Complete index of my ongoing series of essays under the heading of “Figs in Winter” (began in September 2022), published as a Substack newsletter. (Why the title? Check it out!) Some essays are free, some require a subscription (you know, writers have to pay bills too!). Entries are arranged according to the standard curriculum of ancient Greco-Roman philosophical schools: Ethics (how to live), Science (what to know), and Reasoning (how to think), plus a number of limited thematic series. The top essays within each group are the most recent ones. Enjoy!
Most recent post: Protagoras: should we re-evaluate the Sophists?
Index
Ethics (how to live)
Science (what to know) and pseudoscience (what to stay away from)
Reasoning (how to think)
Collections (thematic series)
- Secular pilgrimages
- What should we do with a tyrant?
- The three stages of philosophical therapy
- Tracking Plato and Cicero in Syracuse
- Marcus Aurelius’ Ten “Commandments” to Himself
- Dealing with insults, the Stoic way
- Telic vs atelic activities and the meaning of life
- Vita Dulcis: fear and desire in the Roman Empire
- Prosochē or not prosochē? On Stoic mindfulness
- The two reasons I left Christianity
- Five questions that will change your life
- The varieties of bad Stoicism
- There’s no such thing as a happy nihilist
- Be a Stoic like Epictetus
- Five insights about character
- Birthday meditation on death
- What does it mean to live according to nature?
- Where are you from?
- New Year’s Resolutions, Stoic Style
- What, if any, is the difference between religion and philosophy?
- A few thoughts on Buddhism
- Everything you always wanted to know about Greek philosophy
- The philosophy of football
- Reflecting on Ken Frazier, skeptic
- The great philosophical exodus of 86 BCE
- Totalitarianism as a novel form of “government”
- The nine kinds of ethical life
- Alas, Alcibiades, what condition you suffer from!
- Is it true that you can’t derive an ought from an is?
- On the steps of Marcus Aurelius: visiting Carnuntum
- Figs in winter and the idea of an art of living
Science (what to know) and pseudoscience (what to stay away from)
- The hedonic treadmill vs the eudaimonic staircase
- The neuroscience and philosophy of evil
- I very much doubt the universe thinks
- Three cheers for the end of the world?
- Determinism, swerves, and the relationship between metaphysics and ethics
- The full colors of Greece and Rome
- Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?
- On the objectivity of ethical judgments
- Heraclitus and Stoicism
- How Ayn Rand misunderstood Aristotle
- ChatGPT, the ultimate sophist?
- How to evaluate a philosophical theory
- What would change my mind about God?
- Scientific facts, scientific theories, and dishonest legislators
- What criterion for knowledge?
- Who’s afraid of skepticism?
- Why we can’t, ultimately, prove anything
- How to assess the probability of pretty much everything
- The importance of doubting
- The axiom of futility
- Plato’s mistake
- Ancient wisdom for modern readers (ongoing)
- How to win an argument with Cicero
- How to grow old with Cicero
- How to run a country with Cicero
- How to win an election with Quintus T. Cicero
- How to be a bad emperor with Suetonius
- How to be content with Horace
- How to tell a story with Aristotle
- How to die with Seneca
- How to grieve with Pseudo-Cicero
- How to say no with Diogenes and the Cynics
- How to drink with Obsopoeus
- How to be a leader with Plutarch
- How to keep an open mind with Sextus Empiricus
- How to be free, Epictetus style
- Profiles in Skepticism (ongoing)
- Sextus Empiricus (forthcoming)
- Cicero (forthcoming)
- Carneades
- Arcesilaus, founder of the Skeptic Academy
- Pyrrho
- The Cyrenaics
- Philosophy as a Way Of Life
Massimo Pigliucci 
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