Monticello

Monticello (1768- ) is the house of Thomas Jefferson, the third American president. It is in Virginia near Charlottesville on the top of a “little mountain” (what Monticello means in Italian). It is the house you see on the back of nickels (the American five-cent coin). What you do not see on the nickel is the wonderful view it has.

Jefferson and his friend Dabney Carr went to the top of the mountain as boys. They promised each other that they would be buried under an oak tree there (they were). Jefferson liked the place so much that he built his house there, amid the oaks.

Jefferson designed the house in 1768. From then till 1809 he, his white workers and black slaves worked on it. It seems he was always working on it. When Jefferson left for Europe in 1784 the house was more or less done, but his five years in Europe gave him new ideas. When he got back he tore down a lot of it and rebuilt it.

The house is Italian on the outside in the style of Palladio and English on the inside. The cooking was French.

Apart from the windows from Europe, the house is mostly built from materials from the mountain itself.

The estate had about 2000 hectares and 150 slaves, including Sally Hemings.

The dome, the rounded part of the roof, was not added till 1800. It is a lot more evident on the nickel than it is in real life when you are on the ground looking up at it. When you enter the house you have no idea that it is there. (I was there in 2006.)

When you walk in you come into a waiting area. Above the door is a clock that tells not only the hour and minute but also the day of the week. While you wait you can look at the bones of monstrous creatures that once lived there in a lost age.

His book room held thousands of books. Most of the books you see are copies of the books it once had. The originals were sold off long ago to help settle Jefferson’s debts. A few books, though, are left: the Don Quixote that he learned Spanish from, his Ariosto, Virgil, Plutarch and some others. He has a lot of law books and books in French.

Next to his library is his office and next to that his bed, which seems too short (as do others from that period).

There is an eight-sided room where James Madison and his wife often slept. The bed is set in the wall in the French style of the time.

The house is full of paintings, clocks, fireplaces and windows – but not many curtains! On the wall of his living room are paintings of his three heroes: Newton, Bacon and Locke.

The steps going up to the second floor are very narrow – to save space in the house. They let people see the second floor only two nights a week. You have to sign up on the Internet for it.

See also:

• Jefferson
• Sally Hemings
• Jefferson’s library
• Newton
• Locke
• Bacon
• white oak
• Spanish
• 1040 Fifth Avenue: Where Jackie O. lived

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Tips on visiting Washington, DC

Last week we went to see Washington, DC. Since we will no doubt go again in a few years, I will write down some pointers for myself for next time:

1. Get a good map. It should show not only the chief attractions, but also train and bus lines, parking and which way the one-way streets go. Some streets can no longer be reached by car, like part of the street around the Lincoln Memorial. This should be shown on the map too.
2. Count on seeing only two places a day: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. By five in the afternoon everyone will be too tired for a third place and will only want to sit down and eat. Most places are closed by six in any case.Two places a day does not sound like much, but that is is what winds up happening.
3. Settle on which places to see months before you go. This will give you time to learn about them online and off and reserve tickets (recommended).
4. Reserve tickets when you can.
5. Go when the weather is warm. Because of all the security added since 9/11, you will often find yourself waiting in line outside.
6. Learn the trains and buses. Parking is a pain in the neck. It would be best to park your car in the morning and just leave it, but without taking buses or the underground trains, your party will become too tired out from walking — and what if it rains?The other way to do it is to find parking near each attraction.
7. Bring food. Food in the city is costly.
8. Many places are free and open nearly every day.
9. If your wife lets you come to the front of a line in a museum, quietly refuse. To do otherwise will make either you or her look like an ass.
10. It is hard to get close to many places by car. That is part of the security added since 9/11.
11. Interstate highway 66 goes right into downtown Washington, right on to Constitution Avenue.
12. There is an Old Country Buffet in Fairfax at 236 and Pickett off exit 57 of I-66. There are other places to eat further down I-66.
13. Rough Guides are much more readable than other guides, so they are good for learning about places you might want to see. But on the ground they are often missing important details, the maps especially. For example, their map made it seem that you could drive right up to the Lincoln Memorial. Before 9/11, perhaps that was true, but no longer. I found this out the hard way!The Rough Guide on Washington says next to nothing on parking! Many of its telephone numbers are wrong.

Now that I have some experience with Washington, I will look through the other maps and guides to see how they compare.

