Barlaam of Seminara on Stoic Ethics

Charles R. Hogg and John Sellars, Barlaam of Seminara on Stoic Ethics: Text, Translation, and Interpretative Essays. 

Mohr Siebeck, 2022, ISBN 9783161595271. Further information. 

This volume contains the first critical edition and translation of Barlaam of Seminara’s fourteenth century treatise Ethics According to the Stoics, along with a series of interpretative essays explaining its content and context. Barlaam’s text is the earliest interpretative work written on Stoic ethics, a product of the burgeoning Italian Renaissance but also drawing on Barlaam’s experience in the Byzantine intellectual world of Constantinople. Intriguingly, it offers a radically different account of the Stoic theory of emotions to the one known from other sources, possibly taken from sources accessible to Barlaam but now lost. The volume includes interpretative essays on each of the two books of Barlaam’s treatise, along with a biographical introduction and an essay setting out the wider context of the reception of Stoicism in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. 

Contents

Introduction 

1. Barlaam of Seminara 
Southern Italy 
Constantinople 
Debates with Dominicans 
The Hesychast Controversy 
Diplomacy and Expulsion 
Naples and Avignon 
Gerace 

2. The Ethica secundum Stoicos 
The Text of ESS 
Authorship
Sources 
The Plan of the Work 

I. Text and Translation

Note on the Text 
Table of Chapter Headings 
Text
Translation

II. Interpretative Essays

The Role of Bodily and External Goods for Happiness in Book 1 (Charles R. Hogg Jr.)
1. Introduction
2. Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness 
3. Aristotle on Virtue, Emotions, and External Goods 
4. Aristotle: Some Critical Comments 
5. Barlaam on External Goods and Happiness 
6. The Stoic Definition is Demonstrated (ESS 1.2–14) 
7. The Peripatetic Definition is Refuted (ESS 1.15–25) 
8. The Place of Advantages in the Happy Life (ESS 1.26–29) 
9. Conclusion: Some Critical Thoughts 

The Stoic Theory of Emotions in Book 2 (John Sellars)
1. The Stoic Soul (ESS 2.1) 
2. Three Mental Traits (ESS 2.2) 
3. Varieties of Will (ESS 2.3–4) 
4. An Eightfold Division of Mental States (ESS 2.5–9) 
5. The Standard Stoic Account of Emotions (ESS 2.10–11) 
6. Two Fourfold Accounts Combined (ESS 2.11) 
7. Constantia and εὐπάθειαι (ESS 2.12) 
8. The Full Account (ESS 2.13) 
9. Comments on Theophrastus (ESS 2.13–14) 
10. Overcoming Emotional Disturbances (ESS 2.15–16)

The Reception of Stoic Ethics in the Middle Ages (John Sellars)
1. Stoic Ethics in Late Antiquity 
2. Stoicism in Byzantium 
3. The Latin Middle Ages 
4. The Twelfth Century: Peter Abelard and William of Conches 
5. The Thirteenth Century: Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas 
6. The Fourteenth Century: Jean Buridan 
7. Petrarch and Stoic Ethics