Schools

Abstract

This chapter examines Seneca’s views on the collective practice of philosophy, through his representations of the philosophical school. Seneca believes that the Stoic school uniquely combines intellectual coherence with latitude for individual inquiry. He demonstrates these features of the Stoic intellectual community by contrast with Epicureanism. The Epicurean school also receives more sympathetic treatment, though, as Seneca uses it to illustrate how philosophy’s vulnerability to public misunderstanding and caricature. The chapter highlights the fundamentally social character of the philosophical way of life in Seneca’s writings, expressed through the often transtemporal and virtual model of community offered by the philosophical school.