Manual of Reformed Stoicism

Review of anew book on Stoicism by Piotr Stankiewicz

The modernization of Stoicism is a process that seems to impose itself. Lawrence C. Becker had cleared the ground in his book A new Stoicism, published in 1998. Its level of technicality did not, however, make it really accessible to anyone. With the Manual of Reformed Stoicism (2020), the philosopher Piotr Stankiewicz offers a new interpretation of the system, much clearer, without jargon or theoretical dissertations, accessible to all audiences and dedicated to practice; at the price, however, of a minimalism that can confuse even the most familiar readers of the doctrine.

The book is structured in six main parts, each containing several chapters (24 in total). Each chapter is structured as follows: a short paragraph “in a nutshell” which goes back over the key ideas of the chapter; a brief introduction which explains the logic of progression between the sub-parts; the sub-parts themselves which consist of a quotation followed by a commentary. This organization allows the reader to find his way around easily and to personalize the reading.

The Reform of Stoicism

Why does the author speak of a reformed Stoicism? Because he proposes many changes compared to what is known about the original doctrine and other modern…