RSA 2024 Chicago: The Stoic Renaissance
From the 1200s to 1600s, Stoicism was the antique philosophy that spread most rapidly in Europe. Reborn of secular tradition in cities where culture and politics were linked, classical literature, particularly that of Seneca, served as socio-political model. According to Ronald Witt, Padua’s literary legacy for example was an “eloquence without a conscience,” relying more upon Senecan Stoicism than Christian canon. The tragedies of Seneca would impact Renaissance drama, from Mussato’s Ecernis to both France and England. Oft-copied works of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Diogenes Laertius, among others, drove Stoicismas the principal of moral thought — from Machiavelli to Erasmus to Montaigne and Muret to Lipsius.