The traditional festival culminating in the winter solstice is upon us. Massimo, my friend Yannos, and a few others have shared this article, and I thought you might like to see it also. I would recommend Yannos’ post especially, (you may need to use FB’s translate function) for a more in-depth look at the festival than the linked article provides.
Yannos is a wealth of knowledge, and the online Stoic community is fortunate to have him.
How to Celebrate the Saturnalia!
You can now submit questions via #CuriousCat , if you are so inclined.
Please check out https://curiouscat.me/MountainStoicWV
I’ve been doing some reading on Socrates lately, and so the google algorithms decided I’d be interested in this video. This is not an aspect of Socrates I’m very familiar with, and I’ve not yet read any Montaigne. You may also find it interesting.
Cosmopolitanism is discussed, there’s a note of “shamelessness,” and maybe oikeiôsis too.
This was posted in the Traditional Stoicism group, and is well worth the read.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TraditionalStoicism/permalink/1971579303085544/
I came across this article which discusses what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” in some depth. The author takes exception to that label, but I think it suits just fine. I had recently joked in a conversation that if I had a dollar for every scholar who said something along the lines of “I won’t detail exactly what the exercises in Epictetus are…” that I’d have a goodly number of dollars.
Braicovich does not say this, however. He notes 18, although (spoiler alert), he later pares that down significantly. Either way, it’s worth the read.
https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/prometeus/article/viewFile/1950/1722
Franco Scalenghe has translated all of Epictetus’ known works (via Arrian), and graciously made them available without cost to the reader. If you haven’t leafed through his translation, I highly recommend it.
http://www.epitteto.com/THE%20DIAIRESIS%20TREE%20BOOK%20I.html
There are also five dialogues he authored to be found on the site which are well worth your time.
“Quite often people will come up to us after our events and they will say it’s great to see a couple of guys out here spreading Jesus’ message or they’ll say it’s great to a couple of Buddhists out on the road sharing these Buddhist principles, or (the thinking of) stoic philosophers like Seneca or Marcus Aurelius,” says Joshua.
Interesting to see some classical Stoics mentioned casually in this context. Seems to be a sea-change in how Stoicism is viewed around the globe. Of course, minimalism for minimalism’s sake isn’t virtue, but anyway ….
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/10/09/comment-minimalism-why-you-dont-need-what-you-want
