Massimo Pigliucci

Marcus is absolutely right.

I don't need the additional step of complaining and involving in this fact that the world is so unfair because there are bitter cucumbers.

That was the beginning, or one of the beginnings, because I also got pretty much at the same time another stunning phrase from Epictetus, who was one of the inspirations to Marcus, so the two are very closely related.

Epictetus was another interesting guy.

Marcus Aurelius was an emperor, so literally the most powerful person in the Mediterranean world at the time.

Epictetus was at the opposite extreme.

He was a slave.

He started out life as a slave.

He was actually eventually...

and he became actually one of the most well-known and respected teachers in the Mediterranean area at the beginning of the second century.

So he had a completely different sort of life trajectory.

And yet the ideas, the Stoic ideas, resonated apparently with both of these people, and both of them became major conduits for later generations.

And one of the things that Epictetus says at the beginning of the discourses is that

So you want to make money.

He's talking to some of his friends.

You want to make money or you want me to make money so that I can help you.

Well, that's all fine.

But what am I going to do with that money?

The money itself isn't going to tell me.

What's going to tell me is my faculty of judgment.