Argument 3: Living According to Nature: The Rejection of Luxury and the Embrace of Simplicity
Building upon the foundational principles of mental sovereignty and the stewardship of time, Seneca advances a third, highly practical and socially critical argument that forms the ethical core of his daily philosophy: the happy life is achieved by living in accordance with Nature, which necessitates a conscious and rational rejection of luxury and an embrace of simplicity. For Seneca, luxury is not merely an indulgence or a matter of personal taste; it is a profound sickness of the soul and a corruption of society. It creates false and insatiable desires, weakens both the body and the mind, and ultimately enslaves us more deeply to the whims of Fortune. Conversely, simplicity—which he equates with “voluntary poverty”—is not a state of destitution but a rational, liberating practice. By learning to be content with what is necessary and natural, we unburden the spirit, fortress ourselves against misfortune, reclaim our time for what truly matters, and discover a form of wealth that is secure, self-sufficient, and impervious to external threats. This argument is Seneca’s direct response to the rampant materialism and moral decay he witnessed in Roman society, offering a timeless prescription for finding tranquility in a world obsessed with superfluous things.
To fully comprehend this argument, we must first understand Seneca’s diagnosis of luxury as a disease, then examine his prescription of using Nature as a rational standard, and finally, appreciate how this practice is the ultimate expression of freedom and the key to attaining the tranquil mind of the Stoic sage.
First, Seneca presents luxury not as an accessory to life, but as a direct antagonist to the good life. He sees it as a destructive force that operates on multiple levels. Its primary mechanism of harm is the corruption of our desires. Nature, he argues repeatedly, has very simple and easily satisfied needs. In Letter IV, he quotes Epicurus: “‘Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth.’ Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold.” These are natural desires. They have a clear stopping point: once hunger is sated, thirst quenched, and cold averted, the desire ceases. Luxury, however, introduces artificial, or “empty,” desires which are boundless by definition. As he states in Letter XVI: “Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless… Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point.”
This creates a vicious cycle. The person who indulges in luxury is not satisfying a need but merely stimulating an appetite. In Letter CXIX, he writes: “Money never made a man rich; on the contrary, it always smites men with a greater craving for itself. Do you ask the reason for this? He who possesses more begins to be able to possess still more.” The luxurious life is one of perpetual dissatisfaction. He who eats plain bread when hungry is satisfied; he who demands flamingo tongues and oysters from distant seas is not satisfying hunger but “bullying the sated stomach into further eating” (Letter CVIII). This endless pursuit of novelty and excess means that the luxurious person can never reach a state of contentment; their goalpost is always moving. They are, in Seneca’s view, the poorest of all people, because they are defined by what they lack, not by what they possess.
Secondly, luxury systematically weakens our capacity for virtue by making us soft. It erodes both physical and mental resilience. Seneca uses the historical example of Hannibal in Letter LI with devastating effect: “A single winter relaxed Hannibal’s fibre; his pampering in Campania took the vigour out of that hero who had triumphed over Alpine snows. He conquered with his weapons, but was conquered by his vices.” This is a metaphor for every human life. When we accustom ourselves to constant comfort—soft beds, rich foods, heated baths—we lose our ability to endure hardship. The body becomes a demanding master rather than a serviceable tool. This physical weakness inevitably seeps into the soul. The man who cannot endure a hard bed or a simple meal will be unable to endure exile, poverty, or pain. By avoiding all discomfort, we become incapable of facing the inevitable discomforts of human existence. Luxury, therefore, is a training school for cowardice.
Thirdly, and most critically from a Stoic perspective, the attachment to luxury is the most effective way to enslave oneself to Fortune. This argument links directly to the first principle of the sovereignty of the mind. The more external things we require for our happiness, the more hostages we give to fortune. The man who believes he needs an elaborate house, fine clothes, and exotic foods has made his tranquility dependent on a thousand variables outside of his control: market fluctuations, shipping routes, the favor of his superiors, the whims of thieves. Seneca brilliantly illustrates this with his visit to the villa of Vatia in Letter LV. Vatia was considered the luckiest man in Rome because he knew how to live a life of leisure in his luxurious coastal home. But Seneca sees through the facade: “But what he knew was how to hide, not how to live… this person is not living for himself he is living for his belly, his sleep, and his lust.” His happiness is a fragile construction of externals. The true sage, in contrast, minimizes his dependence. By finding contentment in what is simple and easily obtained, he reduces the surface area that Fortune can attack. As Seneca states in Letter V, “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.” The goal is not necessarily to renounce possessions, but to achieve an inner state where their presence or absence makes no difference to one’s peace of mind.
