AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Trinity avowed1/8/2023 ![]() See here also Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). Catherine Wilson’s How to Be an Epicurean argues that “real Epicureanism is neither frivolous nor dangerous to health, nor a threat to other people.” Catherine Wilson, How to be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 10. There has also been a revived interest in living an Epicurean life. E.g., John Sellars, Lessons in Stoicism (London: Allen Lane, 2019) Massimo Pigliucci, How to be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (New York: Basic Books, 2018). One can now easily find any number of Stoic devotionals or lessons to help the beginner start practicing Stoic ideals. Might the resurgence of interest in ancient philosophy provide us with guides and refreshed insights for how to cultivate an inner life oriented toward the goal of human flourishing?Īncient philosophical writings such as the Stoics are no longer a field only for classicists and historians of ancient philosophy rather, the writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius are held up as providing wise resources for how to handle adversity, manage our emotions, and show us our broader place in the world. Ancient philosophy was preoccupied with the fundamental questions of human existence and flourishing: What do I need, and what must I do to live a good life? And how is my human nature constituted to live in accordance with a flourishing life? How can I overcome the crippling passions of fear, grief, anger, and illicit desire? Lasch-Quinn has written a powerful and wide-ranging book which argues that a “revival of interest” in “modern versions of ancient Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism” are providing important guidance for people seeking to cultivate inwardness, self-knowledge, When people have questions about how to live well and how to make sense of their lives, to whom do they turn for help? and meaning in a culture dominated by a self-absorbed and narcissistic culture (p. ![]() In this regard, we are at a disadvantage from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians who often turned to philosophy to provide them with the arts of living. 19) that cannot provide substantive well-being and happiness. 18) due to its “assumption of self-interested ends” (p. She gives a lengthy definition of the therapeutic worldview, but here I will simply note that the primary problems are that it results in “a loss of inwardness” (p. In fact, as Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn has argued, much of this self-help derives from, what she refers to as (drawing upon Philip Rieff), a therapeutic worldview. And yet most of the bumper-sticker or coffee-mug slogan advice fails to grapple with the most important questions we face as humans, let alone to do so in a way that is coherent or oriented toward a truly good human life. The desperate existential need we all have for help to know how to live well is on display in the remarkably successful (in terms of popularity and sales) self-help industry. ![]() In my courses on theology and Scripture, I will often ask my students: when people have questions about how to live well and how to make sense of their lives, to whom do they turn for help? Who provides the necessary resources for how to face adversity, develop good character, cultivate wisdom, pursue meaningful friendships and community, and so on? For the few students who can think of a response to my question, these resources rarely provide anything like a robust and coherent vision of the good life. Whether one agrees with Augustine’s specific account of the goal of human existence, his positing of a relationship between human nature and a transcendent telos for humanity as indispensable for the ars vitae (“the art of living”) would not have been a controversial claim for most ancients.Ĭontrast this with the situation today where most people are either confused or lack the ability to make coherent sense of their lives or to provide robust responses to the most important questions they face in our contemporary world. The truly interesting question is not whether we want to be happy but where true happiness can be found for Augustine, this happiness can only be found in fulfilling the telos of humanity’s existence, which is rejoicing in God’s presence (10.32). There’s not a person in this world, Augustine says, who doesn’t have some intuitive sense of the meaning of happiness or flourishing and also wants to live a happy life. I am using the translation by Sarah Ruden (New York: The Modern Library, 2017). “We hear the word ‘happiness,’ and all of us admit that we strive for the thing itself” (10.29). In Book Ten of his Confessions, Augustine makes the seemingly incontrovertible claim that everyone wishes to be happy.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |