Stoicism and Emotion

On the surface, stoicism and emotion seem like contradictory terms. Yet the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were deeply interested in the emotions, which they understood as complex judgments about what we regard as valuable in our surroundings, Stoicism and Emotion shows that they did not simply advocate a suppression of feeling, as "stoicism" implies in today's English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential.

Margaret Graver is professor of classics at Dartmouth College.