From ancient to new Stoicism: V — Piotr Stankiewicz’s Reformed Stoicism
A conceptual map of where Stoicism came from and where it may be going
This series of essays is meant to provide, as the subtitle says, a conceptual map of where Stoic philosophy came from and where it may be going. So far, we have looked in depth at the three fields of inquiry defining ancient Stoicism: science-metaphysics [1], logic, and ethics. We have then examined what I think remains so far the most comprehensive, if somewhat challenging to follow, attempt at modernizing Stoicism: the one articulated by Larry Becker.
In this entry we’ll consider a second such attempt: Piotr Stankiewicz’s Reformed Stoicism, as presented in his major book devoted to the topic. Stankiewicz has clearly been inspired by Becker, and yet the two attempts have relatively little in common, as we shall see. In fact, let me begin immediately with the greatest contrast between the two approaches: Becker strives to recover modern versions of Stoic science-metaphysics, logic, and ethics, because he wants — like the ancient Stoics — to ground ethics in the other two. Not so Stankiewicz, who explicitly rejects both the Stoic view of the world and their advice on how to think about things. Indeed, he rejects any kind of science-metaphysics and logic:
