ARTICLES ARCHIVE

 

You can find a complete listing of all the articles on this site here. They are listed in reverse chronological order, and are all clickable links. Twenty-five articles are displayed per page, with the publication date included. To find older articles, click on the page numbers at the bottom.

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  • 7 Observations About Getting Older

    I’ve gotten questions now and then about what it’s like to get older.  How do I keep my mental and physical fitness like you?  How do my thoughts change?  How do my relationships change?   It’s a question that deserves an in-depth discussion, since the answers are complicated.

  • My Own Ten Commandments (Podcast Reading)

    This is a reading of My Own Ten Commandments, one of the most popular articles to appear here in 2015.  It lays out some key points in my worldview.

  • How To Prepare Korean Roasted Barley Tea And Roasted Corn Tea

    This is a cold time of the year where I live.  Sometimes I’m reminded of the time I spent in Korea many years ago, and of the great food I used to eat there. I like to haunt Asian food stores every now and then, to take me back to the old days.

  • Coming In January 2016: “Pathways”

    In early January 2016 I’ll be releasing a new book called Pathways. It is a collection of my best essays from 2015, and includes more than 50 separate essays.     Many of these have been enlarged, expanded, or edited.  These are the definitive versions of my best essays from 2015.

  • Lecture On “The Dream Of Scipio”: The Out-Of-Body Experience, The Nature of Glory, And The Immortality Of The Soul

    This lecture discusses Cicero’s visionary essay The Dream of Scipio which I included at the end of my book Stoic Paradoxes.  It relates a philosophical conversation arising from an out-of-body experience high above the Earth.

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture 7: Only The Wise Man Is Wealthy

    Welcome to the seventh and final lecture in our series on Stoic Paradoxes. In this lecture, we discuss some of the most critical points of Stoic ethics:  What is wealth? Who can be considered wealthy? Is the wise man rich?  If so, in what way? I hope you’ve enjoyed this lecture series.  If so, please…

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture 6: Wise Men, Fools, Free Men, And Slaves

    Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope the next few days will be a time for reflection and relaxation. And thanks for joining us in our next lecture on Stoic Paradoxes.  In this lecture, we discuss some of the most critical doctrines in Stoic ethics:

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture 5: Misdeeds Are Equal, And Good Deeds Are Equal

      Fortress of the Mind Publications brings you the fifth lecture in our series on Stoic Paradoxes. In this lecture, we discuss the following proposition:  misdeeds are equal, and good deeds are equal. Is this true?  If so, to what extent?  And what does it mean for us? Join us here (for SoundCloud) or here (for…

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture 4: Discussion Of Paradoxes 1 And 2

    This is our fourth lecture on Stoic Paradoxes.  In the first three lectures, we discussed some important background information: the life of Cicero, the basics of Cicero’s thought, and a summary of Stoic fundamentals. In this 15-minute lecture, we get into the book proper, with a discussion of the book’s first two propositions:  That what…

  • Your Character Has Two Components

      Every man’s character has a dual quality to it.  One quality is etched into every man’s consciousness from birth, more or less.  And this is the quality of reason that Nature herself has endowed us with; it is that which separates us from the unreasoning brutes. It is a universal quality, in the sense…

  • Breakout From The Chosin Reservoir

    The armies of North Korea burst into South Korea in June 1950 and quickly overwhelmed its forces, confining them to a perimeter around the city of Pusan.  Douglas MacArthur, in what can only be called a brilliant counterstroke, hit back with an amphibious landing at the city of Inchon.

