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June 17th

OFFENSE OR DEFENSE?

“Fortune doesn’t have the long reach we suppose, she can only lay

siege to those who hold her tight. So, let’s step back from her as

much as possible.”

—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 82.5b–6

achiavelli, who supposedly admired Seneca, says in The Prince that
“fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, in order to keep her down,
to beat her and struggle with her.” Even for the sixteenth century, it’s pretty
horrifying imagery. But for a ruthless and endlessly ambitious ruler, it was
par for the course. Is that the nasty lifestyle you’re after?
Now compare that view with Seneca’s. Not only is he saying that the
more you struggle with fortune, the more vulnerable you are to it, but he’s
also saying that the better path to security is in the “impregnable wall” of
philosophy. “Philosophy,” he says, helps us tame the “mad frenzy of our
greed and tamps down the fury of our fears.”
In sports or war, the metaphor here would be the choice between a
strategy of endless, exhausting offense and a strategy of resilient, flexible
defense. Which will you play? What kind of person are you?
Only you can answer that question. But you would be remiss not to
consider the ultimate end of most of the princes in Machiavelli’s book—and
how few of them died happily in bed, surrounded by their loved ones.