Strategic Differences: Seneca and Plutarch on Controlling Anger

In a span of less than a century, Seneca and Plutarch both wrote works arguing against anger. This article studies these texts as speech acts, that is, as discourses through which the authors, by various means, seek to produce a certain effect in their readers. The comparison of several parallel pas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mnemosyne 2007-01, Vol.60 (1), p.59-86
Main Author: VAN HOOF, L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ANGER
Classical studies
Comparative studies
ETHICS
Greco-Roman antiquity
Greek language
Historical studies (History of philosophy. History of ideas)
Hooves
Latin language
LITERARY STRATEGIES
Morality
Passion
Philosophy
Platonism
PLUTARCH
Plutarch (46?-120?)
Rhetoric
SENECA
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
Slaves
Speech acts
Stoicism
Treatises
Virtue
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Summary:In a span of less than a century, Seneca and Plutarch both wrote works arguing against anger. This article studies these texts as speech acts, that is, as discourses through which the authors, by various means, seek to produce a certain effect in their readers. The comparison of several parallel passages from Seneca's "On Anger" and Plutarch's "On the Control of Anger" with regard to genre, philosophical technicality, rhetorical strategies, and specific argumentation brings to the fore how Seneca, in his plea for the eradication of anger, instills a concept of virtue substantially different from what most Romans would be familiar with, whereas Plutarch promotes the control of anger as an important part of the way a gentleman presents himself in a civilised society.
ISSN:0026-7074
1568-525X
0026-7074
DOI:10.1163/156852507X165847