Seneca: the world according to nature

Abstract

The dissertation examines the treatment of nature in the tragic and philosophical works of Seneca the Younger. "Live according to nature" was the Stoic injunction, but for Seneca it was impossible to think about the natural world without also considering the limitations of the philosopher's own mind. Through literary critical study of various complexes of imagery spanning the Senecan corpus, I argue that Seneca regarded the split between the flawed mind of the philosopher and the perfect nature which is the object of his study as a central problem within Stoicism.