Aristotle vs Seneca on Mind

Aristotle and Seneca both have a great deal to say about mind — 4 passages and 4 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.

Aristotle on mind

Student of Plato, tutor of Alexander. His Nicomachean Ethics defines virtue as the mean between extremes, and happiness as activity of soul in accord with virtue.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

“If a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them. (Bk I, Ch II)”

“Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.”

Seneca on mind

Roman statesman, dramatist, and Stoic philosopher. His Letters to Lucilius are a manual of practical ethics, written from a life lived close to power.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.”

“The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”

“You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”

Where they part

Greece, 384–322 BCE and Rome, c. 4 BCE–65 CE are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Aristotle treats mind as something to be it is the mark of an… — a matter of practice. Seneca approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.