Book Review: The Stoic Life, by Tad Brennan

Emotions, Duties, and Fate

In a sense, Tad Brennan is a modern Cicero. Just like Cicero wrote sympathetically and yet critically about Stoicism (e.g., Paradoxa Stoicorum, Tusculan Disputations, and De Finibus), so Brennan does in his The Stoic Life. Brennan doesn’t have either the style or the philosophical insight of Cicero, but then again, that’s setting the bar way high! The book is enjoyable, carefully written, and has a lot to offer both to the person who is just approaching Stoicism and to the seasoned practitioner of the philosophy. The first kind of reader may get some insight into whether Stoicism is really for them, the second one should welcome the challenges that Brennan puts forth, especially in part IV of his book.

The Stoic Life is organized into five sections: an “introduction” that includes chapters on why be a Stoic, the sources we have about ancient Stoicism, the philosophical background to Stoicism, and an overview of Stoic ethics. Part II focuses on Stoic psychology, talking about impressions and assent, the difference between belief and knowledge, and the relationship between impulses (to action) and emotions. Part III delves more deeply into the ethics, covering the chief good (i.e., virtue) and the so-called preferred and dispreffered indifferents, the concept of oikeiosis (moral development), and the…