Category Archives: Books

Books

Aristotle and the Virtues

Mohamed Sesay

Aristotle is the father of virtue ethics–a discipline which is receiving renewed scholarly attention. Yet Aristotle’s accounts of the individual virtues remain opaque, for most contemporary commentators of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics have focused upon other matters. In contrast, Howard J. Curzer takes Aristotle’s detailed description of the individual virtues to be central to his ethical theory. Working through the Nicomachean Ethics virtue-by-virtue, explaining and generally defending Aristotle’s claims, this book brings each of Aristotle’s virtues alive. A new Aristotle emerges, an Aristotle fascinated by the details of the individual virtues.

Justice and friendship hold special places in Aristotle’s virtue theory. Many contemporary discussions place justice and friendship at opposite, perhaps even conflicting, poles of a spectrum. Justice seems to be very much a public, impartial, and dispassionate thing, while friendship is paradigmatically private, partial, and passionate. Yet Curzer argues that in Aristotle’s view they are actually symbiotic. Justice is defined in terms of friendship, and good friendship is defined in terms of justice.

Curzer goes on to reveal how virtue ethics is not only about being good; it is also about becoming good. Aristotle and the Virtues reconstructs Aristotle’s account of moral development. Certain character types serve as stages of moral development. Certain catalysts and mechanisms lead from one stage to the next. Explaining why some people cannot make moral progress specifies the preconditions of moral development. Finally, Curzer describes Aristotle’s quest to determine the ultimate goal of moral development, happiness.

Books

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle

Mohamed Sesay

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this Handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another.

The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle’s life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle’s treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle’s philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.

Books

Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Mohamed Sesay

In Levels of Argument, Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. In the first half he argues that the Republic distinguishes between two levels of argument in the defence of justice, the ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’ routes. The longer is the ideal and aims at maximum precision, requiring knowledge of the Forms and a definition of the Good. The shorter route is less precise, employing hypotheses, analogies and empirical observation. This is the route that Socrates actually follows in the Republic, because it is appropriate to the level of his audience and can stand on its own feet as a plausible defence of justice. In the second half of the book, Scott turns to the Nicomachean Ethics. Scott argues that, even though Aristotle rejects a universal Form of the Good, he implicitly recognises the existence of longer and shorter routes, analogous to those distinguished in the Republic. The longer route would require a comprehensive theoretical worldview, incorporating elements from Aristotle’s metaphysics, physics, psychology, and biology. But Aristotle steers his audience away from such an approach as being a distraction from the essentially practical goals of political science. Unnecessary for good decision-making, it is not even an ideal. In sum, Platonic and Aristotelian methodologies both converge and diverge. Both distinguish analogously similar levels of argument, and it is the shorter route that both philosophers actually follow–Plato because he thinks it will have to suffice, Aristotle because he thinks that there is no need to go beyond it.

Books

Clitophon’s Challenge: Dialectic in Plato’s Meno, Phaedo, and Republic

Mohamed Sesay

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.

Books

Aristotle and the Arabic Tradition

Josh Hayes

This volume of essays by scholars in ancient Greek, medieval, and Arabic philosophy examines the full range of Aristotle’s influence upon the Arabic tradition. It explores central themes from Aristotle’s corpus, including logic, rhetoric and poetics, physics and meteorology, psychology, metaphysics, ethics and politics, and examines how these themes are investigated and developed by Arabic philosophers including al-Kindî, al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, al-Ghazâlî, Ibn Bâjja and Averroes. The volume also includes essays which explicitly focus upon the historical reception of Aristotle, from the time of the Greek and Syriac transmission of his texts into the Islamic world to the period of their integration and assimilation into Arabic philosophy. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to all those who are interested in the themes, development and context of Aristotle’s enduring legacy within the Arabic tradition.

