Pioneers in Modern Stoicism: Margaret Reesor

Welcome to Stoicism Today! This week Judith Stove draws our attention to an overlooked 20th-century scholar who made significant contributions to the modern understanding of ancient Stoicism: Margaret Reesor. This piece is part of an occasional series, Pioneers in Modern Stoicism. You can read previous installments here, here, and here.

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Modern scholarship has extended knowledge of ancient philosophy in many directions, but one major school of thought, Stoicism, has received little of its attention. This neglect of the most influential system of later antiquity is particularly notable in English-speaking countries…The main justification for this book is the lack in English of works which discuss specific problems in Stoicism...

So wrote A.A. Long in his introduction (p. 1) to Problems in Stoicism (1971), a ground-breaking and still an important collection, offering informed explorations of such topics as oikeiōsis and the ‘indifferents.’ Contributors included F.H. Sandbach (1903-1991), author of the perennial classic The Stoics (1975), and J.M. Rist (1936-), whose Stoic Philosophy (1969) remains a useful source.

Introducing the volume, Long names these and the other contributors, such as Gerard Watson, (1934-1998), an Irish priest and classics professor at Maynooth; his opinion of Stoic ethics was that it represented ‘monumental moralizing dullness.’ This view was quoted and seemingly endorsed by Long at the time, who, strikingly, adds: ‘The early Stoics should not be judged by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius’ (p.1). This offers a vivid instance of the notion—less commonly held, happily, today—that the relatively complete and accessible Roman Stoic texts were to be considered less useful than the often-fragmentary Greek sources (some of which—e.g. Diogenes Laertius—date from periods further from the early Stoa than Marcus was, while others—Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias—had an agenda often hostile to Stoicism).

Yet one authority, absent from the contents page and overlooked in Long’s introduction, had already made serious contributions, in English. Margaret Reesor is amply represented in the bibliography:

• The Political Theory of the Old and Middle Stoa (New York, 1951)
• ‘Fate and Possibility in Early Stoic Philosophy,’ Phoenix xix (1965), 285-297
• ‘The Stoic Categories,’ American Journal of Philology lxxviii (1957), 63-82
• ‘The Stoic Concept of Quality,’ American Journal of Philology lxxv (1954), 40-58
• ‘The “Indifferents” in the Old and Middle Stoa,’ Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association lxxxii (1951), 102-10

No other author, apart from Max Pohlenz (1872-1962), has more bibliography entries—and his works were in German, and from a previous generation. Margaret Reesor’s were comparatively recent, contra Long’s explicit statement about the lack of English treatments. Who was this shadowy figure, whose interpretations invited an engagement throughout the volume, formally denied to their author?

Margaret Elaine Reesor (1924-2010) was a Canadian scholar of ancient philosophy. She completed her B.A. at the University of Toronto (1945), and her M.A. the following year, obtaining her PhD at Bryn Mawr in 1951; her thesis appeared in that year, as in the first bibliography entry. At this time she was an instructor of classics at Wells College (1950-3), then at Women’s College, University of North Carolina (1954-8) and U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1958-60). Reesor became Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky (1960-1). She returned to Canada as a lecturer at Queen’s University, Ontario (1961-3), where she remained, as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor (1967-75). From then until 1987 she was Professor of Classics, serving as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton in 1973-4 and 1980-1. A brief obituary notes:

She was greatly admired as a teacher in a wide range of classical subjects, including Greek language, literature, and philosophy, and the Latin writers Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil and Seneca, and as a much-published authority on the Pre-Socratic, Stoic, and Epicurean philosophers (Briggs).

Reesor’s articles can be read via JSTOR. Her writing is clear and her reasoning rigorous, as she addresses head-on some of the thorniest topics in Stoicism: substance; active and passive forces; disposition; mixture. Along the way, she makes important observations on such key matters as Stoic ideas about causation, still an evolving area of study:

We must observe further that [in Chrysippus] as a cause the quality [of a body] was both active and passive. In so far as it determined an effect upon an object in which it was immanent or upon an external object, it was active; in so far as it was itself predetermined by a series of causes, it was acted upon (1954, p. 44).

In concluding that Chrysippus’ ‘theory of quality influenced his theory of virtue, and his psychology’ (p. 58), Reesor seems to have considered Stoic ethics and physics as intimately co-implicating.

J.M. Rist, after describing Reesor’s work as ‘useful’ (p. 38), nonetheless took issue with some matters in her 1954 paper. He disagreed with her suggestion of Zeno’s likely belief about substance, quality, and active and passive principles. Yet noting that the sources are fragmentary and conducive to a range of readings, and that Reesor’s conclusions were cautious, it looks rather as if Rist may have disagreed with a straw Reesor.

Reesor’s 1957 article on Stoic Categories developed some of the themes, with respect to the virtues.

The concept of internal relation appears to be implicit in Zeno’s treatment of the virtues. Plutarch writes that Zeno recognized four virtues, wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, and regarded them as several according to difference (pleionas kata diaphoras) but inseparable (achōristoi)…They were one virtue, seeming to differ according to their powers in relation to external entities… (1957, p. 64).

She remained duly hesitant in her conclusions:

Can we assume that the virtues in Zeno’s philosophy were qualities, and that consequently all qualities were internally related? Here the evidence fails us. We know only that the virtues were corporeal causes (p. 65).

