Seneca, the UN, and the Moral Winds of War

Oct 4

The United Nations Turns 80 & Finland’s President Stubb

As the United Nations turns 80, it recalls its founding principles and central purpose of upholding international peace and human rights. Last week, global leaders gathered at the UN Headquarters in New York to engage in high-level debate sessions around the theme, “Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights”. Indeed, we are better together, but the prospect of peace often feels foreign among armed conflicts, fatal threats to civil discourse, hyperpolarized politics, and the escalating state of climate change. The list goes on.

However effective the UN may be, especially given its outdated structure and overall dysfunctionality, we should never undermine the value of international cooperation and peace. I was deeply moved by Finland’s President, Alexander Stubb’s, address. The President openly acknowledged the shortcomings of the UN, but ultimately urged the organization and his fellow leaders to consider values, interests, and power. He says that these three pillars differ among nations and undergo constant change, but we need to change with them.

Aside from a call back to our fundamental values of a shared global society, his call against forceful aggression and self-serving interests was quite striking. He urged his fellow leaders to act accordingly and said, “War is always a failure of humanity. It is a collective failure of our fundamental values.”

Seneca’s Natural Questions as a Reflection Point

This is undeniably true as human beings. Listening to his words, I was reminded of the philosopher Seneca. Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher active in the first century CE during the ancient Roman Empire under the reign of Emperor Nero (remember the guy who fiddled while Rome burned????). Toward the end of his life, he wrote a work on Nature called Naturales Quaestiones (Natural Questions).

In seven books, Seneca examines fundamental aspects of Nature to alleviate his readers’ fears of natural destruction. This pursuit of knowledge grants us the opportunity to understand our place in the universe, our relationship with the supernatural, and, most importantly, how to live our lives more morally well. He covers a wide range of common and rare natural phenomena, including lightning and thunder, water, snow, earthquakes, wind, etc. For every topic, he provides precise explanations of the phenomenon (they almost read like modern meteorology!), followed by a moral commentary. Now, I’d like us to consider how Seneca understands war in this work.

To put it simply, Nature knew from the beginning of time that the destruction of humanity was inevitable. It’s in part that human beings – at their core as moral beings – easily succumb to their vices and stray from the moral good. At the end of book 3, on the waters, Seneca includes a dynamic visual description of the end of the world, where he concludes with the rebirth of a pure human race (but will eventually turn away from the greater good).

After Seneca presents the traditionally Stoic idea of the cyclical rebirth (born pure → turns to vice → destruction → reborn pure), he considers global warfare. He begins his discourse on the winds in Book 5 by acknowledging their productive being: winds can bring people across nations together. At the same time, however, these very same winds are the force that allows us to seek out our enemies (or neighbors) and wage war with one another. But, they were never intended to be used in this manner: it is purely a human perversion of the goodness of Nature that contributes to our eventual destruction.

Seneca struggles to understand why men would go to such great lengths to cross dangerous seas only to reward themselves with war. I agree. Being with Nature (and respecting Nature) is a fundamental part of a uniquely human experience. However, when some individuals exploit this for their own self-interest and the detriment of others around them, then human beings are not upholding the fundamental values of what it means to be a social being in the first place.

Humanity’s Call to Be Better

Seneca knew it. I know it. President Stubb said it. War is always a failure of humanity. It is a collective failure of our fundamental values. I firmly believe that Seneca thought we have great potential as a human race to be good for ourselves, each other, and the world around us (and he was writing under the reign of a quite problematic and tyrannical emperor).

All too often, we throw it away. We will never know for sure, but I think Seneca was disappointed with Rome as a global superpower and how human beings were treating the world around them, both Nature and their own neighbors, close and far.

As President Stubb concluded: “We should learn from history, but always look to the future, bearing in mind that our decisions will shape it.” While Seneca did not overtly comment on the state of Rome or Emperor Nero in the Natural Questions, he understood how our consequences affect each other and will ultimately affect ourselves – if not through war, then through destruction by Nature. Today, the stakes are higher for us, with advanced military technology, nuclear warfare, and rapid modes of transportation.

Remember, we’re not new beings: we’re products of the past in the present, preparing for the future. We can learn a thing or two from what others thought it meant to be good for humanity and the world around us. We must strive to be better human beings by upholding the fundamental values of our shared morality.

(This is all without making the obvious connection between Seneca’s Natural Questions and climate change, as well as relevant policies…)

Seneca, the UN, and the Moral Winds of War

Your Daily Roman Empire

by Alexandra Berardelli

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