Key Arguments

• He defines being 'thrown out' as being expelled from somewhere one is unwilling to leave, and asserts that this never happens to the wise: 'And the reason why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.'
• He states the key Stoic strategy for freedom under necessity: 'He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.'
• By making his will coincide with what is unavoidable, the wise man converts coerced events into voluntary actions, thus preserving inner freedom even in the face of death or expulsion.
• This crowns his earlier reflections about leaving life 'as if' voluntarily, presenting consent to fate as the definitive mark of wisdom.

Source Quotes

And yet there is this virtue about my case: I’m in the process of being thrown out, certainly, but the manner of it is as if I were going out. And the reason why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

And the reason why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

Key Concepts

• being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
• He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

Context

Final lines of the excerpt from Letter LIV, where Seneca moves from his personal case of illness and attitude toward death to a general Stoic doctrine: the wise person maintains freedom by willing what necessity decrees, and so is never truly expelled against his will.