Dr John Sellars

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
BA (Wales), MA, PhD (Warwick)

Room No 1CK23
Telephone No 0117 32 84401
email: john.sellars@uwe.ac.uk

Personal

I studied Philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Wales in Lampeter (St David's University College, the oldest University in England and Wales after Oxbridge, founded in 1822) before moving to the University of Warwick for my MA and PhD. After a brief spell researching issues relating to the teaching of philosophy at the University of Leeds, I took up a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at King's College London (see Research below). I also held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford, and I remain a member of Wolfson.

Research Interests

My research interests are in ancient philosophy, especially Stoicism, although I also read widely in the history of philosophy, including medieval, renaissance and early modern. For a number of years I worked on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project at King's College London, editing translations of Peripatetic and Neoplatonic texts by Aspasius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Proclus, Simplicius, and Philoponus. I have also written a number of pieces dealing with the reception of Stoicism, notably on Justus Lipsius.

My own work at present is focused on Stoicism in the first two centuries AD. I am currently working on a monograph devoted to the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius (in which part of the task is to make the case that there is indeed philosophy in the Meditations) as well as contributions to Blackwell's A Companion to Marcus Aurelius and Brill's Companion to Seneca. All of this is preparatory work for a planned sourcebook for the Late Stoics.

In the longer term I hope to develop a project provisionally entitled 'The Existence of Values: Ancient and Medieval Perspectives', concerned with issues in value theory and axiology as they appear in a range of philosophers from Aristotle to Aquinas.

Teaching

Ancient Philosophy
Hellenistic Philosophy

Selected Publications

Books

The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, Second Edition (London: Duckworth / Bristol Classical Press, 2009)

Stoicism (Chesham: Acumen / Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)

Justus Lipsius: On Constancy, Edited with an Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography (Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press 2006)

The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003)

Articles and Chapters

'Stoic Practical Philosophy in the Imperial Period', in R. Sorabji, R. W. Sharples, eds, Greek and Roman Philosophy, 100 BC-200 AD, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Suppl. 94/1 (2007), 115-40

'Stoic Cosmopolitanism and Zeno's Republic', History of Political Thought 28/1 (2007), 1-29

'Justus Lipsius's De Constantia: A Stoic Spiritual Exercise', Poetics Today 28/3 (2007), 339-62

'Techne peri ton bion. Zur stoischen Konzeption von Kunst und Leben', in W. Kersting, C. Langbehn, eds, Kritik der Lebenskunst (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 91-117

'The Aristotelian Commentators: A Bibliographical Guide', in P. Adamson, H. Baltussen, M. Stone, eds, Philosophy, Science, and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic, and Latin Commentaries, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Suppl. 83/1 (2004), 239-68

'Simon the Shoemaker and the Problem of Socrates', Classical Philology 98/3 (2003), 207-16