Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Other Ancient Philosophers

By Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez and Meredith Kunz

Three leading popularizers of ancient philosophy draw on the lives and insights of Greco-Roman thinkers to provide an invaluable compass for navigating the good life

What is the meaning of life? Who do we want to become? And how can we achieve this? These are big questions that are hard to think through. Fortunately, a group of philosophers from ancient Greece and Rome have already done a lot of the heavy lifting.

The ancient Greeks and Romans converged on three major themes in attempting to articulate what is good in life: pleasure, virtue and doubt. Or, to put it more straightforwardly: feeling good, being good and thinking well.

These ideas were first proposed over two millennia ago but are more pertinent than ever. Despite our remarkable advances in science and technology, we still want the same things – love, friendship, money, reputation – and still fear the same threats – poverty, sickness, pain, death. The specifics may have changed, but human nature has remained the same, and the instruments devised by these ancient philosophers constitute a powerful toolkit to help us thrive in the modern world.