Sublime

They are questions about how to treat other people fairly, what kind of greatness to pursue in life, what it means to love and be loved, how we should face death, how society should be organized, who our real friends are, how to raise our children, what the demands of justice are, and quite generally, what to do with our lives.

the primary goal of most ancient philosophers was to help ordinary people live better lives. Stoicism, as we shall see, was one of the most popular and successful of the ancient schools of philosophy.

Thrasea Paetus. Thrasea was not a philosopher or writer but a politician and an aristocrat, a member of the Senate, who is presented, in both Tacitus and Dio, as a man of absolute integrity. He was the only one who expressed disapproval of the speech Seneca delivered to the Senate in defense of Nero’s killing of his mother: when it was delivered, T

Aristotle says that good lawgivers have shown more concern for friendship than for justice.

Justin Martyr (c.100–c.165), who employed the Stoic conception of a divine ‘Reason’ (Logos) pervading all things – partially present in all rational intellects – to explain who the eternal Son of God, incarnate in Jesus, was.

We turn now to one of the most fraught questions about Seneca’s life story: his vast accumulation of wealth under Nero. 25 For our purposes, there are three central questions. First, how rich was he? Second, how exactly did he get his money? And third, how can we reconcile his accumulation of wealth and property with the overwhelmingly negative dep

It sits at the helm and steers a course for us who are tossed in waves of uncertainty. Without it, there is no life that is not full of care and anxiety. For countless things happen every hour that need the advice philosophy alone can give.