The Ancients Can’t Help Us… Yes, They Can.

We face the possibilities of nuclear Armageddon and global climate collapse precisely because we insist in focusing on science and technology at the expense of philosophy and wisdom

Plato surrounded by students in his Academy in Athens. Mosaic (detail) from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus, Pompeii, 1st century B.C. Roman National Archaeological Museum, Naples. Source: Wikimedia Commons

You may have noticed that ancient wisdom is back with a vengeance. I’m not talking just about the stunning resurgence of Stoicism. Princeton University Press has been publishing a highly successful series based on how the ancients lived, which includes title like “How to Be a Bad Emperor” (on Caligula, so we can learn about tyrants), “How to Grow Old” (based on Cicero’s On Old Age), and “How to Die” (based on the writings of Seneca). There are many, many more examples to go by.

But — predictably — success attracts criticism, one example of which is a recent essay by Carlos Fraenkel (the James McGill Professor at McGill University in Canada), published in the Times Literary Supplement under the title “The ancients can’t help us now.”

Fraenkel’s first salvo is a personal story he recounts as an example of why the ancient utterly fails us today: “Once a student came to my office. She’d been one of my liveliest interlocutors in class: smart, sharp, curious. ‘I won’t be able to get my final paper to you in time,’ she apologized…