Freedom To or Freedom From?
At the core of legal theory is this idea that there are essentially two forms of liberty—positive and negative. Positive liberty is the freedom to do something, such as the freedom of speech or the fr...
11 Apr 20193min
All That Matters Is How We Respond
It was the great Athenian leader, Pericles, who said that there was nothing wrong with poverty. It could be caused by so many things—a business failure, the sudden loss of a family’s breadwinner, thef...
9 Apr 20192min
Do You Want To Be Less Angry?
Few people have studied the life and writings of Seneca as deeply as James Romm has. Romm is the author of a great biography of Seneca, Dying Every Day, a translation of Seneca’s various thoughts on d...
8 Apr 20192min
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
Each of has been blessed by Fortune. We’re alive right now, instead of 50 or 500 years ago. We were born free, and not into slavery. We’re reading this email on a computer in our office or on our cell...
5 Apr 20192min
Do Better Where You Can
When we look at the lives of a great man like Marcus Aurelius or a great woman like the Catholic activist Dorothy Day, it’s easy to be intimidated. They seemed to always know what to do and seemed to ...
4 Apr 20192min
You Are Here On The Mountaintop
The point of memento mori is not to make you sad. It’s not to make you anxious about how few days you may have left. On the contrary, it’s supposed to free you. It’s supposed to inspire you. It’s supp...
3 Apr 20193min
It's Just The Glasses
In his wonderful new book How To Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, historian, and Stoic Donald Robertson charts the fascinating...
2 Apr 20193min
All Things Can Be Used for a Purpose
One of the benefits of being an artist is that everything that happens to you—no matter how traumatic or frustrating—has at least one hidden benefit: It can be used in your art. A painful parting can ...
1 Apr 20193min
