Episode #190 ... Are emotions a waste of time? - Neo-Stoicism (Martha Nussbaum)

Philosophize This!

Stephen West

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.8 • 16.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we talk about the lessons found in the ancient Greek play titled Hecuba. We talk about the great Stoic ethicists Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. We talk about Martha Nussbaum and her work looking to infuse classical Stoic ideas with all that we've learned in the sciences over thousands of years. We talk about compassion. Shame and guilt. Her capabilities approach. It's a whole lot of fun for the whole family. :) SPONSORS: Better Help: https://www.BetterHelp.com/PHILTHIS AG1: https://www.drinkAG1.com/philo

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, I'm Stephen West, this is philosophize this.
0:04.0	Sorry about the break, I had a family emergency I had to tend to, but we're back, and we'll be most
0:08.6	Mondays moving forward.
0:10.0	Thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon for an ad-free version of the show sub at any level at patreon.com slash philosophize this.
0:17.0	So today we're going to be talking about a person many consider to be one of the greatest philosophers alive today.
0:22.0	We're going to be talking about the greatest philosophers alive today.
0:22.9	We're going to be talking about Martha Newsbaum.
0:25.7	And I want to start today with a story.
0:27.8	It's a story that's very important to Martha Newsbaum.
0:31.3	It's a story she said earlier on in her career she'd sometimes be kept
0:34.6	up at night thinking about it and it's disturbing implications about what it is to be a person.
0:38.4	It's a story where we won't fully understand just how relevant it is to this digital panopecom we're living in
0:44.3	until about the end of the episode. The story is a play, it's written in ancient Greece by the great
0:49.3	playwright Euripides. The story we're talking about today is called Hecuba. Now Hecuba was the name of the
0:56.3	historically famous Queen of Troy, mother of Hector, you know that guy Brad Pitt killed in
1:02.3	1997, wife of Agamemnon but a formidable person in her own right
1:07.4	Now most of her story is pretty tragic her kingdom falls her husband's killed
1:11.9	most of her children are killed, she's sold into slavery, but through all this bad stuff, she had one hope that she was holding on to, which was to save at least one of her sons. His name was Polidorus. So she sends him off to a different kingdom away from the battle with a bunch of gold. She tells him go talk to the king in the city of Thrace. He's a friend of mine. Ask him to protect you until everything dies down with this whole fall of Troy stuff that's going on.
1:34.5	So Polidorus leaves, chest full of gold on the back of his cart, and that's the last she sees of him.
1:40.5	Time passes.
1:41.5	She's finally able to make it back to this kingdom that she sent him to.
1:44.0	And as she comes up to the beaches of Thrace, right where the waves hit the sand, she sees a dead body.
	...

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