Deep Dives

A thorough exploration of a new chapter in The Great Conversation. Every day.

✦

On the Mechanics of CatharsisToday's Deep Dive

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Heart's Catharsis

Work

Essays

Chapter

Essay XXVII. OF FRIENDSHIP

Heart's CatharsisEmotional CatharsisFriendship

Excerpt Preview

"
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza to open the liver,...

- Essays

Today's Analysis

Bacon argues that friendship is not merely a social comfort, but a necessary medical purge for the mind's dangerous passions.

Open Today's Deep Dive

Your Deep Dives

Premium
View all saved
Augustine of Hippo

On the Exhaustion of Finite Loves

Augustine of Hippo Confessions

Rest in Him, and ye shall be at rest. Whither go ye in rough ways? Whither go ye? The good that you love is...

Divine SourceMisplaced Desire
Saved
Arthur Schopenhauer

On the Coin of Happiness

Arthur Schopenhauer The Wisdom of Life

Cheerfulness is a direct and immediate gain,--the very coin, as it were, of happiness, and not, like all else, merely a cheque upon the...

CheerfulnessExistentialism
Saved
Marcus Aurelius

On the Burden of Perfect Coherence

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Herein doth consist happiness of life, for a man to know thoroughly the true nature of everything; what is the matter, and what is...

HappinessTruth
Saved

Past Daily Deep Dives

Premium
Browse archive

AUG

18

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson On the Duty of Originality

Essays

Education

AUG

17

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal On the Weight of Consciousness

Pensées

Human Condition

AUG

16

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal On the Vertigo of the Infinite

Pensées

Existential Reflection

AUG

15

Seneca

Seneca On the Legibility of Virtue

Letters From a Stoic

Balance

AUG

14

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne On the Treason of the Word

Essays, Book One

Lying

Go Premium to unlock your full journey.

Generate your own Deep Dives, revisit the daily archive, listen across the Aporium, and follow curated journeys through the Great Conversation.

Explore Premium