Seneca (1) (–0065)

Sobre a brevidade da vida
Os escritos do filósofo estoico Sêneca pertencem à categoria de obras que mudaram a humanidade e que, universais, resistem à passagem do tempo. Por meio de insights poderosos, eles transformam a maneira como nos vemos e já serviram de guia para inúmeras gerações por sua eloquência, lucidez e sabedoria. Sobre a brevidade da vida e Sobre a firmeza do sábio foram concebidos em forma de cartas e apresentam reflexões essenciais quanto à arte de viver, à passagem do tempo e à importância da razão e da moralidade. Traduzida do latim por José Eduardo S. Lohner, esta edição conta ainda com notas esclarecedoras do tradutor. (Amazon)… (more)

Lovely thin edition of a 20 part essay lent to me by my son. This (flawed) 2018 Benediction Classic does not have a name for the translator. Of course the content is true to the title except that Seneca asserts that life is not short at all if you live it properly. The secret is not to let others steal away your time or become 'engrossed' in activities other than philosophy. Being engrossed is not to be at leisure and 'they are at leisure wo take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever(sic)y age to their own; all the years that hae gone ore (sic) them are an addition to their store.'… (more)

The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life .... It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.

These sentences from the first page of Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae sum up the problem as he sees it. Almost all of the rest of the essay is examples of things that people do in their life but with which they are ultimately unsatisfied. So what is the answer? As near as I can tell it is to be wise and to spend one's time as a philosopher like Seneca.

Honors, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them...

I must aver that the other activities that Seneca criticizes amount to almost everything that people do, and that if they were not done there would have been no Rome for Seneca to flounce around in.

Is the essay just repetitive blather then? Mostly, but there are many things of at least historical interest. For example, The law does not draft a soldier after his fiftieth year, it does not call a senator after his sixtieth...… (more)