Stephen Greenblatt: Why “This Time Is Different” Is Always Wrong

What It Covers

Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard humanities professor and Pulitzer Prize winner, explores how ancient texts remain relevant to modern crises. The conversation examines Shakespeare's coded political commentary, Euripides' refugee debates, Lucretius' atomic theory rediscovery, and how figures like Montaigne and Marcus Aurelius navigated dangerous times without becoming victims or tyrants themselves.

Key Questions Answered

• •Ancient texts as survival guides: Greek and Roman works function as rehearsals for moral crises because humans evolved fiction to mentally simulate alternative scenarios before acting. Euripides' play The Children of Hercules debates refugee asylum obligations in terms identical to current immigration controversies, demonstrating that fundamental political dilemmas remain unchanged across 2,500 years despite technological progress.
• •Artistic constraint under tyranny: Shakespeare mentioned politics directly once, nearly lost his life, then developed coded commentary through historical plays. Writers in repressive societies from Elizabethan England to Stalin's Russia create escape valves where dangerous ideas surface through fiction. Christopher Marlowe failed this balance and died at 29, while Shakespeare survived by mastering indirect expression.
• •Likability as survival strategy: Montaigne and Benjamin Franklin succeeded partly through genuine agreeability combined with genius, unlike brilliant but abrasive figures like Cicero or Socrates. Montaigne maintained connections with powerful people during French religious wars by being pleasant enough that even fanatics wanted his counsel, demonstrating that intellectual humility paired with social skill enables influence without creating fatal enemies.
• •The swerve concept: Lucretius proposed one atom deviating from straight downward motion could trigger chain reactions creating complex life over billions of years, not thousands. This atomic theory's medieval rediscovery fundamentally challenged religious cosmology. Modern technology now enables reading carbonized Herculaneum scrolls without unrolling them, potentially recovering lost Epicurean texts that could reveal additional ancient scientific insights.
• •Power without corruption: Marcus Aurelius held absolute authority yet avoided becoming monstrous like other emperors, though he never directly addressed serving Nero in his philosophical writings. Seneca instead portrayed psychopaths and tyrants in plays, using fiction to comment on what he couldn't state directly. This demonstrates how philosophical practice can counteract the alpha male dominance pattern observable even in chimpanzee troops.