The desire for a better self
– Seneca
on wanting to be good

Catharine Edwards
Birkbeck, University of London

October 16, 18.00 pm CET

Seneca’s Letters return often to the subject of our ungovernable and ill-targeted desires and the means we might use to orient and control them better.  Building on Brad Inwood’s examination of ‘summary will’ in terms of the phenomenology of decision-making and self-improvement in Seneca’s work (2000), my paper will explore the ways Seneca represents the relationship between the voluntas of nature and the voluntas of the individual proficiens, who has not yet fully grasped what the voluntas of nature might be.  Letter 80, I shall argue, has a very particular point to make about the role of wanting, velle, in philosophical progress.  Those who are not yet sapientes may not fully understand virtus and ratio but Seneca’s writing also appeals to their emotions so that they nevertheless want to achieve that understanding.