Philosophy

Seneca wrote this in a letter to a friend: “Set aside certain days on which you will be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’” He was not writing from comfort. The Stoics generally were not theorising from comfort. Epictetus was a slave. His philosophy was not developed in a seminar with good coffee and a whiteboard. It was developed inside conditions he could not choose, as a way of finding what was actually within his control when almost everything was not. ...

The setup is well known. A runaway trolley is heading toward five people on the track. You can pull a lever to divert it onto a side track, but there is one person there. Five die or one dies. Do you pull the lever? Most people say yes. The math is uncomfortable, but clear. Now the second version. Same trolley. Same five people. But this time you are on a footbridge above the track, and next to you is a large stranger. If you push him off the bridge, his body will stop the trolley. Five saved, one dead. The arithmetic is identical. ...