French and Italian Stoicisms - by Kurt Lampe & Janae Sholtz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The importance of Stoicism for Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sense and Michel Foucault's Hermeneutics of the Subjectand The Care of the Self is well known. However, few students of either classics or philosophy are aware of the breadth of French and Italian receptions of Stoicism. This book firstly presents this broad field to readers, and secondly advances it by renewing dialogues with ancient Stoic texts.

The authors in this volume, who combine expertise in continental and Hellenistic philosophy, challenge our understanding of both modern and ancient concepts, arguments, exercises, and therapies. It conceives of Stoicism as a vital strand of philosophy which contributes to the life of contemporary thought. Flowing through the sustained, varied engagement with Stoicism by continental thinkers, this volume covers Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou, Émile Bréhier, Barbara Cassin, Giorgio Agamben, and Pierre Hadot. Stoic sources addressed range from doxography and well-known authors like Epictetus and Seneca to more obscure authorites like Musonius Rufus and Cornutus.

Review Quotes

'French and Italian Stoicisms presents a valuable overview of the often subtle and surprisingly diverse ways in which ancient Stoic philosophy has influenced modern thinkers such as Sartre, Deleuze, Kristeva, Foucault, Agamben, and Hadot. The contributors to this book are themselves revitalizing Stoicism by drawing our attention to unfamiliar perspectives on a tradition, which deserves to be explored and evaluated by us now more than ever before.'
Donald Robertson, author of Stoicism and the Art of Happiness and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.

'Lampe and Sholtz have put together a uniquely informative collection showing the extensive and sometimes surprising influence of Stoic ideas on recent French and Italian thinkers including such luminaries as Sartre, Deleuze, Badiou, Kristeva, Foucault and Agamben, as well as thinkers who should be better known in the English-speaking world (and perhaps now will be) like Barbara Cassin and Pierre Hadot.'
Alistair Welchman, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

This volume breaks new ground in its close examination of French and Italian twentieth-century responses to Stoicism, especially on the topics of language and freedom. A series of thoughtful and perceptive essays open up a complex intellectual terrain that will be of interest both to students of modern Continental philosophy and Stoicism.
Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought, University of Exeter, UK

About the Author

Kurt Lampe is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol, UK and the author of The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life (2015). He is also the co-editor of German Stoicisms (forthcoming, Bloomsbury).

Janae Sholtz is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies at Alvernia University, USA. She is the author of The Invention of a People: Heidegger and Deleuze on Art and the Political (2015) and co-editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism (Bloomsbury, 2019).