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Stoicism and beauty
In my Stoicon ’23 talk I challenged what the Stoics thought about beauty
Stoicon is the annual international conference gathering people interested in Stoicism. “Gathering” is no longer exact, perhaps, since after Covid-19 we don’t meet in person anymore, but rather through the confine of a Zoom screen. No matter, this year’s theme was the relationship between Stoicism and beauty.
Friends and colleagues gave talks on “The Stoic theory of beauty” (Aistė Čelkytė), “How to create a more beautiful world using harmony and proportion” (David Fideler), “The inspirational power of moral beauty” (Brittany Polat), “Peter Paul Rubens and the first modern revival of Stoicism” (John Sellars), “Selecting for beauty: some precepts for a Stoic” (Jennifer Baker), “From the cosmos to cracks in bread: things of beauty for Stoics” (Greg Sadler), and even “Dancing with the Stoics” (Nancy Sherman). The final keynote speech was given by John Vervaeke and was entitled “Why beauty is deeply implicit throughout Stoicism.” Videos of the talks will soon be available at the Modern Stoicism YouTube channel.
Perhaps predictably, I played the part of the token skeptic, with a talk on “Did the Stoics get their theory of beauty wrong?” Spoiler alert: the answer, I think, is yes. But we can learn a lot from the mistake and even correct it.