See also:

• Washington
• bus
• car
• 9/11
  

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Washington, DC

Washington, DC (1792- ) is a large city that is the seat of the American government. It is where the president lives in the White House to lead the country, where Congress meets in the Capitol building to make laws and where nine judges dressed in black meet in the Supreme Court to pass final judgement. Across the river the top generals meet in the Pentagon, the building with five sides.

Washington is named after the first president, George Washington. He never lived there, but at his house down the river nearby.

The city is famous for its cherry trees, just like the cherry tree that George Washington himself cut down as a boy.

There is also a state called Washington, in the north-west at the other end of the country. Most people will say “Washington, DC” when they mean the city not the state. The city itself is not in any state but in what is called the District of Columbia – or DC for short.

Washington, DC is in the east. It is the last in a chain of cities near the sea stretching from Boston in the north, through New York in the middle down to Washington in the south.

Americans like to put their capital cities in the middle of the land they rule and not, as in Europe, in the most important city. So, even though Washington is now “back East”, when it was built nearly everyone lived in the East. So, given where people lived then, Washington was in the middle of the country, standing between the north and south.

Washington did not spring up naturally like most cities from trade or industry. It was created by an act of Congress. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a Frenchman who fought for America against Britain, designed the city to one day equal the great cities of Europe.

The White House, the president’s house, was built first. It was started three hundred years to the day after Columbus discovered America.

Going round the city is a great circle road known as the Beltway. On the maps it is called I-495. Those who live “inside the Beltway” are said to be out of touch with what lies beyond the road – the rest of the country.

Near the river stands the Washington Monument, a tall, thin white building, the tallest building made of bricks in the world. To the north is the White House, to the east is the Capitol, to the south is the Jefferson memorial and to the west the Lincoln Memorial, the building that is on the back of the penny. Between the Washington monument and the Capitol building are museums, including the largest in the country if not the world: the Smithsonian.

Most of the important buildings are done in the style of ancient Rome.

President Kennedy said that Washington has Northern charm and Southern efficiency, meaning it has the worst of both.

President Truman said that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

See also:

• Pointers on going to see Washington, DC
• Anacostia
• Marion Barry
• New York
• 9/11

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story

A story tells about something that happened. It does not have to be true: it can be completely made up. It is not always just for amusement: a story is often the best way to get across news, history, religion, philosophy and even science. People like stories much more than a dry list of facts.

Some people are just naturally good at telling stories. Yet a story is something made and like anything made it has certain parts that go together in a certain way. Knowing this helps.

A good story has the following elements:

• characters: those in the story. Ordinarily there is one character we follow throughout – the hero.
• conflict: something stands in the way of what the hero wants. We want to see him succeed, but we do not see how it will happen. That makes the story. It keeps us asking “What happens next?”
• plot: the story line, the outline of what happens.
• acts: each story is made up of acts, most commonly three: a beginning, middle and end. More on that below.
• scenes: each act is made up of scenes. Each scene moves the story from one point in the plot to the next. A scene is made up of what the characters do and say.

Most stories have a three-act structure: a beginning, middle and end:

• Act I: Introduces the hero and his conflict. This is where you pull people into hearing your story.
• Act II: The heart of the story. Here you give the hero hell. Bad things keep happening. Just when he is about to make it, his hopes are ruined by some twist in the story. And so on.
• Act III: The ending. The hero either succeeds or fails. Put your surprise ending here. Do not let anyone see it coming.

In a two-hour film, Act I will probably be the first 20 minutes, Act III the last half hour and Act II will be the 70 minutes in between.

Know your characters. Plot is important, but good characters more so. If no one cares about your characters, a good plot will not save them. If you do not know your characters they will all sound the same – like you. No offence, but the story will seem flat.

Most good writers learn about their characters as they write, coming to know them like their friends. They follow the characters through the story, not the other way round.

That said, outline the plot in a compelling way on one page. If you cannot, that is a bad sign. Your outline can change, you may not even know how it will end, but you need structure.

With your outline, figure out how the story moves between the points in the plot. The first thing you think of will be too predictable to be interesting, so think some more.

Every step in your story, however, must be believable when it happens. Fact is stranger than fiction for a reason. At the same time, you must always keep your readers asking themselves, “What happens next?”

