Seneca to Lucilius: 31, the great potential of the human mind

Family is where we begin our moral development

Turn a deaf ear to those who love you most: their intentions are good, but the things they are wishing for you are bad. If you want to be truly prosperous, entreat the gods that none of the things they want for you may happen. Those are not goods that they wish to see heaped upon you. (XXXI.2–3)

Strong stuff from Seneca here! But before you run off thinking that the Roman philosopher was giving permission to teenagers to ignore their parents and live a life of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, take a look at what comes immediately afterwards:

There is but one good, and that is both the cause and the mainstay of happiness: trust in oneself. (XXXI.3)

According to classic scholar Liz Gloyn, in her wonderful The Ethics of the Family in Seneca, the Stoics recognized that, in most cases at least, the family is crucial to our initial moral development. We learn the basics of how to live our life and how to interact with others from our parents and other adults we grow up with. The problem is that such early teaching environment soon runs…