Gone vacationing, back soon!

A collection of articles on implementing the wisdom of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in our daily life — My Philosophy as Way of Life (PWOL) series of essays has now being going on since July 2018, and has produced 393 articles and counting. Naturally, people have a tendency to focus on the latest entries, but — if I may be forgiven for saying so — some of the…

Which system of government is best? Here’s an ancient answer that can teach us a lot — “Our political community is not the work of a single genius but of many, nor was it formed in the life of one person but over a number of generations and centuries.” (Cicero, De Re Publica II.2) What sort of system of government work best for human beings? This is…

When someone important and of questionable character dies, should we make fun of them? — “His last words heard among mortals — after he had let out a louder sound from that part with which he found it easier to communicate — were as follows: ‘Good heavens. I think I’ve shat myself.’ Well, I don’t know about that, but he certainly shat up everything else.”…

I spent a few hours on soil that has seen millennia of fascinating human history. It’s well worth reflecting on it — The story goes that one day Zeus seduced and impregnated yet another mortal woman, Leto. Hera, Zeus wife, was royally pissed off. As usual. So Hera banished Leto from earth. Zeus then implored his brother, Poseidon, to raise from the underwater world an island in the middle of the Aegean…

An unabashed purveyor of nonsense keeps getting invited to international conference on science and philosophy — “Sheldrake’s book [A New Science of Life] is a splendid illustration of the widespread public misconception of what science is about. In reality, Sheldrake’s argument is in no sense a scientific argument but an exercise in pseudo-science.” (John Maddox, then editor of Nature magazine) Next week I will once again…

A detailed summary of Pierre Hadot’s classic book, which helped put Stoicism and ancient Greco-Roman philosophy back on the map — My Philosophy as Way of Life (PWOL) series of essays has now being going on since July 2018, and has produced 388 articles and counting. Naturally, people have a tendency to focus on the latest entries, but — if I may be forgiven for saying so — some of the…

Duties toward others are deeply intertwined with the cultivation of personal virtues in our attempt to live in agreement with nature — [This series is based on Walter Nicgorski’s Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy. See part I, part II, part III] “And Socrates properly persisted in condemning that man who first separated the useful from the right, for that, he charged, was the source of all moral disorder.” (Cicero…

Stoicism deserves criticism on a number of fronts, but the Stoic conception of virtue ain’t one of them — I’ve recently quit social media. I’ve consciously, willfully left close to 50,000 followers on Twitter and a few thousands on Facebook. Why? Because, I reckoned, it was the virtuous thing to do. The case against social media and their increasingly pernicious effects on society is increasingly well established on empirical…

So-called Menippean satire was invented by an ancient Cynic philosopher. And it has influenced us for millennia — Menippus of Gadara (modern day Jordan) was a slave. He was also a Cynic philosopher and a satirist. We don’t know much about him, except the fact that he was a Greek, likely of Phoenician descent. When he obtained his freedom he moved to Thebes. Even more unfortunately, all his…