Oddbean new post about login | logout nostr, what kind of old books do you keep on going back to? https://i.nostr.build/a0PM.jpg
I like old fiction. Not like, fantasy or scifi. Think "The Count of Monte Cristo" or "Slaughterhouse 5" or even "Wuthering Heights". They're tragic, but emotionally and literarily fascinating. And while they can have horrific themes, nothing is meaningless for shock value like some modern "literature".
Discourses, by Epictetus
Seen a bunch of his quote/ referenced throughout the time, definitely something to take a look at
Stoicism is the Starbucks of philosophy, for both good and bad. It is readily accesible and very recommended to study it (it's one of my philosophical keystones), but take care not to fall into the commercial version of it. It's much, much deeper than you might think. If you want any help getting into it just say so!
tell me more 🤔
Great, I told you more but my note wasn't published. Summarized, Stoicism defends that there is very little in our life that we have power on. We have power over our thoughts, opinions and actions. Over the rest of existance (our health, our fame, our loved ones) not really - that's under the purview of Logos/Nature/God. Moral good can only be found where we have power on, as otherwise being good or bad would be random or arbitrary, and as such wouldn't be moral good or bad. A happy life (eudaimonia) is a life lived in the pursuit of virtue, which is objectively derived from our nature as rational beings. The four stoic virtues are Courage, Temperance, Wisdom and Justice. Other material stuff we can prefer or disprefer, but they are fundamentally (moral) indifferents. For example, the death of a loved one isn't good or bad, it simply is. Good or bad is how we might react to it — wallowing in our own dispair would be bad, accepting it as part of life and continuing on would be good. This is all supported by a detailed system of physics and logic, which can get pretty deep. Also, traditionally Stoicism was (and is) a profoundly spiritual philosophy, which is something many times set aside nowadays.
Bible, the OG book
hmm, tempting
Fun fact: "bible" is derived from the Greek word "biblia", which means "books". It's actually a lot of books rolled into one.
meditations - marcus aurelius letters from a stoic - seneca the book - alan watts
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons. 2nd time through recently. Read it when I found out the founding fathers were obsessed with it while fighting the revolution. Even if Roman history is mostly fake, it’s sensational. Letters from Cortez. Correspondence from Cortez back to Spain during his expeditions in Mexico. Including a fun bit on Charles the 5th not understanding inflation when the gold market is flooded in Europe. My favorite two old books from last year.
Roman history is mostly fake?
Not sure. Seems credible that a lot of the Renaissance era manuscripts found that are the basis of everything we know outside of architecture were forgeries. There was a big market for Roman stuff, so a lot was faked. Many have subsequently been found out, including some of Gibbons sources. But there’s forgery questions even around things like Tacitus.
