Seneca's On Anger: Seneca Vs. Seneca

Whether one encountered a bad driver on the road or witnessed a loved one suffering, everyone has been in situations where he or she has felt angry. The nature of this universal emotion has divided people on their thoughts about how to control anger. Although some like Aristotle argued that their tendency toward anger is natural and useful at times, stoics like Lucius Annaeus Seneca believed anger was unnatural and useless. Although Seneca tries to persuasively argue his beliefs on why anger is detrimental and unnatural to humanity by using strong logical connections, his use of ambiguous language leaves uncertainty towards his arguments. Seneca first begins his letter “On Anger” by ambiguously defining anger as a violent vice that causes

In this argument, he claims that mankind was born with the tendency to hold mutual love for each other, while anger was created for mutual destruction (2). Because nature simply would not have created such a vile characteristic in its “best and most finished work,” and this desire would not be in a man’s peaceful heart, Seneca deduces that anger cannot be considered as a natural characteristic. He does not consider the fact that his opponents may have different definitions of the word natural, making his argument

Seneca disagrees with Aristotle’s view claiming that if anger “listens to reason and follows where reason leads, it is no longer anger” (4). However, Aristotle’s definition of anger could have included both Seneca’s definition of anger and his definition of “not anger”. Although Seneca tries to give the illusion that his argument is better than that of Aristotle, an impactful Greek philosopher, he forgets the fact that his definition of anger could be completely different than Aristotle’s definition, making the basis of his argument