Beginning with Episode 288 of the Lucretius Today Podcast recorded today, for the next six weeks or longer we are going to be dealing with important issues as to emotions: Should emotions be considered to be "diseases," as Cicero explains is implied in the Greek "pathe" terminology, or considered as "perturbation" as he says in Latin?
Should all strong emotions be suppressed by the wise man, as the Stoics suggest, or is the wise man going to experience strong emotions?
These issues are discussed in Part 3 of Tusculan Disputations, which begins here.
Cicero criticizes the Stoics for playing word games with these issues, but to some extent it is in fact necessary for us to explore the meaning of the word choices we use to be sure we are not accepting false or misleading labeling.
I suggest that over the next couple of weeks when we are looking for topics for meetings that we begin exploring this topic in more detail. This subforum will be a good place to post threads on this topic.