Books

Mantissa: Essays in Ancient Philosophy IV

Mohamed Sesay

This is the fourth (and last) volume of Jonathan Barnes’ collected essays on ancient philosophy. As its title suggests, the twenty-three papers which it contains cover a wide range of topics. The first paper discusses the size of the sun, and the last looks at Plato and Aristotle in Victorian Oxford. In between come pieces on–inter alia–the theory of just war and the definition of comedy, the nature of the soul according to Plato and Aristotle and Zeno and Tertullian, atheism of Protagoras, Timaeus the Sophist (and his Platonic Lexicon) and the early history of Aristotle’s writings, Nietzsche on Diogenes Laertius, the first Christian novel …

One of the pieces is new. The others have all been retouched, and some of them revised. Half a dozen were written in French and have been translated into English. The volume is kitted out with a bibliography and with two rather good indexes.

The papers are, in parts at least, well written, and some of them are mildly diverting: no-one with a nose for ancient philosophy will sniff at them.

Books

Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle

Mohamed Sesay

In this authoritative discussion of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price considers four related areas: eudaimonia, or living and acting well, as the ultimate end of action; virtues of character in relation to the emotions, and to one another; practical reasoning, especially from an end to ways or means; and acrasia, or action that is contrary to the agent’s own judgement of what is best.

The focal concept is that of eudaimonia, which both Plato and Aristotle view as an abstract goal that is valuable enough to motivate action. Virtue has a double role to play in making its achievement possible, both in proposing subordinate ends apt to the context, and in protecting the agent against temptations to discard them too easily.

For both purposes, Price suggests that virtues need to form a unity–but one that can be conceived in various ways. Among the tasks of deliberation is to work out how, and whether, to pursue some putative end in context. Aristotle returns to early Plato in finding it problematic that one should consciously sacrifice acting well to some incidental attraction; Plato later finds this possible by postulating schism within the soul. Price maintains that it is their emphasis upon the centrality of action within human life that makes the reflections of these ancient philosophers perennially relevant.

Books

Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading

Chris Long

In the Gorgias, Socrates claims to practice the true art of politics, but the peculiar politics he practices involves cultivating in each individual he encounters an erotic desire to live a life animated by the ideals of justice, beauty and the good. Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy demonstrates that what Socrates sought to do with those he encountered, Platonic writing attempts to do with readers.

Christopher P. Long’s attentive readings of the Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedo, Apology, and Phaedrus invite us to cultivate the habits of thinking and responding that mark the practices of both Socratic and Platonic politics. Platonic political writing is here experienced in a new way as the contours of a politics of reading emerges in which the community of readers is called to consider how a commitment to speaking the truth and acting toward justice can enrich our lives together.

The most innovative aspect of this book, however, is the digital platform on which it is published. The enhanced digital book allows readers to make annotations on the book and, when desired, to share notes easily to the author’s blog for comment and discussion. The book is published in a way consistent with the position for which it argues.

Books

The Journey Back to Where You Are: Homer’s Odyssey as Spiritual Quest

David A. Beardsley

The Journey Back to Where You Are attempts to reclaim the place of Homer’s Odyssey as an allegory for the spiritual quest–a journey from strife and division back to love and unity. Drawing on the works of ancient scholarship, but written in accessible language, it describes the journey we must all make to return from our own internal warlike Troy back to our own “native land.” The volume contains the complete translation of the Odyssey by Samuel Butler, revised by faculty of the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, and used by permission.

Books

The Returns of Antigone: Interdisciplinary Essays

Sean D. Kirkland

Despite a venerable tradition of thinkers having declared the death of tragedy, Antigone lives on. Disguised in myriad national costumes, invited to a multiplicity of international venues, inspiring any number of political protests, Antigone transmits her energy through the ages and across the continents in an astoundingly diverse set of contexts. She continues to haunt dramatists, artists, performers, and political activists all over the world. This cutting-edge, interdisciplinary collection explores how and why, with essays ranging from philosophical, literary, and political investigations to queer theory, race theory, and artistic appropriations of the play. It also establishes an international scope for its considerations by including assessments of Latin American and African appropriations of the play alongside European receptions of the play.

Tina Chanter is Head of the School of Humanities at Kingston University in the United Kingdom. Her many books include Whose Antigone? The Tragic Marginalization of Slavery, also published by SUNY Press. Sean D. Kirkland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and the author of The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato’s Early Dialogues, also published by SUNY Press.