Thematically related recent piece about how Machiavelli and Du Bois had a similar perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127895 https://news.ycombi

Thematically related recent piece about how Machiavelli and Du Bois had a similar perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127895 Also, early this year I read Pigliucci's How to Be a Stoic. In that book the author often references that he had "conversations" with his "friend" Epictetus. All this to say: there might be something to this practice of befriending the dead.