See also:

• writing for television
• film
• science

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away on holiday

I will be away on holiday till the 27th…

(Beyonce on the car radio singing “To the left, to the left”…)

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writing for television

I have never written for television, but here are my notes from reading those who have.

Writing for television pays well but the hours are long. You will not get a chance to write that play. Nor is it likely that you will be able to go from television to film. It is not like that. On the other hand, writers are more important in television than they are in the film world: all of the top producers are writers. If you are really good, then some day you will produce, maybe even create, your own shows.

Writing for television means writing scripts. So you begin by writing a script for a show you would like to see on television. You send it to a company, like the BBC, that might be interested in making it. Your script will have all the words the show needs. A one-hour show needs a script of about 14,000 words.

Your first scripts will be no good – you are too green. Like in any art or trade, it will take several years of learning it before you will be any good.

Here are the numbers:

The BBC, for example, gets maybe 10,000 scripts a year. They have readers who read through these scripts. They read the first ten pages of each script. About 1500 of these are good enough to read to the end. Of these maybe 100 will be so good that they will ask the writer for a second script. Of these second scripts about 30 will be good enough to call the writer in to meet the producer and head writers.

When they call you in they are not so much interested in your script as in you. You have proved that you can write a good television script, a rare thing. That is why they want to meet you.

With numbers like these, your script must be as good as possible before you send it in. What is more, sending in an avoidably bad script will give you a bad name among the readers. They may not read your next script.

So make sure your English is perfect, make it look like a real script (you can find examples online), read it aloud, have friends look at it, stick it in a drawer for a few months and then read it again. All these things help.

But most of all, do not give up. That is the secret.

As in any writing, write what interests you, not what you think might interest others. Otherwise your writing will be dead.

You must also know your medium inside out. To write a good television show, you must live and breathe television. Just as to write a good book you must live and breathe books. This is why great book writers often fail miserably when they attempt to write a script. It is a different medium. Shovelware does not work.

Oh, and one more thing: you must know how to tell a good story. More on that next time.

See also:

• Stephen King on becoming a good writer
• television
• film
• English
• shovelware
• story

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Winnie Holzman

Winnie Holzman (1954- ) is an American writer of stage and television and an award-winning poet. She wrote for the television shows “thirtysomething” (1990-1991), “My So-Called Life” (1994-1995) and “Once and Again” (1998-2002). With Stephen Schwartz she turned Gregory Maguire’s book “Wicked” into a Broadway play. She wrote the story,
Schwartz wrote the songs.

She is good at making her stories seem like real life, especially at the level of emotions. She gives television something of the depth ordinarily seen only in books.

She puts herself in her character’s shoes and asks herself what would happen next – not on television, but in real life. She writes in cafes partly to hear how people really talk to make her characters sound natural and real.

She does not write at set times of the day and often puts off writing. When it gets really bad, she forces herself to write just two lines. That will be enough to get her going again.

When she gets stuck, she reads the old Greek stories or books on story structure, if only not to be consumed by fear.

Her characters lie, cause others pain without being aware of it, do bad things without knowing why. They find themselves in trouble with little idea of what to do next. They have precious little self-knowledge and yet seem to think only of themselves. Doubt and confusion reign. Even characters that seem perfect only seem so.

No one is all good or all bad, no one has all the answers. She does not like heroes or happy endings.

Like Chekhov she hates the false smile that so many paste over life.

Even though things seem to happen by chance in her stories, it is all well thought out.

She likes the plays of Chekhov, William Inge and Tennessee Williams. She was deeply affected by those of John van Druten, especially “The Voice of the Turtle” (1943) and “I am a Camera” (1951). She likes the Roman Polanski film “Chinatown” (1974).

She was born in New York, grew up on Long Island and went to university at Princeton (class of 1976). After Princeton she went to New York to learn writing and theatre under Arthur Laurents at New York University.

Among other things, Laurents taught her to:

• Believe in herself as a writer.
• Cut words when possible. The shortest way to say something is best.
• Write what is interesting, real or surprising, not what makes you look good as a writer (the great temptation).

She has some acting experience, having learned the Stanislavski system. Her acting helps her to write.

Holzman is married to actor Paul Dooley. He played Molly Ringwald’s father in the film “Sixteen Candles”.