Having diagnosed luxury as a disease that creates infinite desire, erodes resilience, and enslaves us to Fortune, Seneca offers a powerful and practical cure: the conscious and deliberate practice of simplicity, or what he calls “voluntary poverty.” This is not an ascetic command to be destitute. Rather, it is a philosophical discipline designed to recalibrate our understanding of what is truly valuable. In Letter XVIII, he gives Lucilius a specific exercise: “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?'”
This practice serves two profound purposes. First, it is an act of inoculation. By exposing ourselves to a mild, controlled dose of hardship, we build up our immunity to the fear of it. “It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress,” he writes. When a man has learned through practice that he can be perfectly content with bread and water, the threat of losing his fortune loses its terror. He has faced the “worst-case scenario” and discovered that it is not a catastrophe. This is the ultimate insurance policy against the blows of fate.
Second, this practice is a tool for self-discovery. It is a way of distinguishing between true needs and the false needs created by habit and convention. In Letter CXXIII, Seneca arrives at his villa to find his dinner unprepared. Instead of anger, he feels a sense of liberation: “I am asking for no slaves to rub me down, no bath… Hunger will make even such bread delicate… How many things are superfluous we fail to realize until they begin to be wanting; we merely used them not because we needed them but because we had them.” By temporarily stripping away the non-essential, we come to understand what is truly essential. We discover that our natural needs are few and easily met, and that most of what we call “needs” are merely habits we have acquired “because our neighbours have acquired such things, or because most men possess them.”
This leads to Seneca’s concept of Nature as the ultimate standard for a rational life. To “live according to Nature” is to use our reason to align our lives with the simple, functional, and harmonious order of the natural world. In Letter XC, he contrasts the simple, peaceful dwellings of early humans with the ostentatious and anxiety-producing architecture of his own time. “A thatched roof once covered free men; under marble and gold dwells slavery.” Nature provides what is necessary for survival and well-being. It is humanity’s deviation from this standard, driven by luxury and greed (“dementia”), that has created the vast majority of our troubles.
The ultimate goal of this practice is to redefine wealth itself. The crowd sees wealth as an external accumulation of money and property. For Seneca, this is a dangerous illusion. True wealth is an internal state of being. The one who has aligned his desires with nature’s simple needs is the richest person of all, because they have reached a “stopping-point” that the perpetually craving millionaire can never attain. In Letter CXIX, he poses the question: “Would you rather have much, or enough? He who has much desires more – a proof that he has not yet acquired enough; but he who has enough has attained that which never fell to the rich man’s lot – a stopping-point.”
This inner wealth is the only kind that is truly our own. It cannot be stolen, lost in a shipwreck, or confiscated by a tyrant. It is the result of our own rational judgment. This is why Seneca can state that “the wise man is the keenest seeker for the riches of nature.” He is not seeking gold from the earth, but the contentment that comes from wanting only what the earth freely offers. This state of self-sufficiency allows one to “compete in happiness with Jupiter himself,” because, like God, the wise person craves nothing.
In summary, Seneca’s argument for living according to Nature is a profound and practical philosophy of liberation. It starts with a sharp diagnosis of luxury as a psychological and spiritual disease that creates a prison of endless, artificial desire. It offers a cure through the rational discipline of “voluntary poverty,” a practice of intentional simplicity designed to expose our false fears and reconnect us with our true, natural needs. The standard for this life is Nature herself—her simplicity, her functionality, her lack of superfluousness. By adopting this standard, we shift our definition of wealth from an external accumulation of possessions to an internal state of self-sufficiency. This is the ultimate freedom. It is the practical method by which we withdraw our happiness from the chaotic realm of Fortune and secure it within the impregnable fortress of a rational, virtuous, and tranquil mind. It is, for Seneca, the only path from the frantic and exhausting business of “getting and spending” to the serene and joyful art of truly living.