Philosophy, thinkers and the lessons that have stood the test of centuries.
35 articles
Today “epicurean” means someone who likes expensive food and luxury. Epicurus himself taught something quite different: that happiness comes from few things and from the absence of fear.
She taught philosophy and astronomy in one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, and its most powerful men respected her. Her violent death made her a symbol, but it also covered her in legends.
Few people know his name today, but Musonius Rufus was one of the most respected philosophers of Rome. His lectures, recorded by his students, sound strikingly close to our own questions.
We know Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius well. But Stoicism began centuries earlier, with a man who lost his cargo at sea and found philosophy in a bookshop.
He walked through Athens in daylight with a lit lantern and said he was looking for a human being. When Alexander the Great asked what he wanted, he told him to step out of his sunlight. Who was Diogenes really?
After the Second World War, a psychiatrist who had lost almost his whole family in the camps wrote a book about what keeps people alive. It is still read by millions.
The most powerful man in the Roman world kept notes to himself: how to be patient, just and calm. Two thousand years later, they are still read every day.
Socrates left no books. We know him from those who heard him. Yet one sentence of his, spoken before his judges, remains one of the most quoted in philosophy.
"We become just by doing just acts." For Aristotle, character is not something we are born with but something we build every day.
Seneca complained about people who scatter their time without noticing. His questions are more relevant than ever.
"Some things are up to us, others are not." With this sentence begins the Handbook of Epictetus, one of the most practical books of ancient philosophy.
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