The divine comedy of Roman Emperors’ last words. One of the funniest works of Roman literature to survive—and the only one that has ever made me laugh out loud—is a skit, written by the philosopher Seneca, about the Emperor Claudius’ adventures on his way to Mt. Olympus after his death. Titled “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii” (“The ‘Pumpkinification’ of the Deified Claudius”), it recounts how the Roman Senate declared that the dead Emperor was now a god, complete with his own temple, priests, and official rites of worship. The deification of emperors was fairly standard practice at the time, and the spoof claimed to lift the lid on what really happened during the process. It was an inside joke. Seneca was the tutor of Nero, who was Claudius’ successor and his stepson. The idea is that the befuddled old Emperor—who was rumored to have been finished off with some poisoned mushrooms by his wife, Agrippina—is not really fit to be divine. As Claudius climbs up Mt. Olympus, word comes to the “real” gods that a stranger has arrived, and that he is muttering incomprehensibly. But, when Hercules is sent to investigate, the two of them swap a few lines of Homer’s poetry. (“Thank goodness there are some scholars in Heaven,” Claudius enthuses.) The gods meet in private to decide whether to allow Claudius to join their ranks. “Opinions were mixed, but were coming down generally in Claudius’ favor,” Seneca writes, until the Emperor Augustus, who was deified forty years earlier, swings the vote decisively against him. Claudius, one of his successors, has been such a monster, Augustus points out, that he shouldn’t be allowed to become a god. “He may look as if he couldn’t startle a fly, but he used to kill people as easily as a dog has a shit,” Augustus says. … (New Yorker)
Hume’s skeptical philosophy and the moderation of pride. Hume wanted his readers to appreciate “the imperfections and narrow limits of human understanding.”[1] But why? What good comes from seeing ourselves as ignorant? Hume’s answer is: A whole lot! First, it’s interesting theoretically. A great part of the appeal of philosophy is that it teaches us about ourselves. We can ask, for example, about how our minds work. And we might find it fascinating to learn that they don’t work as well as we thought. While this discovery is an important part of Hume’s “science of man,”[2] Hume places greater emphasis on the practical effects of appreciating it. He tells us that a sense of our own ignorance can counteract dogmatism, make us better at reasoning, and even promote social cohesion. How is that supposed to work? Hume isn’t very clear about this. Neither are his interpreters, despite their acknowledging Hume’s interest in these practical effects. … (New Work in Philosophy)
Chariot racing in the Ancient World. Nowadays folks use fast cars and designer handbags to flaunt their wealth. Back in the ancient Greek world, however, owning horses was the ultimate status symbol. This tradition continued during the Roman Empire and indeed, anyone who partook in equine activities was immediately assumed to belong to the elite. Chariot racing was no exception… And while the rich got the bragging rights, it was the drivers, the horses, and even the fans that took the risk. Chariot racing was a popular sport for centuries, enjoyed under various governments and leaders throughout the ancient world. Its exact origins, however, are unknown. We know that the sport existed in the Mycenaean world because of artistic evidence on pottery. Meanwhile, the first literacy reference to a chariot race is in Homer’s Iliad, at the funeral games of Patroclus. … (Classical Wisdom)
Can Cognitive Behavioral Therapy change our minds? I’ve had only one panic attack. It happened in the fall of 2008, during a period when my wife and I were graduate students in English. I was walking across a sunny quad, wearing an actual tweed jacket, thinking about all the papers that I had to grade, when suddenly a wave of fear washed over me. Its origin wasn’t at all mysterious: I had no workable plan for my life. There were almost no jobs for new English professors, and the search for work would likely send me and my wife to different parts of the country. How would we ever build a life together, or start a family? Intellectually, I had known for years that we were approaching our future in an unrealistic way— but now the problem registered as a physical assault, contained in the brightness of the sun and the stirring of the air. Oh, my God, I thought. What am I going to do? Breathing hard, I paced up and down the path, preparing to throw up. It took a few minutes for these sensations to pass; eventually, the sound of the chapel bell steadied me, and I sat on a bench, drained and disturbed. … (New Yorker)
Natural beauty: exploring Shaftesbury's ideas on nature, virtue, and beauty. One of the most interesting (and currently under-appreciated thinkers) of the early modern period was Anthony Ashley Cooper, better known as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1670-1713). He was so important to philosophy in the 18th century that the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment—David Hume, Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith, among others—all had to grapple with Shaftesbury, either to criticize or be inspired by his work. Hume, now considered by far the greater philosopher, credited him as one of the “philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing.” Eighteenth-century German thinkers, from Leibniz to Goethe, were especially influenced by his thoughts on nature and beauty. Leibniz went so far as to call his work “beyond Plato and Descartes,” while Herder called him “the beloved Plato of Europe” (Michael B. Gill, A Philosophy of Beauty, p. 12). … (Stoicism for Humans)