This volume contains outstanding studies by some of the best scholars in ancient Greek Philosophy on key topics in Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian thought. These studies provide rigorous analyses of arguments and texts and often advance original interpretations. The essays in the volume range over a number of central themes in ancient philosophy, such as Socratic and Platonic conceptions of philosophical method; the Socratic paradoxes; Plato's view on justice; the nature of Platonic Forms, especially the Form of the Good; Aristotle's views on the faculties of the soul; Aristotle's functionalist account of the human good; Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian views on the nature of desire and its object. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy and classics.

This volume contains outstanding studies by some of the best scholars in ancient Greek Philosophy on key topics in Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian thought. These studies provide rigorous analyses of arguments and texts and often advance original interpretations. The essays in the volume range over a number of central themes in ancient philosophy, such as Socratic and Platonic conceptions of philosophical method; the Socratic paradoxes; Plato's view on justice; the nature of Platonic Forms, especially the Form of the Good; Aristotle's views on the faculties of the soul; Aristotle's functionalist account of the human good; Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian views on the nature of desire and its object. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy and classics.

This distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker’s ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato’s Socrates, focusing on his views of moral psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato’s Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul’s non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato’s analysis of logos (reason or language) which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy.

This volume presents essays on Ancient ethics from Homer to Plotinus with a focus on the significance of Ancient ethical thinking for contemporary ethics. Adapting Kant's words, we might describe philosophers today as holding that meta-ethics without normative ethics is empty; normative ethics without meta-ethics is blind. One fascinating feature of Ancient ethics is its close connection between content and method, between normative ethics and meta-ethics. In connecting ethical, epistemological, and cosmological issues, Ancient ethical theories strive for an integrated understanding of normativity. The project of this volume is to capture some of the colours of the bright spectrum of ancient ethics. The goal of bundling them together is, ultimately, to shed better light on the issues of contemporary ethics. Topics: Classical Chinese Ethics, Indian Ethics, Homeric Ethics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Plotinus, Ancient and Modern Moral Psychology, Hybrid Theories of Normativity, The Unity of the Virtues, The Art of Life and Morality (Lebenskunst und Moral). Contributors: J. Annas, M. Anagnostopoulos, R. Aprressyan, Th. C. Brickhouse / N. D. Smith, J. Bussanich, C. Collobert, S. Delcomminette, W. Detel, D. Frede, L. Gerson, Ch. Halbig, J. Hardy, O. Höffe, B. Inwood, M.-Th. Liske, L. Pfister, M. McPherran, J. Piering, G. Rudebusch, D. Russell, G. Santas, Ch. Shields, M. Sim, C. C. Taylor.

Zusammenfassung: This collection of original articles draws from a cross section of distinguished scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. It is focussed primarily on the philosophy of Aristotle but comprises as well studies of the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Epicurus. Its authors explore a range of complementary topics in value theory, moral psychology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, political theory, and methodology, highlighting the rich and lasting philosophical contributions of the thinkers investigated. Opening with an engaging intellectual autobiography of its honoree, Fred D. Miller, Jr., the volume offers treatments of Socrates as a citizen; Plato's attitude towards poetry; Socratic self-knowledge; Plato's conception of law in his Republic; explorations of reason, goodness, and moral conduct in Plato; Platonic metaphysics; Aristotelian causation; Aristotelian metaphysics and normativity; natural philosophy in Aristotle; Aristotelian logic; political theory and approaches to justice in Aristotle's Politics; methodological reflections on how best to approach Aristotle's indefensible ideas; and closes with a reconsideration of Epicurus on death and the art of dying. Altogether, the volume reflects the richness of the ongoing community of philosophical scholars dedicated to reconstructing, assessing, and criticizing the principal philosophers of the ancient world, whose epoch-forming explorations of the key elements of human life--considered socially, politically, psychologically, and metaphysically--remain topics of lively investigation today. It will be of interest to philosophers of many stripes, including those with a primary interest in ancient philosophy but extending as well to those with systematic interests in the themes it explores. This volume will be a valuable addition to all libraries serving communities dedicated to researching and studying the origins of Western philosophy

A collection of essays bringing diverse approaches to Plato into conversation in the spirit of its honorand, Christopher Rowe.

