Ancient Ethics by Meyer, Susan Sauvé -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS 1 WHAT IS ANCIENT ETHICS?

An ethics of virtue? A morality of happiness? Notes

2 PLATO AND THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE

Plato and his predecessors The quest for excellence Excellence, virtue, and happiness Excellence and knowledge Knowledge vs. rhetoric The dearth of knowledge Plato’s indictment of the Golden Age Politics and justice in the Republic The norms of the polis Paideia: learning to be good Knowledge: understanding the good Virtue and external goods Notes

3 ARISTOTLE AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Happiness as the goal of life The choice of lives: EN I.5 and X.7–8 The political life Philosophy in the political life The human function Ethical excellence The doctrine of the mean Voluntary action The role of reason in ethical excellence Intellectual activities and excellences Universals and particulars Reason, desire, and knowledge Learning to be good Responsibility for character External goods Notes

4 EPICURUS AND THE LIFE OF PLEASURE

History, biography, and texts Epicurean philosophy The fourfold remedy Pleasure and the virtues Friendship Hedonism and eudaimonism Notes

5 THE STOICS: FOLLOWING NATURE

The goal of life Following nature Natural law Only the admirable is good Virtue, happiness, and external goods The good and the admirable Goodness and value: the eclipse No degrees of goodness Nature and moral development Aristo and the standard of choice The passions Epicureans vs. Stoics on the life without distress Only the wise are free Notes

Appendix 1 Freedom and What is 'Up to Us' in Stoicism

Notes

Appendix 2 Intellectual Excellences in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Bibliography