

Plutarch, On Being A Busybody - Curiosity, Secrecy, and Privacy - Sadler's Lectures
Jun 25, 2025
13:37
This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient Middle Platonist philosopher and biographer Plutarch's essay On Being A Busybody
This episode focuses specifically on one of the features of the sort of curiosity or inquisitiveness central to being a busybody, namely that the person exhibiting it attempts to dig into other people's secrets, to find out bad things they would rather keep private, motivated by the desire and enjoyment of knowing those things and bringing them to light. He points out that this sort of curiosity can be not only unseemly or shameful, but also quite dangerous to those motivated by it
You can find the copy of the text I am using for this sequence on Plutarch's On Being A Busybody here - https://amzn.to/3IcyoX5
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