Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Stoicism
- Introduction
- 1 The Socratic Imprint on Epictetus' Philosophy
- 2 The Stoics on the Voluntariness of the Passions
- 3 Stoicism in the Apostle Paul: A Philosophical Reading
- 4 Moral Judgment in Seneca
- 5 Stoic First Movements in Christianity
- 6 Where Were the Stoics in the Late Middle Ages?
- 7 Abelard's Stoicism and Its Consequences
- 8 Constancy and Coherence
- 9 On the Happy Life: Descartes vis-à-vis Seneca
- 10 Psychotherapy and Moral Perfection: Spinoza and the Stoics on the Prospect of Happiness
- 11 Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero's Problematic Legacy
- 12 Stoic Emotion
- Works Cited
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Stoicism
- Introduction
- 1 The Socratic Imprint on Epictetus' Philosophy
- 2 The Stoics on the Voluntariness of the Passions
- 3 Stoicism in the Apostle Paul: A Philosophical Reading
- 4 Moral Judgment in Seneca
- 5 Stoic First Movements in Christianity
- 6 Where Were the Stoics in the Late Middle Ages?
- 7 Abelard's Stoicism and Its Consequences
- 8 Constancy and Coherence
- 9 On the Happy Life: Descartes vis-à-vis Seneca
- 10 Psychotherapy and Moral Perfection: Spinoza and the Stoics on the Prospect of Happiness
- 11 Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero's Problematic Legacy
- 12 Stoic Emotion
- Works Cited
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Stoicism remains one of the most significant minority reports in the history of Western philosophy. Unfortunately, however, the precise nature of its impact on later thinkers is far from clear. The essays in this volume are intended to bring this picture into sharper focus by exploring how Stoicism actually influenced philosophers from antiquity through the modern period in fields ranging from logic and ethics to politics and theology. The contributing authors have expertise in different periods in the history of philosophy, but all have sought to demonstrate the continuity of Stoic themes over time, looking at the ways in which Stoic ideas were appropriated (often unconsciously) and transformed by later philosophers for their own purposes and under widely varying circumstances. The story they tell shows that Stoicism had many faces beyond antiquity, and that its doctrines have continued to appeal to philosophers of many different backgrounds and temperaments.
In tracing the influence of Stoicism on Western thought, one can take either the high road or the low road. The high road would insist on determining the ancient provenance of Stoic and apparently Stoic ideas in the work of medieval and modern thinkers, using the writings of the ancient Stoics to grade their proximity to the genuine article; this would require paying close attention to the particular questions that exercised thinkers such as Zeno and Chrysippus, in order to determine the extent to which later figures contributed to their solutions.
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- StoicismTraditions and Transformations, pp. 1 - 9Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004