Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras PDF Author: J. Clerk Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107046653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In this book, Clerk Shaw removes this apparent tension by arguing that the Protagoras as a whole actually reflects Plato's anti-hedonism"--

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras PDF Author: J. Clerk Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107046653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In this book, Clerk Shaw removes this apparent tension by arguing that the Protagoras as a whole actually reflects Plato's anti-hedonism"--

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras PDF Author: J. Clerk Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316240207
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
Plato often rejects hedonism, but in the Protagoras, Plato's Socrates seems to endorse hedonism. In this book, J. Clerk Shaw removes this apparent tension by arguing that the Protagoras as a whole actually reflects Plato's anti-hedonism. He shows that Plato places hedonism at the core of a complex of popular mistakes about value and especially about virtue: that injustice can be prudent, that wisdom is weak, that courage is the capacity to persevere through fear, and that virtue cannot be taught. The masses reproduce this system of values through shame and fear of punishment. The Protagoras and other dialogues depict sophists and orators who have internalized popular morality through shame, but who are also ashamed to state their views openly. Shaw's reading not only reconciles the Protagoras with Plato's other dialogues, but harmonizes it with them and even illuminates Plato's wider anti-hedonism.

Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times

Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times PDF Author: William V. Harris
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004379509
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times attempts to blaze a trail for the cross-disciplinary humanistic study of pain and pleasure, with literature scholars, historians and philosophers all setting out to understand how the Greeks and Romans experienced, managed and reasoned about the sensations and experiences they felt as painful or pleasurable. The book is intended to provoke discussion of a wide range of problems in the cultural history of antiquity. It addresses both the physicality of erôs and illness, and physiological and philosophical doctrines, especially hedonism and anti-hedonism in their various forms. Fine points of terminology (Greek is predictably rich in this area) receive careful attention. Authors in question run from Homer to (among others) the Hippocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch, Galen and the Aristotle-commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.

Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life

Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life PDF Author: Daniel Russell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199282846
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
Daniel Russell examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychology. Russell offers a fresh perspective on how good things bear on happiness in Plato's ethics, and shows that, for Plato, pleasure cannot determine happiness because pleasure lacks a direction of its own. Plato presents wisdom as a skill of living that determines happiness by directing one's life as a whole, bringing aboutgoodness in all areas of one's life, as a skill brings about order in its materials. The 'materials' of the skill of living are, in the first instance, not things like money or health, but one's attitudes, emotions, and desires where things like money and health are concerned. Plato recognizes thatthese 'materials' of the psyche are inchoate, ethically speaking, and in need of direction from wisdom. Among them is pleasure, which Plato treats not as a sensation but as an attitude with which one ascribes value to its object. However, Plato also views pleasure, once shaped and directed by wisdom, as a crucial part of a virtuous character as a whole. Consequently, Plato rejects all forms of hedonism, which allows happiness to be determined by a part of the psyche that does not direct one'slife but is among the materials to be directed. At the same time, Plato is also able to hold both that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and that pleasure is necessary for happiness, not as an addition to one's virtue, but as a constituent of one's whole virtuous character itself. Plato thereforeoffers an illuminating role for pleasure in ethics and psychology, one to which we may be unaccustomed: pleasure emerges not as a sensation or even a mode of activity, but as an attitude - one of the ways in which we construe our world - and as such, a central part of every character.

The Oxford Handbook of Plato

The Oxford Handbook of Plato PDF Author: Gail Fine
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0190639733
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 793

Get Book Here

Book Description
Plato is the best known, and continues to be the most widely studied, of all the ancient Greek philosophers. The updated and original essays in the second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Plato provide in-depth discussions of a variety of topics and dialogues, all serving several functions at once: they survey the current academic landscape; express and develop the authors' own views; and situate those views within a range of alternatives. The result is a useful state-of-the-art reference to the man many consider the most important philosophical thinker in history. This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Plato differs in two main ways from the first edition. First, six leading scholars of ancient philosophy have contributed entirely new chapters: Hugh Benson on the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro; James Warren on the Protagoras and Gorgias; Lindsay Judson on the Meno; Luca Castagnoli on the Phaedo; Susan Sauvé Meyer on the Laws; and David Sedley on Plato's theology. This new edition therefore covers both dialogues and topics in more depth than the first edition did. Secondly, most of the original chapters have been revised and updated, some in small, others in large, ways.

