Seneca Explains The Art of Argument
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.6 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this letter, Seneca critiques sophistical argumentation, highlighting how it exercises wit without purpose and distracts from the essentials of living a good life.
Today’s episode is an excerpt from The Tao Of Seneca produced by Tim Ferriss’ Audio. Get the free PDF at tim.blog/seneca
🎙️ Listen to other letters from Seneca:
- Seneca on Despising Death
- Seneca on Conquering the Conqueror
- Seneca on Philosophy and Friendship
- Seneca on Practicing What You Preach
- Seneca on The Reasons For Withdrawing From The World
- Seneca on Master and Slave
📚 Grab a copy of How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management by Seneca | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, |
| 0:14.0 | audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing |
| 0:24.4 | weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, |
| 0:30.0 | that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. |
| 0:44.2 | Hey, it's Ryan. |
| 0:50.1 | Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. |
| 0:52.9 | I'm recording this right now from a balcony in Ithaca. |
| 0:55.6 | I wanted to see some of the sites from The Odyssey. We've been to Olympia. We're going on to the Delphi. We're going to see Marathon. We're going to |
| 1:03.5 | see the Battle of Thermopyla. We're visiting the philosophical sites, the historical sites. |
| 1:08.1 | We're making many of the same trips that the Romans said. And yet, I thought it was interesting. Donald Robertson pointed out that Seneca maybe hadn't done this, |
| 1:16.6 | which has given me something to think about. And that queues up today's episode. We've brought you chunks of this over the years. |
| 1:25.6 | Obviously, reading Seneca is great, but sometimes it can be great |
| 1:28.8 | to listen to him. And Tim Ferriss put together this awesome audiobook edition of Seneca called |
| 1:35.2 | the Dow of Seneca. This is going to be letter 45, which is on sophisticated argumentation. |
| 1:43.3 | And Seneca's talking about living authentically |
| 1:45.3 | according to nature's laws, |
| 1:47.3 | valuing virtue over material wealth, |
| 1:50.7 | and not pursuing those superficial goals. |
| 1:53.8 | We're going after what really matters, |
| 1:56.1 | which to him would be self-improvement, |
| 1:58.0 | character, good judgment, right? |
... |
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