M2-S3, The philosophical tradition today: The Uses of Stoicism in Contemporary Philosophy

The Uses of Stoicism in Contemporary (French and American) Philosophy

 

The seminar will be devoted to various uses of Stoicism in contemporary philosophy. Its purpose will be twofold. First, we will study how an ancient doctrine like Stoicism has been appropriated, understood and used by authors such as Sartre, Deleuze, Foucault, Agamben, Nussbaum and others. This will lead us to investigate the influence and reputation of Stoicism in early twentieth century european philosophy, and the interplay between history of philosophy and philosophy in the continental and analytic traditions during the twentieth century. Second, the seminar will try and investigate whether and why past philosophical doctrines can still be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates.

Bibliography

Sartre, L'être et le néant, Gallimard, 1943 (Being and Nothingness, trans. H. E. Barnes, Washington Square Press, 1992)

G. Deleuze, Logique du sens, Minuit, 1967 (The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester, Columbia University Press, 1990)

L. Becker, A New Stoicism, Princeton UP, 1998.

M. Foucault, L'Herméneutique du sujet, Gallimard-Seuil, 2001 (The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981-1982, trans. G. Burchell, St. Martin's Press, 2005)

M. Nussbaum, Upheavals of thought, Cambridge UP. 2003.

F. Recanati, Perspectival Thought, Oxford UP, 2007.

G. Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Stanford UP, 2016.

J. Sellars (ed.), The Routledge Handboook of the Stoic Tradition, 2016.