Plato’s Meno 2
Plato’s Meno 2 JUDITH STOVE August 4, 2022 If you’re a parent, you’ll readily be able to think about what kind of behaviour you’d like to see in your child or children. If you’re not a parent, perhaps treat this as a thought-experiment. First off, parents say that they want their child to be happy. […]
The River
The River
always seems to follow The Way;
when the land shifts, as it wills,
whether by the slow and steady heaving,
or whether by a sudden violence,
while the countless ages trundle by,
as the rains and seasons
wax and wane by the long count,
so the river will shift in its course.
it keeps on – a torrent or a trickle – flowing as it must,
following,
where it may;
paying no heed to where it ran yesterday,
giving no thought to how it will reach the sea tomorrow.
the patient work of eons,
it will forswear in a moment.
It will throw itself from the battlements of languid certainty,
crashing over terrible heights
in the epitome of a peasant’s faith,
to roil and churn with borrowed fury
like stirred and newborn Creation
fresh and livid from the womb of chaos.
it will go, even underground,
renounce the sun
and leave the house of the sky,
for the prodigal wandering,
of travelling by secret paths
through darkness and tumult,
to simply
and cunningly
follow the way,
even when it knows not the way.
just so.
if the way is not always seeking better ways,
it is not The Way.
The Pilgrim (The Call)
THE PILGRIM (THE CALL) ROCCO JARMAN THE PILGRIM (THE CALL) A Hermetic Poem by Rocco Jarman Here I am, a traveller,on my way to where,I do not know. The child of two houses, with no home. There exists in me,the reigns and traces of my past,holding me to nature and to a primal legacy,an unbroken […]
Why Read Plato?
WHY READ PLATO? JUDITH STOVE Roosevelt Montás, now a lecturer at Columbia University, has described how, as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, he found some volumes of Shakespeare and Plato thrown away beside the street in New York. In my case, the great treasure I found was a set of […]
Virtue: Who Decides
VIRTUE: WHAT IS IT? WHO DECIDES? SHARON LEBELL I write to inspire constructive conversation among the philosophically-minded, students of modern Stoicism, the Stoic-curious, and those who consider themselves to be Stoics. I encourage my readers to favor “living the questions” over marshaling arguments to advance or defend cherished or conclusive points of view. Living the […]
Lessons in Stoic Virtue from Ukraine
LESSONS IN STOIC VIRTUE FROM UKRAINE Sharon Lebell From Kyiv my grandfather and his penniless family travelled in steerage to North America in 1903. Many other of my ancestors hailed from villages that lay within today’s Russian Federation territory. To those once fearful and hopeful ancestors who lived on both sides of the arbitrary political […]
