Stoicism pervaded and even perhaps suffused early modern European culture from the Renaissance onward in ways that made this ancient philosophical tradition, not unlike its Hellenistic rival Epicureanism, a constant and potent presence. Many writers and thinkers were attracted to the Stoic idea that the goal of human existence is to live in accord with nature, virtuously and rationally, that men must free themselves from the passions and show acceptance and constancy in the face of natural and other phenomena that they cannot change, that virtue counts for more than bodily self-conservation, and that God and the cosmos, if not quite the same thing, are coextensive.

In this wide-ranging, perceptive, and elegant book, Christopher Brooke demonstrates both Stoicism's appeal and ubiquity and the multiple ways in which it colored and entered into the controversies of European political thought. If others, from Ernst Cassirer to Richard Tuck, had previously pointed to the fundamental role of Stoicism in early modern thought, no one else has covered the ground in so comprehensive and authoritative a manner. Everyone interested in the intellectual history of the era between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment has reason to be grateful for and to take cognizance of this book. And yet there is a problem. While in one or two cases, such as that of the South Netherlander Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), a kind of Stoicism incontestably formed the core of a major political writer's outlook, this phenomenon is rare, and in most cases, including that of Rousseau, we are essentially dealing with a tincture or coloration present only in the background. This means that it is mostly uncommonly difficult to assess precisely how Stocism affected a particular author's political standpoint. Brooke refers in his conclusion to the “political Stoicism of the French Revolution,” but this is especially baffling since the French Revolution, viewed in terms of its political thought, was really four revolutions—liberal constitutional monarchism, democratic republicanism, the intolerant authoritarian populism of Montagne, and the obsession with subsistence of the sans-culottes. Which of these does Brooke suggest is the one that reflects the shaping force of political Stoicism?

Stoicism was crucial to Lipsius as a way of evading and transcending the Protestant–Catholic doctrine tearing the Low Countries asunder in his time and providing a political doctrine helpful to his contemporaries without challenging either the Spanish imperial power dominant in his native southern Netherlands (Belgium) or the mainly Protestant Dutch Revolt that had wrested the northern Netherlands from Spain. But if Lipsius's political thought, and the Stoic moral philosophy on which it rested, helped scholars and many others to reconcile themselves to the divided state of their homeland, distance themselves from patriotic and religious appeals, and reconcile themselves to whichever political authority controlled their particular locality, it also encouraged a high degree of political passivity and acquiescence in the supremacy of princely (or, for that matter, republican) predominance. Since this was the essential role of Stoicism to Lipsius, it raises searching questions about the function of Stoicism in a European political thought tradition, given that this tradition became more concerned with redefining, reforming, or revolutionizing society and politics than with mere stability and acquiescence for their own sake.

Stoicism, like Epicureanism, was chiefly concerned with helping and fortifying the individual, rather than commenting on the political scene (which was often inadvisable in the Roman imperial context). Early modern political thought, on the other hand, was far more preoccupied with conceptualizing the relationship of society and the state and searching for the best form of government than with emancipating the individual from error, superstition, and fear. Consequently, while no-one would wish to deny that Stoicism played some part in the development and thinking of figures like Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, Diderot, Adam Smith, or Rousseau, neither is it easy to determine exactly what the shaping force of Stoicism was in each particular case and how seriously to take it.

Brooke concedes, in the case of Grotius, that there is much force in the claim of Richard Tuck and J.B. Schneewind that it is “a serious mistake” to suppose that Grotius was reworking Stoic natural-law theory when providing early modern Europe with the foundation of its natural-law tradition. For Grotius made no appeal to Stoic metaphysics and does not present human reason as an extension of the divine mind. At the same time, though, and quite convincingly, Brooke nevertheless insists that Grotius's thought is “shot through with distinctively Stoic content.” So it was. But what exactly does that tell us? The only subsequent major thinker, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), who, like Lipsius, placed the need to escape from religious controversy and authority undeviatingly at the very center of his political thought, sharing with Lipsius a tendency to acquiesce in princely absolutism, also tended, as Brooke shows, to be unusually harsh in his criticism of Stoic philosophy for what he saw as its inner contradictions and the deficiencies of its moral thought.

Another problem is the flexibility, not to say pliability, of Stoicism. Bayle considered Stoicism peculiarly prone to self-contradiction. There were absolutist Stoics in early modern Europe and republican Stoics, atheistic Stoics and nonatheist Stoics. There were Stoics who venerated divine providence and alleged Stoics, like Spinoza, famous for eliminating divine providence and all teleology. Brooke's sixth chapter is entitled “How the Stoics Became Atheists.” Here, Brooke demonstrates that Lipsius and other late Renaissance Neo-Stoics had reconciled Stoicism and Christianity by playing down or falsifying Stoic identification of God with nature and, as far as possible, avoiding the pantheistic implications of key Stoic doctrines. This is certainly true, and correcting Lipsius's error in this regard was bound to open the door to varieties of atheism. But does this mean, as Brooke assumes, that therefore Susan James was right to view Spinoza's philosophy as essentially a reworking of Stoicism, given the common monism, the systematic relationship of cosmology to ethics in both, the strict determinism with divine providence reduced to the course of natural laws, and the emphasis on conatus, or the striving to conserve oneself, as well as the identification of God with nature?

At first sight, the parallels do indeed appear striking. But here again, much depends on what one means by Stoicism. For most ancient Stoic philosophers, God was not identical to, but only coextensive with, nature, while divine providence was not an unknowing, unalterable play of natural forces but, rather, a knowing, directing force. For them, the divinity pervaded nature, and his knowing providence was something to which men could attune their souls, and even pray. The Stoic notion of “superstition” was very different from Spinoza's and left ample room for astrology, divination, and respect for ancient oracles. It is true that many early modern writers listed Spinoza among the Stoics, but it is equally true that a great many aligned him with Lucretius and the Epicureans. In any case, both Stoics and Epicureans were more concerned with the individual than society, and it would be difficult to demonstrate that Spinoza's alleged Stoicism in some way concretely shaped his democratic, republican, political thought.