People often find themselves distressed by experiencing strong, especially negative emotions, feeling overwhelmed by uncontrollable anger, fear, or sadness, among others. The ancient Stoics were very concerned with the negative effect of emotions, but also believed that such feelings could be rationally controlled or avoided altogether. Using Seneca’s On Anger, we will consider both the Stoic theory of the emotions and the cognitive and behavioral therapies they promoted for dealing with self-destructive feelings.

Join Professor Katharina Volk (Classics) for a dinner seminar on Thursday, October 5 at 6 PM. Please find a link to the readings below.

This event is the first in a two-part series on Seneca. The week after this, we will be discussing his Natural Questions (link).