This event is another one of my favorites. Hosted by NYU, French novelist Pierre Vesperini spoke about ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and its effects on our political system today. But his talk went way past this subject and onto many thought-provoking topics such as the ancients, war, history, and of course, philosophy. Firstly, he compared Western economic and political models with those from Greek and Roman philosophies, saying that they are directly influenced by them. However, the practices we use today have nothing to do with real Greek and Roman practices, but are merely an illusion of them. But to fully understand his talk, he explains the two ways philosophical reflections should be understood (the way the reflection proceeds or the results from it), and the two meanings of word philosophy. The latter is this: the academic meaning: as a discipline, traditions, and curriculum depending on the university or the country. He explains that this form of philosophy is: “not a thing that occurs in all eternity or in all the world. It is not historical, not necessary but contingent. It does not go back further than the beginning of the 19th century.” The other meaning is something that he  has found personally. He found that it has nothing to do with the academic meaning; it is not a thing but a name that exists in all cultures. He begins his connection with globalization and communication early on, but does not say it explicitly, which I really liked. Vesperini then goes on to talk about his past as a historian and why he no longer considers himself one: “although I presented myself as a historian, I was not trying to reconstruct the path--I was after something else. This means being a philosopher but not in the academic way. Philosophy can mean anything: medicine, gardening, even philosophy in the academic sense. The philosopher is always after something. He keeps moving. When he finds the thing he is afer, he is not a philosopher any longer, but a specialist.”