5 Great Books on Stoicism You May Not Have Read

While I am on vacation this week, I’d like to share some of my favorite under-the-radar books on Stoicism. (At least, it seems to me that they are under the radar, since I rarely hear or see people talking or writing about them.) With the exception of the first on the list, which is introductory, these are all excellent reads for people who are already familiar with Stoicism and want to deepen their understanding and practice. Feel free to leave comments below for other readers to let them know if you have read and enjoyed any of these books yourself.

Stoic Serenity: A Practical Course on Finding Inner Peace, by Keith Seddon

Stoic Serenity, first published in 2006, is one of the older books on Stoicism directed toward a non-academic audience. It’s quite good and deserves to be much better known.

Seddon very clearly lays out the basic principles of serious Stoicism (not pop culture Stoicism), including virtue, indifferents, the dichotomy of control, living in agreement with nature, the Stoic worldview, and getting along with other people. He also includes appendices on determinism, apatheia, the philosophy of Epictetus, and the debate between Stoics and Epicureans. In other words, although this is intended as an introduction, it is quite in-depth in some areas and offers a thorough grounding in the basic principles of Stoicism.

In addition, since the book grew out of a correspondence course on Stoicism that Seddon conducted in the early 2000s, it is structured as a self-guided course. There are many prompts for reading the ancient texts on your own and writing reflections in your journal. Seddon also includes substantial exercises at the end of each chapter, along with a few sample responses at the end of the book. All in all, I think this one of the best introductions for people who truly want to learn about Stoicism.

Stoic Spiritual Exercises, by Elen Buzaré

This very short book (less than 100 pages) is an excellent introduction to Pierre Hadot’s work on spiritual exercises in the Stoic context. If you’ve read some theory about Stoicism and you’d like to integrate Stoic principles more deeply into your life, this is a great next step. Buzaré creates a taxonomy of spiritual exercises, from memorization (mnênê) and attention (prosochê) through to the three branches of logic, physics, and ethics. At the end she reconstructs what an ancient Stoic meditation might have looked like, with the aid of her training in Buddhist meditation and the early Christian Hesychastic prayer tradition.

I find her thoughts on spiritual exercises both beautiful and compelling, and I have enjoyed incorporating some of Buzaré’s insights into my own practice. This is a great book for anyone who would like to take their Stoic practice to the next level.

The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection, by Gretchen Reydams-Schils

This work by University of Notre Dame professor Gretchen Reydams-Schils covers topics that many academic books on Stoicism neglect: selfhood, community, and social relationships, including citizenship, friendship, marriage, and parenthood. She looks in detail at both the personal and social strands of oikeiosis, examining how these overlap with our modern ideas of self and other. And she beautifully elucidates the innovations the Roman Stoics introduced into the philosophy, resulting in an “upgraded” status for traditional family relationships.

The Roman Stoics is such an excellent book, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I would say it’s required reading for anyone who wants to apply Stoicism in their life.

The Stoic Theory of Beauty, by Aistė Čelkytė

Very few people talk about beauty in the context of Stoicism, so I very much appreciate Čelkytė’s clear and interesting exploration of the Stoic perspective on beauty. She sticks with the views held by Chrysippus, which is a good choice since he was the primary theorist of the Old Stoa. It also requires a bit of detective work; all of Chrysippus’ works have been lost and scholars today must piece together his views based on surviving fragments and the criticism of his rivals.

Since there is no undisputed statement of the ancient Stoic position on beauty—and it’s doubtful that there ever was one—Čelkytė examines several strands of evidence. First, she notes that conventional beauty is a preferred indifferent, not a good in itself, and this leads to interesting conclusions when the Stoics say that “only the beautiful is the good” and that only the wise person is beautiful. She carefully examines the ways in which the Stoic concept of beauty is structured by virtue. Two main concepts associated with Stoic ideas on beauty—functionality and proportionality—reflect the underlying goal of living in agreement with nature, as well as the Stoic worldview on order and harmony in the natural world.

I learned a lot from The Stoic Theory of Beauty, and I would recommend it for people who are fairly advanced in their study of Stoicism. It’s definitely not appropriate for beginners. But if you have already covered the more practical areas, this is a great area to explore for your long-term practice of Stoicism.

The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, edited by John Sellars

This is a treasure trove of information on the historical reception of Stoicism throughout the ages, in different times, places, and cultural movements. Ranging from late antiquity (Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius) through the Renaissance and Reformation (Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, Shakespeare) to the modern world (Romantic literature, Victorian culture, 20th-century French philosophy), this handbook provides an unparelleled grounding in how Stoicism has both overtly and covertly influenced Western culture.

Each chapter is presented by a notable experts, including Chris Gill (“Stoic Themes in Contemporary Anglo-American Ethics”), Donald Robertson (“The Stoic Influence on Modern Psychotherapy”), and Gretchen Reydams-Schils (“Stoicism in Rome”). Perhaps my favorite section—because I knew so little about its relationship to Stoicism before reading this book—is Part III on early modern Europe. For example, we learn that Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza were influenced by the ancient model of philosophy as “medicine for the mind,” and that the luminaries of the French and Scottish Enlightenment were indebted to Cicero and the Roman Stoics. Sometimes the influence of Stoicism is subtle, but the more you look for it throughout Western history, the more you recognize its presence.

If you’re someone who has read exclusively about ancient Stoicism, I would strongly encourage you to pick up this volume to learn about the hidden influence of Stoicism throughout the rest of history.