Key Arguments

• He quotes a Greek maxim to diagnose foolish life: "‘The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.’"
• When asked who said it, he attributes it to his familiar source: "‘Who said that?’ you ask. The same man as before." (Epicurus, from earlier letters).
• He rejects the reading that confines folly to stock comic characters: "And what sort of life do you think is meant by ‘the life of folly’? Baba’s and Isio’s? No, he means our own life," thus universalizing the charge.
• He characterizes this life as driven by irrational desire and futility: "precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction – if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now," stressing both their danger and their proven inability to content us.

Source Quotes

To these favours there shall be added the following small contribution, a striking maxim that comes from Greece. Here it is: ‘The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.’ ‘Who said that?’ you ask.

Here it is: ‘The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.’ ‘Who said that?’ you ask. The same man as before. And what sort of life do you think is meant by ‘the life of folly’?

The same man as before. And what sort of life do you think is meant by ‘the life of folly’? Baba’s and Isio’s? No, he means our own life, precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction – if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now – never thinking how pleasant it is to ask for nothing, how splendid it is to be complete and be independent of fortune. So continually remind yourself, Lucilius, of the many things you have achieved.

Key Concepts

• ‘The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.’
• ‘Who said that?’ you ask. The same man as before.
• And what sort of life do you think is meant by ‘the life of folly’? Baba’s and Isio’s? No, he means our own life, precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction – if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now – never thinking how pleasant it is to ask for nothing, how splendid it is to be complete and be independent of fortune.

Context

After his remarks on exercise in Letter XV, Seneca adds his customary ‘small contribution’, an Epicurean maxim about foolish life, and broadens it into a critique of ordinary human existence dominated by restless, unsatisfiable desire.