The educative and therapeutic function of Stoicism in Senecan tragedy

Abstract

The longstanding scholarly debate on the relation between Seneca’s tragedies and his philosophical compositions has caused many disputes among scholars divided into three main groups. According to the traditional anti-Stoic view, Seneca tragicus cannot be Seneca philosophus since they diametrically differ due to the intense presence and the triumph of excessive emotions over reason, which infuse the plays and come in contradiction to the Stoic moral principle that passions need to be extirpated. Therefore, the Stoic use of poetic examples seems to be paradoxical. However, a significant proportion of scholars detect philosophical aspects within the plays, including non-Stoic influences such as Platonic and Aristotelian or psychoanalytical. The third group of scholars argue in favour of a wholly Stoic reading of the plays. The current thesis places Senecan drama within a Stoic tradition of philosophers employing poetry to serve their ethical purposes. Furthermore, it aims to demonstrate the educative function of Seneca’s drama through Seneca’s use of tragic exempla of Stoic moral principles and by analysing the tragic characters as case studies to construct their psychological portraiture in line with Stoicism. The educative role of the plays is substantiated through 1) Seneca’s acceptance of the soul’s monistic and cognitive nature, which allows for a view of passions as wrong judgments and false beliefs about indifferentia, which are things of no intrinsic value, 2) Seneca’s use of poetry as an educational means, 3) the chorus’s and minor characters’ guiding role towards Stoic messages through sententiae and admonition against passions 4) the educative use of the physical manifestation of ira and furor within the plays, 5) the illustration of furor as an ingrained process stemming from intense emotions, which renders the agent responsible for their mental state and actions, and 6) the tragic exemplification of the need for reason to interfere by rejecting the erroneous judgements based on improperly placed values on indifferentia and dependence on fickle Fortuna.