While her art imitates life, life has imitated her art: she once wrote a story about a 14-year-old girl falling in love with another girl. After she wrote it, but before it appeared on television, the very same thing happened to her daughter!

Holzman was among the first to write stories on television that put homosexuals in a good light. Before the 1990s they were next to invisible on American television or pictured as strange.

See also:

• My So-Called Life
• “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire
• America
• television
• New York
• Papa
• Hollywood

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My So-Called Life

“My So-Called Life” (1994-1995) was an American television show that appeared on ABC from August 1994 to January 1995. It starred Claire Danes as Angela Chase, a 15-year-old  girl growing up in a middle-class suburb of Pittsburgh.

What made it good was that it was much truer to life than most of television, showing what it is like to be 14 or 15. The show still holds up more than ten years later. It has some of the depth of a good book and, like a good book, you come away seeing the world a bit more deeply.

The show only lasted a season: Claire Danes wanted to break into film. The show also had low ratings: there were some 99 shows on television that had more viewers than it did!

“My So-Called Life” was the brainchild of Winnie Holzman (who appears as Mrs Krzyzanowski in the show), Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. They had worked together on “thirtysomething” (1987-1991) and so ABC hoped they could come up with another show just as good. ABC gave them complete freedom – which, while common for HBO, was rare for ABC.

Holzman and company wanted to show the real life a 15-year-old girl, not the very unreal picture you get elsewhere on television, like on “90210.” But, like Newton Minow who called television a “vast wasteland”, Holzman failed to understand that television is closer to beer than books: most watch television to escape.

As in “thirtysomething”, most characters think only of themselves, living in unending confusion and self-doubt.

Holzman herself is an award-wining poet. This makes Angela much better at expressing herself than most 15-year-olds. Even with, like, her overuse of, like, the word “like”.

For example, when asked about whether Jordan, a boy she was interested in, was a good kisser, Angela said:

They weren’t the kind of kisses you could actually evaluate. They were more like – introductory kisses.

No one talks like that. Still it was perfect.

Jordan made two attempts to kiss her – they were too sudden, he did not work up to it. She had to push him away both times. And yet a few minutes later when the moment was right, he did nothing. She left upset at him.

Man, a page straight out of my marriage. It made me see that this sort of thing happens not so much because I am a bonehead but that it goes much deeper than that, that it is part of the universal mystery of boy meets girl.

The high school in the show is University High School in Los Angeles, where Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor went. Since it is so close to Hollywood, you see it in other films and television shows. The show is partly based on what Holzman found at nearby Fairfax High, where she had taught writing for a time.

All the actors are the age they play. Because of child labour laws, the show had four acts (not three), with Angela appearing in only two. They filled out the stories by using more characters and their parents.

See also:

• If you like “My So-Called Life”, you might also like the plays of Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, William Inge and John van Druten
• My So-Called Life – this is the Wikipedia article. It is surprisingly good.
• Winnie Holzman
• television
• America
• film
• ninth grade

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Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy (about 100-170) of Alexandria is the inventor of the Ptolemaic system, a theory of the heavens that said the stars, sun, moon and planets went round the earth. The earth did not move, it did not even turn. In the early 1600s this was replaced by the theory of Copernicus and Kepler that held that the earth and everything else went round the sun.

Ptolemy also wrote about music, astrology, optics and geography. He was among the first to apply trigonometry to science.

He wrote about his theory of the heavens in the “Almagest” (150) and other works. With it you can get the position of the sun, moon and planets on any given day, past, present or future.

Ptolemy built his theory on 25 years of his own observations and the work of Hipparchus — and probably the work of others (now lost).

The Almagest is a work of genius and beauty that stood for over a thousand years, but it is hardly perfect:

• We now know some of his observations were made up.
• It contains arithmetic errors that just happen to let his proofs come out right.
• It was based on Aristotle’s physics, some of which was easy to prove wrong if anyone took the trouble to check it out against the real world. Someone finally did: Galileo.

Ptolemy takes Aristotle’s physics as a given and then comes up with a theory that fits both Aristotle and his observations.

The root trouble with his theory is not what you think – where he put the earth – but his use of circles.

According to Aristotle heavenly bodies were made up of something called quintessence. Quintessence, being perfect moved in perfect circles. Aristotle said that was the perfect motion.

And so Ptolemy manfully stuck to circles. But to get his circles to match his observations, he needed circles within circles – the dreaded epicycles.

