Philosophy of the Earlier Stoics

Rediscovered Philosophers

In the past, you could read works of late Stoics, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who wrote about how to live a good life.

Now, you can also read works of early and middle Stoics, such as Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and Posidonius, who wrote about philosophical questions, such as the nature of the universe and the basis of knowledge, as well as about the good life.

About this Series

In the past, you had to learn about most Hellenistic philosophers by reading descriptions of their doctrines. Imagine if you could not read the works of Plato or William James and could only read descriptions of their doctrines! You would have no sense of their intellects or of their personalities.

Yet the works of many Hellenistic philosophers have always been hidden in plain sight, quoted in the dialogs of Cicero, where they have been accessible to a handful of classical scholars who were willing to search for the sources of the dialogs and to wade through all the extraneous material that Cicero added.

This series, the Rediscovered Philosophers, disentangles the philosophers' works from the dialogs, making these works accessible to a wider audience for the first time. It includes three books: Philosophy of the Stoics, Philosophy of the Skeptical Academy, and Philosophy of the Syncretic Academy.