working, for being orderly, and for greatness.” He continues: “The wise man would not despise himself, even if he were a midget; but he would rather be tall” (On the Happy Life 22.1).
He goes on to discuss explicitly the Stoic doctrine of the “indifferent things” and to emphasize that even indifferent things, like wealth, may have some value, and some are more desirable than others (“they are worth something, and some are more important than others”). As the orthodox Stoic position held, Seneca withholds words like “good” from the indifferent things: they are valuable, but not good, and the distinction is important. Valuable items are worth choosing over others, if all things are equal; but they are not, in themselves, sufficient for human happiness, and hence, not truly good. Only the life of virtue is truly good. But Seneca does, again in accordance with normal Stoic belief, suggest that some indifferents are better than others. The real question is whether one can enjoy wealth without feeling in the least bit upset if it should ever go away: “If my wealth goes away, it takes with it nothing but itself” (22.5). “To sum up: my wealth is mine; you belong to yours.”
Seneca insists, then, that there is a right and a wrong way for a philosopher to be rich. There are three central elements in being rich in the right way. One key factor, as we have seen, is that the wise man will not be dependent on his wealth for happiness; he should be able, like the addressee of Kipling’s poem “If,” to meet both fortune and disaster “and treat those two imposters just the same.” The second major criterion is that the philosophical rich person must acquire his wealth honestly, without taking it illegitimately from anybody else; wealth must not be “stained with somebody else’s blood.” It is not at all clear that Seneca’s own wealth would pass this test. He clearly became wealthy in the service of Nero, as well as through usury that caused suffering in the provinces; and he was at least complicit, if not actually actively responsible, for some of the bloodshed of the regime, including the murder of Britannicus. It is noteworthy that Seneca writes only in the third person about the importance of acquiring wealth honestly. He does not say, “My wealth is taken from nobody else nor tainted with blood,” but rather, “The philosopher’s wealth will not be stained with another person’s blood” (23.1). Moreover, there is some obvious evasiveness about Seneca’s treatment of how the “philosopher,” that nonexistent abstraction, might actually manage to achieve the vast wealth that, Seneca assures us, he will enjoy but never abuse. It comes, we learn, from “the generosity of Fortune” (23.2); the implication is that it would be rude to reject the gifts of such a goddess. There is no acknowledgment that Fortune might operate through rather unsavory human agents, such as Agrippina and Nero. Indeed, there is no discussion of how, exactly, Fortune might go about depositing wealth into the lap of the philosopher without his doing anything dubious, or indeed anything whatsoever, to acquire it. Like Byron’s Don Juan, who finds beautiful women constantly throwing themselves at him without his ever lifting a seductive finger, Seneca’s version of the rich philosopher acquires his wealth by a kind of divine accident.
The third essential feature of the Philosopher’s behavior around wealth is his generosity. He will show exactly the right degree of beneficence and munificence to those less fortunate than himself—giving constant and ungrudging gifts, not carelessly but with judgment. After all, one of the primary reasons why wealth is beneficial is that it allows an opportunity for giving: Ubicumque homo est, ibi benefici locus est: “where there’s a human, there’s a chance to give” (24.3). But rich people have a chance to give more than poor people and are, in that sense, better off. There is no suggestion here that the best kind of things one could give another person might be immateriaclass="underline" no suggestion that a beneficium, a benefit, might include love or time or labor or thoughtfulness or kind words.
Seneca argues that there are two types of the philosophical rich man. The first type is an imperfect sinner, a philosopher only in the sense that he aspires to become better. He cannot fit his life to his words, but at least he is trying: “You’ve got no right to push me to live up to my own standards. I’m fashioning myself, I’m molding myself, I’m living myself up to my ideal; if I achieve the goals I’ve set, then push me to answer words to deeds” (24.4). The other type is stronger and more self-assured. He prefers being rich to being a beggar under the Sublician Bridge (Pons Sublicius), a famous haunt of the homeless in Seneca’s Rome. He prefers wearing a toga and sandals to “showing naked shoulders and cut feet” (25.2). But he can be happy either way. The tiny acknowledgment of the life of the poorest of the poor in contemporary Rome is striking, not least because the ideal type of philosopher obviously has no impulse whatsoever to help them in their plight. They are an image of what he could be; they are not people whom he might have a responsibility to help.32
Seneca does not present himself as one who has achieved the ideal relationship to wealth. The ideal philosophical character is not himself but Socrates, who takes over the essay and declares his support for the Stoic point of view. Socrates—famous for not charging for his teaching, and for owning only a single cloak that he wore both summer and winter—is not an obvious supporter for the idea that the philosopher would like to be very rich, if possible. But Seneca insists that Socrates is, when it comes down to it, on his side: those who criticize philosophers for being rich are no different from those who attacked, imprisoned, and executed that long-suffering Athenian: “Go on, jump on me, attack me: I’ll conquer by enduring” (27.3). The charges of hypocrisy against philosophers are, it turns out, leveled by people who are themselves hypocrites, and who fail even to listen carefully to the philosophers’ words: “So I don’t live one way and talk another,” says the wise man; “I talk one way and you hear another. You don’t even ask what my words mean” (25.8).