While society and technology have evolved, it seems like human nature and the fundamental questions we are trying to answer haven’t changed. Perhaps it’s not surprising at all how many of Epectitis and Plato’s ideas hold up today, they were people just like us after all!
I wanted to give a shout-out to two texts I have read lately. Spoiler alert: they are related to the two names I just mentioned. If you are interested in philosophy I highly recommend checking them out.
Discourses
This one is commonly recommended, and rightly so. Much of what is discussed in this book can be applied to your everyday life, and one of the big points Epictetus makes is that philosophy is as much about practicing as learning. There is no point in sitting in a lecture (or learning something altogether) if you are never going to use it for something.
This book contains a lot of lessons on how to live the best life and be happy, but doesn’t contain much ideas about ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, etc. Unlike The Republic, the passages don’t flow well together. Building on the above, I found it best to read (and re-read) only a couple sections at a time, and take some time to digest and think about it rather than digest too much information at once.
Obligatory quote: “A man must keep this in mind; and when he is called to any such difficulty, he should know that the time is come for showing if he has been instructed…If you did not learn these things in order to show them in practice, why did you learn them?”
As always, you can find the ebook for free here from Standard Ebooks.
The Republic
One of the most influential pieces of western philosophy, and maybe among all texts! There are so many famous ideas presented like the ring of gyges, a definition of Justice, the theory of forms, how types of governments change, and the allegory of the cave. A big plus of this text is that it’s written in a form of a dialogue (a conversation between multiple people). This makes the text more engaging, rather than reading statements given by one person. That is not to say there weren’t confusing sections, such as his discussion about the afterlife, or when he starts brining random math and perfect squares to explain how governments collapse.
The Republic sometimes gets a bad rep due to some of the “controversial” ideas presented like the myth of metals, collective raising of children, and censorship of certain works of art. In his defense, I think it’s important to think about why we (in today’s time) think of these ideas as repulsive. No doubt some of these very ideas were just as controversial back then in Plato’s time. For example his destain of democracy, and his claim that women are just as apt to be the guardians and philosophers in his Republic as men (which isn’t a wild thing to say today!).
Obligatory quote: “When they [the public] meet together, and the world sits down at an assembly…and they praise some things which are being said or done, and blame other things, equally exaggerating both, shouting and clapping their hands…will not a young man’s heart, as they say, leap within him? Will any private training enable him to stand firm against the overwhelming flood of popular opinion? or will he be carried away by the stream? Will he not have the notions of good and evil which the public in general have—he will do as they do, and as they are, such will he be?”
As always, you can find the ebook for free here from Standard Ebooks.