🖌️ Stoic Paradoxes, Reading Well, Art and Philosophy, and The Life of Marcus Aurelius
Monday Muse (Vol. 29)
Greetings Readers!
Here is the latest Monday Muse with a morning meditation, perennial reminder, insight, and recommendations to consider.
Be wise and be well this week!
📿 Morning Meditation
This week’s morning meditation is courtesy of The Wisdom School podcast (Apple or Spotify). Today’s meditation is a short selected reading (delivered in a Lectio Divina style) from Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
To read well is not to scour books for lessons on what to think. Rather, to read well is to be formed in how to think. In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis argues that to approach a literary work ‘with nothing but a desire for self-improvement’ is to use it rather than to receive it. While great books do offer important truths about life and character, Lewis cautions against using books merely for lessons. Literary works are, after all, works of art to be enjoyed for their own sake rather than used merely for our personal benefit. To use art or literature rather than receive it ‘merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it.’ Reading well adds to our life—not in the way a tool from the hardware store adds to our life, for a tool does us no good once lost or broken, but in the way a friendship adds to our life, altering us forever. […]
Source: On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior (Listen to the conversation).
💡 Perennial Insight(s)
To understand and know ourselves, we need to undertake an aesthetic investigation of that work-in-progress that is the self we are. … Art and philosophy aim at ecstasy, total release from the states that have pinned us. Philosophy targets the understanding, yes. And art aims at aesthetic pleasure. Okay. But these are surface attributes. Art and philosophy require of us that we work ourselves over and make ourselves anew, individually and ensemble. […]
Source: The Entanglement by Alva Noë (Listen to the conversation).
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week's recommendation is a new book by one of my favorite authors (and podcast guests), Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor by
. The new book is part of the Ancient Lives series by Yale University Press and is available for preorder now! Donald's other books include How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and the graphic novel Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. Lastly, if you’re not already a subscriber to his Substack, I encourage you to check out .🎧 Recent Podcast(s)
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
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