In this pathbreaking interpretation of Plato's foundational text of political philosophy, Carolina Araújo reveals how the Republic remains ripe for an interpretation grounded in notions of cooperation, flourishing and justice relevant to the diversity of contemporary life. Plato's Republic has the Greek name of Politeia that Araújo translates as “the way of life of the citizens,” not “the State” or “the form of government” as it more traditionally rendered. Plato's treatise, Politeia, depicts the rich array of patterns emerging from human interaction and enquires into the best amongst them. Cooperative Flourishing in Plato's Republic returns to these important questions about society – how to live with a vast diversity of personalities, with different interests and abilities, all of them trying to flourish – and asks how best can we share our environment? With rigorous philosophical analysis of the Greek text, accompanied by original translations of the most important passages, Araújo upends mainstream scholarship to progress Socrates' “bottom-up” view of politics and rejects previous readings of the Republic as a proto-totalitarian text, psychological study or lengthy analogy. By defending a theory of Platonic justice that is rooted in cooperative flourishing, the public education of all citizens and the contribution of philosophers to political life, “the beautiful city”, which Plato called Kallipolis, emerges as a hopeful possibility.

Hugh H. Benson explores Plato's answer to Clitophon's challenge, the question of how one can acquire the knowledge Socrates argues is essential to human flourishing-knowledge we all seem to lack. Plato suggests two methods by which this knowledge may be gained: the first is learning from those who already have the knowledge one seeks, and the second is discovering the knowledge one seeks on one's own. The book begins with a brief look at some of the Socratic dialogues where Plato appears to recommend the former approach while simultaneously indicating various difficulties in pursuing it. The remainder of the book focuses on Plato's recommendation in some of his most important and central dialogues-the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic-for carrying out the second approach: de novo inquiry. The book turns first to the famous paradox concerning the possibility of such an inquiry and explores Plato's apparent solution. Having defended the possibility of de novo inquiry as a response to Clitophon's challenge, Plato explains the method or procedure by which such inquiry is to be carried out. The book defends the controversial thesis that the method of hypothesis, as described and practiced in the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic, is, when practiced correctly, Plato's recommended method of acquiring on one's own the essential knowledge we lack. The method of hypothesis when practiced correctly is, then, Platonic dialectic, and this is Plato's response to Clitophon's challenge. "This is a new book on a critically important topic, methodology, as it is explored in three of the most important works by one of the most important philosophers in the very long history of philosophy, written by a scholar of international stature who is working from many years of experience and currently at the top of his game. It promises to be one of the most important books ever written on this subject."-Nicholas Smith, James F. Miller Professor of Humanities, Lewis and Clark College "The thesis is bold and the results are important for our understanding of some of the most studied and controversial dialogues by and philosophical theses in Plato. In my view, Hugh Benson's examination of the method of hypothesis in the Meno and the Phaedo is a tour de force of subtle and careful scholarship: I think that this part of the book will be adopted as the standard interpretation of this basic notion in Plato. An excellent and important book."-Charles Brittain, Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters, Cornell University

At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit of others and at the expense of her own personal happiness. This book shows how Plato has prepared us, his students, to recognize that the sun-like Idea of the Good is an infinitely greater object of serious philosophical concern than what is merely good for me, and thus why neither Plato nor his Socrates are eudaemonists, as Aristotle unquestionably was. With the transcendent Idea of Beauty having been made manifest through Socrates and Diotima, the dialogues between Symposium and Republic—Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias, Theages, Meno, and Cleitophon— prepare the reader to make the final leap into Platonism, a soul-stirring idealism that presupposes the student’s inborn awareness that there is nothing just, noble, or beautiful about maximizing one’s own good. While perfectly capable of making the majority of his readers believe that he endorses the harmless claim that it is advantageous to be just and thus that we will always fare well by doing well, Plato trains his best students to recognize the deliberate fallacies and shortcuts that underwrite these claims, and thus to look beyond their own happiness by the time they reach the Allegory of the Cave, the culmination of a carefully prepared Ascent to the Good.