Donald J. Robertson's Blog, page 53
October 10, 2018
How to Live Like Socrates: Live from Athens!
Hello from Athens! Earlier this year, I launched my brand new e-learning course called How to Live Like Socrates, which follows a similar format to my How to Think Like a Roman Emperor course on Marcus Aurelius. How to Live Like Socrates is running again and enrollment opens in a couple of days, so I …
Socrates and the Stoics at the Lyceum
Today I visited the ruins of the Lyceum palaestra, or wrestling school, in Athens. Pomegranate trees grow around the edge of the archeological site and there were butterflies. (These are some of my photos of the site.) The Lyceum was named after Apollo Lyceus, Apollo “the wolf-god”, to whom the whole area was dedicated. He …
October 8, 2018
Athens: Visiting the “Prison of Socrates”
The Greeks tell tourists this house carved into the Hill of the Muses is the “prison of Socrates” but there doesn’t seem to be any real evidence for that. Still, it’s worth a visit. You could maybe climb though the bars and imagine that you’re awaiting a cup of hemlock, if you want to relive …
October 6, 2018
Where They Laughed at Socrates
Today I visited the Theatre of Dionysus, the place where Athenians once gathered to laugh at Socrates. Aristophanes first presented his satirical play The Clouds at the City Dionysia festival of 423 BC, and it was most likely performed on this very stage. (Here is a photo I took of the theatre and a close-up …
October 3, 2018
Athens Day One: The Stoa Poikile
I arrived in Athens last night so this morning I decided to head straight for the Stoa Poikile, the home of Stoicism. A Greek stoa is a colonnade: basically a row of columns supporting a roof. The Stoa Poikile had a wall on one side giving shade, so it’s described as a portico or a …
October 2, 2018
Photos: Stoicon 2018
Some photos from my workshop at Stoicon 2018 in London, courtesy of Dominic O’Ryan, Eoin Dixon Murphy, and Eduard Ezeanu.
October 1, 2018
Stoicon Questions
Leo Bowder, who’s a philosophy teacher doing some research on Stoicism, gave me some interesting questions to answer about popularizing Stoicism. So I thought I might as well share my responses online because answering them properly helps me to think through my opinions about Stoicism. I find that’s both beneficial for me and also useful …
September 27, 2018
September 25, 2018
Press Release: Stoic Week 2018
On October 1, 2018, the seventh annual Stoic Week takes place and Modern Stoicism are inviting people in the UK and from around the rest of the world to participate and learn how to live like a Stoic for a week. The idea behind the week is to give people an opportunity to see whether …
September 21, 2018
Stoic Book Review: Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
People have been telling me to read Antifragile: Things that Gain From Disorder (2014) by Nassim Taleb since the book came out because he’s into Stoicism. I’ve finally had a chance to read it so here’s my latest quasi-review. I say that because rather than talk about the whole book I’m just going to write a …
