The Socrates Express

Notes

In the interest of keeping the endnotes relatively brief, I’ve cited only secondary sources here, as well as clarified points of controversy. Primary sources—the words of the philosophers themselves—can be found in the bibliography.

INTRODUCTION: DEPARTURE

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato”: Cited in Gyles Brandreth, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 84.

“misliving”: William Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 13.

“radical reflection”: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald Landes (New York: Routledge, 2012), xxxv.

“life-enhancing poetry”: Daniel Klein, Foreword to Epicurus: The Art of Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2012), viii–ix.

“Sooner or later”: Quoted in Robert Solomon, The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 10.

1: HOW TO GET OUT OF BED LIKE MARCUS AURELIUS

We have a common enemy: Marcus and I both follow the path of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. “The essence of my desire is simply this: to sleep away life,” he said. The Book of Disquiet, trans. Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2002), 428.

Suicide, said the French: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1983), 3.

The Scottish philosopher: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1985), Book III, Part I.

Later, enamored of the Greek: Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius: A Life (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009), 21.

“his constant strivings”: Ibid. 251.

possibly laced with opium: A good deal of controversy surrounds the question of whether Marcus was ingesting, and possibly addicted to, opium. See Thomas Africa, “The Opium Addiction of Marcus Aurelius,” Journal of the History of Ideas 22, no. 1 (1961): 97–102.

Marcus had no intention: “To Myself” is a more faithful translation of the title than Meditations.

“a self-help book”: Gregory Hays, Introduction to Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (New York: Penguin, 2002), xxxvii.

“someone in the process”: Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford, UK: Blackwell), 251.

2: HOW TO WONDER LIKE SOCRATES

Train of thought: I had assumed that, like “off the rails,” the expression “train of thought(s)” was born of the railroad age. It was not. The phrase was coined by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in 1651—more than a century before the first railroad.

“Our culture has generally tended to solve”: Jacob Needleman, The Heart of Philosophy (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), 7.

“He seems to have entered”: Peter Kreeft, Philosophy 101 by Socrates (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 25.

Socrates was a practitioner of: Drukpa Kunley, a fifteenth-century Buddhist monk, was perhaps the most famous practitioner of Crazy Wisdom. He called his penis “The Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom” and is credited with initiating the practice in Bhutan (still in vogue today) of painting phalluses on buildings to ward off evil spirits.

“with a big, round”: Needleman, The Heart of Philosophy, 153.

“great, smooth forehead”: Ibid, 153.

“marvelous new naiveté”: Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957), 31.

“Every question is a cry”: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Cradle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine, 1996), 323.

“Socrates was the first”: Quoted in Paul Johnson, Socrates: A Man for Our Times (New York: Penguin, 2002), 81–82.

“Enlightened kibitzing”: Solomon, The Joy of Philosophy, 14.

“All philosophy begins with”: Centuries later, Ralph Waldo Emerson added, correctly, that “[w]onder is the seed of science.”

“One time at dawn he”: Quoted in James Miller, Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), 42.

“If you do not annoy”: Kreeft, Philosophy 101 by Socrates, 63.

“planting a puzzle”: Ibid., 37.

“Men pummeled [Socrates]”: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. Pamela Mensch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 71.

“The moment of insight”: Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (New York: Random House, 2006), 307.

“like the sensation”: Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (Bulgaria: Demetra, 1886), 88.

I am embarking on a: Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 115.

“Generosity just flows”: Solomon, The Joy of Philosophy, 76.

“Ask yourself if you are happy”: John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (CreateSpace, 2018), 49.

3: HOW TO WALK LIKE ROUSSEAU

“The flowers by the side”: Quoted in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 55.

“All traveling becomes dull”: Quoted in Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, 58.

“follow this way or that”: Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Thoughts on Walking (London: Read Books, 2013), 5.

“A difficult friend”: Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 4.

The Pentagon recently developed: Joseph Amato, On Foot: A History of Walking (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 257.

“I could not imagine the malice”: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, trans. Oliver Davis (New York: Routledge, 2004), 63.

“a book that is and is not”: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin, 2000), 20.

“to roll about, toss”: John Ayto, Word Origins: The Secret History of English Words from A to Z (London: A. & C. Black, 1990), 539.

About six million years ago: This is an estimate. Anthropologists are uncertain exactly when, or why, primates first took to two feet. For an overview of the research, see Erin Wayman, “On Becoming Human: The Evolution of Walking Upright,” Smithsonian, August 6, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/becoming-human-the-evolution-of-walking-upright-13837658/.

“It requires spending three-fourths”: Amato, On Foot, 3.

“essentially unimproved”: Solnit, Wanderlust, 18.

“a nobleman’s carriage”: Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 485.

“imagination is more important”: Albert Einstein, in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.

“sanctuary in time”: Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1951), 17.

4: HOW TO SEE LIKE THOREAU

stumbled upon: Kathryn Schulz, “Pond Scum,” New Yorker, October 12, 2015.

as the commuter train: I am riding the Fitchburg Line. It reached Concord in June 1844, just thirteen months before Thoreau moved to his cabin on Walden Pond.

“The biggest little place”: Henry James, Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America (New York: Library of America, 1993), 565.

the shot heard round the world: Most historians agree the phrase refers to the skirmish at Concord’s North Bridge on April 19, 1775. That’s where the first British soldiers fell in the battles of Lexington and Concord. However, shots were fired earlier that day in Lexington, and the two towns continue to dispute exactly where the Revolutionary War began.

“a certain iron-pokerishness”: Quoted in Sandra Petrulionis, ed., Thoreau in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012), xxiv.

The scientist’s detached: The phrase “the view from nowhere” was coined by the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel and is the title of his 1986 book. Thoreau, though, was certainly aware of the concept of detached scientific observation, as well as the critiques of it.

“A world that makes room”: Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55.

“fearless self-inspection”: H. H. Salt, animal rights advocate and an early biographer of Thoreau, quoted in Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 135.

“sit motionless”: Concord native Joseph Hammer, quoted in Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, 102.

“He walked as if a great deal”: Quoted in Petrulionis, Thoreau in His Own Time, 57.

“innocence of the eye”: The phrase is John Ruskin’s. Thoreau read Ruskin and was greatly affected by his thoughts on seeing. See John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1971), 27.

thoroughly conscious ignorance: The phrase comes from the nineteenth-century Scottish physicist James Maxwell. “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is a prelude to every real advance in knowledge.” Quoted in Stuart Friedman, “What Science Wants to Know,” Scientific American, April 1, 2012.

“I stopped and looked”: Quoted in Walter Harding, “The Adventures of a Literary Detective in Search of Thoreau,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring, 1992.

There’s a physiological basis: This is due to the fact that the light hits the more sensitive periphery of the rods.

a fun-pack of optical tricks: Thoreau, the great seer, didn’t care to see everything. When a farmer invited him to see a two-headed calf, Thoreau demurred. “We do not live for amusement,” he said.

thin, but very wide: As Wittgenstein said: “The depths are on the surface.”

The glance is helpful: Not all philosophers were fond of the glance. Kant dismissed it as herumtappen, “random groping.”

spiritual seeker named: Not to be confused with the English poet William Blake.

5: HOW TO LISTEN LIKE SCHOPENHAUER

“We cannot leave”: Nigel Warburton, Philosophy: The Basics (London: Routledge, 1992), 100.

“It is as if time had stopped”: Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 164.

Only in the last few years: Toward the end of Schopenhauer’s life, a British newspaper ran a favorable review of his collection of essays, and soon it became an ornamental must-have for every middle-class coffee table in Europe. His fame, though, came too late, and like a meal that’s taken too long to arrive, he couldn’t fully enjoy it.

“playing with my new doll”: Quoted in Julian Young, Schopenhauer (New York: Routledge, 2005), 1.

