Customer Reviews

The Stoics Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

With due respect to the previous reviewer, the reason this book seems like a "chopped mess" is because it is a book of fragments - the ancient Stoic tradition is itself extremely fragmentary, a fact hardly the fault of Inwood and Gerson. By bringing many of the most important of those fragments together in an inexpensive edition, the editors have actually done a great service to those who desire not just a book about Stoicism, but access to the primary texts in an accessible fashion. This book is particularly helpful to beginning students in ancient philosophy.

Hackett fills a valuable niche in classical studies by selling at student-friendly prices new, readable translations with extensive notes and helpful introductions. This book is particularly useful: it brings together a number of otherwise hard-to-find translations of basic writings of the Stoics. I imagine this book will stay in print a long time.

The same might be said of another recent Hackett publication, a 2006 translation of On Academic Scepticism, a book that might be considered a kind of counterpart to the Stoics Reader: call it Cicero's Hellenistic Reader. By doing friendly battle during the Roman Republican period, the Stoics and Sceptics covered endlessly interesting subject matter in ways that remain accessible to any curious modern reader.

Other Hackett titles that come to mind: a handy Epicurus Reader; the Nichomachan Ethics; a remarkable complete Plato. I wonder how the publisher manages to offer these new translations at such low prices? I look forward to filling my library with their future efforts.

I have read a great deal of the many books offered on stoic topics available and this is maybe the worst. You will gain no insight or any pleasure from this chopped up mess that is impossible to enjoy reading. A hodgepodge of excerpts with no continuity or cohesive message. Just a mess.