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Gregory Hays, translator of Marcus Aurelius, does a hack job on Stoicism
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 title “Tune out & lean in.” Unfortunately, my take on the article is that it is a hack job. Let’s see why.
The article is allegedly a review of a whopping six books about Stoicism: That One Should Disdain Hardships (Yale Press, a collection of the lectures of Musonius Rufus), How to Keep Your Cool (Princeton Press, an edited version of Seneca’s On Anger), How to Be Free (Princeton Press, a new translation of Epictetus’ Enchiridion), The Pocket Stoic (by John Sellars, Chicago Press), Stillness Is the Key (by Ryan Holiday, Penguin), and Not All Dead White Men (by Donna Zuckerberg, Harvard Press). But if you expect to find out much about any of said books by reading Hays’ “review” you’ll be sorely disappointed.
The article begins reasonably enough. Hays identifies Tom Wolfe’s novel, A Man in Full, as the pivotal moment that made Stoicism cool again. Which is way of an oversimplification, but we can go with it as a first approximation. He then, correctly, describes the questionable fashion among entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley types to latch on to what they think is Stoicism but are in fact just Stoic techniques. Not the same thing, just like practicing meditation doesn’t make one a Buddhist. As he puts it, “Instead of wondering ‘Who moved my cheese?’ they can ask ‘What things are in my control?’”
Shortly thereafter Hays makes fun of people who buy “memento mori” medallions and, in the same paragraph, also disdainfully mentions Stoic Week and Stoicon, two serious and useful events organized by the Modern Stoicism group. (In that paragraph I’m also mentioned as a “luminary” of the movement, which somehow I get the impression ain’t meant as a compliment.)
Even so, the article maintains some balance when Hays goes on to mention the pivotal role played in the early phases of modern Stoicism by the French scholar Pierre Hadot, author of The Inner Citadel and Philosophy as a…