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture 3: The Fundamentals Of Stoic Doctrine

    We continue our lecture series on Stoic Paradoxes with a detailed discussion of the essentials of Stoic thought.  What are its main tenets?  Where did they come from?  How were they applied?  Are they reasonable?  Tune in with me to find out… This podcast was brought to you courtesy of Fortress of the Mind Publications. As always,…

  • A Reading Of The Prologue To “Pantheon”

      Frequent reader Lucas Temple mentioned to me recently that he would like to hear a reading of the prologue of my book Pantheon: Adventures In History, Biography, And The Mind.  The prologue is an account–based on actual events–of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen, one of the triumphs of archaeology. The incident highlights…

  • “Stoic Paradoxes” Lecture Series, Part 2: Cicero’s Thought

    In this second lecture of our series on Stoic Paradoxes, we focus on the influences behind Cicero’s thought, and how he identified himself doctrinally. This podcast is brought to you by Fortress of the Mind Publications.  

  • Greed Is A Corruptor

      Pyrrhus was a powerful king who ruled Epirus and Macedon for some years during the Hellenistic period. Plutarch tells a revealing story about him in his Parallel Lives (Life of Epirus, 14). One of Pyrrhus’s valued advisors was a man named Cineas, who was entrusted on many foreign missions of great sensitivity. [To read…

  • My First Podcast: Part One Of A Lecture Series On Stoicism

    I have decided to add podcasts to the content offered on my site.  There is a refreshing value in mixing the presentation of material by audio, along with material already offered in a written format. Because of the many questions I receive on Stoicism, and the enduring interest in this subject, I have decided to…

  • Coming In Spring 2016: “On Duties”

    For well over a year now, I’ve been working steadily on the most ambitious literary project of my life.  It has been an incredible and exhausting adventure, and has opened up vistas in my perception of the world that I never would have expected.

  • The World Will Provide

    Our spirits are driven by two things:  appetite and Reason. Appetite is the hunger for pleasures, and Reason is the rational impulse.  When Reason does not control the appetite, then the appetite usurps the leadership position of the spirit. And this is a sure road to ruin. Appetite leads us around aimlessly by the nose,…

  • What Is It Like To Get Older?

      One of the questions that I’ve been asked a lot these days is how one’s perceptions change about things as one gets older. A lot of younger guys in their twenties or thirties want to get a glimpse of what lies around the corners of life that they will be approaching soon. [To read…

  • One Illusion Is Only Worth Another Illusion: The Judgment Of Bocchoris

    Here is a sly and amusing story that I came across in Plutarch this weekend.  We find it in his Life of Demetrius (Ch. 27).  It is short, but effective. There was an Egyptian pharaoh named Bakenranef, who was known to the Greeks as Bocchoris (names of foreign rulers and notables were often Hellenized by…

  • Success Can Be Fatal

    I was eating today at one of those a kilo places in Rio:  one of those places where the food is purchased by the total weight.  The greater the quantity of food, the greater the price.  It turned out to be an opportunity for reflection on the price not of food, but of achievement. Where…

  • Genius Springs Up In Unlikely Places

    On an airline flight yesterday I was watching a 2014 Mark Wahlberg film called The Gambler.  I had not heard of it before.  Apparently it didn’t do too well at the box office last year, due to its depressing and nihilistic tone. Regardless, there was a great speech near the beginning of the movie by…

  • Civil And Military Organization Of The Later Roman Empire

      Introduction Current news headlines of populations on the move into Europe have drawn attention to a previous era in European history, one in which mass migrations of foreign peoples played a major role.  The Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries was faced with these very challenges from the movements of Germanic tribes,…

  • Never Get Out Of The Boat, Unless You’re Going All The Way

    There is a scene in the 1979 film classic Apocalypse Now where Willard and the Chef stop their river patrol boat to collect some mangoes in the jungle.  They come face to face with a tiger, and this causes the tightly-wound Chef to become unglued. “Never get out of the boat…never get out of the…

  • The Films Of Gaspar Noé

    Sometimes we need to take a break from virtue.  All things in moderation, I say, including virtue. Sometimes, we need to look deeply into the abyss.  Someone once said that the abyss looks back at you, but it’s more accurate to say something else: it blows out its breath at you, like the open maw…

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Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642.  From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.