“Your mother expects”: Quoted in David Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 43–44.

“I wish you learned to make yourself”: Quoted in Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 53.

“The sound, which like all music”: William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (New York: Random House, 1990), 66.

cognitive recovery after a stroke: Kil-Byung Lim et al., “The Therapeutic Effect of Neurologic Music Therapy and Speech Language Therapy in Post-Stroke Aphasic Patients,” Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine 74, no. 4 (2016): 556–62.

Patients in minimally conscious: Helen Thomson, “Familiar Music Could Help People with Brain Damage,” New Scientist, August 29, 2012, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22221-familiar-music-could-help-people-with-brain-damage/.

a joy to read: Philosophical writing, Schopenhauer said, should “resemble not a turbid, impetuous torrent, but rather a Swiss lake which by its calm combines great depth with great clearness, the depth revealing itself precisely through the clearness.”

is “more with you”: Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 7.

“a nasty piece of work”: Paul Strathern, Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes (Lanham, MD: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 11.

At night, he jumped: Schopenhauer, the big-eared philosopher, would lose much of his hearing late in life. First one ear, then the other. The noise he so hated disappeared, but this provided little consolation, for so, too, did the music.

According to one study: Lisa Goines and Louis Hagler, “Noise Pollution: A Modern Plague,” Southern Medical Journal 100, no. 3 (2007): 287–94.

Another study found that the roar: Stephen Stansfeld and Mark Matheson, “Noise Pollution: Non-Auditory Effects on Health,” British Journal of Medicine 8, no. 1 (2003): 244.

6: HOW TO ENJOY LIKE EPICURUS

A New York Times correspondent: Quoted in Jeri Quinzio, Food on the Rails: The Golden Era of Railroad Dining (London: Rowan & Littlefield, 2014), 30.

It is edible, yes: Amtrak recently announced it will be curtailing its dining car service. Luz Lazo, “The End of an American Tradition: The Amtrak Dining Car,” Washington Post, September 21, 2019.

“air and genius of gardens”: Quoted in David Cooper, A Philosophy of Gardens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 6.

“for many years he was unable”: Quoted in Klein, The Art of Happiness, 82. Diogenes dismissed these rumors, though. “The critics are all crazy,” he wrote.

the “Four-Part Cure”: The Epicurean Philodemus summarizes the Four-Part Cure this way: “Nothing to fear from god, nothing to worry about in death. Good is easy to obtain, and evil easy to endure.” Tim O’Keefe, Epicureanism (New York: Routledge, 2010), 6.

was a “tranquillist”: O’Keefe, Epicureanism, 120.

“Happiness is definitely”: Ad Bergsma et al., “Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus,” Journal of Happiness Studies 9, no. 3 (2008): 397–423.

“pure pleasure of existing”: Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy, 115.

“I too am an Epicurean”: Quoted in James Warren, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1.

Two of Epicurus’s early influences: Klein, The Art of Happiness, ix.

7: HOW TO PAY ATTENTION LIKE SIMONE WEIL

If I had more time, I’d read: Before the advent of rail travel, hardly anyone read while traveling overland. The novelty of reading while moving quickly captured the imagination of a restless, literate public, and by the 1840s English booksellers established stalls at rail stations. One touted its “Literature for the Rail—works for sound information and innocent amusement.”

“in her presence all ‘lies’ ”: The poet Jean Tortel quoted in Francine du Plessix Gray, Simone Weil (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), 168.

“For the moment, what we attend”: William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 428.

As many studies reveal, we do not: The most famous of these is the so-called invisible-gorilla study. Psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris asked participants to watch a video of people passing a basketball and count the number of passes. Halfway through the video, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit enters the scene, thumps her chest, then walks away. Afterward, fully half of the participants didn’t recall anything unusual during the video. Psychologists call this phenomenon “inattentional blindness.” We only see what we expect to see. See Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (New York: Crown, 2009).

“a condition so rewarding”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi et al., The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990), 19.

