From ‘Zero Tolerance’ to ‘Turn the Other Cheek’ and back: Lucius Annaeus Seneca and the Graeco-Roman Roots of a Modern Transcultural Dilemma

I divide my paper into five parts: after a short introduction to explain my question and my odd title (“From ‘Zero Tolerance’ to ‘Turn the Other Cheek’”), I examine justice as the Golden Mean between four ethical extremes, taking up Seneca’s thought. In the three following sections, I deal with the ideological outcome of my four-quarter grid, firstly examining the interchange of morally acceptable attitudes, then the opposition of sternness versus cruelty, and in the fifth section the last pair of opposites: mercy and commiseration.