Tuesday, October 25, 2016

More philosophizing

I sat in on a workshop recently, Stoicism 101 with Massimo Pigliucci at the Ethical Society. He gave an interesting lecture, including mentioning James Stockdale - whom I remembered as the vice presidential candidate for Ross Perot who said during a debate: "who am I, why am I here." Which would normally be a pretty philosophical thing to say, but wasn't appropriate in the context. So I was amazed when Pigliucci mentioned Stockdale's ordeal in Vietnam and how lessons of the Stoics helped Stockdale - or as it says in Wikipedia:
His primary focus was ancient Stoicism and the Roman slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, whose lessons captured in The Enchiridion Stockdale credited with providing him strength during his ordeals as a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton.
I was amazed and impressed to know this about Stockdale.

During the lecture I also got the idea for a Meetup group that does philosophical plays, and decided to do some research and found quite a few and not just from the ancient Greek philosophers.

My list so far:
  • THE CLOUDS by Aristophanes
  • WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett
  • THE ROBBERS by Frederich Schiller
  • SOCRATES by Voltaire
  • NO EXIT by Jean-Paul Sartre
  • OEDIPUS by Seneca the Younger
  • WHO SHALL DIE by Simone DeBeauvoir