JOHN SELLARS
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Upcoming Online Talks

19/9/2020

 
Here’s a quick round up of online talks I’m giving this autumn, along with links: 

1. ‘What is Stoicism?’ at Stoicon, Saturday 17th October, register at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/stoicon-2020-virtual-conference-tickets-103616048390 

2. 'Stoicism and Social Media', The Aurelius Foundation Webinar, Friday 30th October, register at https://www.aureliusfoundation.com/events/webinar-170720-s2c3l-eh844-ent3c-t39ta

3. ‘Marcus Aurelius and Journaling’, Stoicon-x Journaling with the Stoics, Sunday 1st November, register at https://www.subscribepage.com/stoiconxsalon 

4. ‘’How to Be a Stoic’, The Philosopher Webinar, Monday 2nd November, register at https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/events-sellars 

5. ‘Hellenistic Philosophy as a Guide to Life’, De Nacht van de Vrijdenker Filosofiefestival, Friday 13th November, register at https://www.nachtvandevrijdenker.be

Marcus Aurelius

13/7/2020

 
I'm very pleased to report the publication of my new book on Marcus Aurelius. You can read more about it here. The opening paragraph of the Preface sums up what it is trying to do: 

This book is a study of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, as presented in his work widely known as the Meditations. Its aim is to present Marcus as a serious philosopher. It tries to do this in a number of ways. First it tries to show that Marcus was a committed Stoic philosopher and not, as some have suggested, a confused eclectic thinker. Second it reflects on how Marcus understood what it meant to do philosophy, rather than anachronistically judging him by present day standards. Third it examines the unique literary form of the Meditations and asks what sort of philosophical text this might be. Fourth – and most important of all – it examines the philosophical content in the Meditations, placing it within the wider context of previous Stoic philosophy. As we shall see, Marcus engaged with a wide range of material spanning the three traditional parts of Stoic philosophy – logic, physics, and ethics – and bringing this out will hopefully also challenge the claim that Marcus was merely interested in what is sometimes called “practical ethics”.

I have also written a piece online that say a bit more: 'Marcus Aurelius, The All-Round Philosopher'. 


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New Book Projects

13/5/2020

 
Over the last few months I have signed three new contracts for books, all of which are collaborations with others. They are (in the most likely order of completion): 

1. Barlaam of Seminara on Stoic Ethics (Mohr Siebeck), with C. R. Hogg, comprising a text and translation of Barlaam’s work on Stoic ethics, along with a series of interpretative essays. 

2. The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (Cambridge University Press), with a chapter by myself and 10 other contributors. 

3. Brill’s Companion to Musonius Rufus (Brill), co-edited with Liz Gloyn, my colleague at Royal Holloway, and many, many contributors.

Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Renaissance

13/5/2020

 
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I’ve just had an article published, entitled ‘Renaissance Humanism and Philosophy as a Way of Life’. This has been kicking around for a while; its first outing was at a conference in Italy in 2015, and I read it more recently at a conference in London I co-organized in 2019. It has been published in a special issue of Metaphilosophy devoted to the theme of philosophy as a way of life. Due to an existing agreement between Royal Holloway and Wiley, it has been published open access. 

It’s part of a larger project I’ve been working on over the last few years on this topic. I have recently sent off two other papers that complement it, both of which will appear as chapters in edited volumes. The first looks at the Renaissance interest in biographies of ancient philosophers and what that might tell us about how they conceived philosophy in the period (‘Philosophical Lives in the Renaissance’). The second looks at works of philosophical consolation in the Renaissance and again what that might tell us about how they understood philosophy (‘Renaissance Consolations: Philosophical Remedies for Fate and Fortune’). 

I’ve had tentative plans to try to develop a book on this topic, building on these three preliminary papers. A much earlier paper on spiritual exercises in Justus Lipsius could also feed into it (here). I have not fully decided either way, but even so these three new pieces together try to make the case for the claim that during the Renaissance a number of thinkers embraced the idea of philosophy as a way of life, and by acknowledging this we can make better sense of what they were doing. 

