Stoic News

By Dave Kelly

Monday, March 10, 2003

Book Review: Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation - Practical Philosophy.

"As you will gather, I recommend this book very highly to all interested in rigorous practical philosophy, but I do have a couple of minor criticisms. First, much more could be said about Stoicism's connection with modern cognitive therapy. Sorabji has a few pages on this (pp. 153-4), rightly pointing out that cognitive therapy differs from Stoicism in that it focuses mainly on factual rather than evaluative errors (p154). But it would have been interesting for him to have said something about REBT, a form of cognitive therapy which, like Stoicism, focuses more on evaluative mistakes, only with a hedonistic rather than a virtue-based value system."

I didn't care for this book by Richard Sorabji. Sorabji doesn't have much use for Stoicism, and I agree with the reviewer's second "minor criticism" that while "Sorabji is enthusiastic about the potential for Stoic therapy, he concedes quite a lot, too much in my view, to its opponents."

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