How to become Canonical

Why write at all if one respects the authority of canonical texts?

Our reading habits reveal our minds; reciprocally, the way and what we read can also shape, even nourish our minds. The words we read are not merely, as the saying goes, food for thought (and sometimes, thus, the semblance of thought), or trusted friends, but they can even be medicine of the mind. Seneca's second letter thus, takes for granted that words can impact us greatly. (The letter -- a compact 321 words -- turns on a series of equations among words, potions, nourishment, friendship, and location.) As we have already seen, this fact is crucial to the very possibility of escaping the ordinary exchange economy.

In the second letter, Seneca distinguishes sharply between unsteady, wandering minds and firmer ones. Now, it is possible that these are so by nature. But even the better sort of minds need cultivation; Seneca suggests that one can copy better readers (like him) and by imitating these good habits improve our minds. The better sort of readers have a limited set of enduring [certis] books that through repeated rediscovery nourish. By example Seneca shows that the better sort of reader is willing to be critical of such, canonical works--he makes a point of criticizing Epicurus. It's not that he disagrees with what Epicurus wishes to convey -- the opinion of the market-place can be wrong in rejecting all what it takes to be poverty --, but Seneca also criticizes Epicurus, in part, for embracing the axiology and conceptual apparatus of the market-place: Epicurus mistakenly treats poverty as something substantial that can be the subject of predication (such that there can be contented and miserable forms of poverty). Famously, Seneca insists that if one is cheerful, that is self-sufficient (i.e., one's needs do not go beyond one's possessions), one cannot be poor [Illa vero non est paupertas, si laeta est.], a position he already announces in his first letter.

It does not follow there is no poverty in Seneca's alternative political economy. For while in the ordinary economy poverty is measured by commodities (relative to others or by some absolute measure), in Seneca's preferred axiology one is poor because one's desires outstrip one's needs; poverty is a state of mind. Seneca does not, however, claim that this doctrine should be sold in the market-place --  we know that it can be popular in the self-help and religion sections of bookstores -- nor does he claim that polities should be ruled by it (although we are, of course, not unfamiliar with such ideologies).

If poverty is a state of mind (and some crucial mental states are words) then the words we read can be a source of poverty, or value (despite the necessity of loss) [recall]. So, there is quite a bit at stake in one's readings. We have already seen that good reading is critical reading. But Seneca underscores the critical nature of reading by offering an exemplary canonical author, Epicurus, who he understands (and expects his reader to understand) is not somebody he tends to agree with. The point is not merely that Seneca reminds the reader that he does not belong to Epicurus's school; it is, rather, that one improves oneself, in part, by reading and critically re-reading works one knowingly does not agree with it. Even the most enduring works can be like other commodities, to be consumed and then cast off [aliena sunt!].

Now, before Epicurus is cast off, Seneca extracts an authoritative maxim, that he adopts as law [recognizing the pun on legi]. Such a maxim can function as the right kind of mental state that guards the mind against the variety of misfortune, or poverty. So, a canonical text is one that can furnish value generating maxims.*

But Seneca is not just a reader, he is also a writer. In the most immediate sense he is a writer that pre-selects authoritative maxims from canonical texts. This is especially helpful to other readers whose minds might become steadfast one day, but who are not discriminating yet. (This leaves open the possibility that some flukes of nature need no tutors at all, of course.) But Seneca also improves on received maxims.  This suggests that he aspires not just to instruct by way of what is known; he is also writing in order to generate an enduring text. 

So a writer that offers instruction in Seneca's alternative political economy, and can improve on it, is a candidate to be canonised. Some of Seneca's close readers -- Montaigne, Bacon, Spinoza, and Adam Smith  -- are exemplars.

*In reading Seneca, I distinguish a maxim from a proverb (or sayings attributed to one's elders) by  axiological sphere; the latter are at home in the market-place, the former in canonical texts.