Ebook: Cosmic Viewpoint: A Study of Seneca's Natural Questions

Natural Questions is an 8-book disquisition on the nature of meteorological phenomena, ranging from rainbows to earthquakes, from comets to the winds, from the causes of snow & hail to the reasons why the Nile floods in summer. Much of this material had been treated in the earlier Greco-Roman meteorological tradition, but what sets Seneca's writing apart is his insertion of moralizing sections within his technical discourse. How are these outbursts against the luxury & vice that are apparently rampant in his 1st-century CE Rome to be reconciled with a meteorological agenda? In grappling with this question, The Cosmic Viewpoint argues that he's no blinkered or arid meteorological investigator, but a creative explorer into nature's workings who offers an idiosyncratic blend of physico-moral investigation. At one level, his inquiry into nature impinges on conduct & morality in its implicit propagation of the Stoic ideal of living in accordance with nature: the moral deviants whom he condemns in the course of the work offer egregious examples of living contrary to nature's balance. At a deeper level, The Cosmic Viewpoint stresses the literary qualities & complexities essential to his literary art of science: his technical enquiries initiate a form of engagement with nature which distances readers from the ordinary involvements & fragmentations of everyday life, instead centering existence in the cosmic whole. From a figurative standpoint, his meteorological theme raises the gaze from a terrestrial level of existence to a more intuitive plane where literal vision gives way to higher conjecture & intuition: in striving to understand meteorological phenomena, we progress in an elevating direction--a conceptual climb that renders the Natural Questions no mere store of technical learning, but a work that promotes changed perspective.
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Interiority & Cosmic Consciousness in the Natural Questions
Seneca's Moralizing Interludes
The Cataclysm & the Nile
The Rhetoric of Science
Seneca on Winds
Earthquakes, Consolation & the Senecan Sublime
Seneca on Comets & Ancient Cometary Theory
Seneca on Lightning & Divination
Rpilogue
Bibliography
Index of Passages
General Index
Index of Latin Words
Index of Greek Words