Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

The Art of Living

Four Roles That Shape Life

Massimo Pigliucci considers persona development.

The ancient Romans already knew what Shakespeare would later proclaim: all the world’s a stage. But the Stoics took this metaphor seriously in a way that might surprise us. When the philosopher Panaetius (185-110 BCE) spoke of us having four personae – literally the masks worn by actors in Greek and Roman theater – he wasn’t suggesting we’re all putting on a false face. Instead, he was proposing something more profound: that each of us plays four distinct roles in the drama of life, and that learning to perform them skillfully, without contradiction or confusion, is the key to living well. The catch? Some of these roles we choose freely, while others are thrust upon us by nature, chance, or circumstance.

…