Pour une balnéothérapie stoïcienne ? Représentations de la baignade et poétique du discours philosophique dans les Lettres à Lucilius de Sénèque

The bathing representations throughout the correspondence with Lucilius seems to induct some crucial elements, both rhetorical and ethical, of the Seneca’s writing process. The description, and depiction, of bathing experiences in the Epistulae Morales enlightens the fact that Seneca’s shaping not only a stoic care of the self, but also a thinking and a writing method. Review of that writing pattern shows that the poetics of philosophical discourse may take different leads in the correspondence, from empirical experiences to ethical conceptualization, through literary aemulatio and satirical moral lessons. What appears, then, is a sociopoetical way of writing philosophy. The social representations are indeed orchestrated by Seneca in order to build a philosophical arrangement, which paves the way to a total transfiguration of the mind.