You might not be familiar with the name Eric Barker, but you’ve definitely seen Eric’s writing. His incredibly viral pieces—on how to think, on how manage fear, on how to love—have been read millions of times and featured by some of the biggest news sites in the world. You probably didn’t know that his blog […]
In Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer, the stoic philosopher is not the character based on Percy (though Percy loved Stoicism and wrote about it often), it’s his Aunt Emily. A rich, Southern aristocrat in New Orleans, she wanted the best for Binx Bolling, the boy she had essentially adopted and raised. She would give […]
The last time a politician with a philosophical bent stood up before the American people, as Vice Presidential Candidate James Stockdale did, and asked “Who am I? Why am I here?”, the media and the uninformed public snickered. What was a “philosopher” doing on stage at a vice presidential debate? There is no place for […]
We first interviewed Professor Massimo Pigliucci back in 2015 after his popular piece in New York Times on Stoicism became one of the most shared and viewed articles on the site. And today, with the release of his new book on stoic philosophy we decided to again reach out and ask him about all the […]
In early 2014, an employee of the multi-billion dollar medical company Theranos began to worry that the company may be engaged in fraudulent activities. Despite being a relatively low-level employee in his early twenties, he decided to do something about it. So he wrote a letter to the company’s CEO outlining the problems as he […]
The temptation exists for all of us to let our imagination run wild envisioning all the ways things can go wrong. Of course, such an exercise can be useful in preparing us for the future and making us ready for adversity, but Marcus Aurelius well understood that it can become crippling fear that will paralyze […]
It’s scary to think that we will someday die. What of our family, we think? What of our possessions, our potential, and our plans? Death in this way, is a great loss. The poet Lucretius described it in haunting language: “Never again will your dear children race for the prize of your first kisses and […]
The Stoics are very clear that the stories we tell ourselves about why things are the way they are has an enormous impact on how we feel about them. If we decide that something is unfair, we’ll feel wronged. If we tell ourselves that we deserve something, we’ll be disappointed or upset if we don’t […]
It’s easy to think that Stoicism is about judging other people. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus talk critically about their fellow men quite a bit. In one passage, Marcus says, “Robbers, perverts, killers and tyrants—gather for your inspection their so-called pleasures!” This a good exercise but it can also lead to a sense of moral […]