(no subject)
Seneca explains how best to pursue tranquility. Basically, we need to use our reasoning ability to drive away “all that excites or affrights us.” If we can do this, there will ensue “unbroken tranquility and enduring freedom,” and we will experience “a boundless joy that is firm and unalterable.” Indeed, he claims (as we have seen) that someone who practices Stoic principles
“must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are “paltry and trivial and fleeting.”