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De Providentia
''De Providentia'' (''On Providence'') is a short essay in the form of a dialogue in six brief sections, written by the Latin philosopher Seneca (died AD 65) in the last years of his life. He chose the dialogue form (as in the well-known Plato's works) to deal with the problem of the co-existence of the Stoic design of providence with the evil in the world—the so-called "problem of evil." Dating and title The work cannot be precisely dated, but since it is addressed to Lucilius, who is the addressee of some of Seneca's final works including his ''Letters'', and since the essay has similarities to letters 106, 108, and 109 then the work is usually considered a late one dating to around 64 AD. The full title of the work is ''Quare bonis viris multa mala accidant, cum sit providentia'' ("Why do misfortunes happen to good men, if providence exists"). This longer title reflects the true theme of the essay which is not so much concerned with providence but with theodicy and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca The Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was probably innocen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (6th century BCE).. In the Classics, classical sense, a philosopher was someone who lived according to a certain way of life, focusing upon resolving Meaning of life, existential questions about the human condition; it was not necessary that they discoursed upon Theory, theories or commented upon authors. Those who most arduously committed themselves to this lifestyle would have been considered ''philosophers''. In a modern sense, a philosopher is an intellectual who contributes to one or more branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, social theory, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. A philosopher may also be someone who has worked in the hum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destiny
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often used interchangeably, the words ''fate'' and ''destiny'' have distinct connotations. *Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable" and unavoidable. This is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the universe, and in some conceptions, the cosmos. Classical and European mythology feature personified "fate spinners," known as the Moirai in Greek mythology, the Parcae in Roman mythology, and the Norns in Norse mythology. They determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human fates. Fate is often conceived as being divinely inspired. *Fate is about the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodicy
Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil or suffering in the world". Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy provides a framework wherein God's existence is also plausible. The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in 1710 in his work , though various responses to the problem of evil had been previously proposed. The British philosopher John Hick traced the history of moral theodicy in his 1966 work, ''Evil and the God of Love'', identifying three major traditions: # the Plotinian theodicy, named after Plotinus # the Augustinian theodicy, which Hick base ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium
The ' (Latin for "Moral Letters to Lucilius"), also known as the ''Moral Epistles'' and ''Letters from a Stoic'', is a collection of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for more than ten years. They are addressed to Lucilius Junior, the then procurator of Sicily, who is known only through Seneca's writings. Regardless of how Seneca and Lucilius actually corresponded, it is clear that Seneca crafted the letters with a broad readership in mind. The letters often begin with an observation on daily life, and then proceed to an issue or principle abstracted from that observation. The result is like a diary, or handbook of philosophical meditations. The letters focus on many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy such as the contempt of death, the stout-heartedness of the sage, and virtue as the supreme good. Writing The ''Letters'' were probably written in the last three years of Seneca's li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucilius Junior
Lucilius Junior (fl. 1st century), was the procurator of Sicily during the reign of Nero, a friend and correspondent of Seneca, and the possible author of ''Aetna'', a poem that survives in a corrupt state. Life The information about Lucilius comes from Seneca's writings, especially his '' Moral Letters'', which are addressed to Lucilius. Seneca also dedicated his ''Naturales Quaestiones'' and his essay ''De Providentia'' to Lucilius. Lucilius seems to have been a native of Campania, and Seneca refers repeatedly to "your beloved Pompeii." At the time Seneca wrote his ''Letters'' (c. 65 AD), Lucilius was the procurator (and possibly governor) of Sicily. He was a Roman Knight, a status he had achieved through "persistent work," and he owned a country villa in Ardea, south of Rome. Seneca devotes one of his shorter letters to praising a book Lucilius had written, and elsewhere quotes a few lines of Lucilius' poetry. ''Aetna'' ''Aetna'' is a 644-line poem on the origin of volcanic ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divine Providence
In theology, Divine Providence, or simply Providence, is God's intervention in the Universe. The term ''Divine Providence'' (usually capitalized) is also used as a title of God. A distinction is usually made between "general providence", which refers to God's continuous upholding of the existence and natural order of the Universe, and "special providence", which refers to God's extraordinary intervention in the life of people. Miracles generally fall in the latter category. Etymology "Divine" evolved in the late 14th century to mean "pertaining to, in the nature of or proceeding from God or a god". This came from the Old French ''devin'' or ''devin'', with a similar meaning, and that from the Latin ''divinus'', meaning "of a god", in turn from ''divus'', with similar meaning, which was related the Latin ''deus'', meaning god or deity. The word providence comes from Latin ''providentia'' meaning foresight or prudence, and that in turn from ''pro-'', ahead" and ''videre'', to se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve Eudaimonia, (happiness, ): one flourishes by living an Ethics, ethical life. The Stoics identified the path to with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues and living in accordance with nature. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things, such as health, wealth, and pleasure, are not good or called in themselves (''adiaphora'') but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dialogue
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature. Etymology The term dialogue stems from the Greek διάλογος (''dialogos'', conversation); its roots are διά (''dia'': through) and λόγος (''logos'': speech, reason). The first extant author who uses the term is Plato, in whose works it is closely associated with the art of dialectic. Latin took over the word as ''dialogus''. As genre Antiquity and the Middle Ages Dialogue as a genre in the Middle East and Asia dates back to ancient works, such as Sumerian disputations preserved in copies from the late third millennium BC, Rigvedic dialogue hymns and the ''Mahab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), Roman Republic (509–27 BC) and Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually dominated the Italian Peninsula, assimilated the Greek culture of southern Italy ( Magna Grecia) and the Etruscan culture and acquired an Empire that took in much of Europe and the lands and peoples surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. It was among the largest empires in the ancient world, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants, roughly 20% of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essay
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and '' An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's ''An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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