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Implications of Seneca's Comfort Letter for Philosophical Counseling : With a focus on his Consolation to Helvia

KIM JIN A 1

1가톨릭대학교

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ABSTRACT

This study aims to analyze Seneca's comfort letters to his mother during his banishment and shed light on their implications for philosophical counseling. Seneca was banished to Corsica on a charge of adultery in 41 AD and wrote Consolation to Helvia to comfort his mother that was sorrow-stricken to hear the news of his son's banishment. In this letter, Seneca talks about the meanings of banishment philosophically and says that banishment is not important. He is not thus unhappy, and his mother has no reason to get sad. This was his way of comforting his mother. Readers can take a peek at his stoic attitude toward life in his comfort letter. One can get an introspection that how to accept a situation can be a way to overcome human pain and sorrow rather than the situation itself from Seneca's letter. His technique of consolation in his letter is specific and clear. The present study examined if his consolation could be applied to modern people today by analyzing specifically the content of his letter with a focus on four keywords including "banishment," "nature," "virtue," and "philosophy" and figuring out his comfort letter's implications for philosophical counseling.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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