The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy

Presenting philosophy as an art concerned with one's way of life, Sellars draws on Socratic and Stoic philosophical resources and argues for the ancient claim that philosophy is primarily expressed in one's behaviour. The book considers the relationship between philosophy and biography, and the bearing that this relationship has on debates concerning the nature and function of philosophy. discourse, Sellars presents it instead as an art (techne) that combines both logos (rational discourse) and askesis (training), and suggests that this will make it possible to understand better the relationship between philosophy and biography. an art and the Stoic development of this idea into an art of living, as well as considering some of the ancient objections to the Stoic conception. The second part goes on to examine the relationship between philosophical discourse and exercises in Stoic philosophy. Taking the literary form of such exercises as central, the author analyses two texts devoted to philosophical exercises by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.