Planets move in stretched-out circles called ellipses, as Kepler later found out. It is not that Ptolemy could not do ellipses – it was just the sort of thing he was good at. It was his physics that held him back.

Copernicus used circles and epicycles too, so he was not that much better. It was not till the work of Galileo, Kepler and Newton that Copernicus’ theory won the day. Galileo proved it true, Kepler made it usable and Newton provided the physics.

Astrology: Ptolemy believed that the movements of the heavens affect us. In his book “Tetrabiblios” he shows how in terms of Aristotle’s physics.

Geography: his book on geography was not known in the West till 1300. In it he gives the latitude and longitude of over 8000 places from Spain to China, making possible a detailed map of the world as it was known in Alexandria in his day. It is from Ptolemy that we get the idea of north being “up.”

Ptolemy’s world map (c. AD 150)

Ptolemy knew the earth was round but thought it was smaller than it really is. That is why Columbus thought that he could easily get to Asia by sailing west across the ocean.

See also:

• 100s
• Copernicus
• Galileo
• Kepler
• Newton
• geography
• science
• Aristotle
• Hipparchus
• latitude and longitude
• Jacob Bronowski: The Starry Messenger

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AD (Anno Domini)

Anno Domini (525- ), or AD for short, is Latin for “in the year of the Lord”, meaning since the birth of Jesus Christ. It is how years are numbered in the Gregorian calendar, the main calendar used in the West. AD is also known as CE for the Christian or Common Era.

BC: Years before Christ are marked “BC” for “Before Christ” or BCE for Before the Common Era. BC counts down the years to the birth of Christ, so 13 BC comes after 14 BC. Some use a negative number instead, as in “Aristotle was born in -384.”

There is no year zero. The year before AD 1 is 1 BC.

When a year is given by itself in English, as in “Shakespeare was born in 1564”, the Christian Era is assumed.

To name a range of years, add an “s”: The 1960s means from AD 1960 to 1969. The 1900s, since it has two zeros, means from 1900 to 1999 – unless it is otherwise clear that only the ten years from 1900 to 1909 are meant.

Sample dates:

• -1323 death of King Tut
• -480 Battle of Thermopylae
• -384 birth of Aristotle
• -31 Battle of Actium
• 622 Hegira
• 1054 Crab Nebula supernova
• 1492 Columbus arrives in the Americas
• 1564 birth of Shakespeare
• 1969 Neil Armstrong lands on the Moon
• 2006 now

The starting year of other eras:

• -5509: anno mundi – Byzantine – creation of the world
• -5493: anno mundi – Alexandrian
• -3761: anno mundi – Jewish
• -3114 Mayan Long Count begins
• -2016: anno Abrahami – birth of Abraham
• -776; Olympiads (periods of four years) – from the first Olympics
• -753: AUC – anno urbis conditae – the founding of Rome
• -312: Seleucid – start of the empire
• +622: AH – anno Hegirae – After the Hegira – Muslim (the years are 354 to 355 days long)

Greek historians used Olympiads from -250 to +450. In 813, Theophanes used the Alexandrian Era, in use since 412. A corrected version of that, the Byzantine Era, was used by the Orthodox Church from 691 to 1728.

Josephus in the 90s used Seleucid years and Olympiads.

Eusebius and Jerome in the 300s used anno Abrahami.

Dionysius Exiguus in Rome invented AD in AD 525 – not to name years but to work out the date of Easter, which is different every year.

Isidore of Seville in Spain in the 600s numbered years from the conquest of Spain by Augustus in -38.

Bede in 731 was the first to use AD and BC in writing about history. AD did not start catching on till Alcuin and Charlemagne pushed it in the 800s; BC not till the 1600s!

Kepler in 1615 called the Christian era vulgaris aerae, meaning the vulgar or common era, as opposed to one that used the reigns of kings to date years, which the Bible uses.

When the abbreviations first appeared in English:

• 1570s: A.D.
• 1823: B.C.
• 1838: C.E.
• 1881: B.C.E.

A.C., for Anno Christi, was common in the 1600s.

Before the 1800s, no one in English said, “Aristotle was born in 384 B.C.” That is how new it is.

CE was first used to write Jewish history. It started to catch on among US scholars in the 1980s. It is now used about a fifth of the time in English-language books.

