A new revised edition of my 2006 book Stoicism is now coming out with Routledge; further details here.
So, what’s new about it? What has been changed? In brief, the core of the book - Chapters 2-5 - are largely the same, as I was reasonably happy with them and they had been received well. The largest revisions were to Chapters 1 and 6, which have changed quite a bit. In the original edition I was least happy with Chapter 1. The section on the loss of Stoic texts, which was a bit too speculative, has been dropped, and the introductions to individual Stoics have been expanded, especially in the light of work I’ve done on the Roman Stoics since 2006. The original Chapter 6 was very much my first attempt to sketch out the subsequent influence of Stoic ideas and since then I’ve done quite a bit of work on this topic (see here), as well as editing The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition. So I’ve rewritten most of this chapter in the light of all this more recent work. Throughout the rest of the text I’ve made a few tweaks and updates here and there. I have replaced ‘non-preferred’ with ‘dis-preferred’ as a translation of apoproegmenon, as that seems better to capture the idea. I have also avoided references to apatheia in the light of recent work that has questioned how helpful this term is in relation to the Stoa (see here). I’ve also taken a more critical stance towards the idea that Epictetus’ three topoi might map onto the three parts of Stoic philosophy (see my change of mind here). In short, I’ve brought everything up to date and in line with my current thinking about Stoicism, which has developed and - I hope - improved over the last two decades. The guide to further reading has also been updated to include references to some of the most important work published since the book first came out. As time went by I became less inclined to recommend the book because I was conscious of a few things I no longer fully agreed with; now I can comfortably say that there's nothing in it I don’t stand by today. I was also conscious that over time the price of the book had increased to a level that I thought was excessive. I’m very pleased that Routledge have managed to re-issue it at a more sensible price.
I have two new books coming out this summer. The first is an edited collection, The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. The second is a revised and updated edition of my 2006 book Stoicism. Click on the titles for further details or below for the publishers' websites:
This year has also seen translations of Lessons in Stoicism into Japanese and Swedish, and a translation of Stoicism into Russian. The autumn should see Hellenistic Philosophy translated into Spanish and the publication of The Stoic Leader, co-authored with Justin Stead. Some new bits and pieces just out:
Some upcoming events:
1. Seneca and Stoicism workshop, organized with my colleague at Royal Holloway, Liz Gloyn, Wednesday 30 April 2025, London. Free and open to all. Further details at https://sites.google.com/view/csas-rhul/workshops 2. Aurelius Foundation public event, Saturday 31 May 2025, London. Further details and tickets at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/practical-philosophy-stoicism-with-the-aurelius-foundation-tickets-1113689197369 3. Stoicism in Practice conference, Friday 20 June 2025, London. Free and open to all. This is the second annual conference of our 'Centre for the Study and Application of Stoicism'. First announcement at https://sites.google.com/view/csas-rhul/conference Next month, I and my colleague Liz Gloyn are running a workshop on Seneca and Stoicism, taking place in Bloomsbury, in central London, on Wednesday the 30 April. This will be the fourth workshop that Liz and I have organized since 2019. Full details of the event can be found at https://philevents.org/event/show/130182
The workshop is free and open to all, and there's no need to register. I’ve been working on three book projects in the closing months of 2024.
The first is The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. This book was finished and submitted last year but this autumn I’ve been checking proofs and compiling an index. All this is now done and it is scheduled to be published in March 2025. There is further information at the CUP website. The second is a new revised edition of my book Stoicism, which was first published in 2006. I have gone through the whole text and made a variety of minor updates and a few additions. The work for this is now in production and it due to be published by Routledge in June 2025. The third is a new translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Robin Waterfield. I have written an Introduction, some notes, and a guide to further reading to accompany Robin’s translation. We are submitting the final manuscript to Basic Books shortly. With these now done, I have three new book projects to focus on. Two of these are trade books on Stoicism, one likely to come out at the end of 2025 and the other in the Autumn of 2026. The third is a larger project I have been working on for a few years, an academic monograph on Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Renaissance, contracted with Oxford University Press. A fourth book for 2025 is an edited volume on Musonius Rufus which after a number of years is close to completion. For anyone interested in the influence and reception of Stoic ideas, the follow chapters written for different venues offer a more-or-less continuous overview:
For the influence of Stoicism after 1800, there are multiple chapters by others in my Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition (2016), details at https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-the-Stoic-Tradition/Sellars/p/book/9780415660754  I'm currently organizing a conference that will take place in London in June with the title 'Stoicism in Practice'. This will be an academic conference bringing people together from a number of disciplines to discuss the application of Stoicism in a variety of contexts. The main focus will be on psychological research but there will also be experts in ancient philosophy and discussion of Stoicism in the context of business and leadership. Full details of the event can be found at tinyurl.com/csasrhul
This month sees the publication of the paperback edition on Aristotle, along with translations into Italian and Spanish. To coincide with these three, I've done three interviews, one with a website called The Collector (https://www.thecollector.com/john-sellars-aristotle-interview/), one for the Italian newspaper La Lettura, and one for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo (https://www.elmundo.es/papel/el-mundo-que-viene/2024/03/15/65e9e886fdddff353f8b459a.html).
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