Part 1, Part 2

Someone will say that one can pursue virtue because he expects some pleasure. And is that right? Seneca believes that even if virtue creates pleasure, it is not the reason to strive for it: because pleasure is not the only thing but its additional result. Pleasure is not a reward or prime source of virtue, it is only an addition to it. Man accepts it not because he enjoys it. A higher good lies in the rationality of judgment and at the highest level of spirit: when a person has overcompleted his own mercy, he has fringed himself with his own boundaries, this supreme good reaches a complete appearance and needs nothing else: beyond the whole, as well as beyond the end, nothing exists . For Seneca, a pleasant life is possible only in combination with virtue. For him who does not live honestly, he can not live and enjoy it, and this can not experience the verbal animals as well as those for whom food is a dimension of good. The wickedness is in a variety of pleasures and pastimes: arrogance, self-indulgence, inflated self-denial over others, blind, unreasonable selfishness, dissipated extravagance, exaltation for the youngest childhood, frustration, haughtiness for which insult, laziness and disobedience of the neglected spirit . Unlike the viciousness that these vices create, virtue is just the opposite - it drives them up and awakens the mind: before accepting any pleasure, she puts it under scrutiny; even after checking it does not value him particularly high; and when it is accepted, it is pleasant to enjoy it, but to control it. And because control reduces pleasure, he therefore damages your supreme good. You delight in your pleasure, I restrict it; of pleasure you enjoy, I use it; you consider him to be a superior good, I do not even think of it; for your pleasure you do everything, I am nothing.

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Seneca's words: "For the pleasure of doing nothing," he refers to the sage, to whom he only allows pleasure. For Seneca the sage is this man, over whom no one has power, the least pleasure. For him, the only thing that exists is virtue, and it is he who guides him in life, and those people who think the pleasure is leading, who are full of all the gifts of fate, they are unhappy and have no way forward. These people are stupid, they are threatened by disappointment, they will experience great pleasure; for them the worries and the right thinking are equally strange to them; Something common to most people happens to them - their madness is in joy, laughing their anger. And the pleasures of the wise are exactly the opposite: they are settled, moderate, almost slow, they are mastered and barely noticeable, because they have come uninvited; but even if they have come at their own initiative, the one who feels them does not accept them either with honor or joy; the wise man mixes them with his other life activities and places them as moments of joke and fun between serious duties. The vicious people think that living pleasantly, living and virtuous. They rely on this principle because of Epicure's teachings of pleasure, but they do not know that they understand it incorrectly. In this way they lose the only remaining good in all their misery - the shame of sin; they begin to praise everything that they have redeemed before, the vice becomes their pride.

While the vicious people think Epicure's teaching of their cover for their passions, this doctrine is not at all. It is right and holy, even joyless, because Epicurus reduces the pleasure of small and weak sensations and binds him to the same laws that Seneca binds virtue: He orders him to obey nature, and what is sufficient for nature is little for leakage. But people who do not know the profound secrets of Epicurus's doctrine imagine that their vices are entirely up to it, and allow themselves to shake not secretly but with open forehead. Whoever goes to virtue gives evidence of the nobility of his nature, who comes after pleasure, seems impotent, inert, devoid of courage, about to fail altogether unless he finds a person to show him the difference between the different pleasures and teachings that do not go beyond the bounds of natural desires, and which move downward, endless, and the more we satisfy them, the more insatiable they become. That is why let virtue go forward - then every step will be relaxed. With this Seneca shows that virtue and pleasure are not equal, and if one wants to reach a happy life, then virtue is the one that must guide it, it must go forward, but the pleasure of following it. If one puts the pleasure at the head, then he will be deprived of it, and of virtue; he will not rule the pleasure, but it; his lack will harass him, his abundance will suffocate; it is unfortunate if he leaves it, even more unhappy if it overflows. No man goes to catch pleasure, and pleasure becomes the real hunter. As a hunter because of hunting neglects much more serious deeds and gives up many of his duties, so also the one who pursues the pleasure, leaves everything, first throws away liberty and becomes a subject of his rump, he does not really buy pleasures but is sold. If a person has a weakness in pleasure, he can not be a good protector of his homeland, nor a vindictive, nor a defender of his friends. That is why the higher good must go up where nobody and nothing can take it down, where there is no access to grief, hope, fear, nothing at all that affects its legitimate rights. Only virtue can go up to this place! In its footsteps we must go to overcome this steep slope.

The virtue tolerates patiently and willingly everything that happens because it knows that every difficult moment happens according to the laws of nature, and the one who complains tears pours and moans, he executes violently the commandments. Seneca, therefore, warns of suffering all the torments that are a consequence of the structure of the universe. Everyone is bound by the holy duty to bear their mortal lot, and must not be embarrassed by the evils no one can escape. Man is born as a royal subject : freedom - this is obedience to God. All this is the reason, according to Seneca, to think that virtue is the foundation of true happiness. The counsels that give this virtue are: first, it is good and bad to accept only what is the result of virtue and vice versa, and secondly that one does not tremble before the evil and the good that if God allows , to become God's likeness. The prize for this feat is a gift enormous, of divinity equal: no coercion will weigh on you, you will not need anything, you will be free, protected, invulnerable. No business will go out of your way, nothing will hinder you, everything will go according to your wishes, no failure will lead you, no unexpected or unwanted encounter. And to be happy, must he be virtuous? Virtue is not achieved once. Everyone, in order to reach the higher good, must fight the vicissitudes in the human destiny to escape from the bonds and pranks of transience. The difference is that one is firmly connected, others are attached; And he who goes far to the heights that has risen upward, he pulls the loose chain behind him, is not yet free, but as if he is at liberty. Someone Seneca's opponent may at this point say he speaks more courageously than he lives, and Seneca will say he does not say how he lives, but how he should live. The same reproaches are directed to Epicurus, to Plato, to Zeno. When Seneca speaks of virtue, he does not speak of himself, and when he blasphews the vices, he first blaspheth his own. He says that when he can, he will live as well, and that reproaches directed against him will not prevent him from glorifying life - not the one I lead, but the one I know I have to lead will not prevent me I adore virtue and follow it, even crawling far or behind it.