What is anger? Anger is the uncontrolled, violent rage of someone towards someone else over whom the former is entitled to exercise his power, is in a position to do so, and who is therefore in a position to abuse his power.
Seneca, Natural Questions: What is it to conduct himself well in his job as procurator? On one hand, he exercises his functions. He exercises them, but without abandoning what is indispensable for exercising them well, that is to say free time and literature. A studious free time, applied to study, to reading and writing, etc, as complement, accompaniment, and regulative principle, is the guarantee that Lucilius properly discharges his office as procurator.
Most men are tormented by either disgust or self-love with themselves, which leads, in the former case, to being concerned about things that are really not worth caring about; by caring things external to the self; and, in the later case, through self-love, it leads to being attracted by sensual pleasures, by all the pleasures through which one tries to please oneself. These people are never alone with themselves. They are never alone with themselves in the sense that they never have that full, adequate, and sufficient relationship to themselves that ensures that we do not feel dependent on anything, neither on the misfortunes that threaten nor on the pleasures we may encounter or obtain from around us. The figure of the flatterer and the dangers of flattery rush in here, in this insufficiency that ensures that we are never alone with ourselves, in this inability to be alone, when we are either disgusted with or too attached to ourselves.
Speaking freely is anti-flattery. It is anti-flattery that someone who speaks and who speaks to the other but, unlike what happens in flattery, he speaks to the other in such a way that this other will be able to form an autonomous, independent, full and satisfying relationship to himself.
It would be better if the person being guided were not much richer and more powerful than the person guiding him.
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