The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

I found this very informative and useful in my study of Stocism.

This beautifully edited volume, in 15 chapters written by some of the most distinguished philosophers, scholars and translators of the ancient texts, gives readers a compact, state-of-the-art overview and bibliography of Stoic systematic philosophy. It begins with two chapters on the history of the school, and concludes with a chapter on its philosophical significance in later Western philosophy. Between those two bookends are chapters on Stoic cosmology and theology, physics, metaphysics, determinism, logic, and ethics. The writing throughout is superb and accessible to anyone with even a slight acquaintance with ancient Stoicism. Nonetheless, it is aimed at the serious student – someone who is interested in the difficulties of reconstructing and interpreting the ancient texts, and learning about the philosophical differences between ancient Stoics themselves.

From the description offered on the back cover, "One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker." An earlier reviewer expressed frustration that the text was convoluted, I disagree on the whole, but there are areas (especially early) in the book that I think are overly complex and aimed specifically at academics. This is unfortunate because I think most of the book does a great job introducing and clarifying many aspects of Stoicism, and provides a solid foundation for continued reading.This is a compendium of essays and not all authors are equal. As an example, there is a chapter on Stoic logic early in the book that is clearly written by an accomplished expert; however, the entire chapter is essentially wasted on the average reader as it wades into levels of minutiae aimed at an academic interested in reading texts to extract hidden or hard to find details. There is no introduction as to why Stoic logic is important, how it evolved, who evolved it, how we interpret it at a macro level, or what it offered to other schools of philosophy. True, some of this information can be inferred in the meat of the text, but you have to read about "exclusive-cum-exhaustive disjunctive assertibles" to find it. I understand this has critical importance to scholarship, but as an admitted novice I rely on the experts who dedicate their lives/careers to the field to understand these intricacies and provide their interpretation in an understandable format.I would certainly recommend this to others, but would advise average readers not to become discouraged because of one or two chapters. It is still worth the read and it's clear that many of the authors collaborated together and did an excellent job of trying to make many complicated aspects of Stoicism accessible.

A scholarly, yet mostly very accessible panorama of ancient Stoic philosophy. There are a number of superlative essays by experts in the fields collected here, and even the chapters that are not quite as clear or exciting are well worth a read. I have published a number of in-depth commentaries on almost all chapters at my How To Be A Stoic blog, so here let me just add that this is the sort of book that anyone seriously interested in both ancient and modern Stoicism simply has to have on her bookshelf or tablet.

This book is a true "companion" rather than a commentary or guide to the Stoics in that it addresses issues that underly the writings and thought of the Stoics rather than merely summarizing ideas or commenting on various writings. This makes it an invaluable guide for bringing depth to one's reading and study of the Stoics enabling one to study them in their historical, social, and literary context so that one can study them with originality rather than being restricted to a particular point of view or interpretation.

Good review

Excellent

important collection