Stop Playing Word Games, Start Living — Letters from a Stoic

Philosophy promised to make us equal to God. Then it started teaching us that a mouse is a syllable. Letter 48 is Seneca's full impatience with logical word-games dressed up as wisdom. He has no objection to thinking carefully. He objects to thinking carefully about nothing. The 'mouse is a syllable, syllables don't eat cheese, therefore mice don't eat cheese' style of argument, Seneca calls it childish, and means it.

It is play dressed as seriousness. It is brow-furrowing and long beards applied to questions that help no one. The real indictment comes in the middle of the letter: men are stretching out imploring hands on all sides. Lives ruined and in danger of ruin are begging for assistance. People are drowning, captive, sick, terrified.

And the philosopher is debating whether a word-puzzle has a solution. His charge to the practitioners of such logic: you were retained as counsel for unhappy mankind. You promised to help. Instead of word-games, teach what nature has made necessary and what superfluous. Show people how to live.

That is what philosophy promised. Keep the promise.