I grew up in Rome, Italy. Not far from the Vatican. Naturally, I was a Catholic by default. As the Monty Python song goes:

I’m a Roman Catholic
And have been since before I was born
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They’ll take you as soon as you’re warm…

The 2021 edition of Stoicon, the international conference for people interested in Stoic philosophy, has just concluded (online). I presented a somewhat provocative talk bearing the title of this article, just to stir the pot a bit. You see, Stoics (both ancient and modern) more than occasionally have a tendency…

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is all the rage these days. Meaning, literally, that it enrages people. Or at least, pundits and politicians on the extreme right of the political spectrum. Predictably, it also serves as a rallying cry for people on the extreme left of that same spectrum. The fact…

One of the first things I noticed after moving to the United States in the now very distant 1990 was just how litigious American society is. It seems that the answer to every problem is “I’ll sue you!” …

Karl Marx famously wrote that:

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (Theses on Feuerbach 1845, 11)

Well, to be fair, the two goals are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, one could argue that interpreting the world is a necessary prerequisite…

Cicero and Seneca are two of the giants of Ancient Roman philosophy, the first one an exponent of the New Academy, the second one a Stoic. Both, however, where to some extent eclectic, prone to think in their own terms, not just slavishly following their predecessors. So Cicero, despite his…

Should we be politically active or withdraw into our personal and family life? This is a fundamental question that we all face, implicitly or explicitly, throughout our lives. Stoicism is often accused of being a self-centered philosophy, with little regard for social and political activism. …

What exists, and how do we know it? The first is the fundamental question of ontology, a major branch of metaphysics. The second question is epistemological, but it is obviously crucial for the first one: without good epistemic reasons any ontological claim becomes as arbitrary as those of religion. According…