The Stoics have come down to us in the terms “stoic” and “stoical”, as meaning holding firm and uncomplaining in the face of adversity. Yet there is far more to it than that as this Companion makes clear. Brad Inwood (Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto, who has written on Stoic ethics and edited a useful work on introductory readings in Hellenistic philosophy) has assembled a group of strong names here in order to reveal the complexity of Stoicism as well as its transmission and heritage. What we have as a result is a first‐class introduction to the subject from a modern critical perspective, providing context, analysis, and range.
Stoic philosophy is often summarized as a mixture of the physical (matter, nature, the body), the ethical (morality, values and desires, consequences), and the logical (propositions, grammar, semantics). And again, as an examination of eudaemonism (happiness, with Aristotle hovering in the background), naturalism (virtue vis‐à‐vis nature), and moralism (why choose morality). These are helpful books and starting points for anyone starting their studies, and, those further advanced but wanting to get basic principles straight. They also help to shape the Companion. This begins with a history of the Stoics from Zeno to Chrysippus and Arius Didymus (by David Sedley) and under the Roman Imperial period (by Christopher Gill), where we see the influence of Epictetus on Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. It then moves on to key Stoic areas of thought – epistemology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, theology, moral philosophy, and logic. Then follows a discussion of the Stoic heritage through Spinoza and Grotius, Lipsius and Butler, to works like Becker (1998) which show how Stoicism can live today (I would have liked more on applying Stoical ideas now).
Epistemology (by R.J. Hankinson) probes into noesis, reality and perception, analyzing Sextus Empiricus and the Stoic/sceptic debate, and demonstrating how discussion is based on subtle interpretation of the text. Hankinson follows this with a later chapter on Stoicism and medicine, where, unlike the empiricists, they theorized about body/soul in the heart and the “pneuma”, and provided the foundation for Galen. Metaphysics (by Jacques Brunschwig) analyzes ontology and (in)corporeality, reading Diogenes Laertius through Castor, and evaluating the Stoic categories of substance: such views on matter link the Stoic view of matter with other aspects of their philosophy. There are also chapters on natural philosophy (physics and cosmology), and astronomy and astrology, addressing immanence and activism and naturalism, and teasing things through to determinism. Valuably, too, such discussion takes on board how controversies developed at the time and since over these ideas, what they meant, and how they were represented in the texts (for example, Hahm's analysis in the 1970s, the role of Cleomenes as mediator for Zeno, and Cicero and Eudoxus for views on astronomy).
Theology takes us into the cosmos and the nature and existence of a god, arguments from design, the balance between monotheism and pantheism, providence and theodicy, tying up well with natural philosophy, and driving on into determinism itself (and Aristotelian and Stoical views on teleology). Dorothea Frede offers an excellent analysis of “responsibility v fatalism” in the context of causation. Another well‐known feature about the Stoics is their interest in logic. This is addressed both by Susanne Bobzien's chapter on propositional logic, syllogisms and truth conditions that shows Stoic logic is something “to be done”, and by an important and intricate chapter on Stoic “grammar” that reminds us how central semantics and syntax have been, to what the Stoics said, and our understanding now of what they said. Historiography intervenes as so often with classical texts, and, here and throughout the Companion, acknowledgement is regularly made to textual transmission and interpretation: how we often know what the Stoics said because critics took issue with them; how the medieval period eclectically took what it chose; how Cicero and Seneca and Epictetus have had disproportionate authority as sources; and how even now we need to take care when we read writers like Hutcheson (who both borrowed and rejected Stoic ideas).
This is a work, then, which brings Stoic ideas, and approaches to them, into the reach of the general reader and the student/academic keen to obtain a coherent view of what is going on in the field. The Companion is a gateway to works by Algra and Long, Irwin and Hankinson, Schofield, Sedley and White and others, all cited in a useful bibliography (which adds a listing of primary texts). The approach is for the reader who may not be able to read Latin and Greek, and all the essays are in the English language and Greek terms are transliterated. As for level of difficulty, some are plain sailing, others more complex, probably the most complex demonstrating the challenges of dealing with texts and meanings and ideas. That said, where chapters challenge, as Irwin's chapter on Stoic naturalism and the critics, or Brennan's Stoic moral philosophy, they “show” philosophical analysis in action – we are “doing philosophy” as well as reading about it. Just as with Bobzien on logic, we are “doing logic”. Stoicism was not just a set of views but an activity to be done and lived, and the Companion shows this. Readers will have to look elsewhere for a comprehensive discussion of Stoicism in modern ethics – where many first meet it – but, armed with the background and context in this Companion, they should be able to do this more sure‐footedly. A useful addition to public and personal collections supporting the study of classical thought, philosophy, and ethics.
