The schatological dream revisited: a new reading of Seneca’s Ep. CII
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Abstract
The problem of the post-mortal continuation of the soul is an open issue in Seneca’s oeuvre. In his Epistulae the philosopher portrays himself while reflecting on this dilemma, which he builds in terms of the so called “Socratic alternative”, i.e. death is either something that “destroys or sets us free” (Ep., XXIV, 17). Interestingly, in Ep. CII Seneca dramatizes his own surrender to the “bellum somnium” of immortality. The current article aims at showing that the epistolary frame offers a key to read this dramatization of his surrender to the eschatological dream not as a mere “sentimental or consolatory demand” (Setaioli, 2000, p. 317), but as an attempt of textual rather than ontological transcendency. In this sense, we propose to reconsider the rendering of the somnium-cogitatio (CII, 21-29) as the meditative writing of a reading.
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