Sublime

the central ethical moment, the paradigm for all others, is when one person attends to another, cares for her, and acts to ameliorate her suffering.

At this same time, across the Atlantic, the influence of Stoicism could be found in the writings of the New England Transcendentalists. Henry David Thoreau, for example, doesn’t directly mention Stoicism or any of the great Stoics in Walden, his masterpiece, but to those who know what to look for, the Stoic influence is present. In his Journal,

Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

IF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY and politics have been unkind to Stoicism, so has modern philosophy. Before the twentieth century, those who were exposed to philosophy would likely have read the Stoics. In the twentieth century, though, philosophers not only lost interest in Stoicism but lost interest, more generally, in philosophies of life. It was possible,