Virtue and Knowledge

Virtue and Knowledge PDF Author: William J. Prior
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315522047
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Originally published in 1991, this book focuses on the concept of virtue, and in particular on the virtue of wisdom or knowledge, as it is found in the epic poems of Homer, some tragedies of Sophocles, selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The key questions discussed are the nature of the virtues, their relation to each other, and the relation between the virtues and happiness or well-being. This book provides the background and interpretative framework to make classical works on Ethics, such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, accessible to readers with no training in the classics.

Virtue and Knowledge

Virtue and Knowledge PDF Author: William J. Prior
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315522047
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book

Book Description
Originally published in 1991, this book focuses on the concept of virtue, and in particular on the virtue of wisdom or knowledge, as it is found in the epic poems of Homer, some tragedies of Sophocles, selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The key questions discussed are the nature of the virtues, their relation to each other, and the relation between the virtues and happiness or well-being. This book provides the background and interpretative framework to make classical works on Ethics, such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, accessible to readers with no training in the classics.

Early Greek Ethics

Early Greek Ethics PDF Author: David Conan Wolfsdorf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191076414
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 751

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Book Description
Early Greek Ethics is devoted to Greek philosophical ethics in its formative period, from the last decades of the sixth century BCE to the beginning of the fourth century BCE. It begins with the inception of Greek philosophical ethics and ends immediately before the composition of Plato's and Aristotle's mature ethical works Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. The ancient contributors include Presocratics such as Heraclitus, Democritus, and figures of the early Pythagorean tradition such as Empedocles and Archytas of Tarentum, who have previously been studied principally for their metaphysical, cosmological, and natural philosophical ideas. Socrates and his lesser known associates such as Antisthenes of Athens and Aristippus of Cyrene also feature, as well as sophists such as Gorgias of Leontini, Antiphon of Athens, and Prodicus of Ceos, and anonymous texts such as the Pythagorean Acusmata, Dissoi Logoi, Anonymus Iamblichi, and On Law and Justice. In addition to chapters on these individuals and texts, the volume explores select fields and topics especially influential to ethical philosophical thought in the formative period and later, such as early Greek medicine, music, friendship, justice and the afterlife, and early Greek ethnography. Consisting of thirty chapters composed by an international team of leading philosophers and classicists, Early Greek Ethics is the first volume in any language devoted to philosophical ethics in the formative period.

The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics

The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics PDF Author: Burkhard Reis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139456997
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
There is now a renewed concern for moral psychology among moral philosophers. Moreover, contemporary philosophers interested in virtue, moral responsibility and moral progress regularly refer to Plato and Aristotle, the two founding fathers of ancient ethics. The book contains eleven chapters by distinguished scholars which showcase current research in Greek ethics. Four deal with Plato, focusing on the Protagoras, Euthydemus, Symposium and Republic, and discussing matters of literary presentation alongside the philosophical content. The four chapters on Aristotle address problems such as the doctrine of the mean, the status of rules, equity and the tension between altruism and egoism in Aristotelian eudaimonism. A contrast to classical Greek ethics is presented by two chapters reconstructing Epicurus' views on the emotions and moral responsibility as well as on moral development. The final chapter on personal identity in Empedocles shows that the concern for moral progress is already palpable in Presocratic philosophy.

The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium PDF Author: Sophia Xenophontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108833691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This volume provides the first authoritative study of the creative appropriation of Greek ethics by late antique and Byzantine authors.

A Problem in Greek Ethics

A Problem in Greek Ethics PDF Author: John Addington Symonds
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description


Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics

Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics PDF Author: Nicholas White
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0198250592
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Nicholas White opposes the long-standard view that ancient Greek ethics is fundamentally different from modern ethical views, especially those prevalent since Kant. Since the eighteenth century, and indeed since before Hegel, moral philosophers wishing to oppose the dualism of rationality-cum-morality vs. inclination, especially as it is manifested in Kant, have looked to Greek thought for an alternative conception of ethical norms and the good life. As a result, Greek ethics,particularly in the so-called Classical period of the fourth century BCE, has for more than two centuries been standardly thought to be fundamentally eudaimonist, and to have the character of what is nowadays normally called the ethics of virtue.White argues that although this picture of Greek ethics is not without an element of truth, it nevertheless seriously distorts the facts. In the first place, Greek thought is far more variegated than the picture suggests. Secondly, it contains many elements -- even in the Classical thinkers Plato and Aristotle -- that are not eudaimonist and also not suitable for an ethics of virtue.Greek thinkers were not as a group convinced of the possibility of a harmony of one's happiness with full regard for the happiness of others and with conformity to ethical norms. On the contrary, Greek thinkers were well aware of,and took seriously, the idea that ethical norms can possess a force that does not derive from conduciveness to one's own happiness. Indeed, even Plato and Aristotle took it that under certain circumstances there can even be a clash between ethical standards and one'sown well-being. The project of completely eliminating the possibility of such a clash came to full development not in the Classical period but rather in the ethics of the Stoics in the third century.Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics argues that throughout Greek thought the concept of ethics as a source of obligations and imperatives can, in unfavorable circumstances, run counter to one's own happiness. In this sense Greek ethics has a shape similar to that of modern Kantian and post-Kantian thinking, and should not be seen as opposed to it.

