Gregory Hays, translator of Marcus Aurelius, does a hack job on Stoicism

[image: coin representing Marcus Aurelius, minted circa 180 CE, photo by the Author]

Gregory Hays is the author of a deservedly celebrated translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. (Though he does take liberties with the text, which is why I prefer the Robin Hard translation.) So I was interested when more than one person told me that Hays recently published a long article on modern Stoicism in the New York Review of Books, with the unpromising…