“And so I resolved to live. Indeed, sometimes it takes a strong person to live, too.” Seneca, Letter LXXVIII
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RUBENS, Peter Paul. The Death of Seneca [A Morte de Sêneca], c. 1612–1615. Oil on canvas. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Available at https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/wE4KXQExZ5. Accessed 23 May 2025.
We often recall that Seneca wrote extensively about the freedom to die. Take, for instance, the paradigmatic Letter 70, in which he discusses the individual’s right to choose death when faced with unbearable suffering. We therefore often find the argument from freedom set against the argument from belonging, as though they were opposing forces. On one side stands an individual’s freedom over their own body and fate. On the other stands the moral and social obligation to remain alive, bound to family, society, and life.
Things are more complicated. In his own life, Seneca had already sided with the argument from belonging, as Letter 78 makes clear. He confesses that he had thought about killing himself, but that his father’s “indulgence” and advanced age held him back: “Cogitavi enim non quam fortiter ego mori possem, sed quam ille fortiter desiderare non posset.” The issue involves the ethical consideration one owes another person, beyond the individual strength to die. The ties of affection and obligation require him to go on living. Here belonging shapes and directs freedom, giving it an ethical and communal meaning. For Seneca, then, belonging can paradoxically strengthen freedom, far from being a burden that stifles it. The freedom to die is a prerogative that must be weighed within the horizon of human relationships and ethical responsibilities. Decisions about life and death are part of a web of ties that give existence meaning and depth, beyond any isolated, purely individual act.
Freedom for Seneca is thus a responsible autonomy that recognizes both one’s own finitude and one’s interdependence with others. It falls short of absolute independence. To live “fortiter” is also to honour that belonging, taking on life as an ethical commitment to those to whom we owe affection and care, as well as a matter of one’s own will.
This ambivalence between freedom and belonging invites us to think of life and death as moments in a dialectic, rather than as radically separate opposites. In that dialectic, the person, in all their complexity, negotiates between the desire for autonomy and the recognition that they are part of a world of others. Seneca thus places the freedom to die within a larger ethical dimension. Living, too, demands courage, because it means taking responsibility for the ties that make us who we are.
Prof. (and student) Alexandre H. Reis