My Pal, the Ancient Philosopher

Nice article. I had always held that Philosophy was an immensely practical discipline but bottled up by academia (after the scientific revolution) in meaningless debates/pointless nitpicking thus emasculating it of its vital essence. Philosophy was meant to be practiced, adjusted and modified for "Real Life" within a Worldview with certain inviolable core principles. Some books that i have personally found illuminating are (in no particular order);

1) Epictetus' Handbook and The Tablet of Cebes: Guides to Stoic Living by Keith Seddon - The author takes Epictetus's "Enchiridion" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchiridion_of_Epictetus) and adds detailed commentary to it thus giving you a deeper understanding of its practical philosophy. "The Tablet of Cebes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebes#The_Tablet_of_Cebes ) is an allegorical tale of the structure of Life and the interplay of various factors affecting it; absolutely beautiful and one of my favourites.

2) The article's mention of Mengzi's "sprouts" reminds me another chinese text Caigentan aka "Vegetable Roots Discourses" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan). Two good translations are the one by Robert Aitken/Daniel Kwok and the other by William Scott Wilson.

3) Hindu philosophy has multiple schools. One of the most ancient schools whose fundamental ideas have been taken into and modified by other schools is Samkhya (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya). The beauty of this school is the way it defines and structures everything both material and non-material and distinguishes them from the "True us/self" (i.e. Consciousness/Awareness) into one unified framework. A good (and relatively easy to understand) translation of one of the main texts is The Essence of Samkhya Karikas: The Foundation of Yoga Philosophy by Damini Dalal.

Thematically related recent piece about how Machiavelli and Du Bois had a similar perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127895

Also, early this year I read Pigliucci's How to Be a Stoic. In that book the author often references that he had "conversations" with his "friend" Epictetus.

All this to say: there might be something to this practice of befriending the dead.

Can you ever be a philosopher—a lover of wisdom—without loving those you have learned that wisdom from?

The best quote I know of on this topic comes from my first philosopher pal, Seneca. I've spoken with him and others on a daily basis for over 10 years - far more than I speak to living humans.

He's impossible to quote, because nearly every sentence is quotable. But here's an excerpt (the opening sentences of the 3rd paragraph are what came to mind, but the rest is excellent).

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You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.

None of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die. None of them will exhaust your years, but each will contribute his years to yours. With none of these will conversation be dangerous, or his friendship fatal, or attendance on him expensive. From them you can take whatever you wish: it will not be their fault if you do not take your fill from them. What happiness, what a fine old age awaits the man who has made himself a client of these! He will have friends whose advice he can ask on the most important or the most trivial matters, whom he can consult daily about himself, who will tell him the truth without insulting him and praise him without flattery, who will offer him a pattern on which to model himself.

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become. These will offer you a path to immortality and raise you to a point from which no one is cast down. This is the only way to prolong mortality – even to convert it to immortality. Honours, monuments, whatever the ambitious have ordered by decrees or raised in public buildings are soon destroyed: there is nothing that the passage of time does not demolish and remove. But it cannot damage the works which philosophy has consecrated: no age will wipe them out, no age diminish them. The next and every following age will only increase the veneration for them, since envy operates on what is at hand, but we can more openly admire things from a distance. So the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life.

This philosopher's name wouldn't work in Brazil...