On Suicide in Seneca's Letter 58 (ep. 2)

As I noted, last April, when (here) I first wrote on Seneca’s Letter 58 (here), it is rather long and has quite a bit of technical, philosophical discussion. In addition, to a lot of other issues. And unusually in this series — which started over a decade ago — I hinted I would devote a second post to it. But it hung over me with dread.

This past year, I would re-read the letter with Seneca skillfully weaving between metaphysical and political themes. But I trembled at the existential call in it. And I worried I could not write about it in the manner becoming the topic and my audience’s intelligence.

This existential call is introduced by the powerful line (58.27), Imbecilli fluvidique inter vana constitimus: weak and fluid, we are stopped among vain things. Let us therefore turn our minds to the things that are everlasting (I adjusted Richard Gummere’s translation a bit.) After discussing the role of reason and God’s providence in our lives, Seneca writes: “There is a pleasure in being in one’s own company as long as possible, when a man has made himself worth enjoying.”

Seneca then introduces the question at what point in old age suicide becomes apt. Now, it’s not the first time in these letters that Seneca has alluded to the significance of suicide in his own thinking (recall, e.g., Letter 24 (here) and Letter 51 (recall here); I would not be surprised if there were more letters that I am not recalling.) In both of these letters, politics is on the surface or not far from it. As I have noted in my first stab at Letter 58 that’s true here too, but politics is not the only register.

Seneca then narrows the issue down to the occasion when a man’s body has become useless to its (given) task/function (ad si inutile ministeriis corpus est.) He then suggests it may be appropriate to release the mind from its whirling in the void—our body is the way by which our mind makes contact with other bodies. The implied ablism surprised me because on the whole, as we have encountered his in earlier letters, Seneca’s view on what endures in the soul is reason that latches onto natural necessity.

So, why can’t a malfunctioning body not philosophize? (It also seems at odds with the earlier Stoics’ views on freedom of mind even while being tortured, etc.) In response to this implied question, Seneca offers a kind of cost-benefit analysis, and a better be safe (self-chosen death) than sorry (physical misery) argument. But it’s clear his heart is not in the argument, and he allows Lucillius another approach.

He then switches to another case; this is the one that I found unbearable to contemplate with you in my solitude for most of 2024. What if the mind goes? As Seneca puts it: “But if corrosion begins to shake my mind, if it tears apart my parts, if it leaves me not life but some breath, I will leap from the rotting and crumbling building.” (Modestly adjusted translation) [at si coeperit concutere mentem, si partes eius convellere, si mihi non vitam reliquerit, sed animam, prosiliam ex aedificio putri ac ruenti.]

Now, confronting this unnerved me. Not in the sense of the fear that many people my age (might) have of being overcome with dementia and Alzheimer’s. I view such diseases as heartbreaking for friends and family, but when the person principally concerned has a cheerful disposition and can enjoy the comforts of life while being well cared for it does not strike me as especially alarming prospect. I often encounter people with dementia who seem (ahh) happy (even if not flourishing).

But, rather, in a related sense: during long covid I could use my brain only sporadically, but almost not at all for most of its agreeable and social functions. Luckily, I could still read and write philosophy in solitude and so engage in silent dialogue with others—but all the other sociable joys of life were impossible or in a very limited fashion. And, for me, even philosophy is mostly a social activity in the classroom or with friends/companions. And whenever I engaged in those activities, I would pay a deer price. Damned if you do (severe migraine), and damned if you don’t (intellectual loneliness and a forlorn lack of connection even with people around you).

So, in my dark hours, I often confronted the question in terms of what to do with my life going forward if, as seemed increasingly likely, my recovery halted. For reasons having to do with my family’s circumstances, I refused to frame this question in terms of suicide, despite recognizing that if I had been a bachelor I might well have obsessed about or deliberated on it. (And, also, when it would cross my mind, I kept quiet about it—because the downstream idea to have to talk with a shrink when talking itself would give me a migraine was unappealing.)

Returning to Seneca it’s noticeable that he offers a clear reason for his stance. For him cognitive impairment or suffering is an impediment to all the reasons/ends worth living (viz.: sed quia impedimento mihi futurus est ad omne propter quod vivitur). It’s not obviously true; there may be bodily goods that fall in this category.

However, before my long covid, I always assumed that I would enjoy music to the end of my days. But it turned out that my cognitive impairment made even my most favorite music sound like scratching on a blackboard. (Luckily, the recovery from my symptoms also has caused the revival of joy in music.) So, it’s possible that the absence of (great) mental suffering is an enabling or necessary condition to enjoy those bodily goods that make life worth living. (I allow that music appreciation may not be the best example of a bodily good, although I would argue it is for Seneca.)

That is, if you are prone to serious (ahh) depression or when a certain kind of suffering generates depression then Seneca invites you to contemplate suicide. Not, to be sure, to end the pain/sadness [dolorem], but because he finds that even in the depth of depression there is a courageous freedom to end it. In my own splenetic state of affairs, I had no appetite to confront this kind of freedom despite my oblique awareness of it.