Wisdom and Other Feelings: Affect, Knowledge, and the Senecan Subject

Much of the scholarship on the Senecan emotions has treated affect primarily as an obstacle to be overcome by Stoic reason and self-control. Placing Seneca’s philosophical, scientific, and literary works in dialogue with modern affect theory, I argue that emotions can provide routes to knowledge and define the subject’s relationship to the cosmos. The first three chapters of this dissertation treat the role of affect in Seneca’s meteorological treatise Natural Questions. In Chapter 1, I argue that the Senecan sage defines himself through an enchanted and joyful identification with the cosmos. In the subsequent two chapters, I explore the didactic potential of affect for epistemically compromised subjects who have not yet attained sagehood. Chapter 2 demonstrates the paradoxical solace to be found in stupefaction and anxiety, and Chapter 3 argues that even forms of wonder rooted in ignorance can guide imperfect subjects towards apprehending a logic underlying the cosmos. Chapter 4 turns to Book 20 of Seneca’s Epistles, treating the role of wonder in our understanding of the good (bonum) and honorable (honestum). I argue that, as the book unfolds, technical Stoic definitions of the good and honorable prove to be circular and inadequate, and that Seneca presents wonder as the only viable way of grasping these concepts. Finally, in Chapter 5, I turn to Seneca’s Troades, arguing that the heroine Andromache finds solace in extreme grief and hopeless. In doing so, she exposes rationalistic methods of consolation as idealized abstractions, whereby violence and suffering are mined for lessons and meaning. Ultimately, I argue that affect is able to paint a fuller picture of the universe than the one afforded by reason alone.Ph.D