I shall argue that while More was clearly an avid reader of the Meditations he read Marcus not as a Stoic but as a ‘non-denominational’ ancient moralist who confirms a range of doctrines that More finds elsewhere in ancient philosophy. Yet More’s general attitude towards Stoicism is more often than not critical, especially when it comes to the passions. More quotes from Marcus’s Meditations throughout the Enchiridion, leading one commentator to note that More ‘mined the Meditations’ when writing his book. I examine Henry More’s engagement with Stoicism in general, and Marcus Aurelius in particular, in his Enchiridion Ethicum. Throughout the period a continual theme was the compatibility of Stoicism with Christianity by the end of the period they were firmly disconnected, paving the way for eighteenth century presentations of Stoicism as a form of materialism and atheism. The early seventeenth century saw a flurry of scholarly studies by Bursius, Scioppius, and Casaubon alongside those of Lipsius. His contemporaries Montaigne and Du Vair presented Stoic ideas in the vernacular and re-emphasized the practical orientation of Stoicism.
His De constantia founded what has come to be called Neostoicism, while his two Stoic handbooks published in 1604 brought together for the first time more or less all the surviving evidence for Stoic philosophy. It was with Lipsius that the fortunes of Stoicism changed dramatically. Seneca remained important, even after the correspondence with St Paul was dismissed as spurious, and attracted the attention of Erasmus, Calvin, and Lipsius. Whereas early Humanists associated Stoicism with Cicero and Seneca, later generations returned Zeno and Chrysippus to centre stage.
The recovery and translation of Greek authors such as Diogenes Laertius and Epictetus expanded knowledge of the Stoa. However Stoicism also had its critics, from an Epicurean Valla to the Platonic Ficino. Seneca attracted much humanist attention and was the subject of biographies and commentaries. Early humanists such as Petrarca and Salutati admired many aspects of Stoic philosophy, based on their reading of Cicero and Seneca. The ancient philosophy of Stoicism found both admirers and critics during the Renaissance.
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