“One forgets oneself”: Quoted in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi et al., eds., Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 220.

“There is no primary act”: Francis Bradley, “Is There a Special Activity of Attention?” Mind 11, no. 43 (1886): 305–23.

“Everyone knows what attention”: James, The Principles of Psychology, 170.

we routinely overestimate our ability: As one example, see David Sanbonmatsu et al., “Who Multi-Tasks and Why? Multi-Tasking Ability, Perceived Multi-Tasking Ability, Impulsivity, and Sensation Seeking,” PLOS One, January 23, 2013.

“No such upper bound”: Alan Allport, “Attention and Integration,” in Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, ed. Christopher Mole et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 29.

“I envied her for having a heart”: Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (New York: HarperCollins, 1958), 239.

“Mi-usine, mi-palais”: Alfred Meyer, quoted in Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, 189.

“the only great spirit”: Quoted in John Hellman, Simone Weil: An Introduction to Her Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1982), 1.

“sloppy, almost careless”: Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life (New York: Pantheon, 1976), 39.

Patient people are happier: Sarah Schnitker, “An Examination of Patience and Well-Being,” Journal of Positive Psychology 7, no. 4 (2012): 263–80.

“In a moment everything is altered”: Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 82.

“philosopher of margins”: A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone and Benjamin David, “Simone Weil,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, March 10, 2018.

“She was boiling with ideas”: Pétrement, Simone Weil, 492.

“But she is mad!”: Quoted in ibid., 514.

“The steadiness of her writing”: Ibid., 521.

“freewheeling, tequila-soaked”: Mary Karr, Twitter: @marykarrlit, July 8, 2019.

fell into a funk: Despondent, Hemingway wrote to his friend Ezra Pound: “All that remains of my complete works are three pencil drafts of a bum poem… some correspondence… and some journalistic carbons.”

8: HOW TO FIGHT LIKE GANDHI

invented the concept of zero: Some scholars believe other cultures, including the Sumerians and Babylonians, may have invented the concept of zero earlier. For a summation of the various arguments, see: Jessica Szalay, “Who Invented Zero,” Live Science, September 28, 2017, https://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented-zero.html.

surprised to find a fit: Louis Fischer, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (New York: New American Library, 1954), 149.

Gandhi considered it “unmanly”: Even Gandhi’s adversaries admired his courage. “A Lesson in True Manliness,” read the headline of one South African newspaper, after Gandhi forced the Transvaal government to back off from one of its demands.

“Have you no shame?”: Quoted in Fischer, Gandhi, 28.

“You have the right to work”: The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1985), 53.

“emerged from Gandhi’s hands”: Rajmohan Gandhi, Why Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy (New Delhi: Aleph, 2017), 133.

Gandhi eventually settled: Gandhi had some help devising a new name for his form of nonviolent resistance. While in South Africa, he held a contest in the newspaper Indian Opinion. Gandhi tweaked the winning entry to come up with satyagraha.

“The officers ordered them”: Quoted in Homer Jack, ed., The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 250–51.

In a comprehensive study: Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 9.

movement to Euclid’s Line: This is what Gandhi had to say about the connection between his ideas and Euclid’s geometry: “Euclid’s line is one without breadth, but no one has so far been able to draw it and never will… if Euclid’s point, thought incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live.”

“What appears to be the end”: Mark Juergensmeyer, Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 4.

uttering the words Hey Ram: Lately, some have cast doubt on whether these were, in fact, Gandhi’s last words. His personal assistant, Venkita Kalyanam, claimed a decade ago Gandhi never uttered the words. More recently, he told the Press Trust of India: “I never said Gandhiji did not say ‘Hey Ram’ at all. What I had said was I did not hear him saying ‘Hey Ram.’ ” “Never said ‘Hey Ram’ Weren’t Bapu’s Last Words: Gandhi’s PA,” Times of India, January 30, 2018.

“To live with Gandhi”: A man identified as Chandwani, quoted in Manuben Gandhi, Last Glimpses of Bapu, trans. Moli Jain (Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwala, 1962), 253.

