classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Laws of Lycurgus Long before Adam Smith developed the idea that commerce was necessary for the accumulation of wealth, Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, had used this principle to curb the avarice of his countrymen, and laid down a constitution for one of the most eminent commonwealths in the ancient world. The Spartan Constitution, according to Plutarch, was also the model for Plato’s Republic. After creating the senate to […]
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A keynote speech given by a clinician at a seminar a few months ago made a lasting impression upon me, not for the scientific content, but for a story she told: A patient, who had an advanced disease and had been receiving treatment at our hospital, came in to my office. He was a well-known physician and we had collaborated often in the past, so we knew each other very […]
Read moreGrowing up in a family of scientists, I’ve always considered a life spent in the attainment of knowledge as ideal and paramount. As philosopher KongZi (孔子) writes, “If I hear the truth in the morning, it’s all right to die in the evening (朝闻道，夕死可矣)” In the words of twice Nobel Prize laureate Marie Curie, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” I remember, during […]
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I find the myth of Narcissus fascinating, and Dali’s interpretation, more than any other artist’s, seems to have captured its meaning, from the philosophical and psychological perspective. Plato writes that, if there is no substance and permanence, if everything is constantly in flux and changing, knowledge and love would be impossible, not only because there would be nothing there to be known and loved, but also because it’s impossible to […]
Read moreAristotle writes in his treatise On the Soul that the cause of movement is desire–not will, not reason, but desire, and that desire and movement (after the object of desire) are the characteristics of animate life. In other words, the one thing that differentiates animate from inanimate beings is the presence of desire. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a beautifully written poem with one unifying theme: desire, articulated and immortalized. It’s a […]
Read more[Homer] does introduce divine agency, not to destroy, but to prompt the human will; not to create in us another agency, but offering images to stimulate our own; images that in no sort or kind make our action involuntary, but give occasion rather to spontaneous action, aided and sustained by feelings of confidence and hope. Certainly we cannot suppose that the divine beings actually and literally turn our bodies and […]
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Poverty as Lady Death for even as a youth, he ran to war against his father, on behalf of her- the lady unto whom, just as to death, none willingly unlocks the door; before his spiritual court et coram patre, he wed her; day by day he loved her more. She was bereft of her first husband; scorned, obscure, for some eleven hundred years, until that sun came, she had […]
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