In the decades following the conquests of Alexander the Great, two major new schools of philosophy--the Epicureans and the Stoics--came to prominence in Athens, promoting starkly different worldviews and ways of life. Meanwhile Plato's Academy, an Athenian institution with a well-established tradition of dogmatism, unexpectedly gave birth to a vigorous form of skepticism that set itself in opposition to the doctrines of Stoicism and Epicureanism alike. Constantly in dialogue and debate with one another, these philosophical movements generated intense and productive controversies whose reverberations are felt even today.
Pivotal though they were, the new philosophical developments of the so-called Hellenistic period are difficult to study: Few complete philosophical texts survive from the time, and scholarly progress requires painstaking analysis of fragmentary evidence and reports from later antiquity. Only in recent decades has scholarship begun to achieve a well-informed and philosophically sophisticated view of Hellenistic philosophy in its own right.
The Oxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy offers thirty essays by leading international scholars, framed by a general introduction from the editors. Organized around the prominent Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic schools, it offers a topical treatment of their characteristic doctrines and arguments and includes essays on their legacies at the end of the Hellenistic era, as the philosophical center of gravity in the Mediterranean world shifted from Athens to other cities. A final section considers the profound formative influence of each school in the early modern period, as European philosophers engaged closely with ancient Greek and Latin texts recovered in the Renaissance. This volume consolidates the scholarly gains of recent decades, highlights the innovation and creativity of Hellenistic philosophy, provides an overview of the current state of scholarship, and points the way to new avenues of research.
