This book made me want to write two or three reviews about it. On one hand it is a careful, lucid investigation into the ways the Roman Stoics tried to put their philosophical ideas into the practise of their politics, their friendships, their marriages and their parenting.
On the other hand, it also exemplifies several of the ways in which I think overtly feminist scholarship has deepened our understanding of the past both philosophically and as pure history. A scholar/philosopher like a Martha Nussbaum or a Gretchen Reydams-Schils reacts differently while reading the central texts of Western culture. Feminists bring different sorts of awarenesses to those readings, they ask different questions and they look into ignored corners. This has been a very good thing. The humanities should embrace many different approaches and methodologies to their fields. There is much to be learned from the great man approach to history and from the social historians. There is much to be learned from a Straussian reading of the Platonic corpus and from a feminist reading. Life is not neat. Humans are not very neat. Our humanities should be a bit messy as well.
Enough of my tangent. Back to the book. Reydams-Schils (hereafter RS) focuses her reading of Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius on the Stoic notion of the self as the site of mediating between the universal strictures of their theory and the particularities of their lives.
In her first chapter, RS outlines the late Stoic notion of the self. Her thesis is that it is part of the most unified theory of soul of that period of philosophy. As with most of the philosophies of the Hellenistic period, the fundamentals of the theory was based in their view of nature and how that self was aligned to nature. From this arose their ethics and politics. In her second chapter, she explores how those ethics are embedded in the Stoic ideals of community and their sense of duties involved with our various social roles. She sketches out the beginning of her reading of the Stoics as parents and spouses. In her next chapter, she discusses the politics derived from this theory. One of the most fascinating aspects of the history of Stoicism is the fact that three of the major theorists RS discusses (Cicero, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius) were major political players in their time. Marcus Aurelius, of course, was an emperor. The Stoic writers were thus able to discuss their struggles which actualizing their theories in the actual politics of their day.
A couple of points about this. Their philosophies made these men dual citizens. They were Romans, of course, but they were also citizens of the universal community of gods and men (Cosmopolis).
Secondly, they were very focused on improvement not on perfection. Theirs was not a philosophy that would lead to wholesale changes, let alone revolution. Change had to occur through reason, one does not force change. Obviously, this leads to a fairly conservative politics and one that can suffer reverses of fortune as bad men rise to power.
Which leads to the third aspect of Stoic politics- the balance desired between the leisure necessary for the philosophical investigation and the life of the active politician. This is mirrored by the Stoic detachment from result versus the duty of trying to create progress in the political life of the community.
Her last two chapters go back to the themes of the philosopher as parent and as marriage partner. This last theme is where the feminism of the author is to the fore. I liked it. She gave me another way of looking at Xanthippe and her relationship to Socrates. I also liked the way she brings to the fore Paulina's part in the death scene of Seneca to be found in Tacitus.
There are many graces to this book. I found her scholarship to be careful and well-grounded in the work in her field. She seems to know the literature now only in the original but in the secondary sources in French, German, Italian as well as English. (Of course, I am no expert but these are my impressions). She is sensitive to many aspects of the writings of her ancient authors. She understands them as exercises in literary form, as political rhetoric, as philosophical argument and as ethical exhortations. She sees them as one of the means by which her authors tried to create selves; indeed, souls that were true to their communities and their social roles but also to their larger community of all the gods and all of humanity.
I, for one, very much enjoyed and learned from the way RS tied all this together.
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