So was Jesus born in AD 1? No. He was born under King Herod, who died in -4. Most likely he was born in -6 or -7.

– Abagond, 2006, 2022.

See also:

• What year is it? – for time travellers and coma patients. Does not work if you are travelling near the speed of light. Or if your computer is set to the wrong year!
• Dionysius Exiguus
• Gregorian calendar
• Jesus Christ
• Easter
• Olympiad
• Isidore of Seville
• Kepler
• style guide: writing numbers
• geography

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Diogenes

Diogenes of Sinope (-412 to -323), philosopher dog and citizen of the universe, was a Cynic philosopher who lived in a tub in Athens. He went about the streets with a lamp lit in the middle of the day looking for an honest man. Alexander the Great admired Diogenes so much that he offered him whatever he wanted. Diogenes, who was sunning himself at the time, asked him to move out of his light.

Diogenes was a Cynic. The Cynics were one of the five schools of Greek philosophy. He did not found the school – that was done by his teacher Antisthenes, a friend of Socrates. He was, however, its most famous member.

No one is sure how the Cynics got their name – Cynic means “like a dog” in Greek. Most likely because Diogenes himself lived like a dog: in the street, having no bodily shame whatsoever, doing everything in public. Yes, everything. Yes, that too. And that. Plato said he was like Socrates gone mad.

The influence of Diogenes was so great that he even affected the Stoics, another school of philosophy. The Stoics count him as one of their own. They see him and Socrates as the two wisest men who ever lived.

His influence extends more through the Stoics than through his own Cynics. That is because the Stoics went on to influence the Romans and Christians.

What Diogenes taught both Cynics and Stoics:

1. Live according to nature, which means living according to reason. This leads to virtue which leads to happiness.
2. The distinction between outer goods, like wealth, power and even health, and the inner goods of the soul. Outer goods come and go, so it is foolish to pin your happiness on them. Inner goods are the truest, highest and most lasting goods of all.
3. The best way to train the soul is to live simply, to do without, to live in poverty. It is the only way to be truly free.
4. Ethics, how best to live, is the chief concern of philosophy.
5. Men and gods are all part of a commonwealth that
   extends far beyond any city or country. Diogenes said he was a citizen of the universe.

From here the two schools part ways.

Diogenes and the Cynics took living in poverty far more seriously. When Diogenes gave up everything he kept his cup. But when he saw a boy drink with his hands, he gave up his cup too.

The example of nature that the Stoics lived by was God and his will. God is the creator and soul of nature. Diogenes, however, followed the dog as his guide to nature.

By living like a dog he opposed nature and reason to human custom and vanity. He showed up the false sort of life that most of us live.

Diogenes said that a good chorus master will sing a bit too high to train his chorus to sing at the right note. Diogenes’s life was like that.

See also:

• Greek philosophy
• Plato
• Stoic

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Epictetus

Epictetus (55-135) was one of the leading lights of the Stoic school of Greek philosophy. He became a Stoic while still a slave in Rome. Later freed, he was kicked out of Rome with all the other Stoics by Domitian in 90. He went to Greece and started his own school. We have two of his books, the “Discourses” and the “Encheiridion”.

If you have read the Bible, you should read Epictetus: he is the missing chapter between Socrates and the New Testament. In the time of St Paul Stoic philosophy affected people’s everyday thinking like how Freud and Marx affects ours. Stoic thought was the mental background noise of the age.

Surprisingly, Epictetus often makes a stronger case for what we would call good Christian living than the Bible does – because he gives down-to-earth reasons for it, not those of heaven and hell.

At times in Epictetus it almost seems as if Christianity is just Stoic philosophy for the masses.

At times, because they part ways on two very important questions: sin and death.

Sin:

Epictetus says that you can become a good person by an act of will, through self control and right reason. Christians say that is impossible: it takes an act of God – what is called grace. To a Christian, the whole point of the Old Testament is that man cannot make it on his own, that just knowing what is right and wrong and wanting to do good is not enough. If it were, we would all be Jews. Or Stoics.

Death:

Both Epictetus and Christians see that death is at the root of our fears and drives us to do senseless things. For example, people do not become famous, get rich, own large houses and fancy cars because they need them in and of themselves. At root, they do it because they are afraid to die. The fear of the abyss ruins our character. We will never live right, we will never be all that we should be, till we face death and somehow overcome it.

