Benjamin Porteous, Harvard University
Few figures from Graeco-Roman Antiquity have attracted more controversy than Seneca the Younger. Scholars have long crossed swords over the nature of this captivating and contradictory man: the Stoic philosopher, and speech writer for Nero; the advocate of a controlled mind, and writer of plays that depend on Sturm und Drang for their effectiveness; the man who thought a retired life fitting for a lover of wisdom, and the canny, wealthy politician; the heroic man of principle, and the cynical power player whose debts caught up with him. (Griffin 1992; Wilson 2014). Seneca’s views on slavery have become a flashpoint for larger appraisals of his life and legacy. The man who wrote Epistle 47, one of the foremost pieces of philosophical prose to survive from Antiquity critiquing slavery, was at the same time a substantial slaveholder. Unsurprisingly, scholarship on Seneca and slavery has hit a roadblock. The idealism of an earlier generation has been discredited by Keith Bradley, Peter Garnsey, and others. More sympathetic voices have not gone beyond Miriam Griffin’s sensible admission that Seneca’s “emphasis is on the master’s conscience and the status quo.” (Griffin 1992: 284)
This paper asks a hypothetical question: how would a late antique Chinese reader—say, from 450 CE-- have understood Epistle 47? I propose that the epistle would have been surprisingly intelligible. By 450 CE, the major works of the Buddhist canon had been translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, joining the corpus of indigenous Chinese philosophical thinking. Ancient Chinese thinkers, especially Mencius孟子(fourth century BCE) held a keen interest in the psychological structure of empathetic reflection. How could the mind be trained to engage with the experience of others? How could this engagement become a mandate to moral action? The arrival of Buddhism brought with it a consciousness of the blurriness of all boundaries: in a world of reincarnation, no ontological distinctions could hold normative value.
Employing the eye of a late Antique Chinese reader, then, I examine Epistle 47. Seneca famously asks Lucilius to switch his perspective on the enslaved people around him, pondering their experiences, and realizing the fragility of the line separating them from him. Modern Classicists are rightly inclined to see this in context as a form of “role play" that allows Seneca to diffuse social tension while focusing finally on the “moral health of the slave owner” (Bradley, 2008: 243; also Edwards 2009). The close reading of relevant Confucian and Buddhist texts—selections from the Mencius and the Vimalakīrti Sūtra (Chinese: Weimojie jing 維摩詰經)--I perform in the first part of the paper suggests that a fifth-century CE Chinese reader would have found in Seneca a compelling other-oriented argument for moral change.
In Mediterranean classical studies this paper hopes to provide a provocative catalyst to Senecan research--how might the eyes of a fifth-century Chinese scholar allow us to see Seneca differently? —and in Global Classics probes at the structures used by foundational philosophical texts to create persuasive moral arguments.