Stoic Ethics Workshop

2/2/2020

 
Last year, my colleague Liz Gloyn and I organized a workshop on the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus (and off the back of that we'll be editing a volume on Musonius). This year we are organizing a second workshop, this time focused on early Stoic ethics. We hope that this will become an annual 'Royal Holloway Stoicism Workshop'. For further details and the call for papers, see the PhilEvents page. 

The Aurelius Foundation

20/1/2020

 
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I am very pleased to announce an event I’m involved in that will take place in March. It will be the inaugural event of The Aurelius Foundation, a new non-profit organization. The Foundation’s goals are: 

  • The VISION of the Aurelius Foundation is increase awareness and to share the principles of Stoic philosophy based on the four cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Justice, Temperance and Courage in the pursuit of happiness
  • The foundation endeavours to share this philosophy to help young people consider how they might plan their journey through life and support their considerations of how to live a life that contributes to the greater good.
  • The foundation is dedicated to youth and youth development through the education of higher principles and values of stoic philosophy to bring positive and constructive change through their life contributions to improve upon the many challenges in the world today.

Its first event will take place in Mayfair, London on 6th March 2020. This event will be an opportunity for people to learn more about the basic ideas behind Stoicism and to hear from people who apply Stoicism in a variety of personal and business contexts - from professional sport to prisons to business and finance.  

The goal of the event is to offer guidance and support for people at the outset of their adult and professional lives in the 18 to 30 age group. It hopes to bring together university students, recent graduates, and young entrepreneurs in order to foster useful networks for the future. 

The all day event - completely free - will be in central London (W1). Refreshments will be provided throughout the day. Further details about the Foundation will be available shortly at www.aureliusfoundation.com. In order to register for a place email Hollie.Boe@radleyandco.com with ‘Aurelius Foundation Event’ in the subject line. 

Want to know more about Stoicism? Start here: https://theconversation.com/want-to-be-happy-then-live-like-a-stoic-for-a-week-103117 

Upcoming Talks

8/1/2020

 
I’ve got a couple of talks coming up in 2020: 

  • ‘The Rise of Modern Stoicism’, 18th March, at the University of East Anglia.
 
  • ’Training and Habituation in Book 3 of Epictetus’s Discourses’, 9-10th April 2020, at a conference entitled Lectures croisées du livre III des Entretiens d’Épictète, at the University of Lyon 3 / École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. 

Before both, I’ll also be presenting at the inaugural event of The Aurelius Foundation, 6th March, in London. 

New Book on Marcus Aurelius

8/1/2020

 
I have just finished writing a book on Marcus Aurelius. This has been a longstanding commitment so I am pleased to have finally got it finished. It is due to be published by Routledge, in their series Philosophy in the Roman World. 

The aim of the book is to defend Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher, and in particular a Stoic philosopher. It is all too common to hear it said that Marcus wasn’t really a philosopher at all - he was merely an amateur, he just wrote moral exhortation, he was a confused eclectic, he resorted to colourful images and rhetoric rather than argument, and so on. 

I try to defend Marcus from these sorts of charges on a number of fronts. The first is biographical, where I look at Marcus’s early commitment to philosophy and his education. It is striking that the vast majority of his teachers in philosophy were Stoics. The correspondence with Fronto is especially interesting here, as it makes clear that Marcus was reading Chrysippus and Seneca, not just Epictetus. 

The second front is literary. The Meditations is an anomalous text. In order to take it seriously as a work of philosophy we need to understand what type of text it is and what it was supposed to achieve. That requires thinking about the idea of written exercises conceived as a form of philosophical training, which was in turn part of philosophy understood as an art of living. 

The third, and most important, front is philosophical. This involves looking at the philosophical themes in the Meditations and unpacking the Stoic doctrines presupposed by Marcus’s personal notes to himself. Against a common view that the Meditations is a work of practical ethics, I look at themes in logic, physics, and ethics. As I have presented it in the book, it’s in fact physical themes that predominate, although on so many topics one can see logical, physical, and ethical material intermingled. Marcus certainly engages with a wide range of philosophical material. 

