Why should we take anything other than an antiquarian interest in the doctrinal intricacies of a school of Ancient Greek ethical thought that passed its zenith in 200 AD? The dust-jacket copy on Tad Brennan's book claims that it will explain not only how to live the Stoic life, but also why we might want to, the reason being that Stoic ideas remain valuable today, both intellectually and in practice. In fact, while Brennan certainly works hard to render Stoicism intelligible, he ends up identifying various ways in which its vision of human nature is either unintelligible, or a source of damaging misunderstandings about ourselves that continue to inform our thinking.

LRB 21 September 2006 | PDF Download