Rev Left Radio
patreon
Philosophy Series: Stoicism for Revolutionaries
🕑 Added 2025-02-26 03:38:40 +0000 UTCBreht listens to, reflects on, and critically engages with a public lecture by the late philosopher Michael Sugrue titled Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: The Stoic Ideal. He discusses the philosophy of Stoicism, its insights as well as its limitations, its commodification and bastardization under late capitalism, the dialectical inversion of the philosophy of a Roman Emperor for proletarian revolutionaries, Virtue Ethics, Mahayana Buddhism and The Four Brahmaviharas, the importance of courage and discipline and responsibility, Momento Mori, the Cardinal Virtues, equipping ourselves mentally and emotionally for a lifetime of class struggle, seeking the balance of the Middle Path, Marxist Dialectics, and much more!
Professor Sugrue passed away last year, and Breht has always found his free, public lectures on philosophy to be helpful and really well done. In the spirit of free and open access to education, Breht offers his knowledge of philosophy alongside this offering by Professor Sugrue. The use of this lecture series falls under the protections of the Fair Use doctrine.
Outro Music: "Lilac Wine" by Nina Simone
SUPPORT SOCIALIST NIGHT SCHOOL HERE: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-omahas-socialist-night-school?qid=4ba49bb6351ea7b8638e5d8ea3c4f851
Check out all our other Philosophy Series episodes HERE
Follow RLR on IG HERE
Comments
Revolutionary Left Radio
Thats beautiful to hear, my friend! Your development is a solid one, and one many have tread before you! And we all need good comrades and friends to help us along the way - god knows I did! Thank you for your support of the show, it means the world to me!
SprocketMusic
I keep coming back to this episode with new things to reflect on. I love what you said about talking through politics, and finding common ground. Over the course of about 2 years, I went from Bernie Bro to rad lib to Anarchist to Marxist to MLM. I was able to make that evolution entirely because of one friend who not only taught me about revolutionary politics, but who listened to my own perspective and experiences along the way, and took my critiques seriously.
Revolutionary Left Radio
Super interesting insight and feedback, and spot on with regards to fear and the role it plays in reactionary ideology and decay into fascism! An episode coming out next week with Pokepreet we explore that exact idea in some depth! Your analysis of Aurelius is also very good, I tried to gesture toward that in the episode, but you are 100% correct!
SprocketMusic
I do want to push back a little at the idea that absolute power is the ultimate temptation. A tyrants' biggest vice is seldom food or sex or booze or even raw power. It's almost always fear. Usurpers, contenders, competitors. Rivals inside and out. Sword of Damacles shit. Domestically, Marcus Aurelius' power was unrivaled, so he did not weaponize terror. For this he is lionized by historians. But in his Northern military campaigns, where Rome's power was always struggling to expand, Marcus Aurelius was ruthless. The Pax Romana was only a "pax" for the imperial core. As for Fear as a vice, I harp on it because I think it's a useful framework for understanding our current conditions. The backbone of fascism is pretty much always the petite bourgeoisie. They're the ones with something to lose, and the most to fear. Precarity is what leads people to support the most heinous atrocities imaginable. I'd argue that the fear of ruin that the average middle class American faces everyday presents a far greater temptation to stray from virtue than Marcus Aurelius ever faced.
