Vivere militare est

Die Funktion und philosophische Tragweite militärischer Metaphern bei Seneca und Lipsius

E-Artikel

Zurück zum Heft: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 43
DOI: 10.28937/9783787336807_3

EUR 16,90

The paper discusses the philosophical relevance of military metaphors in the writings of Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Justus Lipsius. In both cases, these metaphors play a crucial, but different role: Seneca uses them in order to neutralizing the impact of the external reality, e.g. the reality of war, on the soul of the philosopher. According to him the real war is the fight against our affects. On the contrary Lipsius constructs a strong relationship between the warrior and the intellectual - a relationship which confirms the tendency of Lipsius' philosophy to implement discipline in a greater social framework. Military metaphors appear the works of both thinkers as >absolute metaphors< (Hans Blumenberg). Their stoicism turns out to be a metaphorical philosophy.