Seneca and the Self

by Shadi Bartsch (Editor), David Wray (Editor)

This collection of essays by well-known scholars of Seneca focuses on the multifaceted ways in which Seneca, as philosopher, politician, poet and Roman senator, engaged with the question of ethical selfhood. The contributors explore the main cruces of Senecan scholarship, such as whether Seneca's treatment of the self is original in its historical context; whether Seneca's Stoicism can be reconciled with the pull of rhetorical and literary self-expression; and how Seneca claims to teach psychic self-integration. Most importantly, the contributors debate to what degree, if at all, the absence of a technically articulated concept of selfhood should cause us to hesitate in seeking a distinctively Senecan self - one that stands out not only for the 'intensity of its relations to self', as Foucault famously put it, but also for the way in which those relations to self are couched.

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Random Anonymous Pseudonym* · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Seneca and the Self" provides a timely, well-chosen and thought-provoking selection of compelling essays by renowned classicists and philosophers, who present illuminating, complementary and sometimes surprising new angles on Seneca's thought and work.