Exercise General description
The Stoic Doctor: Life Problem Diagnosis & Treatment Rehearse The oldest metaphor in the history of philosophy is the philosopher as a doctor for the mind and philosophy as a medicine for the soul. Martha Nussbaum, the great American scholar of the ancient schools of philosophy, writes, “an analogy between logos [‘language’ or ‘wisdom’] and medical treatment is extremely old and deep in ancient Greek talk about the personality and its difficulties… Pindar writes of his own poetic speech as a ‘charm’ that can produce freedom from disturbance in the troubled soul. The Chorus in ‘Prometheus Bound’ tells the hero that ‘for the sickness of anger, logoi are the doctors”, and Cicero, describing the Stoics, writes, “There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy.” This exercise asks you to explore the “problem” in your life as a Stoic philosopher doctor might treat it in his office.
Global Exercise
Quotations from Stoic Philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus
Without philosophy the mind is sickly.