The
Art of Living is a fundamentally
correct book.  Not only does it accurately lay out Stoic doctrines on the
relation of logos and askesis (exercise).  The work furthermore
accurately relates Hadot’s and Foucault’s stance on the Stoics, in proper
counterpoint to the anti-Continental biases of certain Anglophone leading
lights in the philosophical community.  And, as part of all these activities, The
Art of Living rightly makes a case for the ongoing significance of the
Ancient ideal of philosophy as a way of life. 

Sellars
makes clear that rational argumentation and spiritual-mental exercise both have
their place in philosophy, at least on the account offered by Stoics such as
Marcus Aurelius.  Sellars thus wishes to combat views wish fail to properly
distinguish between logos and askesis within Stoicism.  Likewise,
a persistent but€”given this persistency€”rather underdeveloped thesis in the
work is that Foucault properly grasps the Stoic approach in his later work, and
does not ignore the role of rational argumentation. 

In exploring Stoic thought, Sellars
offers useful summaries of:  the type of spiritual excercises at issue; the
Stoic attitude toward assent to impressions; and the Stoic attitude of
inner-peace that was to be gained by aiming at the ‘point of view of the
cosmos.’  (Concerning this latter point, Sellars has some comments to make
about how this cosmos envisaged is like a ‘complex dynamical system,’ where
one’s perspective is an ‘immanent non-individualist one’ that is furthermore
beyond value-judgments.  Within the context of Sellars’ discussion, I find what
Sellars says to be true.  Still, as with the Foucault comments, there is
something odd about these quite under-stated nods toward very
contemporary work in chaos theory.) 

Sellars
also fills out the Socratic origins and Skeptical relations of the Stoic
doctrines under consideration.  Here I myself become somewhat skeptical€”concerning
the assignment of a variety of positive claims to Socrates.  I agree that for
Socrates, philosophy is a loving of wisdom rather than necessarily being an
attaining of wisdom.  I further agree that on Socrates’ view, virtue requires a
techne, not merely an inapplicable possession of principle.  However, it
seems something of a leap to suggest, as Sellars does, that Socrates understand
virtue to lie in knowledge of a techne rather than in knowledge
of logoi.  Surely it would be more sensible to interpret Socrates as
potentially holding that true knowledge of logoi involves knowledge of
the relevant techne?  Likewise, it is not clear what lets us conclude,
with Sellars, that Socrates actively rejects the idea that philosophy is a
virtue.  Yes, Socrates sees philosophy as a route to virtue even if it is
not a virtue itself, but this is obviously something very different than
simply rejecting the thesis that philosophy is a virtue.

In
the main, however, Sellars’ discussion of Socrates and the Skeptics provides
very useful background for the account of the Stoics. 

We
do not, though, get a very comprehensive treatment of the development of
Stoicism and its various schools.  And the focus is on later Stoics such as Epictetus
and Aurelius.  Although this is all in keeping with Sellars’ aim, as I was I
reading Sellars’ book I nonetheless very much missed a fuller introduction of
earlier, more fragmentary Stoic writings.  Everything flows along quite
logically and well-ordered in The Art of Living, but the beginning
student of Stoicism needs more context than Sellars provides.

Likewise,
what the more advanced scholar of Stoicism is to derive from the book might
have fitted into a thirty or forty pages: accuracy and logic do not, of course,
guarantee relevance.  However, if you are someone who is relatively familiar
with Stoicism but no-longer so actively involved in its study, then you might
find something quite alright in the combination of Sellars’ more-original
points with his (for you) review-like laying out of claims regarding Stoicism

Hopefully,
future work from Sellars will address his contrasting of Stoic philosophy with
Hegel’s alleged quietism as regards philosophical thought.  Sellars certainly
does seem to be mining rich territory by attempting to place Stoicism relative
to thinkers such as Hegel and Nietzsche.  The Art of Living, though, is
solidly directed toward the expectations of scholarship on the Ancient world,
and, as such, could not have been expected to provide a neo-Hegelian placement
of Ancient (Socrates & the Stoics), High Modern (Hegel & Nietzsche),
and Very-Late Modern (Sellars et al).           

© 2004 Marcus Verhaegh

Marcus Verhaegh, Ph.D. received his Ph.D.
at Emory University and is now at the Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama. 
Verhaegh’s work focuses on Kant’s understanding of art and religious symbolism
as contributors to cognition; where, in the case of religious symbolism, the
focus is on practical cognition.  Verhaegh is further engaged in
contrasting Kant’s moral and political philosophy with the accounts offered by
Rawls, and by discourse ethicists such as Habermas.  Finally, Verhaegh is
interested in the import of the ‘Critique of Teleological Judgment’ for ethics,
the discipline of history, and the social sciences (particularly economics).

Categories: Philosophical