Stoicism
Musonius Rufus — Lecture XV: Should every child that is born (or conceived) be raised?
Sometimes the ancient Stoic may seem hopelessly out of touch with modernity. And yet, it’s complicated…
Ever since I got interested in practicing Greco-Roman philosophy, and especially one form or another of Stoicism, I’ve had to face the inevitable fact that sometimes the ancients seem so hopelessly out of touch that one wonders whether the whole enterprise is actually worth it.
Stoicism, of course, is not the only philosophy of life to incur in this problem. Confucianism is often, rightly, accused of being too patriarchal. And of course there are countless ethical anachronisms marring all three Abrahamic religions, just to mention a few cases.
And yet, we don’t throw away Christianity, or Buddhism, or other traditions on those grounds alone. That’s because of three reasons: (i) we recognize the value of the general framework of a philosophy or religion, regardless of specific things they might get wrong by modern standards; (ii) we understand that philosophical schools and religious sects evolve over time and adapt to new cultural conditions; and (iii) we acknowledge that there is a difference between what any particular teacher says at…
