From chresthai to Usus: Seneca’s Legal Recasting of Stoic Ethics

• In Event: Law, Power, and the Imagination: Reframing Authority and Ethics in the Ancient and Premodern World

Brief Overview

The paper argues that Seneca fuses Stoic ethics with Roman law, redefining chresthai through uti as a use of externals. By casting Fortune as owner and life’s goods as loans, he translates Stoic virtue into the language of Roman legal practice.

Author

• Kaicheng Fang, University of Chicago