In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the New Testament or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, (...) and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was fully secularized. Forgiveness was God's province and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait. (shrink)

What makes something beautiful? In this engaging, elegant study, David Konstan turns to ancient Greece to address the nature of beauty.

Inquires into ancient Athenian philosopher Epicurus' analysis of irrational fears and desires, arguing that such emotions played a more central and controlling role in his system than has often been supposed, in a book that also looks at how ancient Roman poet Lucretius interpreted Epicurus' ideas. Reissue.

This book is about love in the classical world -- not erotic passion but the love that binds together intimate members of a family and close friends, but may also include a wider range of individuals for whom we care deeply. Among the topics discussed are friendship, loyalty, gratitude, grief, and civic solidarity.

Aspasius' commentary on the "Nicomachean Ethics", of which six books have come down to us, is the oldest surviving Greek commentary on any of Aristotle's works, dating to the middle of the second century AD. It offers precious insight into the thinking and pedagogical methods of the Peripatetic school in the early Roman Empire, and provides illuminating discussions of numerous technical points in Aristotle's treatise, along with valuable excursuses on such topics as the nature of the emotions. This is the (...) first complete translation of Aspasius' work in any modern language. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In this paper, I shall examine certain aspects of the thinking of Epicurus and Lucretius on the problems connected with human emotions and ...

There is a deep problem with beauty. Beauty is commonly equated with sexual attractiveness. Yet there is also the beauty of art, which arouses an aesthetic response of disinterested contemplation. As Roger Scruton writes in his recent book, Beauty : “In the realm of art beauty is an object of contemplation, not desire.” Are there, then, two kinds of beauty? By looking back at the classical Greek conception of beauty, we may see how it gave rise to the modern dilemma, (...) and some possible ways of resolving it. (shrink)

David Konstan argues that the term philia, in Aristotle, represents an elective, affective relationship, and not, as many scholars have maintained, a relation of mutual obligation, like that of kinship, with no necessary affective element; in addition, he disambiguates two senses of philia, one corresponding to “love”, the other designating the reciprocal affection characteristic of friendship.

Aristotle’s conception of vice is notoriously problematic. On the one hand, it appears as the antithesis of virtue; as such, it may seem, like virtue, to rest on principles, except that in the case of vice the principles are bad ones. On the other hand, vice may be something more like the privation or absence of virtue: not the negative pole or opposite of virtue but the condition of not being at all guided by rational principles or logos. As a (...) way of approaching Aristotle’s notion of vice, I propose to examine two disapproved qualities that Aristotle mentions briefly in his Rhetoric, and which are adduced as the opposites of emotions. The two qualities are ingratitude, which is represented as the opposite of feeling grateful, and shamelessness, the opposite of the emotion shame. Both ingratitude and shamelessness have the appearance of vices, even though they are contrasted here not with virtues but with passions or pathê. Examining the logic of these pairings will, I hope, shed light not only on ingratitude and shamelessness but also on the complex and unstable nature of vice itself. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Sources Physical Theory Ethics Knowledge and Perception Practice References and Recommended Reading.

Dans ce texte, je fais une distinction, chez Aristote, entre deux conceptions de l’acte consistant à accorder un bienfait à une autre personne. La première relève de la libéralité ou eleutheriotês, une des vertus examinées par Aristote dans l’ Éthique à Nicomaque ; la personne libérale aide une autre personne en vue de ce qui est « beau » ou « noble » ( to kalon ). L’autre conception correspond à la faveur ou kharis, qu’Aristote analyse quand il examine les (...) émotions, au deuxième livre de la Rhétorique. Les faveurs sont accordées sans motif ultérieur, mais seulement en vue du bien de l’autre personne ; il n’y a rien à attendre en retour, sous quelque forme que ce soit, pas même le surcroît d’honneur dû à l’accomplissement d’un acte vertueux. Je soutiens que seul le second type de bienfait, selon Aristote, appelle la gratitude (en Grec, kharin ekhein ), puisqu’il est accordé d’une manière pleinement gratuite. Je suggère ensuite que le motif qui anime ce type de faveur pleinement altruiste est probablement l’amour ou philia, le pathos qui, selon Aristote dans la Rhétorique, est qualifié comme « vouloir pour une personne ce que l’on tient pour des biens – pour elle et non pour soi – et de faire ce qu’on peut pour les lui procurer ». (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 282-288, October 2021. Efforts to identify in the expression “being moved” a new emotion have found a hospitable environment in the recent turn to the body in emotion and cognitive studies, exemplified herein affect theory, with a particular focus on the effects of music. Although classical Greek and Latin had comparable expressions, however, they did not single out a specific emotion. Given that music played an important role in ancient educational theories, and was (...) imagined as having arousing powerful reactions, this might seem a curious absence. The reason, at least in part, maybe the strong cognitive conception of emotions characteristic of classical theories. But this should not discourage the search for emotions that are not included in the ancient canons. (shrink)

"The commentary by Aspasius that is translated here dates from the second century A.D., and is the earliest extant commentary on Aristotle. The second work is of unknown date and authorship. The third, a commentary by Michael of Ephesus, dates to the twelfth century.".

Several decades of scholarship have demonstrated that Roman thinkers developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together, they offer many perspectives that are of philosophical interest in their own right. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy explores a range of such Roman philosophical perspectives through thirty-four newly commissioned essays. Where Roman philosophy has long been considered a mere extension of Hellenistic systems of thought, this volume moves beyond the search (...) for sources and parallels and situates Roman philosophy in its distinctive cultural context. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy emphasizes four features of Roman philosophy: aspects of translation, social context, philosophical import, and literary style. The authors adopt an inclusive approach, treating not just systematic thinkers such as Cicero and Augustine, but also poets and historians. Topics covered include ethnicity, cultural identity, literary originality, the environment, Roman philosophical figures, epistemology, and ethics. (shrink)

In this book, eminent scholars of classical antiquity and ancient and medieval Judaism and Christianity explore the nature and place of forgiveness in the pre-modern Western world. They discuss whether the concept of forgiveness, as it is often understood today, was absent, or at all events more restricted in scope than has been commonly supposed, and what related ideas may have taken the place of forgiveness. An introductory chapter reviews the conceptual territory of forgiveness and illuminates the potential breadth of (...) the idea, enumerating the important questions a theory of the subject should explore. The following chapters examine forgiveness in the contexts of classical Greece and Rome; the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Moses Maimonides; and the New Testament, the Church Fathers, and Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

This volume presents papers of a conference held in 2002 at the Rochester Institute of Technology. After a superficial introduction, eight chapters trace the legacy of Epicureanism from Philodemus, the philosopher who took up residence in the Roman town of Herculaneum in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, to C.S. Peirce and, rather cursorily, eighteenth-century Russian theology. Three further chapters deal with Epicurus' ideas of friendship and death, and the last provides a brief description of the wall-sized Epicurean inscription in the (...) ancient city of Oenoanda (in modern Turkey), dating to the second century AD. (shrink)

This paper shows the close relationship between morality and emotions, as emotions were defined and understood by classical Greek and Roman philosophers. Particular attention is paid to the nature of anger, and also to the distinction between full-fledged emotions, which depend on rational judgments and which, accordingly, only human beings are capable of experiencing, and what the Stoics called “pre-emotions,” which were common to human beings and other animals.