JOHN SELLARS

An Introduction to Farquharson's Marcus Aurelius

21/4/2019

I've recently written and sent in an introduction to an edition of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. The book will be in the Macmillan Collector's Library, published by Pan Macmillan. This series was originally published simply as Collector's Library but was acquired by Pan Macmillan a few years ago. The original series issued an edition of Marcus Aurelius, in A. S. L. Farquharson's translation (pictured). This new edition, due out in 2020, will contain my new Introduction and Farquharson's translation, in a nice little pocket hardback volume.

Lessons in Stoicism

7/3/2019

My next book, Lessons in Stoicism, is a short popular guide to Stoicism aimed at a wide audience. It goes through a number of key themes in Stoicism, focusing on the Roman Stoics and introducing the Roman Stoics as individuals along the way.

It will be published by Penguin in September 2019. North American rights and translations rights for a couple of languages have already been sold. Right now copyediting and the cover are being finalized.

There's some further information here.

Events for 2019

9/1/2019

Here’s a round-up of some things I’ll be doing this coming year (despite having made a concerted effort to keep my schedule as clear as possible in order to finish my current book project):

Practical Stoicism, a two-day course for the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education, 9-10 March 2019, co-taught with Chris Gill. Further details here.
Musonius Rufus Workshop, a one-day conference at Royal Holloway's central London building, 11 Bedford Square, 12 April 2019, co-oragnized with Liz Gloyn. Further details here.
British Society for the History of Philosophy conference, King’s College London, 24-26 April 2019. I’ve organized a panel for this, featuring me, Michael Griffin, and Richard Sorabji, on the ancient commentators on Aristotle. Further details here.
Philosophy as a Way of Life and the History of Philosophy, a conference at King’s College London, 28-29 June 2019, co-organized with Joachim Aufderheide and John Callanan. Further details here.
German Society for Ancient Philosophy (Gesellschaft fuer antike Philosophie), Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt am Main, 24-27 September 2019, invited speaker. Further details here.

Autumn 2018 Update

6/1/2019

It’s been a busy autumn, focused more on public-facing activities than research. At the end of September we held Stoicon at Senate House in London. You can see a short film about the event here, and all of the main talks were recorded too, available here.

Around the same time I wrote a short piece on Stoic Week for an online platform called The Conversation, and the piece was republished on multiple other sites, including the Independent and Newsweek. Within a month it had received over 100,000 views. That must make it the most widely read thing I’ve written thus far.

I also wrote a short piece on Philosophy as a Way of Life for The Philosophers’ Magazine, talking mainly about Hellenistic philosophers.

Over the summer I wrote the first draft of a short book on Stoicism for Penguin, and over the autumn did some fine-tuning and editing before final submission. The book will be called Lessons in Stoicism and is due to appear around September 2019.

It’s now time to turn the focus back to research. The next main task is to complete a monograph on Marcus Aurelius, which is due to be published by Routledge in their series Philosophy in the Roman World.

Three New Chapters

1/8/2018

I have just completed and now submitted three chapters for different edited books. The first of these, ‘Renaissance Consolations: Philosophical Remedies for Fate and Fortune’, is for a volume devoted to fate and fortune in Renaissance philosophy. The second, ‘Self or Cosmos: Foucault versus Hadot’, is for a volume devoted to the late work of Michel Foucault. The third, ‘Indifference versus Affirmation: Michel Foucault on the Stoic Idea of Life as a Test’, is for a volume on the French reception of Stoicism, based on a conference from a couple of years ago. I have also written a very short introduction to a special issue of a journal devoted to the Stoic tradition, arising from a conference I attended in Budapest last year.

Hellenistic Philosophy

20/7/2018

Delighted to announce the publication of my latest book, Hellenistic Philosophy, with Oxford University Press. The book is now out in Europe in both hardback and paperback, and will be available in the rest of the world within the next month or two.