Of strength and knowledge

I am a writer whose intellectual life is shaped by paideia. There are excesses that I must avoid.

Paideia or humanitas

By the same means I reduce weight, I also gain strength: physical exercise.

By the same means I reduce ignorance, I also gain knowledge: by reading and examining what I read.

Sometimes physical strength and philosophical erudition helped me in the same direction: preserving myself or overcoming fear.

Being a writer

Unlike moderns, who ask, “What work is not sedentary?”, the ancients asked, “What work is sedentary?” The increase in sedentary work separates modernity from antiquity. For the ancients, only the writer did sedentary work; but his work remains sedentary today.

Any writer can tell you that they read a lot.

But sedentary work tends to create a sedentary person. And that can cost you your health or even your life. What to do?

Oppose a routine like that of a bodybuilder to sedentary work like that of a writer. That is what I do.

Avoid excess

What the Romans called a superstitious person, we call a zealot. Just as the drunkard abuses drink, the glutton abuses food, and the womanizer abuses women, the zealot abuses religion. (Here, abuse means excess.)

Other abuses that I try to avoid: pen or book abuse and bike or dumbbell abuse.