Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 25

ONSIDE / PHILOSOPHY

Who was Seneca?
We are often asked, who was Seneca? And what relevance does
a Roman philosopher have to a business in the financial sector?

M

any people have heard
the everyday phrase
"philosophically speaking"
without ever pausing to understand
its true meaning or origin.
It derives from the Roman
philosopher Seneca the Younger, who
was tutor to the Emperor Nero and
occasional political rising star in the
Roman empire.
He died in AD49 at his own hand,
having learned that he was to be killed
under the orders of the unpredictable
Emperor.
In his death, he evoked the Greek
philosopher Socrates who explained
how philosophy enabled the learned
to rise above external circumstances.
It was a painful and horrific selfinflicted death, but the strong will
with which he accepted his fate came
from his own beliefs and his own
philosophy. Something that had
helped him through extraordinarily
traumatic periods in Roman history.
He endured the excesses of monster
Emperor Caligula, the volcanoes and
earthquakes that destroyed Pompeii
and even the neglectful decadent last
days of the empire where Nero wasted
his days while the empire crumbled.
Through all of this, Seneca had also
suffered illness and exile on Corsica
falling in and out of favour with the
changing political winds in Rome.
In a terrific little book The
Consolations of Philosophy by Alain
De Botton, the pop-philosopher sums
up the single big idea at the heart of
everything Seneca said and did: "That
we best endure those frustrations

which we have prepared ourselves for
and understand and are hurt most
by those we least expect and can't
fathom. Philosophy must reconcile
us to the true dimensions of reality,
and so spare us, if not frustration
itself, then at least its panopoly of
pernicious accompanying emotions."
Would you want to hang that
on your office wall as a motivating
message to your staff? Probably not.
But there remains a core of Seneca's
work that accepts that bad things may
happen, to prepare for them, but to
carry on regardless.
Seneca was also comfortable with
wealth and material possessions, he
had a liking for fine furniture and was
dismissive of those who believed all
of this was counter to the way of
thinking he expounded. Not a bit of
it, instead he just had a realization that
these things could be taken away, but
that life carried on without them.
Probably his second best known
quote, after "philosophical" is "luck
is what happens, when preparation
meets opportunity" - that you make
your own luck in the world, by hard
work and by preparation, not by fate.
Has this been useful? Has this been
interesting? Well there's a reasonably
good chance you've learnt something
you didn't know before, whether that's
a good thing or not, who will ever
know?
We leave you therefore with this
parting thought from the great
philosopher himself: "It is better, of
course, to know useless things than to
know nothing."

"Luck is what happens, when preparation meets opportunity" Seneca the Younger

Why Seneca the
business is like
Seneca the philosopher
Extraordinarily calm
Protective of wealth
Aware of injustice
Knows where opportunity
exists, and where it may not
Values preparation to seize
opportunities

Interested in reading more? Alain De Botton,
the Consolations of Philosophy (Penguin)

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014

Contents
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover1
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover2
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - Contents
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 4
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 5
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 6
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 7
Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - 8
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Onside Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover4
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