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Preview — Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics by R. Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics by R. Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics 3. First published in Paperback , pages. Published October 11th by Routledge first published Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics.

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Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics by R.W. Sharples.

Lists with This Book. Sep 04, Jimmy rated it liked it.

Three Minute Philosophy: Epicurus and Zeno

In the beginning of the book, Sharples tells us this is an introduction to someone who essentially knows nothing about the subject. A few chapters in and he's using terminology from propositional logic which I had to learn for about an hour before I could understand what he was describing. It would have been much better if Sharples was better at writing in common prose, rather he overcomplicates a lot of things or is otherwise not very good at explaining.

I still give him 3 stars, though.

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Mar 10, Anthony Buckley rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Beginniers in ancient philosophy. Reading this is one more step in my campaign to read difficult books on difficult subjects.

I am a newcomer to ancient texts, and it provides a really useful introduction. Despite the title, the book is actually about the Stoics and the Epicureans, with the Sceptics getting hardly a look in. Despite these snappy titles, Reading this is one more step in my campaign to read difficult books on difficult subjects.

Despite these snappy titles, however, the book has lots of long sentences and subordinate clauses making the book refreshingly more difficult to read than it should be. The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. Eduard Zeller - - New York: Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics.

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From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy. Long - - Oxford University Press.

Long - - New York: Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy. RWS was wise to choose this format; it does not overly disintegrate the systems of the individual schools, but does allow for close comparison between the answers that different schools gave to the same question see, e. RWS is also certainly right to stress the ethical focus of the Post-Aristotelians, but he does so, thankfully, without falling into several popular traps.

He avoids depicting the ancients as neurasthenic ninnies whose sole motive for philosophizing was a sense of insecurity -- proper weight is given to, e.

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Stoicism, therefore is a species of pantheism. Alli Jo rated it it was amazing Apr 23, Ethics for both schools was about the attainment of happiness. Virtue consists of pursuing what is natural even though we may not always attain what we aim at. Where possible one should find satisfaction with what one has. Our actions make a differenc to even though they are predetermined.

Epicurean discussions of the fear of death pp. He also abstains from the current fashion for denying the centrality of theology and physics to Stoic ethics -- a perversity that cannot survive scrutiny of the texts, but has somehow caught on in prominent circles. As a result, on those issues in which controversy currently reigns RWS sometimes sounds aporetic, and often sounds old-fashioned; but both are preferable to erroneous novelty, especially for the student first meeting with the material.

Perhaps the only area in which RWS allows his own interests a free hand is in his treatments of determinism, which are fuller than one would expect in a book of this scope, but not surprising from the editor of both Cicero's and Alexander's treatises on fate. I had occasion to comment elsewhere, in the review of a similar but unsuccessful book, that the rapid advances in our understanding of Hellenistic philosophy over the last few decades make it especially important that the author who attempts such a survey be familiar with the best of the recent literature.

RWS has this familiarity, both because of his involvement in the thriving London ancient philosophical community, and because of his editorship of the journal "Phronesis" over the last number of years.

Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics

The results are to be found both in the body of the text, which everywhere reflects the best available scholarship, and in the end-notes, which contain frequent citations of both journal articles and the Symposium Hellenisticum series "Doubt and Dogmatism", "The Norms of Nature", and the rest of its alliterative allies. Long's "Hellenistic Philosophy" is the only sensible standard of comparison for the RWS volume, I should say a word about their relative merits. First, it should be said that RWS clearly did not set out to make a new epoch in Hellenistic studies; since this was exactly the effect of Long's book in its edition, there is a sense in which it will always be the greater work of scholarship, and the fitter object of admiration and acclaim.

Long's book is also more extensive nearly twice the length in either edition and equally dense; ergo it contains more. It is also harder; Long made few concessions to the beginner.