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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.