Jennifer Baker

I was reading what I could find in a library in Galway, Ireland, just spending an afternoon inside when I pulled out Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge.

Riveted like never before, on finishing (it must have taken hours and hours) I saw that she worked at my school. I signed up for class as soon as possible and heard a lot of defenses of Aristotle and criticisms of the Stoics, but I was electrified.

My undergraduate papers somehow got me into graduate school to work with Julia Annas who simply had the ability to walk students through ancient thought, line by line, and still making (slighted updated) Stoic ethics seem livable and like the best, most common sense, option.

Nothing has looked better since, nothing from literature, religion, or non-Stoic common sense.

I’m Jennifer Baker and this is my #PathsToFlourishing story.

This is a #PathsToFlourishing story published as part of a series of stories inspired by the Stoicon-X Women 2021 theme: Practical Paths to Flourishing.