Seneca and roman ethics (toward the problem of death)

The article examines the features of Roman moral philosophy, manifested in the book by Seneca Letters to Lucilius . The positions of Roman Stoicism are associated with Greek philosophical tradition. The main theme - the religious and philosophical interpretation of the problem of death - is given in a comparative analysis of Stoic moralism and Christian theological ontology. The world of Seneca’s philosophical thought, represented by his letters and thematically centered around a specific issue, includes many other topics and semantic categories that are related to each other: this is, first of all, the category of freedom, which is one of the main themes of his book. The article presents material illustrating Seneca’s attempt to resolve the issue of the relationship between personal will and world necessity. The article defines the target attitudes towards which the mentor-philosopher leads his student, analyzes the concept of wisdom as the highest ideal of Stoic philosophy. This topic is given in comparison with the Christian understanding of holiness as a metaphysical, supernatural transformation of a person. As a result, the rational foundation of Seneca’s worldview picture of the world is shown as a tragedy of philosophy.