In the first of two chapters he contributed to the 1971 volume, I.G. Kidd (1922-2011, later best known for his edition of the surviving fragments of Posidonius) addressed three scholarly treatments of the Stoic ‘indifferents,’ including Reesor’s (the others were by Pohlenz, and Dutch specialist on Posidonius, M. van Straaten). Kidd summarised the chapter theme:

The opponents of the Stoa maintained that ta kata physin [‘natural advantages’] should have been included in the End as goods, otherwise there was a contradiction, or that the Stoics were hedging and that their thought implied this (p. 151).

Kidd quoted the conclusion of Reesor’s 1951 article:

Posidonius believed that the ‘indifferents’ had a positive effect upon the emotions, and seems to have argued that they should be regarded as good or evil but not as a matter of indifference (Reesor 1951, p. 110, quoted at Kidd p. 152).

This distinction between the ‘indifferents’ and ‘indifference’ has been fruitfully developed recently by Christopher Gill, who has helped us to understand the ‘natural advantages’ as contributing to human nature at its best:

[The preferred indifferents] are valuable because they enable us to realize our nature as human beings. I think this helps to explain why the list of preferable indifferents includes not merely basic needs such as life and health, but also features that promote our nature as rational and social animals, including family relationships and reputation or acceptance by other human beings (2022, p. 57).

Here as elsewhere, Reesor seems to have been ahead of her time, treating all aspects of Stoic thought as worthy of engagement, notwithstanding the source difficulties. Reesor, before anyone else, brought these highly technical debates into English currency. Her apparent ease and flexibility denoted not only thorough expertise with both primary and modern works, but their assimilation into her plain, modest, and precise idiom: the ‘proper digestion’ upon which Epictetus insisted (Enchiridion 46). And just as she had responded to the European giants of Stoicism of the first half of the twentieth century, Problems in Stoicism’s contributors, in different ways, found themselves obliged to address her accounts.

A history of the Classics faculty at Queen’s describes the positive impact brought about by Reesor’s arrival:

It seemed that the department might be doomed to exist in a state of Heraclitean flux. Not so. Margaret E. Reesor, of Toronto and Bryn Mawr, who, like [E. L.] Harrison, was appointed in 1961, took over the teaching of elementary Greek with enthusiasm and skill, and lectured on the pre-Socratics and Stoicism, her special field of research with scholarly dedication until she retired as professor emeritus in 1987 (S. E. Smethurst, Classics at Queen’s [Kingston: Queen’s University, 1992] 54 (quoted in Griffith).[1]

In the mid-eighteenth century, Elizabeth Carter, who never married, and whose bestselling translations of Epictetus would make her a household name, had adopted the title ‘Mrs,’ presumably as more respectable or impressive than ‘Miss’ (Williams, p. 211). Throughout Problems in Stoicism—that is, as recently as 1971, two hundred years after Carter—citations of Margaret Reesor referred to ‘Miss Reesor’: surely the last female scholar of ancient philosophy whose marital status—rather than qualification or affiliation—was presented as central to her professional identity. Reesor lived with her elderly mother, who accompanied her to faculty events at Queen’s (Griffith).

It is notable that in Stoicism, a field which has a name for male domination, women, since the 1970s, have consistently made an outsize impact: Gisela Striker and Gretchen Reydams-Schils have enriched our understanding of the Roman Stoics; Julia Annas and Susanne Bobzien broke new ground throughout the revival of Hellenistic philosophy; Martha Nussbaum and Margaret Graver produced works which became instant and timeless classics. Many women around the world carry this legacy forward, bringing Stoic ideas—in philosophy, literature, music, and the art of living— to both academic and wider audiences. We can now welcome Margaret Reesor, a valued foremother of the field, into the ongoing conversation.

‘If there’d been no Reesor, there’d have been no Modern Stoa.’

(Diogenes Laertius 7.183, adapted)

Works Cited

Briggs, Ward W. ‘Reesor, Margaret Elaine,’ Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences Database of Classical Scholars, https://dbcs.sas.rutgers.edu/all-scholars/9051-reesor-margaret-elaine

Gill, Christopher. Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and Its Modern Significance. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Griffith, R. Drew, personal email to author, 28 October 2025.

Kidd, I.G. ‘Stoic Intermediates and the End for Man,’ in Long (ed.), pp. 150-172.

Long, A.A. (ed.) Problems in Stoicism. University of London, The Athlone Press, 1971.

Reesor, Margaret E. ‘The “Indifferents” in the Old and Middle Stoa,’ Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 82 (1951), pp. 102-110.

- ‘The Stoic Concept of Quality,’ The American Journal of Philology, vol. 75, no. 1 (1954), pp. 40-58.

- ‘The Stoic Categories,’ The American Journal of Philology, vol. 78, no. 1 (1957), pp. 63-82.

Rist, J.M. ‘Categories and Their Uses,’ in Long (ed.), pp. 38-57.

Williams, Jane. The Literary Women of England: Including a Biographical Epitome (public domain ed.). London: Saunders, Otley & Co., 1861.

About the Author

Judith Stove is a member of the College of Stoic Philosophers, and co-organiser of Australian events Stoicon-X Melbourne (2022-) and now Stoicon-X Sydney (2026-). Her most recent book is Marcus Aurelius and His Legacy: Seeking Rome’s Kingdom of Gold (2025).

Notes

[1] While more recently some retired professors who are women have been described by the feminine form, emerita, others have elected to retain the traditionally male form of the term, emeritus.

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