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature PDF Author: Maria Liatsi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110699613
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Interpretation of ancient Greek literature is often enough distorted by the preconceptions of modern times, especially on ancient morality. This is often equivalent to begging the question. If we think e.g. of aretê, which has different meanings in different contexts, we shall think in English (or in Modern Greek or in French or in German) and shall falsify the phenomena. If we are to understand the Greek concept e.g. of aretê we must study the nature of the situations in which it is applied. For it is an important fact in the study of Greek society that the Greeks used the one word (e.g. aretê) where we use different words. If we are to understand properly the texts, we have to view them in their historical and social context. Ancient Greek thought needs to be studied together with politics, ethics, and economic behaviour. Moreover, the best insights can be found in those who confine themselves to the terms of each ancient author's analysis. From this principle each of the contributions of the volume begins.

Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781539784388
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science. In the two works taken together we have their author's whole theory of human conduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity which is not directed merely to knowledge or truth. The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum. The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it (although his young age makes this less likely). Alternatively, the work may have been dedicated to his father, who was also called Nicomachus. The theme of the work is a Socratic question previously explored in the works of Plato, Aristotle's friend and teacher, of how men should best live. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle described how Socrates, the friend and teacher of Plato, had turned philosophy to human questions, whereas Pre-Socratic philosophy had only been theoretical. Ethics, as now separated out for discussion by Aristotle, is practical rather than theoretical, in the original Aristotelian senses of these terms. In other words, it is not only a contemplation about good living, because it also aims to create good living. It is therefore connected to Aristotle's other practical work, the Politics, which similarly aims at people becoming good. Ethics is about how individuals should best live, while the study of politics is from the perspective of a law-giver, looking at the good of a whole community.

Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece

Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Joseph M. Bryant
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791430415
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
An exercise in cultural sociology, Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece seeks to explicate the dynamic currents of classical Hellenic ethics and social philosophy by situating those idea-complexes in their socio-historical and intellectual contexts. Central to this enterprise is a comprehensive historical-sociological analysis of the Polis form of social organization, which charts the evolution of its basic institutions, roles, statuses, and class relations. From the Dark Age period of "genesis" on to the Hellenistic era of "eclipse" by the emergent forces of imperial patrimonialism, Polis society promoted and sustained corresponding normative codes which mobilized and channeled the requisite emotive commitments and cognitive judgments for functional proficiency under existing conditions of life. The aristocratic warrior-ethos canonized in the Homeric epics; the civic ideology of equality and justice espoused by reformist lawgivers and poets; the democratization of status honor and martial virtue that attended the shift to hoplite warfare; the philosophical exaltation of the Polis-citizen bond as found in the architectonic visions of Plato and Aristotle; and the subsequent retreat from civic virtues and the interiorization of value articulated by the Skeptics, Epicureans, and Stoics, new age philosophies in a world remade by Alexander's conquests--these are the key phases in the evolving currents of Hellenic moral discourse, as structurally framed by transformations within the institutional matrix of Polis society.

Antiphon the Sophist

Antiphon the Sophist PDF Author: Antiphon (of Athens.)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521651615
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This edition collects all the surviving evidence for the fifth-century BCE Athenian sophist Antiphon and presents it together with a translation and a full commentary, which assesses its reliability and significance. Although Antiphon is not as familiar a figure as sophists such as Protagoras and Gorgias, substantial fragments have survived from his major works, On Truth and On Concord, including extensive remains preserved on papyrus. In addition, information about his doctrines is preserved by ancient writers ranging in time from Aristotle to Simplicius and beyond. The introduction provides a brief sketch of Antiphon, his works, and his place in the fifth-century BCE sophistic movement, including his important contribution to the contemporary debate over the relation of law (nomos) and nature (physis). It also deals with the controversial question of the identity of Antiphon the sophist in relation to Antiphon of Rhamnus and other men of the same name.