The poetic-philosophic constitution of the self: Stoicism in Senecan tragedies

Abstract

For Stoic philosophers there is a deep connection between philosophy and poetry – a sort of inextinguishable source of teachings concerning correct language and moral truths. Observation of the choices and the mechanisms that regulate the lives of “tragic heroes” gives us an opportunity to become aware of our own moral choices and the mechanisms that regulate them, as Seneca shows us in his tragedies where he seeks to uncover the inscrutable spaces of the human psyche. To uncover the personalities of the soul he invites us to reflect on what underlies the unknown reasons for our acting as we do. The constitution of the self necessarily pervades this process, as we try to show in this paper.