Good morning philosophers,
I really enjoyed the opportunity this week to mine the wisdom from of the greatest—yet often overlooked—philosophers of all time. I hope you did too.
I love witnessing the surprise or delight when one realizes that Dr. King wasn’t only an activist (though he very much was!) but first a philosopher. Or hearing from the often unstudied corners of Aztec wisdom literature, or from the first woman to have her philosophical work preserved.
And it’s not too late for your voice if you want to hop over to our thread from Thursday and share about your philosophical journey for other readers to learn from and engage.
I’ll leave the roundup below, feel free to jump in to any that you missed or want to read again.
Which episode was your favorite? Leave a comment to start a conversation.
Until next week my friends, have a restful weekend.
Matt
Monday
It’s often overlooked that Dr. King was, at his core, a philosopher. It’s why he could see and articulate something like, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”1
He had a real sense of what that arc was, where it was headed, and where it’s been. That should give us all hope.
Tuesday
In the midst of this spiritual, intellectual, and imperial tumult Hypatia carved a path for herself doing some of the most important work of her time in mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy.
Wednesday
So what exactly was Aztec Philosophy?
For starters, it was a worldview based upon the observation of impermanence. This is a wisdom we see in early Hindu thought, Buddhist teachings, and Greco-Roman thought experiments like Heraclitus’s river or the Ship of Theseus. Such an idea is even found in the Persian wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes found in modern Bibles— “vanity of vanities” etc.Thursday