8 Reasons for Guys To Study the Classics
If you’ve been following the Art of Manliness for awhile now, you’ve likely caught on to the influence that the classical cultures of Greece and Rome exert on a lot of our content. We promote an idea of “manliness as virtue” that was espoused by both of these ancient civilizations. And there’s a reason for that: In college, I majored in “Letters” — a degree program connected with the Classics Department. I studied Latin and took classes on the history of freedom in both ancient Greece and Rome. I read and discussed the Greek tragedies and even took an entire course on Ovid. It’s during this time that I developed a deep and lasting love for classical culture; despite having graduated from college nearly ten years ago, I’m still reading and pondering the works of Homer, Plato, and Cicero.
An understanding of the culture, philosophy, and literature of antiquity has greatly enhanced my life, and it’s an education I think every man should be well-versed in. Even if you didn’t study the classics in high school or college, there’s a case to be made that you should begin doing so now. Below are eight reasons why every man should dive into the classics, as well as a list of suggested works to get you started.this conversation traces back to ancient Athens. Once you’ve got this foundation down, from there you can see how successive philosophers have added, transformed, and rebutted what came out of that city-state. And then, at last, you can start making your own constructive contributions to the Great Conversation.
3. Allows you to see the interconnectedness of ideas.
Our educational system has become increasingly specialized. We’ve created artificial barriers between different fields of study. When you’re in history, you largely just focus on history. When you’re studying physics, you mostly focus on physics. Historian Richard Weaver referred to this as the “fragmentation” of knowledge.
But when you read the classics, those walls disappear. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, all knowledge was interconnected. When you read The Histories by Herodotus, you’ll see him connect historical events to political theory, anthropology, and even geography. Plato doesn’t just muse about Truth, Justice, and Beauty, but also math and physics. The Roman Stoics weren’t just interested in learning how to live in alignment with Nature, but also how to govern empires and interact with people you don’t get along with.
My exposure to the classics has instilled in me a drive to connect even the most disparate of topics and ideas. I love the challenge of trying to synthesize these divergent concepts into a coherent and well-thought-out argument or position.
And here’s the thing: As technology and the economy advances and more and more work is outsourced to algorithms and computers, knowing how to make new connections and synthesize data and ideas will be a skill in high demand. It won’t be enough to be a good computer programmer; companies can hire cheap computer programmers in India. But a computer programmer who has a firm grasp of behavioral psychology, and can impute that understanding into a line of code? That’s a far rarer skillset, and consequently a much more valuable one. Some experts argue that the reason Apple has been so successful in the past two decades is that many of the people who work there — particularly the executives — have a background in both the humanities and technology.
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