The prelims comprise: The Significance of Voluntariness Ordinary and Philosophical Notions of Voluntariness Constraint and Compulsion Force and Contrariety in the NE Knowledge and Ignorance The Platonic Asymmetry Thesis Responsibility for Character References Further reading.

Plato and the pursuit of excellence -- Aristotle and the pursuit of happiness -- Epicurus and the life of pleasure -- The Stoics : following nature.

Fifteen leading philosophers explore a set of themes from the pioneering work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin in the history of philosophy. They discuss knowledge, rhetoric, freedom and practical reason, virtue and the good life, ethics and politics in Plato and Aristotle and beyond.

The dominant consequentialist, Kantian, and contractualist theories by virtue ethicists such as G.E.M. Anscombe, Alisdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Michael Stocker have been criticized for their neglect of the emotions. There are three reasons why it might be a mistake for moral philosophy to neglect the emotions. Emotions have an important influence on motivation, and proper cultivation of the emotions is helpful, perhaps essential, to our ability to lead ethical lives. It is a plausible thesis that an ethical life involves (...) feeling certain ways in certain circumstances and acting from certain feelings in certain circumstances. Some emotions are forms of ethical perception, judgment, or even knowledge. This chapter examines the Ancient ethical tradition that inspires the virtue ethicists' critique, revealing versions of each of these three theses in one guise or another. It first considers the medieval transformations of the ancient doctrines, and then focuses on the third, more contentious thesis, distinguishing several versions of it in the moral philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and indicating some contemporary exemplars as well. (shrink)

"Plato's Statesman reconsiders many questions familiar to readers of the Republic: questions in political theory - such as the qualifications for the leadership of a state and the best from of constitution (politeia) - as well as questions of philosophical methodology and epistemology. Instead of the theory of Forms that is the centrepiece of the epistemology of the Republic, the emphasis here is on the dialectical practice of collection and division (diairesis), in whose service the interlocutors also deploy the ancillary (...) methods of myth and of models (paradeigmata). Plato here introduces the doctrine of due measure (to metrion) and a conception of statecraft (politikē) as an architectonic expertise that governs subordinate disciplines such as rhetoric and the military - doctrines later developed by Aristotle. Readers will find a sustained defence of the importance of expertise (technē or epistēmē) in the conduct of affairs of state, a robust (although not unqualified) defence of the rule of law, and an unsparing but nuanced critique of democratic government. The chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive and detailed philosophical engagement with the entirety of Plato's wide-ranging dialogue, with successive chapters devoted to the sections of the dialogue as it unfolds, and an introduction that places the dialogue in the context of Plato's philosophy as a whole. While not a commentary in the traditional sense, the volume engages with Plato's Statesman in its entirety" -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

A selection of key passage from Aristotle's seminal work the Nicomachean Ethics, which sets out what it means to flourish and live life well.