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The Art of Living

Seneca On Anger

Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate.

Got an anger problem? If you decide to read just one book on the topic, it should be On Anger (De Ira, c.45 CE) by the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE). Even the American Psychological Association’s web page devoted to anger management does little more than restate, on the basis of modern systematic research, the basic points made by Seneca. And Seneca writes far more engagingly than whoever authored the APA’s summary.

Anger was a well-recognized problem in antiquity, and it concerned various philosophical schools.

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