Why do we care about Greco-Roman philosophy?

[image: Socrates (left) and Cicero (right)]

Carla: Hi Matt! Is this a good place for our cappuccino break?

Matt: Splendid! I’ve never been here before, looking forward to chatting over drinks. No to mention those delicious pastries they have here. What do they call them?

Carla: Cornetti. The French call them croissants. It sounds better, but they doesn’t taste as good as what we make here in Rome…

Matt: Ha ha! Maybe so, I’d love to do a blind test! But another time, perhaps, as I actually wanted to ask you a question that’s been bugging me for a while now.

Carla: Go ahead, I’m curious!

Matt: Well, you see, you have been writing for years now about the ancient Greeks and Romans. You know, virtue ethics, Stoicism, Skepticism, all that stuff. I guess it’s historically interesting, of course, but why should we, two and a half millennia later, care about what people like Socrates or Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius said? Particularly since they were all (long since dead) white men.

Carla: Good question, actually. They were certainly mostly men, though there occasionally were women among them. Like Julia Domna, the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, who studied with and supported a group of Stoic philosophers. Or Theano of Crotona, Pythagoras’ wife and a member of his group. Or Aspasia of Miletus, Pericles’ wife and an inspiration to the Sophist movement. Not to mention Diotima of Mantinea, who taught Socrates. As for these people being “white,” the very concept of race as we understand it today simply did not exist, and philosophers came from all over the Mediterranean area, including north Africa.

Matt: I did not know that, interesting. Still, the question remains. For instance, Aristotle’s physics has definitely been superseded by modern science. The Stoics thought the seat of the soul — by which presumably they meant something like consciousness — was the heart. And so on.

Carla: Indeed, I don’t think there is much to salvage from ancient natural philosophy, the old name for what we today call science. I mean, we can appreciate the pioneering work of the Presocratics, of Democritus, of Aristotle, and many others, but very few people nowadays would try to resurrect their ideas in that respect.