Massimo Pigliucci's Blog, page 15

On the worth of comedy and tragedy

An Ancient Greek tragedy being performed in a grand open-air theater in ancient Athens, generated by DALL-E.

We tend to think of Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher-king, and in a sense he was, though the ancient Romans were allergic to the word “king” and preferred Imperator, which technically just meant supreme commander of the troops, the equivalent of a modern American President being hailed as “commander-in-chief.”

Emperors ever since the first one, Octavian Augustus, the adopted son of Julius C...

Video chat: Vittorio Bufacchi on why Cicero matters

Welcome to another entry in an occasional series of video chats with authors and translators who have written about the philosophy, culture, and history of the Greco-Roman tradition.

In this episode I talk to Vittorio Bufacchi, Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at University College Cork, Ireland. Vittorio did his PhD (1994) at the London School of Economics. He specializes in political philosophy, especially on questions of social injustice, human rights, and political violence. His l...

Practice like a Stoic: 13, Start practicing minimalism

Shielding oneself from the arrows of fortune. Image by DALL-E.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosop...

The problem of the perverse

Chrysippus of Soli (left) in animated conversation with Marcus Tullius Cicero (right) about the problem of the perverse. This conversation, of course, never happened, given that the two were born 173 years part (Chrysippus first!). Image generated by DALL-E.

One of the most powerful ideas of Stoic philosophy is that we are naturally “virtuous,” by which the Stoics meant that Nature endows us with the ability to reason and an innate tendency to act prosocially. And virtue—according to Seneca—is no...

E-book: The Cato Chronicles

Dear Reader,

Here is the seventh installment of my ongoing series of free e-books based on essays that have appeared either here at Figs in Winter or at one of my previous blogs.

This new collection features seven essays about the life and philosophy of Cato the Younger (95-46 BCE), the arch-enemy of Julius Caesar and one of the Stoic role models par excellence.

Enjoy, and remember, Philosophia longa, vita brevis!

~Massimo Pigliucci

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Practice like a Stoic: 12, Put temptations out of sight

Temptation of Adam and Eve, Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, after Raphael. Image from Wikimedia, CC license.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a br...

Stoicism as a subversive activity

Zeno of Citium teaching in the Stoa Poikile in ancient Athens, generated by DALL-E.

Is Stoicism a conservative or progressive philosophy of life? To a first approximation, the very question makes no sense. “Conservative” and “progressive” are modern, culturally and temporally specific labels for certain ways of seeing and acting in the world. Nevertheless, it does make sense to ask whether practicing Stoicism leads one to simply embrace the status quo or to consciously attempt to subvert it. Or, ...

Suggested Readings

Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called "Sappho"), Naples Archeological Museum

A.I.-generated garbage is polluting our culture. Increasingly, mounds of synthetic A.I.-generated outputs drift across our feeds and our searches. The stakes go far beyond what’s on our screens. The entire culture is becoming affected by A.I.’s runoff, an insidious creep into our most important institutions. Consider science. Right after the blockbuster release of GPT-4, the latest artificial intelligence model fr...

Practice like a Stoic: 11, Moderate at mealtime

Image from picryl.com, CC license.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic. Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the ...

Why Epicureans and Utilitarians are wrong: on the axiology of pain and pleasure

The four big hedonists: Aristippus (upper left), Epicurus (upper right), Bentham (lower left), Mill (lower right)

Hedonism, philosophically speaking, is “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.” (Apple Dictionary) Two major clusters of hedonistic theories appeared in the history of western philosophy: the Cyrenaics and Epicureans of Hellenistic times, and the Utilitarians of the 19th to the 21st centuries.

Cyr...