PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE IS NO LONGER RUNNING. VIEW CURRENT COURSES HERE.
Richard Humphreys & John Sellars
Ours is a world of deepening uncertainty and political malaise, where the old kinds of optimism for a steadily improving future are impossible to sustain. Stoicism offers a hope of enduring with dignity; it may indicate how without having recourse to religious faith, we can find stability in a relativistic world. We will investigate Stoicism as a system of ideas about living well, and as a set of linked understandings of the natural world, and we’ll think about how these are, or could be, played out today as well as in historical terms. How can uncertainty be tolerated, or even enjoyed? Our concerns will range from the ancient Stoics themselves to Renaissance re-readings of Stoicism, as well as nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy and literature.
For orientation and background we shall read Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell, 1995). For a direct taste of ancient Stoicism we shall read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (in the Penguin ‘Great Ideas’ series, and many other editions). For a general overview of Stoicism, its later legacy, and details of further reading see John Sellars, Stoicism (Acumen, 2006).
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE IS NO LONGER RUNNING. VIEW CURRENT COURSES HERE.
Seminars
1. Why Stoics?
John Sellars, with Richard Humphreys
The history, doctrines, and reception of ancient Stoicism, and why we might be interested in it today.
Reading
J. Sellars, Stoicism (Acumen, 2006)
B. Inwood and L. Gerson, eds, Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Hackett, 1997)
B. Inwood, ed., The Cambridge Companion to The Stoics (Cambridge, 2003)
2. Stoic Fate, Ancient and Later
John Sellars, with Richard Humphreys
The Stoic theory of fate, as expounded by Seneca, and Renaissance extrapolations by Petrarch and Justus Lipsius. We shall explore the themes of affirmation, resignation, and gambling via the film Intacto.
Reading
Seneca, On Providence; Petrarch, On Fortune Fair and Foul; Justus Lipsius, On Constancy (selections of all three will be provided)
Film: Intacto, dir Fresnadillo, 2002 (a screening will take place on the Tuesday prior to the class)
3. Stoicism and Art in Renaissance Culture
Richard Humphreys, with John Sellars
The art and literature of Renaissance Europe reveals the powerful, renewed impact of Stoic thought. This session will look at two indicative areas during the seventeenth century – the Rubens circle and its intimate links with the neo-stoic Justus Lipsius in Antwerp, and English literature and theology, including the work of Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Joseph Hall, and Thomas Gataker. We shall visit The Banqueting House in order to see Rubens’s ceiling panels.
Please note: the visit to the Banqueting House will take place on Thursday 14th December 2006 at 11am.
Reading
Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton, 1991)
Audrey Chew, Stoicism in English Renaissance Literature (1988)
Gilles D Monsarrat, Light from the Porch: Stoicism and English Renaissance Literature (Paris, 1984)
Andrew Shifflett, Stoicism, Politics and Literature in the Age of Milton: War and Peace Reconciled (Cambridge, 1998)
4. Stoicism, Freedom or Slavery?
John Sellars, with Richard Humphreys
Hegel suggested that Stoicism confused introspection with freedom, offering merely a false form of freedom. We shall consider Hegel’s criticisms in relation to the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. We shall also note the subsequent engagements with Stoicism among the Young Hegelians. Nietzsche, despite a number of critical swipes at the Stoics, offered a more positive assessment of Epictetus’s Stoicism, contrasting it favourably with Christian slave morality.
Reading
Epictetus, The Discourses, ed. C. Gill (London, 1995)
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977), pp 197-206
F. Nietzsche, Daybreak (Cambridge, 1982), p 546 (selections will be provided)
5. Stoicism and Literary Modernism
Richard Humphreys, with John Sellars
We shall explore Stoic themes in the work of Wyndham Lewis and (more briefly) Samuel Beckett.
Reading
Wyndam Lewis, ‘Enemy of the Stars’ and ‘Physics of the Not-Self’, in Collected Poems and Plays
Richard Humphreys, Wyndham Lewis (Tate, 2004)
6. Post-Structuralist Stoicism
John Sellars, with Richard Humphreys
An unlikely eruption of Stoicism can be found in the work of some late 1960s French philosophers, notably Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. We shall consider briefly Foucault’s late work on ‘technologies of the self’ but our principal focus will be on Deleuze’s claim that the only meaningful form of ethics today is the Stoics injunction ‘not to be unworthy of what happens to us’.
Reading
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (1990), pp 20-21
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1988), ‘How Do You make Yourself a Body without Organs
General Further Reading - Stoicism in Contemporary Culture:
Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full (Picador) - starring Epictetus
Tom Morris, The Stoic Art of Living (Open Court, 2004) - from the inspirational speaker and author of If Aristotle Ran General Motors
Admiral J. B. Stockdale, ‘Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 50 (1995), 1-13 - a Vietnam Vet uses Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius to get by
Nancy Sherman, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) - building on Stockdale
