Emily Wilson: evaluation

Transcript context

…Say we elect you by lot to be in charge of all classics education. What would you do? What would you change? [laughs] I would try and find ways to make it both more attractive and more inclusive to people from different backgrounds. I would talk to more different people about what it might be that might entice them to learn about cultures and languages that are totally different from any that are nowadays extant. I think we should stop selling classics as, “These are the societies that formed modern America, or that formed the Western canon” — which is a really bogus kind of argument — and instead start saying, “We should learn about ancient societies because they’re different from modern societies. ” That means that we can learn things by learning about alterity. We can learn about what would it be to be just as human as we are, and yet be living in a very, very different society. Now, you have another well-known book. It’s called Seneca: A Life. On reading it, this is my reaction: why are the Stoics so hypocritical? Seneca spends his life sucking up to power. He’s very well off, extremely political, and possibly involved in murder plots, right?…

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