In the process of writing the book I have found a number of things: 

It’s often been claimed that Marcus was not a proper philosopher because he resorted to colourful rhetorical imagery rather than giving real arguments. In fact there are quite a few arguments in the Meditations, and they are specifically Stoic arguments. For instance, in 5.16 he uses the first Stoic indemonstrable syllogism; in 7.75 he uses the fifth indemonstrable; in 10.6 he uses the second indemonstrable; and there are many other examples. 

The division of the books of the Meditations into sections that everyone uses today only dates back to Thomas Gataker’s edition of 1652. Earlier editions (Sally 1626, Casaubon 1643) divide things up differently, while the first printed edition (Xylander 1559) just prints each book as continuous text without divisions. When reading the Meditations, then, it would be a mistake to approach it as a series of isolated aphorisms. Often a passage that can seem cryptic makes a lot more sense when read as part of a chain of thought spanning a series of interconnected sections. The text is a thought process, not a set of carefully crafted literary nuggets. 

While I have learned a lot from reading Pierre Hadot’s various writings on Marcus, I have become less convinced by his claim that Epictetus’s three areas of study (topoi) are the key to understanding the Meditations. While there are certainly lots of echoes of Epictetus there, there are also lots of echoes of Seneca, but just as important are core Stoic ideas originating in the early Stoa. Marcus certainly read his Chrysippus, as were so many of his contemporaries, such as Galen, Plutarch, and Aulus Gellius. 

The table of contents for the book looks like this: 

Introduction

Part I: Marcus and his Meditations 
1. 
Marcus the Stoic Philosopher 
2. The Meditations, a Philosophical Text

Part II: Logic 
3. Impressions and Judgements 

Part III: Physics 
4. 
Nature and Change 
5. Fate and Providence 
6. Soul and Emotion 
7. Time and Death

Part IV: Ethics 
8. 
Virtue and Justice 
9. The Cosmic City

Conclusion
​

Upcoming Talks

14/9/2019

 
Here's a quick round-up of some upcoming talks: 

  • On 25th September I’ll be speaking at the annual conference of the German Society for Ancient Philosophy in Frankfurt (VI. Kongress der Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie). My title is ‘The Unthinking Sage: Marcus Aurelius on Spontaneous Ethical Action’. Further details here. 
  • On 5th October I’ll be speaking at Stoicon in Athens, also on Marcus Aurelius. My title is ‘For the Benefit of All: On Being a Social Stoic’. Tickets available here. 
  • On 12th October I’ll be hosting Stoicon-x London and running a wrokshop session called ‘What Matters? Stoic Views about Value’. Tickets available here. 
  • On 16th October I'll be speaking at Stoicon-x University of Sussex. Tickets here. 
  • On 20th October I’ll be ‘in conversation’ at the Ilkley Literature Festival, in Yorkshire, talking about my new book Lessons in Stoicism. Tickets available here. 
  • On 19th November I’ll be talking to the Renaissance research group at the University of Warwick about ‘Philosophical Lives in the Renaissance’. Further details here. 

Looking further ahead, in March 2020 I’ll be visiting the University of East Anglia to talk about Modern Stoicism and in April 2020 I’ll be speaking at a conference in Lyon on Epictetus.

Lessons in Stoicism

2/9/2019

 
This week sees the publication of my new book, Lessons in Stoicism. You can find further details here and at the Penguin website. There have been a couple of nice advance reviews, such as this one at Five Books and one in the Evening Standard. 

You can read an extract from the Prologue at the Foyles blog. 

SOME UPDATES: 
  • A review at In Common 
  • A thorough overview by Donald Robertson on Medium
  • A feature in the Mail on Sunday's You Magazine ​
  • A review in The Scotsman 
  • A review in The Guardian
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  • Home
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    • Art of Living
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