Cultivating an intellectual life is a necessity of the soul.
And even those serving life sentences in the United States have realized this.
A writer and professor decided to teach History of Thought to prisoners serving life sentences in a US prison.
She started with the Enlightenment, going through Francis Bacon, Kant, Rousseau, Voltaire...
And perhaps you're wondering:
"Why would individuals who are going to die in prison be interested in studying philosophy? Or literature?"
The answer is simple: they understood that our soul needs to learn.
Roger was imprisoned at 18 and is serving a 60-year sentence.
Now, at almost 50 years old, he said:
"For better or for worse, I am a civilly dead man."
But that doesn't mean he's intellectually dead.
Roger is addicted to Foucault and Kafka.
According to Roger, those sentenced to life imprisonment are influential in prison.
Today, 1 in 7 prisoners in the US are serving life sentences.
They create the "prison code," which the prisoners follow and become a beacon of light for the men around them.
Not surprisingly, between 2015 and 2024, the Great Meadow prison in New York State attended philosophy and literature classes with punctuality and attention: the life-sentence prisoners attended the classes and got high marks on the tests.
One of the favorite courses among the prisoners was "The Atlantic World," where Professor David Bond taught about slavery and the trafficking of Africans.
One member of the group started the program as a white supremacist but changed his mind after participating in David's classroom discussions.
The students were captivated by the Iliad and the Odyssey, stories written almost 1000 years before Christ.
They identified with the wars and human emotions of the time.
One of them, who in a past life was a bricklayer, said: "If I had known these stories before, my life would certainly have taken a different turn."
Literature and philosophy change lives.
Those who read have access to deep human emotions and never feel alone.
Because no matter how you are feeling now;
surely a Russian who lived 200 years ago felt the same things as you.