In letters from a stoic 41, Seneca talks about the God that within us. “God is near you, he is with you, and he is within you.” He then went to talk about nature and said that if we pay attention to it and look at it with awe our “soul will be deeply moved by a certain intimation of the existence of God.” A deep affinity with nature and immense appreciation for its beauty can easily be found as well in the works of the other Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
In the next part of the letter, Seneca emphasized the importance of our soul and reason. For the Stoics, we tapped into our soul through reason and we enhanced it through practicing virtues. Virtue is the only good to the Stoics because the soul is the only thing that cannot be taken from us. “What, then, is such a soul? One which is resplendent with no external good, but only with its own… No man ought to glory except in that which is his own.” Seneca and the Stoics have warned about placing value too much value on external goods because they can be taken from any time from us by Fortune. “God is near you, he is with you, and he is within you.”
“God is near you, he is with you, and he is within you.”
In the last part of the letter, Seneca talked about our nature as reasoning animals. To live in accordance with nature means being rational at all times. “For man is a reasoning animal. Therefore, man’s highest good is attained, if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth.”
“For man is a reasoning animal. Therefore, man’s highest good is attained, if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth.”
***** Letters from a Stoic Key Takeaways is a collection of short key takeaways from the letters sent by Seneca to Lucilius. Read each letter’s key takeways here .
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