Barlaam of Seminara on Stoic Ethics : Text, Translation, and Interpretative Essays

This volume contains the first critical edition and translation of Barlaam of Seminara's fourteenth century treatise Ethics According to the Stoics , along with a series of interpretative essays explaining its content and context. Barlaam's text is the earliest interpretative work written on Stoic ethics, a product of the burgeoning Italian Renaissance but also drawing on Barlaam's experience in the Byzantine intellectual world of Constantinople. Intriguingly, it offers a radically different account of the Stoic theory of emotions to the one known from other sources, possibly taken from sources accessible to Barlaam but now lost. The volume includes interpretative essays on each of the two books of Barlaam's treatise, along with a biographical introduction and an essay setting out the wider context of the reception of Stoicism in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Cover 1 Title 4 Preface 6 Contents 8 Abbreviations 10 Introduction 12 1. Barlaam of Seminara 13 Southern Italy 13 Constantinople 14 Debates with Dominicans 16 The Hesychast Controversy 20 Diplomacy and Expulsion 22 Naples and Avignon 23 Gerace 26 2. The Ethica secundum Stoicos 27 The Text of ESS 27 Authorship 28 Sources 31 The Plan of the Work 35 I. Text and Translation 38 Note on the Text 39 Table of Chapter Headings 41 Text 45 Translation 74 II. Interpretative Essays 104 The Role of Bodily and External Goods for Happiness in Book 1 (Charles R. Hogg Jr.) 106 1. Introduction 106 2. Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness 115 3. Aristotle on Virtue, Emotions, and External Goods 132 4. Aristotle: Some Critical Comments 138 5. Barlaam on External Goods and Happiness 140 6. The Stoic Definition is Demonstrated (ESS 1.2–14) 144 7. The Peripatetic Definition is Refuted (ESS 1.15–25) 155 8. The Place of Advantages in the Happy Life (ESS 1.26–29) 167 9. Conclusion: Some Critical Thoughts 170 The Stoic Theory of Emotions in Book 2 (John Sellars) 176 1. The Stoic Soul (ESS 2.1) 177 2. Three Mental Traits (ESS 2.2) 179 3. Varieties of Will (ESS 2.3–4) 181 4. An Eightfold Division of Mental States (ESS 2.5–9) 182 5. The Standard Stoic Account of Emotions (ESS 2.10–11) 187 6. Two Fourfold Accounts Combined (ESS 2.11) 189 7. Constantia and εὐπάθειαι (ESS 2.12) 192 8. The Full Account (ESS 2.13) 196 9. Comments on Theophrastus (ESS 2.13–14) 197 10. Overcoming Emotional Disturbances (ESS 2.15–16) 200 The Reception of Stoic Ethics in the Middle Ages (John Sellars) 202 1. Stoic Ethics in Late Antiquity 202 2. Stoicism in Byzantium 206 3. The Latin Middle Ages 207 4. The Twelfth Century: Peter Abelard and William of Conches 208 5. The Thirteenth Century: Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas 210 6. The Fourteenth Century: Jean Buridan 212 7. Petrarch and Stoic Ethics 213 Bibliography 218 Indexes 228 Index of Greek and Latin Words 228 Index of Passages 230 Index of Subjects and Names 238