🖼️ From Socrates to Aquinas, Moral Education, and Inner Experience

Monday Muse (Vol. 44)

Dear Readers,

Here is the latest Monday Muse with an introduction to the Perennial Lives series, a reminder, insight, and recommendations to consider.

Be wise and be well this week!

Frank Marc and Maria in the Studio by August Macke (1912)

🦚 From Socrates to Aquinas

Perennial Lives is a new series on In Search of Wisdom exploring The Art of Living: From Socrates to Aquinas. Each episode examines the life and wisdom of one perennial figure in an attempt to keep learning how to live.

***Listen to In Search of Wisdom on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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📌 Perennial Reminder(s)

Moral education—the training of heart and mind toward the good—involves many things. It involves rules and precepts—the dos and don’ts of life with others—as well as explicit instruction, exhortation, and training. Moral education must provide training in good habits. Aristotle wrote that good habits formed at youth make all the difference. And moral education must affirm the central importance of moral example. […]

Source: The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett

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💡 Perennial Insight(s)

Reflect, sometimes, on the disquieting fact that most of your statements of opinions, tastes, deeds, desires, hopes, and fears are statements about someone who is not really present. When you say ‘I think,’ it is often not you who think, but ‘they’—it is the anonymous authority of the collectivity speaking through your mask. When you say ‘I want,’ you are sometimes simply making an automatic gesture of accepting, paying for, what has been forced upon you. That is to say, you reach out for what you have been made to want. Who is this ‘I’ that you imagine yourself to be? […]

Source: The Inner Experience by Thomas Merton

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🔥 Recommendation(s)

• The first recommendation is the new biography Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor by Donald J. Robertson. It is the best biography I’ve ever read (I can’t seem to put it down!). Like Donald’s book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor — it’s entertaining, insightful, and beautifully written!

• The next recommendation is Rat Park with Carl Erik Fisher. Carl Erik Fisher is the author of Urge: Our History of Addiction and a previous guest on In Search of Wisdom. If you’re interested in learning more about human nature — you’ll love it!

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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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