John Sellars, "Marcus Aurelius" (Routledge, 2020)
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What is the central argument of John Sellars’s new book on Marcus Aurelius?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with John Sellers, a reader in philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London. We're talking about his new book, Marcus Aurelius, which is just out from Routledge. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is one of the most popular philosophical works by sales to the public. While in academic philosophy, he is considered somewhat of a philosophical lightweight.
In his new book, Sellars argues that this academic perception mistakes the meditations as a failed work of theoretical argument, when instead it is a series of spiritual training exercises to condition the Roman emperor's character in accordance with the Stoic doctrines he learned as a bookish boy. Seller sees Marcus Aurelius as using his meditations as an antidote to corrupting pressures of his powerful position and debilitating suffering in the face of adversity in his personal life and in his military campaigns against Germanic tribes. The book excessively introduces the main Stoic doctrines that form the background of Marcus Aurelius' writings and show how he reviews the day's events and where he has gone wrong in his responses to them in their light.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, John Sellers. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy.
Hi, thanks for having
me. I'm really excited to be talking about Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics. It seems to be something that's floating in the air these days along with the virus. some of the emotional reactions and how people are dealing with, um, you know, the, the difficulties of, of, of the pandemic and everything associated with it. Um, so I've been hearing a lot of muttering, you might say about, about stoicism. And, uh, I thought it would be a great idea to talk with a leading expert on, uh, stoicism and in particular about, um, uh, one of the leading Stoics, right. Or at least one of the most famous, um, people in history who were Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. But before we get to Marcus, maybe you could tell us a bit about John Sellers, how you got into philosophy and how you got into Stoicism and that whole area of philosophy.
Yeah, sure. So I... I mean, I studied lots of different things when I was a sort of high school student. I was interested in physics for a while and those sorts of big questions, right? You know, the origins of the universe, those sorts of things. So I was very interested in those sorts of questions. And then a little later in my teenage years, I had the chance to study politics. And I had a very good politics teacher. And we used to do the kind of usual stuff when you study politics about how the government works and that kind of thing. And then on a Friday afternoon, we'd have a kind of a free form session. And he'd ask us questions like, what is justice? What is equality? And it was him asking these sorts of questions about foundational ideas that underpin our thinking about politics that I think was really my first real connection with philosophy.
And that's what prompted me to go to university to study philosophy. So that's how I first got into it. And as for Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, his meditations were a book that I read fairly early on when I was a philosophy student, just one of those books you easily find in the bookshop, right? And found it fascinating, as lots of people do. And remember reading in the introduction to the translations I read that he was a Stoic. And so I kind of made a mental note of that as something that would be nice to circle back to at a later stage. And then various other things that I studied during my degree often led me in the direction of Stoicism. So, for instance, I studied Spinoza as part of a course in early modern philosophy and was fascinated by him and his approach to the emotions.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the central argument of John Sellars’s new book on Marcus Aurelius?
0:01–11:16
2
How did John Sellars become interested in philosophy and Stoicism?
11:16–24:45
3
Why does Sellars view the *Meditations* as spiritual training rather than failed theory?
24:45–36:36
4
How does Marcus Aurelius use the *Meditations* to cope with personal adversity and military pressure?
36:36–47:37
5
What is the Stoic distinction between impressions and judgments, and why does it matter?
47:37–54:48
6
Which Stoic virtues does Marcus Aurelius prioritize, and how does he define justice?
54:48–1:01:06
7
What is the ‘cosmic city’ concept and how does it shape Marcus’s view of leadership?
1:01:06–1:01:50
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