Virtue and Suffering
Sweet Bites for April 5, 2024
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
This week we closed out our March theme of suffering by exploring the pursuit of virtue during painful times (link below).
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🦉 Wisdom
“When anything happens to you, always remember to turn to yourself and ask what power you have to deal with it."
Epictetus
Source: How to be Free
📰 Article
Seneca’s On the happy life with commentary by
Massimo is the author of several best-selling books on Stoicism including How to be a Stoic, A Field Guide to a Happy Life, and The Quest for Character.
In this article, Massimo provides Richard Mott Gummere’s translation of Seneca’s On the happy life and provides commentary that helps bring the text further alive with the teachings of the Stoics and the underlying philosophy Seneca is preaching.
✏️ Wednesday Wisdom’s Note of the Week
As stated in our Monday Meditations, I am going to try posting the Wednesday Wisdoms in Note form for the next month as an experiment rather than sending a third email for the week. Here is this week’s wisdom:
📖 Book Recommendation
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds by John Kaag
John Kaag is an American philosopher who has written several books, what I would describe as philosophical memoirs where he explores an aspect of himself against a philosophy or philosopher.
In Sick Souls, Healthy Minds, Kaag explores his own depression and juxtaposes it with the life, melancholy, and philosophy of William James.
Some favorite passages/quotes:
“If life is largely governed by habit, by the semiconscious workings of instinct and routine, then the least we can do as free agents is understand how we are constrained.”
—
“Our volition—and the practical pursuits that structure and organize our lives—is what keeps us from recognizing the full range of experience. We regularly confuse what is urgent and immediate with what is actually important or miraculous. Our habits, even the very good ones, close us off from what we might see and what we might become. "Blind and dead," James wrote, "does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all other things.””
—
“If we attend to facts of experience, nothing is destined. Something else is always possible. We surprise ourselves to find that we were, all along, free to cooperate, and that the world, unexpectedly, affords us the chance.”
From the Greek philosopher Protagoras:
“Man is the measure of all things.”
🔖 Links to This Month’s Articles
This month, we explored the theme of suffering in life and how we can either overcome it or manage it. Below are the topics covered and article links.*
Suffering and Virtue (MM)
* MM (Monday Meditations), WW (Wednesday Wisdoms), SB (Friday Sweet Bites).
📖 Story
One of the most famous philosophical works is Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Written in 523 AD as Boethius was awaiting trial and execution, it tells the story in the form of a dialogue with Lady Philosophy.
It explores what it means to live a good life, that happiness does not come from externals but from internals, and that virtue is the ultimate good.
📚 This Week’s Newsletter
Suffering and the Pursuit of Virtue
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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