Part of what makes Christ stick out so much in people’s mind is how he was so unafraid of death and lived life accordingly.

Where the Stoics and Christians part company is how they overcome death. Christians overcome it through faith in God and his promise of a blessed afterlife for the faithful. Stoics, not believing in an immortal soul, have to come to terms with death head on.

Epictetus cares little about nature – for him the burning question for philosophy is how best to live. In this he is a child of his age. Yet his answer is hard to take since it means giving up everything we have built our lives on.

Epictetus, like Plotinus, unwittingly shows you how to put together the best of Greek philosophy with Christianity; how they are not really all that far apart.

See also:

• 100s
• Stoic
• Greek philosophy
• Bible
• Christianity
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Stoic

The Stoics were one of the five schools of Greek philosophy in ancient times. It is the one that most influenced the Romans and early Christians. Stoics valued virtue above all. Famous Stoics include Cato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.

For Stoics virtue, doing what was right, was the only thing that mattered, not health or wealth, family or friends or even life itself – which is why suicide is allowed, as in the case of Cato. Virtue is your only real possession, apart from your soul. Everything else comes and goes. A wise man, therefore, is indifferent to them – he is happy whether he is rich or poor, a king or a slave.

Virtue means being ruled by reason, not by your passions, which only leads to vice.

Life is an endless battle against vice, against one’s passions. To attain virtue a wise man seeks wisdom. Wisdom leads to virtue, virtue leads to peace of mind or what the Stoics called apathy, where all the passions are dead. Apathy leads to true happiness.

Stoics admired Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic and regard them as two wisest men who ever lived.

Stoics believed in fate and providence. God created and rules the world for the benefit of rational creatures like ourselves. Everything happens by necessity: what happens is meant to be and could not be otherwise. A wise man accepts this with good grace.

The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citium in 322 BC. He was a trader from Cyprus who lost his ship and all his goods. When he got to Athens he met Crates the Cynic outside a bookshop. Crates told him that material possessions do not matter. Zeno went around Athens to hear all the other philosophers. In time he started to teach his own philosophy in the Stoa Poilike in Athens, which is how his school got its name of Stoic.

Zeno divided philosophy into three parts:

1. Logic – about reason and knowledge, how to think and know.
2. Physics – about nature and how it works.
3. Ethics – about virtue, how to best live.

By and large, Stoics did logic and physics only to get their ethics right.

Stoic logic comes from Aristotle. Everything we know in the end comes from our senses. Ideas exist only in the mind to help us understand what we sense; they have no reality of their own.

Stoic physics comes from Heraclitus. Everything is material, even our soul and God – both made of fire. God is to the world as our soul is to our body. Our soul comes from the fire of God. God at the same time is Logos – Reason itself.

Stoic ethics comes from Socrates and Diogenes. Since Reason rules the world so reason should rule our souls. This is what Stoics mean when they say “live according to nature.”

After 200 the Stoics were overtaken by the Neoplatonists and Christians. Christians carried on many Stoic ideas, but said that reason alone was not enough: you also need faith. Stoics came very close, but never quite said that.

See also:

• Stoics:
  • Zeno
  • Cato
  • Seneca
  • Epictetus
  • Marcus Aurelius
• predecessors:
  • Diogenes
  • Socrates
  • Aristotle
  • Heraclitus
• rivals:
  • Plato
  • Epicurus
  • Plotinus – Neoplatonist
  • Christianity
    • Augustine = Christianity + Plato
    • Aquinas = Christianity + Aristotle
• Greek philosophy
  

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Epicurus

Epicurus (-341 to -270) of Athens founded the Epicurean school of Greek philosophy, one of the five great school of ancient times. Its glory days ran from about -300 to +200. It taught that the world is nothing more than matter in motion, that things happen by chance – not even the gods are in control. To live well in such a world and have peace of mind, one must avoid pain and seek pleasure.

Although the Epicureans later got a bad name as immoral pleasure seekers, Epicurus himself lived very simply as an example to his followers. He lived in a house in a garden where he taught his followers. His school was therefore called the Garden. It stood there in Athens from –310 to +529.

