While philosophy has long been one strand in the study of the classical world, not everyone clicks with Plato or Aristotle. Stoicism provides a more practical approach to the question of how to live the good life, but it has tended to be regarded as the poor relation. However, it has been staging a comeback over the last few years. Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic podcasts have had over 100 million downloads and his books have been bestsellers in the US charts. Nearer home, some students at the University of Cambridge have founded the Aurelius Society to meet and discuss this pursuit of arete and promote personal resilience and altruism.
Nancy Sherman is an academic at Georgetown University in Washington. Initially an ancient philosopher, more recently she has undertaken research training in psychoanalysis and focused on ethics. She is interested in applying her knowledge to modern life and has worked with the military for several decades. She has considered Stoic ethics and post-traumatic stress, with a focus on Stoic methods for achieving calm. As well as publishing numerous academic articles she has written newspaper articles and blogged on modern Stoicism. She is thus an excellent guide to showing how Stoicism can teach grit, resilience and the importance of close relationships.
This book arises out of some graduate seminars at Georgetown in the autumn of 2019 which were closely based on ancient texts. Her ideas were refined in a series of university seminars and lectures in the US and Europe, and a BBC World Service discussion (Calm in the Chaos: The Story of the Stoics). Her thoughts were brought to fruition while writing this book during lockdown, where she put the teachings of Stoicism on resilience to the test. Her updating and reworking of the Stoic approach to life has been based on experience, and is not just an exposition of the Stoic texts of classical writers such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
She divides the book into nine ‘Lessons’, a separate section of notes (including references to the sources) and a bibliography. The first two lessons describe the background (‘The Great Stoic Revival’ and ‘Who were the Stoics?’) and analyse the reasons for the current surge in interest in Stoicism. After this, Sherman discusses key areas such as ‘Finding Calm’, ‘Managing Your Emotions’, and ‘Stoic Grit and Resilience’. Throughout she strikes a balance between the ancient world and the modern. Both areas are wide-ranging and thought-provoking. Examples of the former are Seneca's treatment of the madness of Hercules (Hercules furens) or the tears of Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium. Modern examples range from a case study of an aerial attack in Kosovo in 1995 that went wrong, the character of Donald Trump, an account of the death of her mother in a nursing home, the alt-right movement's appropriation of the classical tradition, and Black Lives Matter. She analyses these as all part of a single continuum, relating modern ideas and events back to classical parallels and interpreting them within a modern Stoical context. Her viewpoint and modern examples are all from a U.S. perspective.
Sherman has an engaging writing style. Her sentences are short and pithy. The register is conversational, colloquial even. She is good at conjuring memorable images. These all help conceal the intellectual heavy lifting that has gone into this work. She uses her knowledge of the classical world to give perspective to modern concerns in a way that grabs the attention of readers and makes them think for themselves. She makes good use of the black and white illustrations which are all of good quality and reproduced clearly.
The book is an excellent example of how the classical world continues to have relevance to issues we face in our own time. She is keen to suggest the benefits that may be gained from an approach to life informed by Stoic ideas. While aware that there are limits, she sets out how we might build a healthy modern Stoicism, one that can help us face the things that we cannot change, developing the resilience that seems to be lacking in many modern lives.
I enjoyed reading this book. The arrangement by lessons and the style of writing meant that it was a pleasure to pick up and read. I would recommend it for a school library as a way of enriching students’ experience of the classical world. Even better would be to encourage your A Level students, whether linguists, historians or Classical Civilisation students, to read it and discuss it, as an interesting introduction to classical philosophy in action. I am sure there will be some who will be encouraged to consider continuing with their classical studies at degree level after reading this.
Open access
