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!
Dear Readers,
After a brief Summer break, we are starting Reading & the Good Life back up with Why Cicero Matters by Vittorio Bufacchi. For anyone new here, Reading & the Good Life is a book club focused on the art of living. We read one book per month and meet weekly (Fridays at Noon EST) for casual conversations. Below, you’ll find resources to learn more about Cicero and a few selected passages from this month’s book!
Until then, be wise and be well,
J.W.
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
“Meet the Greco-Romans” (Ep. 10)
To learn more about the life and philosophy of Cicero, I encourage you to listen to Episode 10 of Massimo Pigliucci’s series (“Meet the Greco-Romans”). In the conversation, Pigliucci and Bufacchi discuss Why Cicero Matters.
Selected Passages
The following 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 the following 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?