Epicurus said that the aim of life was peace of mind. To attain it you must seek pleasure and avoid pain according to the following principles:

1. Fear no god: Gods exists, yes, but they want to live in peace. They do not care about us. The universe is ruled not by gods but by matter, motion and chance.
2. Do not care about death: it does not hurt, you will not even know you are dead! You will be gone, even your soul. There is no hell to fear.
3. The good is easy to get: Man does not need much – he can live on “water and barley cakes.”
4. The bad is easily endured: if sickness or pain is horrible it is short-lived. If it is long-lasting, it is bearable.

Epicurus was against suicide because it goes against the fourth principle. Some later Epicureans, however, were for it.

For Epicurus there is no such thing as morals, as right and wrong – just pleasure and pain. Not just those of the flesh, but, even more important, those of the mind.

To attain peace of mind it helps to be just, prudent and honourable. So does friendship. Family and political affairs, on the other hand, do not.

The Stoics also sought peace of mind, but looked for it in duty, not pleasure.

Epicurus’s physics was based on the atoms of Democritus. Democritus said that everything was made up of atoms: very small bits of matter – too small to see and too small to cut up into smaller parts. They are uncreated and eternal.

The universe is just atoms moving about. To some degree they follow the rules of physics, but there is also an element of chance as well. There is certainly no divine design or purpose to it all.

Epicurus said that even the gods were made of atoms. While his universe does not require gods, either to create it or rule it, he believed they existed because it is a universal belief among mankind. Gods should be worshipped out of respect not fear.

Famous Epicureans: Cassius, Lucretius, Lucian, Lorenzo Valla, Gassendi, Thomas Jefferson.

Influenced by Epicurean thought: Virgil, Horace, Locke, Boyle, Newton.

Against it: Cicero, Plutarch, Origen and Augustine.

See also:

• Greek philosophy
• Stoic
• Newton
• Locke
• Jefferson
• Origen
• Augustine

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Plato

Plato (-429 to -374) founded the Academy, one of the five schools of Greek philosophy. Through Augustine it became the one that most influenced the West from 400 till 1250. From 1250 to 1650 Aristotle, through the work of Aquinas, became more important.

Plato and Aristotle together laid the foundation of philosophy in the West.

Unlike Aristotle, Plato trusted mind and reason over the senses.

Plato was taught by Socrates, who turned Greek philosophy from questions of nature to questions about man. That is why so much of Plato is about virtue, justice and law.

Plato wanted to create the perfect society. He wrote about it in his book the “Republic”.

In the “Republic” a philosopher-king rules through a military made up of both men and women who have their property and children in common and their lovers chosen, it seems, by lot. The good of society is put above the good of the individual. Homer and other great works are rewritten to serve the needs of the state since, as they stand, they will ruin the young with the wrong ideas. Rulers tell “noble lies” to their subjects for the good of society.

In the course of telling us about his perfect society – which Plato does to find out the true nature of justice – he tells us along the way about the nature of man and of reality.

For Plato man is an immortal soul put in a mortal, material, corruptible body. Man is born neither good nor evil – he is whatever his education has made him. So the key to creating the perfect society is education. He who controls education controls the future. That is why Homer has to be rewritten.

After death the soul goes through the river Lethe where it forgets everything. It then enters a new body.

Plato’s picture of reality is given in his story of the cave. We are like men living in a cave who only see shadows on the wall. We think that is real life. We cannot see what is causing the shadows much less the light.

And so what we see about us is only a shadow of a higher reality, which Plato called the Forms or Ideas – the things causing the shadows.

For example, when we see horses, they are mere shadows or imperfect instances of the true Horse, which is idea or form of horseness in all its purity.

This is called idealism. It speaks to our sense that there is something beautiful and pure at the root of this very imperfect world.

Plato wrote his books in the form of dialogues or discussions. This is because Socrates taught by close questioning to test ideas and seek definitions.

Plato’s dialogues discuss the deepest questions of life:

• The Republic: What is justice? What is real?
• Parmenides: What is being and nothingness?
• Theatetus: What is language?
• Timaeus: How is the world put together?
• Phaedo: Is the soul immortal?
• Symposium: What is love?

And so on.

– Abagond, 2006.

The ancient road to Plato’s Academy

What is left of Plato’s Academy.

See also:

• Greek philosophy
• Augustine
• Aristotle
• Aquinas
• Plotinus
• Bloom on translating Plato

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