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The year was 65 AD, a little less than a hundred years after the assassination of Julius Caesar and the foundation of the Roman Empire. Musonius Rufus, the foremost Stoic philosopher of his times, known by some as the “Roman Socrates”, was accused by emperor Nero to have participated in a conspiracy against him, and was exiled to a tiny and desolate Greek island called Gyaros.
Gyaros was considered a terrible place to be. Fifty years earlier the then emperor Tiberius, who wasn’t known for his charitable nature, refused to send a traitor to exile there, saying it was too harsh and devoid of human culture.
If we look to philosophers and great thinkers from the East and West, we may perhaps question our deep affinity for the cozy embrace of comfort. Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, speaks of the journey of the human being from ignorance towards wisdom, as one that requires daring to let go the familiar shackles and notions of truth, in order to discover a deeper and truer reality…
Which would you prefer: meeting for a quick cup of coffee with a friend or spending the same amount of time texting back and forth about the same topic? Chances are that most of us would prefer the first but usually end up doing the second. But can 10 texts really equal a face to face exchange? Can an emoji replace the smile and the look in the eyes of a friend? Is a network the same as a community?
It is not easy to define youth. Even if we do a lot of research, we will find that different authors throughout time have not been able to agree on an exact definition. Moreover, the concept of youth is so rich and varied in its meanings, so flexible and extraordinary, that it is impossible to find an objective, concrete and synthetic way of defining it.
As philosophers, we have enormous faith in youth and great hope in that future world that we speak about so often and of which we say so many things. We think that, deep down, none of us have ever stopped being young and, for one reason or another, have never stopped having certain anxieties either and, even though those anxieties may be more or less youthful, their roots are to be found in the same problems and in similar circumstances.
We seem to live in a world of dichotomies, a world where sharply contrasting ideas exist. For example, we can say that with all the modern technological breakthroughs, humanity is advancing and yet, we can also say that there is regression of human values as evident in the strife,
As a street photographer I have the opportunity to travel worldwide, to present exhibitions, to present various photography workshops, and of course to take new photographs.
From those travels there is a photograph I have always presented in my last few workshops. I use it to illustrate a “dynamic composition”, which is a composition with a lot of visual elements, allowing a dynamic lecture of the photograph. This particular photograph is not an outstanding example of such a composition, but I use it to explain an ethical concept, and to initiate a dialog with the workshop participants about whether or not it is necessary for the photographer to be involved in a situation
I was in Marseilles, in France, last December. I was presenting a special photographic exhibition about “Paradoxes” at the opening of a congress organized by the International Institute Hermes, for the 2400 year anniversary of the Academy of Plato.
Grace has become an old fashioned word, graciousness and courtesy have become old world values, almost valueless in today’s environment. The world has gone über brash. Billboards extoll the ‘virtue’ of Attitude, with a capital A: “Wear your Attitude,” screams one, as though attitude were an aspirational achievement! A young generation has grown up with an exaggerated sense of privilege and entitlement. If you say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, people look at you as though you were an anachronism. We are encouraged to be ‘go-getters’, to demand, to seize what we consider is ours.
Human beings are often said to be rational creatures, but in reality we are very much emotional creatures as well. More often than not, history is a showcase of tragic actions taken by human beings overcome by their passions. And apart from these grand-scale dramas, our everyday life is full of instances where the right thing is sacrificed for the sake of the urge, the ego, the instinct.
In great theatrical tragedies, such as the Shakespearean King Lear or Romeo and Juliet, the passionate actions taken by the protagonists lead to an unfortunate chain of events of betrayal and death.
The word ‘hero’ comes from an ancient Greek root, which literally translates to ‘protector’ or ‘defender’. Dictionary.com defines the word as “a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character”, and popular perception recognizes a hero as one who performs deeds that are not commonly possible, or one who exhibits virtues or values that makes them stand out. So, we usually think of superheroes celebrated in movies, or victorious warriors like General Patton and Napoleon
I am going to quit white sugar. I am going to learn to play the guitar. I am going to lose 10kgs. Sounds familiar? Traditionally the period of transition into the New Year is celebrated with such resolutions. Gym memberships surge in the first week of January, as do the crowds at gyms…only to taper off in the next few months, if not weeks.
We live in a world of lasers, particle accelerators, satellite image transmission, mainframe computers and microchips, and many other things so unique to this era.
At the same time, however, we live with our desires, passions, defects and virtues, with our universal and timeless fears, typical of every human being and of all times.
And it is quite true that each period has its exclusive fear. As the Nordics feared that the skies -when the skies were the Heavens – would fall on their head, or as medieval man feared to cross the forests at night, or sail the oceans for fear of witches, dragons and abysses, so does today’s troubled pacifist fear that some madman will press the red button.
Every period in life, as in the life of a society as a whole, can be characterized through different aspects: social, economic, scientific, educational, and others. Every period is different from the previous one and from the following one, because everything changes with time.
We sometimes ask ourselves: what is life? What does it mean, for a philosopher, to live?
The special mode of existence that has been afflicting the human being over the last few centuries has made us forget certain simple but important values, while their place has been taken by meaningless elements. This is why it is so difficult to define what life is.
It goes without saying that life is much more than having a body and trying to satisfy all its fleeting desires, controlling it very little and ineffectively, and most of the time ending up as its slave.
Throughout the ages nature has time and again instilled a sense of awe and wonder within human beings; at her unparalleled beauty, at her mysterious methodology and her enigmatic laws that govern the universe.
The ancient Greek philosophers, specifically the Pre-Socratic philosophers are said to have lived their lives with a deep sense of this mystery. Their deeply rooted understanding of the laws of the universe contributed to their aligning their lives with the path of nature. Plato, as well as the Stoics who followed later, believed all of nature to be an expression of the One – the Divine.