Seneca On Anger

Seneca is one of the most representative stoic philosopher in ancient Greek who contributed a plenty of great ideas which inspired a lot of people (Reinhardt 2008, p.vii). One of the most famous arguments he made is about anger. In the extract from Seneca On Anger (Before AD52), Seneca claims that “Anger rages with a desire that is utterly inhumane to inflict pain for revenge in blood and harm.” He illustrates that people suffer from anger, such as people being killed, poisoned, or condemned to death (Seneca On Anger, ex 1.1). Seneca, as a representative philosopher of Stoicism, is appearing to hold the idea that anger can only bring destruction, but at some point, it is entirely avoidable as well. He attempts to persuade his audiences that
Seneca claims that anger is an impulse for revenge which might both hurt others and cause adverse impacts on the person himself (Seneca On Anger, ex 1.1). He supports his idea by listing a series of destructions that anger caused to the society, “person of high rank for sale at public auction, building set alight and the fire spreading beyond the city wall (Seneca On Anger, ex 1.2)”. Seneca keeps clarifying that chastisement is not necessary unless it is assisted by reasons (Seneca On Anger, ex 1.6). He believes that man ought to stay calm even his mother being raped and his father being killed, and Seneca argues that getting angry does not help at all, what the man should do is to punish and protect (Seneca On Anger, ex 1.12). At this point, based on the idea of Stoicism, Seneca is right about the point of staying calm. But as what Stoicism believe, everything starts with reasons, that is, here is always reasons fro getting angry. Then it is too strict and hard for a man to stay calm and not get angry at all even his parents being harmed or intimidated. It is acceptable to say that anger is useless, but people cannot deny the fact of its existence because everything exists for reasons and individuals have the right to be either angry or happy. Here is no right or wrong about getting angry, what matters here is
Firstly, you have to fight with yourself according to Seneca, as he says that “once we allow it to appear outside us, then anger will control us (Seneca On Anger, ex 3.13).” After that, Seneca suggests that people should not just consider whether what you are saying is correct or wrong, but also the person you are talking to, he illustrates that different people have different tolerance of criticism (Seneca On Anger, ex 3.36). This point he made about anger is persuasive because it reflects the idea within the previous context which states that man would do everything for the good of their dearest. Seneca develops the argument by asking a series of questions. It can be concluded that it is totally not worthy to be angry, being angry would only bring frustrations. According to Seneca, his emphasis can be inferred as that anger is a kind of impulse and people usually go through three stages while getting angry, it begins with involuntary impulse then voluntary and become out of control at the last stage (Seneca On Anger, ex 2.4). But, Seneca is making an illogical point here, because according to those three different stages. It represents that getting angry is a kind of uncontrollable procedure since the first stage is a strong impulse which can not be rejected. Even it is possible to overcome the emotion before the second stage; it still cannot be told as