Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory

1. Introduction.- Essential Versus External Social Being.- Part I: Subjectivity.- 2. Who Controls Your Thoughts?  Epictetus and Émile Durkheim on Mental Structure.- 3. When Are You Present? Chrysippus and Henri Bergson on Continuous Time.- 4. Why Do You Care About Yourself? The Early Stoics and Herbert Spencer on Self-Preservation.- Part II: Knowledges and Epistemologies.- 5. Do Preconceptions Determine New Knowledge? Epictetus and Max Weber on Truth.- 6. Do People Know Why They Travel? Seneca and Anthony Giddens on Ignorance.- Part III: Physical Conditions.- 7. Is Climate Change Natural? Marcus Aurelius and Barbara Adam on Death.- 8. What Causes Your Behaviors? Zeno and Pierre Bourdieu on the Body.- Part IV: Collective Ethics.- 9. How Do We Regulate Our Affection for Others? Hierocles and Claude Lévi-Strauss on Kinship Circles.- 10. Can Education Be Egalitarian? Musonius Rufus and Julia Kristeva on Gendered Labor.- 11. Is It Natural to Be Social? Marcus Aurelius and George Herbert Mead on Socialization.- Part V: Emotions.- 12. Is Reason External to Passion? Posidonius, Ann Game, and Andrew Metcalfe on Self-Division.- 13. Who Benefits from the Management of Feelings? Epictetus and Arlie Hochschild on Emotional Labor.- 14. How Individual Is Happiness? Chrysippus and Harriet Martineau on the Universal End.

Will Johncock researches social theory, continental philosophy, and Stoic philosophy, with a particular interest in themes concerning time. He is the author of Naturally Late: Synchronization in Socially Constructed Times (2019) which studies how social science and philosophy differentiate natural time from human time structures. He has lectured at UNSW Sydney.