9: HOW TO BE KIND LIKE CONFUCIUS

He didn’t write it: Some uncertainty surrounds the question of what Confucius did and did not write. Most scholars believe The Analects was compiled by Confucius’s disciples well after his death.

“Swords and shields”: Michael Schuman, Confucius: And the World He Created (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 27.

“an uptight fuddy-duddy”: Ibid., 18.

“and you can turn the whole world”: Quoted in Philip Ivanhoe and Bryan Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 121.

“Do not roll the rice”: Quoted in Daniel Gardner, Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 27.

“an island of kindness”: Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), 105.

“All people have a heart”: Quoted in Paul Goldin, Confucianism (New York: Routledge, 2014), 46.

“Given the right nourishment”: Quoted in Armstrong, The Great Transformation, 304.

“Every spectacular incident”: Stephen Jay Gould, “A Time of Gifts,” New York Times, September 26, 2001.

Observing acts of kindness: Lara Aknin, Elizabeth Dunn, and Michael Norton, “Happiness Runs in Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop Between Prosocial Spending and Happiness,” Journal of Happiness Studies 13, no. 2 (2012): 347–55.

10: HOW TO APPRECIATE THE SMALL THINGS LIKE SEI SHŌNAGON

he created layers: One of Aristotle’s most famous works is called “Categories,” part of a larger collection known as the Organon.

“I perceive value”: Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964–1980, ed. David Rieff (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 217.

“The list is the origin”: Umberto Eco, in an interview with Der Spiegel, November 11, 2009, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-umberto-eco-we-like-lists-because-we-don-t-want-to-die-a-659577.html.

“a crazy quilt”: Meredith McKinney, Introduction to The Pillow Book (New York: Penguin, 1997), ix.

okashii, or delightful: Today the Japanese word means “amusing” or “strange,” but in Shōnagon’s time it meant “delightful.”

“The most precious thing in life”: Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness, trans. Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 3.

“Beauty lies in its own”: Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2007), 4.

“He is paying attention to things”: Russell Goodman, “Thoreau and the Body,” in Thoreau’s Importance for Philosophy, ed. Rick Furtak et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 33.

“the cult of beauty”: Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (New York: Vintage, 1964), 170.

“proper thickness, size, design”: Ibid., 187.

“smart, good-looking”: Ibid., 188.

“to demonstrate that things can be”: Ullrich Haase, Starting with Nietzsche (New York: Continuum, 2008), 25.

“The man who for the first time”: Hermann Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974).

11: HOW TO HAVE NO REGRETS LIKE NIETZSCHE

“had none of the searching”: Quoted in Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 328.

“a piece of pseudo-aesthetic”: Friedrich Ritschl, quoted in Miller, Examined Lives, 326.

“Perhaps no one”: Stefan Zweig, Nietzsche, trans. William Stone (London: Hesperus), 54.

“where doubts and rebellion grow”: Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins, eds., Reading Nietzsche (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 4.

there are many more combinations: Sometimes a higher number, 255,168, is cited, but that refers to the number of possible sequences, not games per se. See Steve Schaefer, “MathRec Solution (Tic-Tac-Toe): Mathematical Recreations (2002),” http://www.mathrec.org/old/2002jan/solutions.html.

In chess, considerably more games: For an explanation of how this number is arrived at, see David Shenk’s The Immortal Game: A History of Chess (New York: Anchor, 2007), 69–70.

what one scholar calls: Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 270.

a hearty Da capo!: An Italian musical term, Da capo means “from the beginning” (literally, “from the head”).

like Sisyphus happy: “We must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Albert Camus said in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.”

most likely due to syphilis: Possibly contracted during a trip to a brothel when he was a young man.

“an experiment in reorienting”: R. J. Hollingdale, ed., A Nietzsche Reader (New York: Penguin, 1977), 11–12.

