Ancient Ethics and the Natural World

This book explores a distinctive feature of ancient philosophy: the closeness between ethics and the study of the natural world.

Barbara M. Sattler (Edited by), Ursula Coope (Edited by)

9781108813723, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 August 2023

246 pages
27 x 18 x 1.7 cm, 0.42 kg

This is an excellent collection of new research in several areas of ancient Greek philosophy.  Every one of these essays has moments of real brilliance. All are valuable in at least several respects. Brad Inwood, Yale University

This book explores a distinctive feature of ancient philosophy: the close relation between ancient ethics and the study of the natural world. Human beings are in some sense part of the natural world, and they live their lives within a larger cosmos, but their actions are governed by norms whose relation to the natural world is up for debate. The essays in this volume, written by leading specialists in ancient philosophy, discuss how these facts about our relation to the world bear both upon ancient accounts of human goodness and also upon ancient accounts of the natural world itself. The volume includes discussion not only of Plato and Aristotle, but also of earlier and later thinkers, with an essay on the Presocratics and two essays that discuss later Epicurean, Stoic, and Neoplatonist philosophers.

Introduction Ursula Coope and Barbara Sattler
Part I. Humans in nature: nature and law, humans and natural catastrophes: 1. Legislating in accordance with nature in Plato's Laws Alex Long
2. Plato's astronomy and moral history in the Timaeus Barbara Sattler: 3. Natural catastrophe in Greek and Roman Philosophy A. A. Long
Part II. Humans as godlike, gods as human-like: Presocratics and Platonists: 4. Anthropomorphism and epistemic anthropo-philautia: the early critiques by Xenophanes and Heraclitus Alexander P. D. Mourelatos
5. Nature and divinity in the notion of godlikeness Li Fan
Part III.Emotions, reason, and the natural world (Aristotle)
6. Human and animal emotions in Aristotle Jamie Dow
7. Reasonable and unreasonable affections and human nature Dorothea Frede
Part IV. Action and the natural world (Aristotle): 8. Chains that do not bind: causation and necessity in Aristotle Thomas Tuozzo
9. Aristotle on nature, deliberation and purposiveness Ursula Coope
Part V. The naturalness of goodness
10. Eudoxus's hedonism Joachim Aufderheide
11. Aristotle and Socrates in the eudemian ethics on the naturalness of goodness Christopher Rowe.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Philosophy [HP]