I saw the new film MacBeth (starring Michael Fassbender) at the Botafogo district of Rio de Janeiro a couple nights ago. I recommend it highly, as the production values are incredible and the pulse of the drama is intense. I don’t consider myself a big Shakespeare fan. I like a few of the major plays (Hamlet, MacBeth, etc.) but many of the others I find to be tedious.
I’m almost finished with Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography Einstein: His Life and Universe
It can’t be done.
It’s never been tried before.
It’s just impossible.
How many times in history have we heard those words? And how many times have those words turned out to be wrong?
Many times.
The author of one of the strangest and most impressive poetic works in history was born sometime around 99 or 95 B.C. The exact date is uncertain; but we are lucky to know even this morsel of information. Titus Lucretius Carus remains one of the most elusive poets of antiquity. He was an Epicurean, and this philosophy was not exactly congenial to the Roman character.
One gets the impression that there was a conspiracy of silence about him, that he may have been some grand embarrassment that needed to be hidden from view.
The centuries certainly conspired to bury his work, and he was almost completely forgotten in the Middle Ages; had the Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini not found him moldering on a monastery shelf, he might have been entirely obliterated from history.
[Author’s Note: This essay first appeared in published form in February 2015 as a chapter of my book Pantheon. Since I use the phrase Fortress of the Mind as my motto and colophon, I wanted readers to know its origin and special significance to me.]
You’ve got to get with the big picture!
You’ve got to remember the big picture!
You’ve got to see the forest for the trees, man!
Get outside yourself, and look at everything!
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.
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 that every man possesses it. From this rational aspect we get our innate sense of justice and fairness. It is also what gives man that special curiosity about the world: it is that which impels him to make inquiries into everything, to investigate everything, and to try to find answers for the riddles of Nature.
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 the rest of my article, click here.]
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 give a series of 10 lectures on Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes.
I published a translation of Stoic Paradoxes
Since this is the first podcast I’ve made, I appreciate the feedback of listeners. I expect things to become additionally refined as we move forward.
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