12: HOW TO COPE LIKE EPICTETUS

including George Washington and John Adams: Carl Richard, “The Classical Founding of American Roots,” in Daniel Robinson and Richard Williams, eds., The American Founding: Its Intellectual and Moral Framework (New York: Continuum, 2012), 47.

“I had a good voyage”: Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 314.

“No tree becomes rooted and sturdy”: Quoted in Donald Robertson, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013), vii.

James Stockdale, an American pilot: See James Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1995).

“We don’t typically get angry”: A. A. Long, From Epicurus to Epictetus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 379.

Forgoing pleasure is one of life’s: As William Irvine says, “Leave it to the Stoics to realize the act of forgoing pleasure can itself be pleasant.” Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life, 117.

“rehearse them in your mind”: Seneca, quoted in Antonia Macaro, “What Can the Stoic Do for Us,” in Patrick Ussher, ed., Stoicism Today: Selected Writing I (Stoicism Today, 2014), 54.

“Let your tears flow, but let them also cease”: Quoted in Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life, 154.

“Do you suppose that wisdom”: Quoted in William Stephens, “A Stoic Approach to Travel and Tourism,” Modern Stoicism, November 24, 2018, https://modernstoicism.com/a-stoic-approach-to-travel-and-tourism-by-william-o-stephens/.

I turn to Epictetus: Epictetus died in AD 135. Mourners heralded him as a “friend of the immortals.” He had inspired a Roman emperor. He would inspire Shakespeare and birth a form of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, that is still practiced today. Not bad for a former slave.

13: HOW TO GROW OLD LIKE BEAUVOIR

“Chronological age is not”: Jan Baars, Aging and the Art of Living (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 52.

“The utter daring!”: Quoted in Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life, a Love Story (Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1985), 359.

The word “work”: Francis and Gontier, Simone de Beauvoir, 198.

“Everyone hopes to reach”: Marcus Cicero, How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life, trans. Philip Freeman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 11.

“I don’t recognize”: Martha Nussbaum and Saul Levmore, Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations About Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles & Regret (New York: Oxford University Press), 19.

“His movement is quick”: Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992), 101.

And it was Sylvie who rescued: Friends, worried Beauvoir might commit suicide, wouldn’t leave her alone. She fell physically ill, too. She spent a month in the hospital, suffering from pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. When Beauvoir was discharged, she agreed to a strict health regime, and eliminated all her vices, save Scotch and vodka. “I need those,” she said. Sylvie secretly watered down her Scotch, just as Beauvoir had done for Sartre.

“It was as if she had put it all behind her”: Quoted in Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Touchstone, 1990), 588.

“At my age”: Quoted in Wayne Booth, ed., The Art of Growing Older: Writers on Living and Aging (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 159.

“the certainty of a crushing”: Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 54.

“wider and more impersonal”: Bertrand Russell, “How to Grow Old,” in Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1995), 52.

The person who departs this world: Many of the philosophers I’ve encountered are good role models in this regard, especially Thoreau. Says author William Cain: “He persisted with his journal until serious illness intervened, and on his deathbed he was still writing: adding to his calendar of flowers and shrubs, compiling lists of birds, making selections from his journals, and preparing articles from his journals.” William Cain, ed., A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.

14: HOW TO DIE LIKE MONTAIGNE

at an alarming rate: It was one such slaughter, in which ten thousand Protestants were killed, that gave the world a new word, massacre, from the Old French for butchery.

Killed by a tennis ball!: He was playing a game called courte-paume, or court tennis, a precursor to the modern game, which used a heavier ball. But, still: killed by a tennis ball!

Que sais-je: Que sçay-je in the Middle French that Montaigne spoke.

“He is a thinker who attacks”: Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (New York: New Directions, 1960), 77.

not bad at all: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet, said something similar. “Don’t worry. It’s not bad. No, not so bad,” he said, just before dying. Patrick Cockburn, “Assassin ‘Told Guards Bullets Were Fake,’ ” The Independent, November 8, 1995.

“Persuade yourself that each new”: Quoted in Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 196.