Holiday: Stoic Musonius Rufus argued for genderless virtue in ancient Rome
Ryan Holiday · Ryan Holiday: How Stoicism Changed the World · Joe Lonsdale · Feb 2, 2023 · at 34:34
Ryan Holiday explains that ancient Stoicism contained progressive elements regarding gender and education.
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“Musonius Rufus, who's Epictetus's philosophy teacher, is like, He gives a speech on, he says, should women be taught philosophy? He says, is virtue the same in men and in women? And he makes this argument, you know, in Rome around the first century that virtue is genderless, that like courage and justice and wisdom and self-discipline might demonstrate themselves differently in men or women, but the, it's beautiful in both, right? Or it's necessary in both. And so actually there's an immense amount of progressivism then in the philosophy”
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