The Kind of Philosophical Life To Aim For

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2:05Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy. And most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

2:48The Kind of Philosophical Life to Aim for More than 60 years ago, a young boy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was curious about philosophy. He went to his high school library and found a book of the writings of Kant. Excited, smart for his age, he started reading, and only made it a few pages before he threw it aside, hopelessly confused. It was later that day when he explained what happened to his father that the boy's life was changed forever, because his father had a brand new copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. These pages, this philosophy, came more easily to the boy, and were still inspiring him nearly to the point of reverie decades later, infectiously so even as countless students of his would attest at the news, the death of Professor Paul G.

3:39Woodruff at 80 earlier this month. I was actually lucky enough to interview Professor Woodruff on the Daily Stoke podcast back in January, and he told one of his favorite lessons from meditations. It's a wonderful little story that captures the essence of this great teacher, this lover of literature, lover of nature, lover of people. And up until the end, Professor Woodruff was brave. This would not have surprised the men he served with as an officer in Vietnam, but his moral courage as he faced a painful death from a lung condition was evident in a series of moving op-eds he wrote for the Washington Post, which I'll link to in today's notes.

4:19Up until the end, he was reading novels with his wife, writing, seeing students and friends, living with virtue. He was no pen and ink philosopher. The ones the Stoics looked at was scorn. He was a father, a husband, a soldier, a leader, a teacher. He was active in social causes and a friend. And we're lucky that he shared his wisdom with us. He will be missed and he will continue to inspire all of us as a model of a great life. I actually was lucky enough I went and saw Professor Woodruff. He wrote this great piece in the Washington Post about how he was sort of seeing friends, family members, and students before he passed, and that Zoom was sort of insufficient, that it was something that he wanted to do in person.

5:08And I drove out to Austin and spent about 30 minutes with him, and we talked philosophy and life. And it just meant a lot to me that he took that time. I didn't want to take up too much of his time. I could see he was struggling and in pain, but he was just there living up to these ideas right there up until the end. And I'll remember that always. And I'll remember our handful of brief interactions. And I continue to read his new, I continue to read his work. I'm actually reading this book that he just put out called Living towards virtue and just an overall great human being that will be missed.

5:46And I hope you'll check him out after you listen to today's episode.

6:10Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.

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