Practical Wisdom

“SOCRATES: This fine speaking of yours about Homer, as I was saying a moment ago, is not a skill at all. What moves you is a divine power. …For all good epic poets recite all that splendid poetry not by virtue of a skill, but in a state of inspiration and possession. The same is true of good lyric poets as well. … Or don’t you think I’ve got it right, Ion?ION: By Zeus, I think you have. Somehow or other your words touch my soul, Socrates, and I do believe good poets interpret these messages from the gods for us by divine dispensation.SOCRATES: So you rhapsodes in turn interpret the words of the poets, don’t you?ION: You’re right in that, too.SOCRATES: So your role is to be interpreters of interpreters?ION: Surely.” (Plato, Ion, 533b-535a)Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“Our inquiry would be adequately made if it should attain the clarity that accords with the subject matter. For one should not seek out precision in all arguments alike, just as one should not do so in the products of craftsmanship either.The noble things and the just things, which the political art examines, admit of much dispute and variability, such that they are held to exist by custom alone and not by nature.And even the good things admit of some such variability on account of the harm that befalls many people as a result of them: it has happened that some have been destroyed on account of their wealth, others on account of their courage. …It belongs to an educated person to seek out precision in each genus to the extent that the nature of the matter allows: to accept persuasive speech from a skilled mathematician appears comparable to demanding demonstrations from a skilled rhetorician.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.3)Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be so well understood, really is.For some imagine death to be the departure of the soul from the body.Others think that there is no such departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is extinguished with the body. …There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it is, and whence it is derived. …Empedocles imagines the blood, which is suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of the brain seems to be the throne of the soul. …Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants held at Corinth … asserts that there is in fact no such thing at all as a soul, but that it is a name without a meaning; and that it is idle to use the expression ‘animated beings.’That neither men nor beasts have minds or souls, but that all that power by which we act or perceive is equally infused into every living creature, and is inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing.Nor is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature.” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I.9-10)Figs in Winter: Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“Attachment to many things weighs and drags us down. That’s why, if the weather stops us from setting sail, we sit and fume, constantly peering outside: ‘Which direction is the wind from?’ ‘The north.’ ‘Damn! When is it going to blow from the west?’ In its own good time, my friend.“So what must we do? Make the best of what’s up to us and take everything else as it comes.“So what resources do we need to have at hand for circumstances like these? Just the knowledge of what is and isn’t mine, and of what is and isn’t possible for me.I am condemned to death. Do I have to die moaning and groaning as well?To incarceration. Do I have to complain about it?To exile. Is there anyone stopping me from going with a smile, joyful and content?‘Divulge your secrets.’ I refuse, because that’s something that’s up to me.‘I’ll clap you in irons.’ What are you talking about, man? Me? You’ll shackle my leg, but not even Zeus can conquer my will.‘I’ll throw you in prison.’ My body.‘I’ll cut off your head.’ Well, have you ever heard me suggest that I’m unique in having a non-detachable head?These are the ideas to which people who take up philosophy should apply themselves, which they should write about every day, and in which they should train themselves.” (Epictetus, Discourses I.1.15-25)Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“SOCRATES: Good day to you, Ion. Where have you come from on this visit to us? From your home in Ephesus?ION: Oh no, Socrates, from Epidaurus, from the festival of Asclepius. …SOCRATES: Well then, did you take any part in the competition? And how did you fare in it?ION: We carried off the first prize, Socrates.SOCRATES: That’s splendid news. … I must confess, Ion, I’ve often envied you rhapsodes your art, which makes it right and proper for you to dress up and look as grand as you can. And how enviable also to have to immerse yourself in a great many good poets, especially Homer, the best and most inspired of them, and to have to get up his thought and not just his lines! For if one didn’t understand what the poet says, one would never become a good rhapsode, because a rhapsode has to be an interpreter of the poet’s thought to the audience, and that’s impossible to do properly if one does not understand what he is saying. So all this is worth envying.ION: True, Socrates, true. At any rate, I find this side of my art has given me a lot of work, and I reckon I talk on Homer better than anybody. …SOCRATES: I’m glad to hear it, Ion. …ION: Yes indeed, Socrates, it’s well worth hearing how splendidly I have embellished Homer. I think I’ve got to the point where I deserve to have the homeridae crown me with a golden crown.SOCRATES: Yes indeed, and one day I’ll find myself time to listen to you. For the moment, however, answer me just this: does your expertise extend to Homer alone, or to Hesiod and Archilochus too?” (Plato, Ion, 530a-531a)Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“No one should postpone the study of philosophy when he is young, nor should he weary of it when he becomes mature, because the search for mental health is never untimely or out of season. To say that the time to study philosophy has not yet arrived or that it is past is like saying that the time for happiness is not yet at hand or is no longer present. Thus both the young and the mature should pursue philosophy, the latter in order to be rejuvenated as they age by the blessings that accrue from pleasurable past experience, and the youthful in order to become mature immediately through having no fear of the future. Hence we should make a practice of the things that make for happiness, for assuredly when we have this we have everything, and we do everything we can to get it when we don’t have it.” (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, prologue)Figs in Winter: Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

“A. To me death seems to be an evil.M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?A. To both.M. Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; and Sisyphus, who sweats with arduous toil in vain the steepy summit of the mount to gain?A. Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such things?M. If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there can be no one there at all.A. I am altogether of that opinion.M. Where, then, are those you call miserable? or what place do they inhabit? For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.A. I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.M. Then they have no existence at all.A. Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that they have no existence.M. I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus inaccurately.A. In what respect?M. Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the same breath. Where now is your sagacity? When you say any one is miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I.4-6)Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics I.1.2, distinguishes between intrinsic and instrumental goods. Some things are good for the sake of something else: we want a nice house because it is comfortable. Other goods, however, are fundamentally good and do not admit of the question "but why do you want it?" Happiness is a fundamental good. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe

First episode of the Practical Wisdom podcast with Prof. Massimo Pigliucci of the City College of New York. We discuss Epictetus's Discourses, I.1.1 to I.1.6, which focuses on the Stoic conception of reason as well as on the separation between mind-independent facts and human judgments. Get full access to Figs in Winter: a Community of Reason at figsinwintertime.substack.com/subscribe