This will be my last post as editor of Stoicism Today. As of today, December 31 2022, I am stepping down from my position, and handing the position and duties of editor over to my friend, colleague, and (for the last year-and-a-half) assistant editor, Harald Kavli. Another friend and colleague, Judith Stove, will be replacing Harald as assistant editor. So, we will begin the new year of 2023 with a “changing of the guard,” so to speak.
Perhaps that expression isn’t entirely right for this transition, when I think about it, though! There will indeed be changes, but I suppose there’s a good bit more continuity involved, since Harald will be taking my place, and Judith has already been helping out behind the scenes here at Stoicism Today. So it’s not as if entirely new people are taking over the management, leadership, correspondence, and other duties involved in this blog. I’ll still be writing occasional pieces for Stoicism Today from time to time as well.
All told, I’m very happy to see Harald and Judy take on these two editorial positions, and for several good reasons. The first is that I can be confident that both of them will be doing excellent work here with the blog in the years to come. Knowing both of them personally, and interacting with them quite a lot in the last several years, they are people I’d be happy to see in the editor and assistant editor position at Stoicism Today, even if I wasn’t involved in it. The fact that I can know – fate willing – that they are going to be doing excellent work puts my mind at ease all the more about my own transitioning out. I’m actually going to make a prediction that, with the two of them at the helm, you’re actually going to see a better Stoicism Today blog in the coming years.
That brings me to my second reason, namely, that it’s well past time that we did make some personnel changes. The founding editor, Patrick Ussher, started Stoicism Today in 2012, and developed it into an excellent go-to resource for the modern Stoicism movement and what would eventually become the Modern Stoicism, ltd. organization. He asked me to take over as editor in Spring of 2016, and I have served as editor since. Seven years is a rather long time to have one person running a publication that is supposed to represent an entire team (even with assistance, input, and contributions by Harald over 1/4 of that time). It’s my view that it’s good to change people and positions up regularly, to keep matters from becoming too dependent upon or determined by just one person, to bring in some “new blood” from time to time.
In my tenure here as editor, we shifted the blog from its original home, hosted at the University of Exeter, to the Modern Stoicism site you find it at now. We also went through a major redesign of the entire website, including the Stoicism Today blog. We’ve publicized and reported on seven Stoic Weeks, just as many Stoicons, and many other in-person and online events. We’ve published new pieces every weekend, contributed by hundreds of authors. And, with the help of my co-editor, Leah Goldrick, we assembled some of the best blog entries, many of them expanded and revised, into two volumes of Stoicism Today Selected Essays (volumes 3 and 4).
I’m quite happy with the work that we’ve done here over the last nearly-7 years, which has been aided, supported, and assisted by a great number of people. And I’ll admit, I’m equally happy to shift the burdens of that work off onto other people who are willing to take it on! From this point onwards, anyone interested in authoring a piece for Stoicism Today (or inquiring about various matters), can and should direct those to Harald and Judith. I’ll still be an active member of the Modern Stoicism team, but my time and tasks here at Stoicism Today are now at an end.
Thanks to all of you readers of the Stoicism Today blog! Thanks to everyone who has written articles, given interviews, or submitted reports (I’ve got Tim LeBon particularly in mind there) for publication in the blog! Thanks to the other members of the Modern Stoicism team, who have helped in so many ways! And special thanks to my friends, colleagues, and team members Harald and Judith, to whom I now hand off not just the labor involved in the blog, but also the remaining space in this article!
Judith writes:
‘I’m very grateful to Greg and Harald for inviting me to be part of the Stoicism Today team. They have crafted an online journal of global appeal, publishing pieces across the spectrum, from established scholars of Stoicism, to new readers and practitioners. Greg’s energy, versatility, vast knowledge, and wise counsel will be missed as we go forward.
In 2023, Harald and I plan to invite contributions from all who have something to say. We will schedule the popular symposium format once again, aiming to present a variety of pieces on a particular theme. So all aspiring writers on any aspect of Stoicism, ancient or modern, start drafting, or polishing up a piece to submit!
I attach a short bio to introduce myself, and hope to get to know more readers and writers soon.
Judith Stove is a writer and student of the past, based in Sydney, Australia. She is part of the organizing team for Stoicon-X Melbourne. Alongside Simon J.E. Drew, Judith cohosts the ‘Soul Searching With Seneca’ fortnightly podcast at The Walled Garden (TWG) on Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius, exploring both their philosophical ideas and Seneca’s sublime use of Latin. Judith’s blog at TWG, ‘Roots of the Garden,’ presents short posts about classic texts of the Western tradition, starting with Plato’s Meno and Theaetetus. She can be reached at Judith.stove@gmail.com, and a further selection of her published work can be found here.’
Harald writes:
I am very grateful for all that Greg Sadler has done for the blog up through the years and it has been a pleasure and a great privilege to work with him. I am very grateful for the opportunity to join the Modern Stoicism team and to be a part of the editorial team for the blog.
I am also very grateful for all of our readers and writers. I think that the blog is quite unique in that we publish pieces not only by academic philosophers and other scholars, but also from people from different backgrounds who have in some way been shaped by the Stoic writers. I have been a student of Stoicism now for about 8 years or so, but I still feel like I learn something new and part of the reason is all the great texts that we have to privilege to publish here at Stoicism Today.
Greg’s shoes won’t be easy to fill, but I am very grateful that Judith will join the team. She’s already done some work for us, and she’s done a great job.
John Sellars, the current Chair of Modern Stoicism writes:
All of us at Modern Stoicism are extremely grateful to Greg for all the work that he has put into editing Stoicism Today over the past years, as well as his contributions to running Stoicon. As many people probably know, Greg is extremely busy, running a highly successful YouTube channel devoted to philosophy on top of his academic teaching, so we were very fortunate to have him agree to take on this huge task. Although stepping down as editor of Stoicism Today, happily Greg remains fully involved in Modern Stoicism. We are equally grateful that Harald Kavli has agreed to take over from Greg as the new editor, having worked alongside him for a while.