The Political Soul

The Political Soul PDF Author: Josh Wilburn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192606409
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the relationship between Plato's views on psychology and his political philosophy, focusing on his reflections on the spirited part of the tripartite soul, or thumos, and spirited motivation over the course of his career. Spirit is the distinctively social or political part of the human soul for Plato, in the sense that it is the source of the desires, emotions, and sensitivities that make it possible for people to form relationships with one another, interact politically, and cooperate together in and protect their communities. Such emotions prominently include not only the aggressive or competitive qualities for which thumos is well known, but also the feelings of attachment, love, friendship, and civic fellowship that bind families and communities together and make cities possible in the first place. Moreover, as spirit is the political part of the soul in this sense, two social and political challenges that occupy Plato throughout his works—namely, how to educate citizens properly in virtue and how to maintain unity and stability in political communities—cannot be addressed and resolved, on his view, without proper attention to the spirited aspects of human psychology.

Plato's Gorgias

Plato's Gorgias PDF Author: J. Clerk Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108492215
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Critical Guide offers detailed analysis of all parts of Plato's Gorgias, together with diverse perspectives on its advocacy of a philosophical, just life as against a life of rhetoric and injustice.

Socratic Virtue

Socratic Virtue PDF Author: Naomi Reshotko
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458078
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 5

Get Book Here

Book Description
Socrates was not a moral philosopher. Instead he was a theorist who showed how human desire and human knowledge complement one another in the pursuit of human happiness. His theory allowed him to demonstrate that actions and objects have no value other than that which they derive from their employment by individuals who, inevitably, desire their own happiness and have the knowledge to use actions and objects as a means for its attainment. The result is a naturalised, practical, and demystified account of good and bad, and right and wrong. Professor Reshotko presents a freshly envisioned Socratic theory residing at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and ethics. It makes an important contribution to the study of the Platonic dialogues and will also interest all scholars of ethics and moral psychology.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being PDF Author: Guy Fletcher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317402642
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1231

Get Book Here

Book Description
The concept of well-being is one of the oldest and most important topics in philosophy and ethics, going back to ancient Greek philosophy. Following the boom in happiness studies in the last few years it has moved to centre stage, grabbing media headlines and the attention of scientists, psychologists and economists. Yet little is actually known about well-being and it is an idea that is often poorly articulated. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being provides a comprehensive, outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising over 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into six parts: well-being in the history of philosophy current theories of well-being, including hedonism and perfectionism examples of well-being and its opposites, including friendship and virtue and pain and death theoretical issues, such as well-being and value, harm, identity and well-being and children well-being in moral and political philosophy well-being and related subjects, including law, economics and medicine. Essential reading for students and researchers in ethics and political philosophy, it is also an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology.

The Hedonism of Eudoxus of Cnidus

The Hedonism of Eudoxus of Cnidus PDF Author: Richard Davies
Publisher:
ISBN: 1009321544
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 74

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mathematician and astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus was a younger contemporary of Plato and an older contemporary of Aristotle, on both of whom he exerted some influence during his stays in Athens. This is perhaps most apparent with regard to his ethical doctrine that identifies the good as pleasure (hedonism). While Plato seems rather unsure how seriously to take this proposal, Aristotle provides the materials for reconstructing the battery of ingenious arguments that Eudoxus brought forward in its defence. Taken together in this Element, these arguments foreshadow almost everything that has been said in the Western tradition in favour of the positive value of pleasure, and, if taken aright, point in the direction of a hedonism that sets store by the cultivation of activities akin to those for which Eudoxus has been most renowned: mathematics and astronomy.