Don't you wish in the modern day world there could be a school of Stoicism and other philosophies of life in the Greek and Roman sense of the world?
These days if you want to study philosophy, you generally study at school and learn about philosophy, the history of philosophy, foundational tenants of every philosophy, the etymology of each word used by every philosopher who ever lived, and you would be the very definition of sophomoric - a wise moron full of knowledge but barren of wisdom.
None of this would actually help you adopt a philosophy with which you should approach life, which was what these schools were originally founded to do. You or your children could study at these schools and learn the fundamental secrets to approaching life in a way which will maximize your own and others' happiness, and you will have arguments and approaches which would answer the annoying questions life hurls at you. Furthermore, you will see that so many of those we look to for answers in this world are full of fertilizer.
Amazing that today, when we have more access to the words of those such as Epictetus, Seneca, and so on there is really no vehicle for learning and teaching them. We are drowning in a sea of words looking for wisdom with no one we can trust to point the foolish from the profound, and only through exhaustive searching and great luck can we approach the ideas so commonly held 20 centuries ago.
2 comments:
Don't you wish in the modern day world there could be a school of Stoicism and other philosophies of life in the Greek and Roman sense of the world?
These days if you want to study philosophy, you generally study at school and learn about philosophy, the history of philosophy, foundational tenants of every philosophy, the etymology of each word used by every philosopher who ever lived, and you would be the very definition of sophomoric - a wise moron full of knowledge but barren of wisdom.
None of this would actually help you adopt a philosophy with which you should approach life, which was what these schools were originally founded to do. You or your children could study at these schools and learn the fundamental secrets to approaching life in a way which will maximize your own and others' happiness, and you will have arguments and approaches which would answer the annoying questions life hurls at you. Furthermore, you will see that so many of those we look to for answers in this world are full of fertilizer.
Amazing that today, when we have more access to the words of those such as Epictetus, Seneca, and so on there is really no vehicle for learning and teaching them. We are drowning in a sea of words looking for wisdom with no one we can trust to point the foolish from the profound, and only through exhaustive searching and great luck can we approach the ideas so commonly held 20 centuries ago.
Dan,
Many of us take the long road to discovering the value of philosophy. Once it is found, we wonder how we could have missed it.
Michael
Post a Comment