THE SUBLIME SENECA This is an extended meditation on ethics and literature across the Senecan corpus. There are two chapters on the Moral Letters, asking how one is to read philosophy or how one can write about being. Moving from the Letters to the Natural Questions and Dialogues, Professor Gunderson explores how authorship works at the level both of the work and of the world, the ethics of seeing, and the question of how one can give up on the here and now and behold instead some other, better ethical sphere. Seneca s tragedies offer words of caution: desire might well subvert reason at its most profound level (Phaedra), or humanity s painful separation from the sublime might be part of some cruel divine plan (The Madness of Hercules). The book concludes by considering what, if anything, we are to make of Seneca s efforts to enlighten us. erik gunderson is Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto. He is the author of four other scholarly monographs: Laughing Awry: Plautus and Tragicomedy (2015); Nox Philologiae: Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Ancient Library (2009); Declamation, Paternity and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self (2003); and Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (2000). He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric (2009). His work spans languages, genres, and eras, and he consistently brings to bear modern critical perspectives when exploring the ancient world.
THE SUBLIME SENECA Ethics, literature, metaphysics by ERIK GUNDERSON
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. Information on this title: /9781107090019 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Gunderson, Erik, author. The sublime Seneca : ethics, literature, metaphysics / by. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-09001-9 1. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 b.c. 65 a.d. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. I. Title. pa6661.e8g9 2015 188 dc23 2014032239 isbn 978-1-107-09001-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
V both beautiful and sublime
Contents Introduction 1 1 Misreading Seneca 14 2 Writing metaphysics 37 3 The nature of Seneca 56 4 The spectacle of ethics 74 5 Losing Seneca 88 6 The analytics of desire 105 7 The last monster 127 Conclusion: The metaphysics of Senecan morals 148 Notes 158 Bibliography 209 Index 221 vii