Dying Every Day

Dying Every Day

Book Club

Join Us: Why Cicero Matters (Pt. II)

Reading & the Good Life (16 Aug at Noon EST)

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J.W. Bertolotti
Aug 15, 2024
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Still Life. Plaster mask and horn by Mikhail Vrubel (1885)

Reading & the Good Life

Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST, Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life (Register here), a casual space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living!



Who is Cicero?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) is best known to posterity as a prominent statesman and orator in the tumultuous period of the late Roman Republic. As well as being a leading political actor of his time, he also wrote voluminously. Among his writings, around a dozen philosophical works have come down to us. Philosophy was a lifelong passion for Cicero. … In terms of modern scholarship, the value of Cicero’s philosophical work was held, until relatively recently, to lie chiefly in the information it provided about the thought of the leading philosophical schools of his day: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Academic skepticism, […]

Read more: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer (1906)

Selected Passages

The passages from Why Cicero Matters by Vittorio Bufacchi will help guide our upcoming Reading & the Good Life meetup (Register here). As you read the passages below, consider reflecting on these questions:

  • (1) How can you begin to embody these lessons in daily life?

  • (2) What might stand in the way of implementing these ideas?

  • (3) How can the following insights help you to live the good life?

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