Batinski, E. E.

, “Seneca’s Response to Stoic Hermeneutics”, Mnemosyne 46: 1 (1993)

69-77.

69, Sobre Homero como protoestoico. Seneca repudió las herramientas criticas de este
sistema hermenéutico, alegoría y etimología.
70, Séneca does offer a cogent and coherent response to the characterizing components
of Stoic hermeneutics.
As De Lacy documents, Stoics criticism is characterized by a) linguistics, b) etimología,
c) alegoría. D) poesía función utilitarian, e) el poeta es filósofo.
71, relación natural entre lenguaje y significado o signifier and signified entre
Early Stoicism. Chrysippus modified: anomaly and usage had influenced language.
Words had more than one meaning, possessed ambiguity. Despite ambiguity,
Chrysippus also argued that through the regressive process of etymology, it was
possible to reveal a word’s innate meaning.
Habla de que los estoicos pensaban que el poeta tenía una intención alegórica en el mito
y la poesía. Estrabón transforma Caribdis en una representación simbólica del
movimiento del Oceano (1.2.36). La poesía debe examinarse en dos niveles, el
mythos y el logos.
72, para Estrabón, las historias de Homero son una mentira para engañar a los unlearned
reader (1.2.7-9). Homero experto en ética (1.1.2, 1.1.10; 1.2.3-6).
Para la necesidad de la intención autorial en la interpretación alegórica, ver Coulter, The
literary microcosm (Leyden, 1976: 20).
74, subraya el concepto de utile
75, Caustic criticism of the Stoic predilection for etymology and allegory. In De
Beneficiis (1.3) Seneca ataca esta etimología. Para Séneca la diferencia entre estas
interpretacions delata la arbitrariedad de la interpretación alegórica.
76, Seneca does not dismiss readers entertained by a poem as unlearned, but aesthetic
contraints do excuse a poet’s, like Vergil’s, lapses from the truth. Seneca redefines the
traditional Stoic concept of the poet as wise man. His view of the wise man/poet is
ambiguous and reflects how problematic this concept had become for the Stoics.
77, he grants that Homer was wise before he wrote his epics and that it may be right to
consider him a philosopher. Seneca challenges the view that Homer was a proto-Stoic.
He can be representative of no one school.
Without the critical tools of allegory and etymology, Seneca is unable to compel a text
to conform rigidly to Stoic doctrine as more orthodox Stoics could.