Chapter 8 - Anatomies of Joy

Summary

The chapter studies the several accounts of the wise person’s joy that are found in Seneca’s works, arguing that these can give insight into his working methods as a philosopher. Seneca is clearly invested in the idea that the fulfillment of one’s rational nature would result in a life filled with joy, the virtuous counterpart to the problematic pleasure or delight of ordinary agents. Yet his explanations of how wise joy relates to objects of value are interestingly dissimilar, reflecting different views of the phenomenology of joy, the nature of its objects, and its dependence on social interactions. Graver argues that these discrepancies reflect a tendency to preserve ideas found in his various reading materials without attempting to impose a system, and, further, that the Stoic tradition itself must have had room for divergences of view concerning some specifics of moral psychology, as long as core principles were maintained.