Reason and Emotion : : Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory / / John M. Cooper.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Cooper, John M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (604 p.)

This book brings together twenty-three distinctive and influential essays on ancient moral philosophy--including several published here for the first time--by the distinguished philosopher and classical scholar John Cooper. The volume gives a systematic account of many of the most important issues and texts in ancient moral psychology and ethical theory, providing a unified and illuminating way of reflecting on the fields as they developed from Socrates and Plato through Aristotle to Epicurus and the Stoic philosophers Chrysippus and Posidonius, and beyond. For the ancient philosophers, Cooper shows here, morality was "good character" and what that entailed: good judgment, sensitivity, openness, reflectiveness, and a secure and correct sense of who one was and how one stood in relation to others and the surrounding world. Ethical theory was about the best way to be rather than any principles for what to do in particular circumstances or in relation to recurrent temptations. Moral psychology was the study of the psychological conditions required for good character--the sorts of desires, the attitudes to self and others, the states of mind and feeling, the kinds of knowledge and insight. Together these papers illustrate brilliantly how, by studying the arguments of the Greek philosophers in their diverse theories about the best human life and its psychological underpinnings, we can expand our own moral understanding and imagination and enrich our own moral thought. The collection will be crucial reading for anyone interested in classical philosophy and what it can contribute to reflection on contemporary questions about ethics and human life.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Editorial Note -- Part One. Socrates and Plato -- 1. Notes on Xenophon's Socrates -- 2. Socrates and Plato in Plato's Gorgias -- 3. The Unity of Virtue -- 4. Plato's Theory of Human Motivation -- 5. The Psychology of Justice in Plato -- 6. Plato's Theory of Human Good in the Philebus -- 7. Plato's Statesman and Politics -- Part Two. Aristotle -- 8. The Magna Moralia and Aristotle's Moral Philosophy -- 9. Contemplation and Happiness: A Reconsideration -- 10. Some Remarks on Aristotle's Moral Psychology -- 11. Reason, Moral Virtue, and Moral Value -- 12. Aristotle on the Authority of "Appearances5 -- 13. Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune -- 14. Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship -- 15. Friendship and the Good in Aristotle -- 16. Political Animals and Civic Friendship -- 17. Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics -- 18. Ethical-Political Theory in Aristotle's Rhetoric -- 19. An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions -- Part Three. Hellenistic Philosophy -- 20. Eudaimonism, the Appeal to Nature, and "Moral Duty55 in Stoicism -- 21. Posidonius on Emotions -- 22. Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus -- 23. Greek Philosophers on Euthanasia and Suicide -- Bibliography Of Works Cited -- Index Of Passages -- General Index