John Sellars
John Sellars is the author of Lessons in Stoicism: What Ancient Philosophers Teach Us about How to Live. From his bio:
Dr John Sellars is a Reader in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, and a member of Wolfson College, Oxford. He was previously a Research Fellow at King’s College London, where he worked on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project (with which he remains involved, as Associate Editor) and, before that, a Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London.
His research focuses on the history of philosophy, primarily ancient philosophy and its later influence, and in particular Stoicism and its reception. His first book, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (2003; 2nd edn 2009) examined the way in which Stoic philosophy was located within a broader conception of philosophy as a way of life. His current research falls into the following categories:
Stoicism, with a particular focus on Roman Stoicism. Recent work has included a number of papers on Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and bibliographies on both for Oxford Bibliographies Online. His book on Marcus Aurelius appeared with Routledge in 2020.
The Stoic Tradition. As well as editing The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition (2016), he has published articles on the reception of Stoicism in the Renaissance and in early modern philosophy (Lipsius, Henry More, Shaftesbury, Ralph Cudworth).
Renaissance Philosophy. A number of current projects deal with aspects of Renaissance philosophy. These have included the reception of Stoicism in the period (noted above) and work on how philosophy was conceived during the period (see below), as well as work on the Aristotelian philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi.
Philosophy as a Way of Life, an approach to philosophy formulated by Pierre Hadot, whose work influenced the late work of Michel Foucault. The idea informed The Art of Living (2003) and has been a continuing theme in his work ever since. Recently, he has been working on a series of papers (that may come together into a monograph) that uses the idea of philosophy as a way of life to bring out otherwise neglected features of the philosophy of the Renaissance.